Larry Kart

Stumbled into those reruns back to back last night -- MTM first, then Newhart (his early sitcom, where he's a psychologist) -- and while both episodes were typically well-written and performed, I was kind of stunned by the fluidity and economy of the direction on the MTM episode, camera work but also the rhythms of line delivery and the overall "musical" pace/ebb and flow versus the relatively stolid clunkiness in those respects of the Newhart episode. Now the MTM episide was a pretty good one to begin with -- the one where Rhoda and Lou begin to go to Minnesota North Stars hockey games together because they both like the sport, and the newsroom (and especially Mary) begin to think they have a "thing" going on, with Moore playing/revealing her jealous possessiveness of Lou in a scene of marveleous comedy that also cuts fairly deep. (Great work there by a surprisingly subtle Valerie Harper and Ed Asner, too.) In any case, I'd never really been aware before of how great a role good directing could play in a sitcom. (And again, despite its relative clunkiness in those respects, the Newhart Show episode was still nice.) Has anyone ever taken a close critical look at sitcom directing? Also, while it's obviously like feature-film directing in some respects, I'm sure it's also rather different in others -- because of the serial nature of the medium, the 30-minute length of episodes, the relative smallness of the screen, the fact that sitcoms are seen in homes and apartments rather than in movie theaters, etc.

Not that I disagree, but which label is the pre-eminent jazz label??? Obviously, Fresh Sound/Lonehill, etc.

Lee Wiley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX5f8U79Btc...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv9oDdQQoxc...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TouM4yed-xE...feature=related

Prell apparently is still going strong: http://birdbeckett.com/ Also, IIRC, he eventually was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

Maury Dell was a pianist (though the name sounds like it should belong to a standup comic). Don Prell was a bassist, member of the Bud Shank Quartet, IIRC.

My copy says George Avakian & Augie Blume. Do you know differently? And who is Augie Blume? That name sounds familiar... My mistake; it was Augie Blume.

He also produced the Joe Daley Trio record.

Yes -- but make what KINDS of effort? Lincoln Center will fall of its own weight and essential aesthetic irrelevance (or conceivably it won't), but any effort that's aimed at bringing it to the ground will, if successful, almost certainly generate another sort of Lincoln Center. By and large, in the world one doesn't wrest away in order to give away or even to distribute. Moreover, the nature and structure of such outfits is what gives them access to what might be distributed; take away the former, and very soon there will be nothing left except the condos. I'm happy that Rutgers for one exists, but Rutgers without Dan Morgenstern or someone like him? It's not that I'm rejecting academia wholesale -- I certainly don't hate it but merely would prefer to evade it (that you say you do hate academia more than most is not necessarily a good sign). It's that I'm not kidding myself about the difference between actual work and the circumstances under which it seems to me to be done, and the world of "prizes" and "gifts" -- of that which is bestowed or wormed out of, rather than exchanges based on common curiosities and interests. Also, though I shouldn't say this until I finish reading George Lewis' book, his apparent belief in a kind of burgeoning "replacement academy" -- well, to me that seems self-defeating.

OK -- " EXAMINATION of the work and perpetuation of the work" simply means, or should mean, USE of the work -- and this will only happen if other people actually find it useful to themselves. For myself, I've had plenty of that here (and in some other places, too, from people that I think of as friends, even if I don't actually know them face to face), and it feels and is quite different from "a institutionalized understanding of the work." Not that real use can't arise in an institutionalized setting, people who make their ways there are people too, but an "institutionalized understanding" that leads to real use would I think demand that the institution turn itself into something that it is not and probably cannot be -- a savannah, say, rather than a zoo with cages and keepers. Again, my old friend Teddy Adorno (a.k.a. Linus Van Pelt) had a good fix on this: "Anyone who takes up a position in the so-called humanities ... is inspired by hopes for the intellect, for something different, something unspoiled, ultimately something absolute.... But his profession will drive out all hope. not simply because of the necessity of submitting to the hierarchy ... but also because of the nature of scholarship itself, which in the name of scholarship negates the very spirit which it promises.... Resentment as the basic attitude of the university teacher is therefore objectively determined and almost unavoidable. The solo compensation [in Germany, in the mid-1960s] is the social prestige of the university professor, which still survives, a factor that may have led to his choice of profession in the first place." I don't think you can INTERNALLY "reform" outfits like the NEA or the academy in general (not the same things, I know). There are pockets, thank the Lord, but pockets is what they are and probably must remain. Lying behind this, perhaps, is a additional simple fact: We're talking about more or less communal musics that are now more or less without communities. That certainly doesn't negate their value, nor does it mean that we shouldn't pay all the loving attention to them that we can and want to, but it does or should mean that we do this without illusions -- and the dreams and resentments that so often fuel them.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, Allen, but speaking for myself -- "official recognition," bleah! As my old friend Theodor Adorno (or was it Linus Van Pelt?) once put it: "The more I get a taste of success, the more thoroughly I become aware [that] one's own existence then becomes a function of success."

Zeitlin set arrived today -- have listened to the first four tracks. Fine remastering job, working with what has to have been fine original material (30th St. studio, this date engineered by Fred Plaut). BTW, Plaut and his wife, soprano Rose Dercourt-Plaut were great friends of Francis Poulenc. Poulenc dedicated a song to Rose ("Nuages"), Fred worked on Poulenc's CBS recording dates and took many photographs of Poulenc, some of them particular favorites of the composer. Back to Zeitlin -- was he ever full of piss and vinegar (in the best sense) at age 25!

I believe that it was in response to Schuller's abandonment of the project that Bill Kirchner decided to assemble "The Oxford Companion To Jazz": http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Companion-Jaz...7344&sr=1-1 in which an allegedly qualified individual writer (yours truly was one) was asked to write each chapter, and the totality would be as comprehensive as space and each writer's actually savvy would permit. In the event, and thanks in large part to Bill's stewardship, the project was completed in remarkably short order. Gunther's main problem was that he felt that no one man, certainly not a man of his age, could do the job anymore -- if only because the developing music would slip out from one's grasp during the time one was working on such a project. On the other hand, I think that Alyn Shipton took a good whack at it.

The man is on a roll.

Knowing the Garner estate, if the European thieves make a move, we'll have World War III.

I saw that band at the London House in Chicago. They were on fire.

That's seriously funny.

Herbie Nichols, probably.

BTW, I do own and like some Jarrett recordings -- Impulse era.

You think she was bad? Last night I saw May Britt in "Murder Inc." Goodness gracious! Peter Falk was fun as Abe Reles, though.

She also had the main female role in Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye," playing the wife of Sterling Hayden's character.

"In the weeks leading up to a solo improvised concert, Mr. Jarrett retreats into creative solitude to empty his mind."

I would say, a woman's breasts photographed close up, and then the image was turned upside down. P.S. I reviewed the album for Down Beat when it came out. Nice stuff.

That "I Got Rhythm" excerpt sounds "poppish"? I want to hear the pop music where you live.

Highly recommended: http://www2.broinc.com/search.php?row=0&am...p;submit=Search The Apollo and the Oedipus have been released before (though with Cocteau's narration from a later Paris performance substituted for that of the German who was the actual narrator for this radio studio performance). Everything on disc two is previously unreleased (or so Music and Arts says). All excellent performances IMO, with just the right "edge," in very clear, somewhat dry German radio studio sound. Haven't sat down and compared these to later Columbia recordings of the works, but I'd be surprised if these weren't preferable -- for one thing, they're real performances; for another, it's Rosbaud's Baden-Baden orchestra on all of disc two and the (I believe) similarly inclined and trained Cologne Radio Orchestra on side one. And Martha Modl as Jocasta!

I love the first of his two duo albums with Lee Konitz, "Speaking Lowly" (Philology).