Three months into this quarantine with no end in sight, I think I’ve found kind of a sustainable routine. At least for a while. So I’m going to try to resurrect this brief category in the blog set up for when I had a week with no paid writing. In general, trying to post on Monday or Tuesday and it’s three things I was wowed by in the last week. Also in general, looking for a book/article/art exhibit, a record, and some kind of livestreamed performance.
If you’re reading this – I’m looking for what’s keeping you going too.
Book: Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener (buy at Gramercy Books).
Holds I requested from the library system before everything closed down showed up with the frisson of happy surprise over the last week or two. My favorite of this first batch is a riveting tech memoir from the New Yorker writer Anna Wiener. Wiener does an excellent job analyzing the tech startup world from the inside out. She incisively flays open the culture of catch phrases and co-opted psychology talk with a fine blade, casting a harsh light on that world’s funhouse mirror take on intersectionality.
The techniques I had a hard time with at first – avoiding proper nouns and the easy connotations of naming restaurants, films, companies – worked their magic on me, making this memoir feel less indebted to a time and place while the use of sensory details put me in the feeling of that place. Uncanny Valley left me with a lot to chew on about my own relationship to work, my coworkers, my friends, and empathy.
Music: Joe Lovano’s Trio Fascination livestreamed from the Village Vanguard
It’ll never replace being in a room but the creative responses to the current situation, the ways music steadfastly refuses to say “No, you can’t do that” while mitigating risk as much as possible, warms my heart.
In particular, jazz venues have been strategizing and come out of the gate with some of the most potent offerings. Spike Willner’s Small’s is leading the charge – I’ve been watching at least three of their nightly offerings a week, look for a highlight here soon – but other venerable institutions like SFJAZZ, The Jazz Gallery, and the Vanguard are also coming out strong.
Every one of the three Vanguard broadcasts I’ve seen features remarkably good camera work and makes me misty about the fantastic sets I’ve seen there. This past weekend was my favorite, by a group of legends: Joe Lovano’s Trio Fascination with Ben Street on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums.
Growing up when I did, Joe Lovano was my favorite all-around living saxophone player. His Blue Note records in the late ’90s and early ’00s were gateway drugs to high school and college me, firmly in the tradition and perfectly in his voice, turning me onto great players like Paul Motian, George Mraz, John Scofield. I’ve never heard a bad Lovano record and he’s always blown me away live.
I discovered drummer Andrew Cyrille around the same time when my first Cecil Taylor purchase was his ’60s Blue Note big band firestorm Unit Structures. As I pieced together – I’m still working on it – that beguiling music unlike anything I’d heard before, the drumming hit me first and kept me grounded. I couldn’t begin to count the number of records I bought specifically because Cyrille was listed as drummer, or killer players I checked out on my periodic trips to New York knowing nothing other than he was in the group. If someone asked me what I want jazz drumming to be – the wild surprise, the propulsion, the use of color – I have a list but it always starts or ends or both with Andrew Cyrille.
Ben Street’s work I didn’t know quite as well but he’s always impressive and he’s the perfect melodic, grounding foil for this set of fascinating excursions, bone-deep ballads, and cooking, sultry scorchers.
This glorious set made the wound of this empty club throb with life, the pain of not being there made more acute and salved at the same time. This was a perfect jazz set, a conversation writ large.
Next up in this excellent series: pianist Eric Reed leads a quartet with Stacy Dillard on saxophone, Dezron Douglas on bass, and McClenty Hunter on drums this weekend. Tickets are available at https://villagevanguard.com/
Theatre: John & Jen, Short North Stage
Alongside jazz, I miss theatre most of all. I’m incredibly grateful for the companies that have been able to work with licensing groups to release archival copies (favorites include Lydia Diamond’s Toni Stone from ACT and Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play at The Goodman) and I’m heartened by companies who aren’t taking “we can’t do this” for an answer, led locally by Krista Lively Stauffer and Tim Browning’s Virtual Theater project (which let me catch Douglas Whaley’s transfixing Turkey Men which was my biggest regret in missing last year).
Short North Stage raised the bar on production values (which I described in my preview for Columbus Underground) with their Edward Carignan-directed adaptation of the Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald Off-Broadway classic John & Jen.
First and foremost, the production sounds great, with Lori Kay Harvey’s musical direction and piano rich and full but never overpowering and the dynamite voices of Dionysia Williams and Hunter Minor are a joy. The actors get the playful nature of the characters’ relationship and smoothly shift gears between joy and heartbreak in exactly the tone the play demands.
Carignan’s direction and videography make excellent use of the production’s homespun qualities, creating a show bursting with charm. John & Jen‘s gorgeous, sticky melodies shine here, any fans of Lippa’s later work or Short North Stage’s smaller chamber shows will do well to catch this during its week of streaming.
John & Jen streams on vimeo through July 12. Tickets are available at https://www.shortnorthstage.org/johnjen
Screen of Distance 