It might just be global warming, but this unusually balmy winter is making many New Yorkers feel kind of frisky and softhearted. At least the ladies can show off their clavicles! Just look at the Mayor, who recently skipped a big gala attended by the Bushes to take his lady friend, Diana Taylor, to dinner Read More
By all rights, I should be getting on my high horse to excoriate Mood Indigo: The Legacy of Duke Ellington , an exhibition at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Centered on the white baby-grand piano upon which Ellington composed many of his signature songs (the gallery breathlessly informs us that it’s valued at a million bucks), Read More
Duke Ellington’s Legacy
Inspires Painters’ Moody Blues
By all rights, I should be getting on my high horse to excoriate Mood Indigo: The Legacy of Duke Ellington , an exhibition at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Centered on the white baby-grand piano upon which Ellington composed many of his signature songs (the gallery breathlessly informs Read More
As almost everyone in New York knows by now , Jazz , a 10-part, 19-hour documentary that began airing on PBS station WNET-TV on Jan. 8, is the latest opus by nonfiction filmmaker Ken Burns. As almost everyone here also knows, titles can be deceiving. And though Mr. Burns may have been the man behind Read More
Thanks to more legal troubles than he has nicknames, the Ol’ Dirty Bastard (or is it Big Baby Jesus?) is restricted to a single track on this third official Wu-Tang Clan release The W (Loud/Sony). But the corporeal absence of the most intensely spastic rapper since Flavor Flav (Joe C, R.I.P.) has only upped the Read More
Pretty Woman, Dopey Guy
Fed up with the Force and sick of cyberspace, I now return from galaxies far, far away to three new films that disprove the assumption that romance is dead at the movies. Notting Hill asks the question, Can a narcissistic, self-absorbed Hollywood movie star who looks like Julia Roberts trash her Read More
Thursday, April 29, marks Duke Ellington’s 100th birthday, and it’s not exactly going to be a surprise party. Spontaneity has a way of being drowned out by the larger institutional and corporate jazz interests who’ve been banging the drum for Duke unceasingly of late-witness Jazz at Lincoln Center’s all-Ellington, all-the-time 1999-2000 season and RCA Victor’s Read More
