I probably speak for most theater fans in saying I was excited when I read about Smash before its premiere on NBC in February. The idea of a weekly network series depicting the development of a new Broadway musical was irresistible. The fact that so many theater people -- both on and off camera -- were involved in the show added to the anticipation. Executive producers included Craig Zadan and Neil Meron who, among other things, have produced film versions of Broadway hits Chicago and Hairspray, along with television movie adaptations of The Music Man, Annie, and Gypsy. Original songs were written by the team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who won the Tony award for their Hairspray score, and also wrote the fine score for last year's Catch Me If You Can. Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening and American Idiot) directed the pilot. And, while not a theater name, the legendary Steven Spielberg is one of the executive producers. Read more »

As my friend Pam Grossman put it, "Yes, universe, I know. I know too well that time passes and we are all going to die, sooner or hopefully later. I also know that cancer sucks. You do not need to drive these points home by killing off musicians I love every other day." This was prompted by the passing of Robin Gibb just after we lost Donna Summer and several other greats. Meanwhile, my friend Davie Kaufman, the biggest Flying Burrito Brothers fan I know, was disappointed that I hadn't yet marked the passing of Chris Ethridge, an original member of the Burritos, also taken from us by cancer. Read more »

"We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free."

This was a particularly sad week for the musical world. We lost four greats: Chuck Brown, the godfather of Go-Go; country-rock pioneer Doug Dillard; supreme disco diva Donna Summer; and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who did more to promote art song than anyone else in the recording era.

Chuck Brown was the most innovative of them, and the funkiest. Born in 1936, he paid his dues as a guitarist in various R&B bands in the '60s. His funk band The Soul Searchers made two classic albums for Sussex, We the People (1972) and Salt of the Earth (1974). "Ashley's Roachclip" on the latter includes a drum break that became one of the sampled breaks in hip-hop; "Blow Your Whistle" from the same LP is also much-sampled. Read more »

Francesco Clemente: Nostalgia/Utopia

In both his work and his life, Francesco Clemente has made a career of breaking down boundaries. His multimedia approach to art -- through painting, sculpture, photography, and bookmaking -- and his peripatetic, nomad-like lifestyle share a common theme of restlessness and ambiguity. In his recent exhibition at Mary Boone, he has created a suite of paintings that reinforce our impression of him, painting works that run through Colonial Baroque, Afro-Brazilian, Indian, and Modernist iconographies. The strategies employed here, drawing on a variety of sources and influences, seek to present some commonality of experience, of shared ideas. Read more »

If Ed Wood had a budget of a $100 million to throw around, even he might not have been able to direct a film as godawful as Battleship -- or as in poor taste. This cheesy exploitation of our men in uniform, including those who lost their limbs overseas in the belief they were fighting to preserve democracy, makes you almost cringe at the hubris of the Hollywood types who pulled this fiasco together.

There is basically no plot. The direction is nil. The acting is uneven. (Brooklyn Decker is clearly up for a Razzie this year.) The screenplay is truly one of the worst of the year so far, and that’s saying a lot. If you can sit through the film’s first half hour without wondering if anything is ever going to happen, you are either brain dead or an eleven-year-old boy. Read more »

David Bindman Ensemble: Sunset Park Polyphony (David Bindman)

Bindman -- familiar from the Brooklyn Sax Quartet and his work with Anthony Braxton, Fred Ho, Ehran Elisha, Kevin Norton, and others -- has been slowly but surely building a small yet impressive discography as a leader. This self-released two-CD sextet album is his masterpiece so far, mixing modal jazz with worldbeat rhythms in a sort of concept album about places, finding one's place in the world, and interaction -- the sort of socially aware jazz program that Shepp and Coltrane were known for in the second half of the '60s, with some musical similarities as well, albeit still sounding like 21st century jazz. Read more »

Dana Schutz: Piano in the Rain

The sitcom, or situation comedy, is a television show format that usually features a family scenario (for example, a husband and wife, like in The Honeymooners), or a larger, extended family (The Cosby Show), or some kind of surrogate family (Barney Miller, Cheers). In this weekly formula a mini-crisis or drama ensues, threatening to unravel the delicate fabric of the familial tranquility. Historically, theatrical comedies have often dealt with the concerns of human activities and conditions in ways that drama can't, cloaking tragedy with humor. Shakespeare, for example, often used his comedies to deal with subject matter that might have been problematic to present as drama; the entirety of Restoration theatre was based on the use of satire as a form of social and political critique. Read more »

"Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?"

Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 - 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer.

Gil Evans, perhaps the second-greatest arranger in jazz after Duke Ellington, was born Ian Ernest Gilmore Green on May 13, 1912 in Toronto, Canada (Evans was his stepfather's name). Though best known for his collaborations with Miles Davis, Evans released many great albums as a bandleader and created a highly influential style that changed the course of jazz history.

Though self-taught, by age 21 Evans was leading a big band that became the house group at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach. Eventually it was fronted and then led by singer Skinnay Ennis, and Claude Thornhill joined Evans in providing arrangements for them. Thornhill then moved to New York to start his own band, and in 1941 invited Evans to New York to write arrangements. Soon Evans's arrangements with their lush, hazy, floating textures defined the Thornhill style. Read more »

In Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, a white-faced, put-upon vampire, Barnabus Collins (Johnny Depp), is unwittingly released into the modern world of 1972 after having been encased in a coffin for nearly two centuries. Immediately, the very thirsty bloodsucker sips the blood of the dozen construction workers who had unwittingly let him loose.

Refreshed, Collins uncomprehendingly walks through the town named for his family, amazed at the sights of graveled roads, automobiles, traffic lights, bulldozers, and folks eating ice cream sundaes in diners. Unsettled, he heads for his once-glamorous homestead, Collinwood Manor, to discover if any of his bloodline is still alive. "Family is the only real wealth," he notes. Read more »

Big Brother and the Holding Company: Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968 (Columbia Legacy)

This 71-minute sonic document was recorded and produced by the late Owsley "Bear" Stanley (famed personal soundman to the Grateful Dead), who stated, shortly before he died last year, "I believe this album will be hailed as the definitive Big Brother live album of all time."

I think he's correct. Even before I pulled out the booklet and read the notes, I was already thinking that I’d never heard lead singer Janis Joplin sound so explosive. Read more »

Robert Yoder: DILF!

Van Gogh wrote, "Ah, portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.... It is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature.... Do I make myself understood? I am just trying to make you see this simple great truth: one can paint all of humanity by the simple means of portraiture." Rober Yoder, in his current show at Platform Gallery, seems to exemplify van Gogh's credo. Unlike van Gogh, however, Yoder uses the portrait not to paint all of humanity but, rather, to get inside the subject, using painting to examine each individual, well, individually. Read more »

The Giant Mechanical Man (TGMM), the Lee Kirk film starring Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Chris Messina (Six Feet Under), is for audiences who have a yen for a true romantic comedy, one that feels gentle and real, but lacks the heroine getting the runs in the middle of traffic. Or a scene where a man's chest hair is pulled off. Or a finale where an overweight, pothead/pornographer gets the beautiful blonde. It's also one, thankfully, that's never been in the vicinity of Nicholas Sparks. Read more »

Roslyn Kind: Coming Home
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College
April 28, 2012

Roslyn Kind is an authentic song artist and entertainer. The audience at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts was treated to a full hour-and-a-half of her fine voice and lively presence. Using her magnificent instrument, she beautifully rendered songs, "standards" and otherwise. Her infectious self-delight never faltered as she sang, conversationally spoke of growing up in a nearby Brooklyn neighborhood, and engaged with the audience as if the theater were her living room. Read more »

Adam Yauch, known to millions of Beastie Boys fans as MCA, died of cancer today (Friday, May 4, 2012) at the age of 47. Yauch had been diagnosed in 2009, and when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following year, the illness kept him from attending the ceremony. The band became so beloved in its native city that tonight, the Mets are playing Beastie Boys songs in place of the batters' usual walk-up music. Read more »

Coffee, the Musical
NYC Coffee and Tea Festival

All serious theatrical works go through many stages on the road to a full-fledged production. Opening night audiences have it easy: They just sit back, watch, and listen. Prior to the first notes of the overture and that moment of “curtain up,” a production team has worked intensely hard, with many tryouts for audience response, presentations for backers, a myriad of rewrites and adjustments applied to the score, dialog, and blocking over many months (and, not uncommonly, a number of years). I kept this in mind while viewing the premiere of the first act of Coffee, the Musical, an engaging and tuneful work-in-progress presented this past February at the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival. Read more »

A few weeks ago my friend Sal lamented that he would miss his annual pilgrimage to JazzFest this year. (Thanks, economy.) I thought at the time, who cares, we've got plenty of culture right here in the Big Apple. Plus I'd spent a long JazzFest weekend in 2004 the year prior to Hurricane Katrina's devastation. But as I rewind through this past weekend in New Orleans as part of the collective that descends annually to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, I was struck by the undeniable and infectious vibe of the event. Read more »

Monday, April 30, is International Jazz Day, proclaimed by UNESCO goodwill ambassador Herbie Hancock. There will be streaming concerts and much more on jazzday.com. It seems like an apt time for a solid historical overview of jazz. Over the years, people have asked me, "I've just started listening to jazz, what should I get?" and "What jazz albums do you think everyone should have in their collection?" Here are my top recommendations to provide a broad foundation for understanding jazz through classic performances that have stood the test of time. Read more »

Subscribe via iTunes or Subscribe via Feedburner or Buy David