Archive for January, 2010
Lady Sings the Blues, or, A Confession About Jazz, Part II
When it comes to jazz, I tend to prefer instrumentals to vocals, which is a shame in that it cuts me off from women’s biggest contribution to the genre. That said, I do have a couple of the greats in my collection. Not long ago I was listening to a Jazz at the Philharmonic record [...]
Who Knew?
Who knew Woody Allen and I had so much in common? I will explain in a minute. But first, a story: About a decade ago I thought very seriously about trying to write a biography of the pioneering tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. What ultimately dissuaded me as much as anything else was reading a piece [...]
Live at Five
My wife and I gave each other iPods for Christmas. So ended a three-year period when, in terms of how I listened to music, I had one foot in the 21st century and the other back in the 20th: I would download stuff from iTunes, and then . . . burn it to CDs. (My [...]
Men of a Certain Age
For the record, I am younger than the three main characters on the TNT comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age – but not by enough to matter. Weeks ago my wife mentioned that she wanted to watch the premiere and asked if I wanted to join her. I declined, having read Alessandra Stanley’s article about [...]
Dark Thinker
A few months back, at the Guggenheim, I saw an installation by an artist I won’t name, since the work left me mostly unimpressed. I say “mostly” because on one wall was the cover of a book: Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer. Seeing the cover led me, a bit later, to pick up the [...]
