(Sorry about the fonts. I don’t know what’s going on with that...)
My new Nation column is here. https://www.thenation.com/article/is-trump-a-liar-or-a-lunatic-why-not-both/ The hed reads: “Is Trump a Liar or a Lunatic? Both.” With a deck “The media must stop normalizing Trump’s bizarre and dangerous actions.”
And here https://www.thenation.com/article/letters-from-the-october-16-2017-issue/ is a rather comical exchange I had with Morton Klein of the far-right Zionist Organization of America.
Alter-reviews:
The season at the Café Carlyle is in full swing. Duncan Sheik did his first shows there last week with a small band combining his own original material, songs from “Spring Awakening”—which he composed, and was amazing and won eight Tonys and a Grammy and you were extremely lucky if you got to see him do it on Broadway—and I almost mean that literally—and some clever covers. I was not familiat with his original material and so while it sounded nice, I have trouble judging music the first time I hear it. But he’s an extremely personal performer and his rendition of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” was haunting and beautiful.
Next up I caught the beginning of an eleven day run by singer-songwriter, actress, producer and famous wife of Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson that will last until October 21. The show centered around songs featured on her self-titled sophomore album, along with new material from her upcoming third album of original songs to be released in 2018. Wilson is very much of the Stevie Nicks style of sensitive LA singers, with songs of emotional contemplation and heartbreak, and lots of patter. Her first album was all covers but her new one is self-penned songs, written with partners that focus on female feelings. At the Carlyle she also did a couple of snippets of two of my favorite songs of all time, “Ode to Billy Joe” and “Harper Valley PTA” and if she wants my advice, she should sing all of them instead of picking on the lyrics in the middle.
If you’ve got a lot of money and are in the city, you should check the Carlyle’s schedule here https://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/the-carlyle-new-york/location/things-to-do/entertainment-at-the-carlyle. It is a wonderfully romantic and historic place to see a show and I am, as I always do, looking forward to the performance of Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli so they can continue to pay tuition for their kid at Brown.(November 7 through 18).
I wanted also to give everybody a heads up regarding Jazz@LC’s first ever Thelonious Monk symposium happening RIGHT NOW (well, tonight). It incldudes a listening party with panelists Robin D.G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk biographer; Zev Feldman, producer of Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, a limited-edition double-LP and 2xCD set; and T.S. Monk, drummer and son of the legendary jazz artist. Jazz scholar Greg Thomas will moderate the conversation. The panel will discuss recordings of unaccounted tapes, covering personnel and notes on styles.
On Friday, October 13 at 7pm, Monk scholars Feldman and Thomas will discuss the soundtrack and play selections from Roger Vadim’s 1959 film adaptation of the 18th century French novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. This film is Monk’s only cinematic venture; it is the only time he lent his talent for a film soundtrack. A screening of the movie will follow the panel discussion. Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio in the Irene Diamond Education Center in Frederick P. Rose Hall, the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Frederick P. Rose Hall is located at 60th Street and Broadway.There’s also a full line up of performances at Dizzy’s, that you can find here. jazz.org/dizzys. I am especially excited to see the amazing Joey DeFrancisco to a whole show of Monk tonight. I’ve been seeing Joey for years—and not old enough to stay up for the late show, and I am blown away by his talent and intelligence every time. You will be too, I’m betting.
I was also lucky enough to catch Tony Bennett’s recent show at Radio City. Tony is an incredible 91 years young. I’ve been seeing him since he became hip again oh, somewhere between 25 and 30 years ago, thanks to his son’s smart management and his irrepressable spirit and his amazing voice. (Tony’s lucky with his family. Devoted daughter, Antonia, opened the show with some very impressive vocal discipline and a lot of love for her (really) old man.) I saw Sinatra in his late sixties and he was about where Tony (finally) is now in terms of the voice—that is, he struggles a bit with the high notes and is a bit deeper in the middle, but it is still just about all there. The show was devoted to what Tony long ago named “The Great American Songbook” amd while he rushed through a few of them—surely “Cold,Cold Heart” deserves the whole song—he could still carry each one with that georgous instrument of his.(Here’s a setlist: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/tony-bennett/2017/radio-city-music-hall-new-york-ny-3be380f4.html) Tony is about to become the first “interpretive” singer to win the Gerswhin Award from the Library of Congress and it will be a moment that makes one proud to be an American (however briefly).
Speaking of pride in this once great nation of ours, Verve has just released an album of the great Ella Fitzgerald singing with the London Symphony Orchestra, along with a duet with Gregory Porter of “People Will Say We’re In Love” And Newly Orchestrated and Arranged Music by Jorge Callandrelli, James Morgan and Juliette Pochin. Sinatra—who come to think of it, introduced Tony from beyond the grave, said Ella “sings songs better than anyone I’ve ever heard in my life.” And here’s the proof.
It’s Ella’s centennial and I’m looking forward to Verve’s release of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong / Cheek to Cheek: The Complete Duet Recordings, and if you don’t have it and have any musical taste at all, so should you. . Later in the year, Verve will issue Ella At Zardi’s, a previously unreleased live album recorded at the famed nightclub on February 2, 1956 – two days before the sessions for Verve’s first official LP release, Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook.
So the 55th New York Film Festival is upon us as I write this.
The highlight of this year’s festival for me was the discussion with Richard Linklater. I am ashamed to admit I saw this while it was still Yom Kippur, but I think he’s the most fun and interesting filmmaker working today—that is he is making the most fun and interesting movies that anyone is right now. For the NYFF55 conversation, he brought along some of his favorite film clips from the classics he watched growing up and talked about why they meant so much to him.
I also really liked “The Square,” a wonderfully weird (and also kinda long) movie from Sweden described on IMDB as a “poignant satirical drama reflecting our times - about the sense of community, moral courage and the affluent person's need for egocentricity in an increasingly uncertain world”. It’s also got a lot to say about the art world, and somehow, also has small parts in it for Elizabeth Moss and Dominic West.
A lot of people I know really liked “Let the Sun Shine In.” I expected to, because I love Juliet Binoche but I did not. I hear it has a great ending featuring a particularly portly French actor and confident of Vladimir Putin, but I did not make it as far as that. I also did not make to the end of “Mrs. Hyde,” which was interesting, but not compelling, and featured the usually wonderful Isabel Huppert.
Finally, I did not make it through much of Claude Lanzmann's Four Sisters. from interviews that Lanzmann originally filmed, in the nineteen-seventies, for “Shoah.” I have never made it through “Shoah” either. I am just not strong enough to hear these tales told. This is a tribute, not a criticism of Lanzmann. This film, like his last outing consists of interviews that did not make it into “Shoah. Richard Brody describes the film in The New Yorker thusly: “’The Four Sisters” consists of four new films by Claude Lanzmann, all of which are developed from interviews that Lanzmann originally filmed, in the nineteen-seventies, for “Shoah.” Each of the films is centered on a different woman, two of whom, Paula Biren and Ruth Elias, are in fact seen briefly in “Shoah.” The four women come from different parts of Eastern Europe, and Lanzmann’s discussions with them illuminate, with a nearly unbearable clarity, the experiences of these women during the German onslaught, during the Second World War, to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The transcripts of their discussions have long been available at the Web site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, but reading the transcripts is like reading the libretto of an opera, an extraordinarily narrow experience compared to the emotional, artistic, and intellectual fullness of the films themselves.” You can read the smart things he has to say about it here https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/highlights-from-the-second-weekend-of-the-new-york-film-festival
M