2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
Mrs. T and I are hitting the road this afternoon for a desperately needed vacation on the coast of Maine. I can't even begin to tell you how much the two of us need to get away from it all, …
"An ambitious man is a man who wants other people to think he is great." Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev dance the "Black Swan" pas de deux from Swan Lake, choreographed by Marius Petipa and set to the music of Tchaikovsky. This performance, introduced by…
"I don't care much about pretty words any more. You live with words a long time. Then all at once you are old, and there are the things and the words don't matter any more." Robert Penn Warr…
Twenty years ago Our Girl in Chicago took me on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's self-designed home in Oak Park, Illinois. It was the beginning of what was soon to become a full-blown obsessio…
From 2004: To memorize something effectively, you have to expend some interpretive effort on it, and with this effort you wind up in something like a conversation with the text. Grasping at …
"I saw the little creases in the flesh of her neck, just the tiniest little creases, the little mark left day after day by that absolutely ininitesimal gossamer cord of thuggee which time th…
Eddie Edwards and Tony Sbarbaro, the original trombonist and drummer of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, appear as guests on an episode of I've Got a Secret originally telecast on CBS on No…
"Always do it in the daytime, because at night your heart takes over. Take her to lunch, to a very chic place like Le Pavillon or The Colony, where she will see famous people and where it is…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I report on American Players Theatre's revival of A Streetcar Named Desire and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of The Winter's T…
Frank Sinatra sings "Witchcraft," written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, on The Frank Sinatra Show, originally telecast on February 7, 1958. The arrangement is by Nelson Riddle: (This is t…
"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will." George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah
"A painting is above all a product of the artist’s imagination, it ust never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spo…
Ravi Shankar performs on an episode of The Hollywood Palace, originally telecast on September 5, 1967. He is introduced by Bing Crosby: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos…
"The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos." Wallace Stevens, "Imagination as Value"
From 2005: I'd somehow managed to make it to the age of thirty-nine without losing anyone to whom I was close. Then one day the bolts of lightning started falling all around me. First my bes…
"For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.…
Today I drive from Spring Green, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee, board a plane, fly to LaGuardia Airport, and make my way from there to my apartment in upper Manhattan. On Tuesday I travel from the…
The New York City Ballet dances George Balanchine's Agon in 1982. The score is by Igor Stravinsky: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monda…
"Criticism is powerless to reach art. Art proceeds itself in a region quite beyond the reach of other expression save itself." John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey revival of Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman and the Broadway premiere of Amazing Grace. Here's an e…
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I write about Edward G. Robinson's art collection. Here's an excerpt. * * * What do the moguls of modern-day Hollywood do with their megabuc…
Courtesy of Doug Ramsey, Gjon Mili's Stompin' for Mili, a short film made in 1954 at a recording session by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, featuring Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Bob Bates on b…
"I finally decided writing was like playing jazz"it can be learned, but not taught." Paul Desmond (quoted in Marian McPartland, "A Portrait of Desperate Desmond," Downbeat, Sept. 15, 1960)
"Time, time"that is our greatest master! Alas, like Ugolino, time devours its own children." Hector Berlioz, letter to Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (Aug. 12, 1856)
