Well, to add to this Botstein state of glory is the recent program at Bard College which celebrates the 20th anniversary of Botstein’s own Bard Music Festival.  As Alex Ross in the New Yorker states, “At this summer’s program, [Richard] Wagner is confronted with two Jewish-born composers whom he copied and then condemned: Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer.”  When I read this, I almost leapt out of my pants, skin, and surrounding atmosphere.  For years, I have tolerated the salivations of so many over the Divine Wagner, the supposed exquisiteness and cerebral passion of his endless sagas.  In spite of the fact that I find his music cold, soulless, and downright boring.  Mendelssohn and the newly-discovered (for me) Meyerbeer, on the other hand, are joyful and lyrical, filled with emotion and honest-to-goodness soul.  Taste, of course, is personal.  And so, although I cannot stand Wagner (perhaps just as much for his notorious anti-Semitism as his frequently tedious compositions), I completely respect those who adore his music.  However, the fact that Botstein is presenting a program that is able to fuse Wagner’s influences with Wagner’s utter hypocrisy, I think, is complete and absolute genius.

Leon Botstein, you are certainly worthy of the title “the Magnificent.”  I just wish I could be there to help celebrate with you and Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer at Bard.  Here’s to 20 and 20 more years of exciting music–and truth and revelation!

Oh, yes, a quick mention: A recent post about the sublime Marie Bryant (dancer and singer extraordinaire) managed to disappear before it could be posted.  Yes, yet another technical difficulty.  Well, I will try my hardest to create another posting about the beloved Ms. Bryant as soon as possible.  For now, here is a photo to enjoy:

Well, this actually brings up many other issues as well.  For example, why is it that so much incredible music composed over the last 100 years gets ignored by choreographers in general, while either many of the same pieces or many of the same composers find never-ending favor in the creative minds of today’s (generally mediocre) choreographers?  Perhaps because so many choreographers are so unmusical?  Exceptions, of course, exist: Mark Morris continues to be a true music maven, as does Alexei Ratmansky (whom the New York City Ballet never should have let escape).  Others, too.  But how many Arvo Part and Philip Glass and Michael Torke soundtracks for dance pieces do we really need to have?  There are hundreds, thousands of jazz and modern classical and avant garde and pop and soul and even non-Billy Joel, non-4 Seasons rock & roll compositions that are just waiting for the right choreographer.  To make reference to an earlier posting, the PJ Harvey/John Parish record, “Dance Hall at Louse Point,” was the focus of an evening’s dance work by the British choreographer, Mark Bruce.  While there is no question that, in the hands of a different dancemaker, the album’s exquisite songs would have found more exquisite treatment, one must applaud Bruce for making the attempt.

It would be wonderful if U.S. dance companies in particular could make a greater effort to revive pieces by some of America’s semi-forgotten choreographic masters.  Some truly exciting programs could be created which might serve to bring in many new dance-watchers if marketed effectively.  Names like Ruth Page and Hanya Holm and Helen Tamiris deserve to be seen with greater frequency in concert programs.  And great pieces of Americana created by inspired dance creat0rs from the 1920s through the 1960s deserve some long-awaited fresh looks.

What is especially exciting about a fresh listening to the soundtrack and a fresh perusal of the booklet included with the CD is the cast itself.  How can one not be thrilled by a musical that featured not only Stubby Kaye and Charlotte Rae, but also – hold onto your hats and shoes – Edie Adams, Tina Louise, and Julie Newmar!  And, incredible as it may seem, this other-worldly trio is featured in a stunning photo on the last page of the CD booklet.  Absolutely wonderful.

The musical itself is also a joy.  Much lyrical humor (thanks to Johnny Mercer), plenty of great tunes (much in keeping with the passion for the American West that seemed to be prevalent at the time), and, although not possible to appreciate from the CD, a wealth of show-stopping Michael Kidd dance numbers.  While I never cared much for the comic strip, I would certainly have paid a bundle to have had an opportunity to see this production.

Along these lines, there is still the question of, “Why?!,” when it comes to the careers of Adams, Louise, and Newmar.  Each found success, to be sure.  Yet, there is no reason at all why their respective successes could not have been greater, for greater success is certainly what they deserved.  The magic ingredient that each possessed?  Soul.  Pure soul.

More to come about these three fabulous women.  For now, let’s drink a toast to this unsung piece of Broadway history and the magnificent players who made it so beautiful.

The reason is simple.  I believe strongly that the best work Harvey has done has been in collaboration with Parish.   In particular, the record Dance Hall at Louse Point continues to be among my favorite releases over the last 20 years.  Parish truly seems to understand how to write music that brings out the best in Harvey, both vocally and lyrically.  Dance Hall at Louse Point illustrates this perfectly.  The songs are such a wild mix of sounds and allow PJ Harvey to use her incredible voice in so many intriguing ways.  They also feature lyrics that are powerful, passionate, strange, inspiring, and, yes, even funny.  Don’t get me wrong–I absolutely adore the majority of Harvey’s own compositions.  But John Parish brings her angles that she herself may not have explored on her own.

And, let’s face it, most of the songs on Dance Hall at Louse Point are so good that Harvey generally includes many of them in her own live shows.  When people in concert halls hear her do Heela and Taut and That Was My Veil and even Is That All There Is? (thank you Peggy Lee!), many, I have no doubt, do not realize that these are songs from Dance Hall.  In a sense, it is a record filled with “classic” PJ Harvey tunes.

It is also worth mentioning that, shortly after Dance Hall was released (in 1996), I had the extraordinary experience of seeing the production for which it was created at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.  The Mark Bruce Dance Company performed original choreography while PJ and John and their wonderful band accompanied the dancers live.  I was certainly not enamored of the movements created by Bruce (I wanted to go home and choreograph new pieces myself!), but I can say with complete honesty that the performance by Harvey and Parish and company was one that I will not soon forget–just phenomenal.

Therefore, there is every reason to be eager about the release of the latest installment in the Harvey-Parish collaboration saga.  I know I will be ready with my money on March 30–as I am sure thousands more will be who not only love Ms. Harvey’s work, but also love the often maligned masterpiece, Dance Hall at Louse Point.

The book is a gem.

Hemp selected 26 of his own favorite places in New York–places, in general, that hark back to a much earlier New York City.  Places which are easy to miss as one hustles to and fro.  Places that somehow survived in spite of drastic changes to the surrounding neighborhoods.  Very very special places.  For each place chosen, Hemp provides a charming and appropriately old-styled pen-and-ink drawing, as well as a brief, rather personal, and utterly fascinating (albeit minutely erroneous from time to time) history of that particular place.  Examples include Mott Street, Washington Mews, St. Luke’s Place, and Grove Court.

After reading the book, I set out immediately to visit as many of the locations cited by Hemp as possible.  In some cases, even I (a very longtime New Yorker with a fondness for exploration) had no real recollection of visiting that particular place before (and what a fabulous revelation in each case!).  And, in the instances where my destination was a very familiar place, it was as if I was seeing those places in a brand new light once I arrived–thanks to Hemp’s lively and informative descriptions.

What an inspiration New York Enclaves turned out to be!  And, with some of my own favorite streets and buildings not included in Hemp’s little beauty of a book, it made me even more excited about digging deeper into the histories of those much beloved places.  Of course, it also saddened me profoundly to think of those equally beloved places which are now gone or on their way to extinction.  In any case, I am grateful to William H. Hemp for his contribution to the literature of New York City–and to the New York Public Library for keeping such a relatively obscure work accessible to all.

Scott Simon of NPR also played some cuts from Golson’s latest record, New Time, New ‘Tet, and they sounded exquisite, very fresh, and as hot as ever.  Definitely worth a trip to one of the few record stores that still exist.

So congratulations Benny Golson and may you continue to bring joy to the planet for many years to come!

Links to the appropriate Kennedy Center and NPR websites may be found below.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showevent&event=mjjpc

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99814711

In this collection, he is especially inspired when he reports on New York City summers.  Keep in mind, we are in the early 1930s when we read Mitchell’s snapshots of peanut vendors in Battery Park, kwass drinkers on Forsyth Street, Italian delicatessens in Red Hook, Jewish delicatessens on the Lower East Side, and families gobbling sandwiches, pickles, boiled eggs, and bananas on the sand in Coney Island.  Here is just one exquisite passage:

At the corner, at the foot of the elevated station stairway, there is a watermelon peddler.  He has just sliced up a long, striped one, a beauty.  A long slice is a nickel; a cross-slice is 3 cents.  A little boy runs up to his mother and begs for a nickel.  She tells him to go ask his pa.  He runs into one of the stores, and his pa gives him what he wants.  A moment later he imprisons his face in a slice of watermelon.

At the moment, I am reading a section on Jimmy Durante.  Durante, tired and hung over, is talking with Mitchell during rehearsals for Red, Hot, and Blue!, which also features a very young Ethel Merman and lots of chorus girls admired greatly by Mr. Durante.  Even here, with Mitchell interviewing a star, what we get is something 180 degrees different from what we would be supplied with by almost any other reporter.  Durante talks about his wild childhood on Catherine Street and food and even what his father likes to eat.  It is a marvelous, utterly personal, uniquely intimate window.  I cannot wait to get to the segments near the end which feature a very young William Steig and a very old George Bernard Shaw.

Of course, these are very big names and there is no question that Mitchell did have access to some truly major–or, at least, once-major–celebrities of his time.  Yet, as a person who admired and sought out and embraced the less-known and the unknown, Mitchell’s portraits of non-celebrities and very minor celebrities are abundant in this book, as they are in all of his collections.  For every Billy Sunday, you’ll get four or five Jeeter Lesters or Gilligan Holtons or Florence Cubitts.  As Mitchell himself comments at one point in My Ears are Bent, “The least interesting people to interview for an afternoon newspaper are the ones who probably should be the most interesting.”  In other words, Mitchell often found his best subjects to be the little guys, the struggling artists, the downtrodden, the out of favor, the ones not in the limelight, the second fiddles.  Accordingly, Mitchell is the true patron saint of this website.

I found those books when I wandered over to the Canadian Fiction section of a Vancouver book shop and began thumbing through titles by the then-unknown-to me Buday.  Immediately, I purchased the three books available in the shop: White Lung, A Sack of Teeth, and the utterly magnificent short story collection, Monday Night Man.  The streets of the East Side and the lives and thoughts of the city’s working (and out-of-work) people were illuminated with vigor.  The stories were gritty, direct, beautiful, horrifying, honest, funny, and powerful.  I wanted more.

Unfortunately, Buday’s books were and continue to be difficult to find.  Even in Canada.  I have made a few trips subsequently over the last few years to that same Vancouver book shop and not once have I seen a single additional title on display by Buday.  How exciting, therefore, to discover that he has a new book out now–and that he has produced other titles throughout these years of fruitless searching on my part.  And the latest one sounds terrific: it is called Dragonflies (published by Biblioasis) and tells the story of the final days of the Trojan War from the perspective of Odysseus.  I cannot wait to get hold of it.

It is without a doubt high time for Canadian authors to be given more serious attention by US academic institutions, review journals, and book stores.  How many Canadian authors, after all, can any US citizen accurately name?  If I had my way, Buday would be taught in any course devoted to great contemporary North American authors.

As I regard and contemplate the John Sloan image above, I am reminded of a wonderful, less-widely-known member of the Ashcan School, Ernest Lawson.  2009 will mark the 70th anniversary of Lawson’s death and it seems a fitting time to devote more thought and text to his incredible work.  I suppose, in a way, I am especially drawn to Lawson because of his love for the northern parts of Manhattan–in particular, Washington Heights and Inwood.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a few of Lawson’s works, including one (Harlem River) depicting the old Washington Bridge,  and another of Spuyten Duyvil, the wild waterway that flows around Inwood Park and the northernmost tip of Manhattan island (Shadows, Spuyten Duyvil Hill).  Of course, Lawson’s work may be viewed in many other collections and it is worth anyone’s while to seek out his beautiful, evocative oils and watercolors.

More about Lawson in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, if you are in NYC, pay a visit to the Met and travel up to the Luce room in the American Wing, where so many gems are hidden.  There you will find the Lawson pieces, as well as many other beauties that are less frequently seen (such as Jerome Myers’ Street Group from 1923).  It will feel like a private viewing.