Thelonious Monk
NEW YORK — Greetings from the Big Apple, where I’m covering celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Thelonious Monk’s legendary 1959 Town Hall tentet show, (for background on the projects and these two shows, read this and this and this).
Last night’s show was the Charles Tolliver Tentet playing note-for-note transcriptions from the Monk show, which was Feb. 28, 1959. Tolliver’s star rose quickly in the late ’60s, but he doesn’t have the same profile of some other musicians of his vintage. Perhaps he deserves more–last night he led a fiercely intense (and star-studded) band through energetic readings of the charts, elecrtifying an equally energetic (and star-studded) audience.
Tolliver premiered the transcriptions at Duke last fall, and that show, while interesting, showed a certain roughness around the edges, and was outshone by some of the other shows in Duke Performances’ “Following Monk” series. For the New York show, everything worked better, and the show struck a balance between excitement–as judged by the occasional shouts from the house–and solemnity, with many attendees speaking about the spooky, chilling magic in the air.
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The New York Times Book Review editors have just released their selection of the top 10 books from 2008. The list comes from the editors’ selection of 100 notable books from the year. Predictable picks include 2666 and Toni Morrison’s new novel. But superstars John Updike, Philip Roth, Tobias Wolff and the Times’ own David Carr and Thomas Friedman did not make the cut.
Look for for Kevin Lincoln’s post about his picks and the Times’ picks tomorrow. The Times’ list after the jump.
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Over at the New York Times, David Itzkoff just wrapped up his live blog of the Grammy nominations ceremony. Gone are the days of early morning announcements:
For the first time in the 50-year history of the Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy is attempting to make the announcement of its nominations as much of a flashy and unpredictable event as the awards ceremony itself. The traditional, early-morning yawner of a press conference is out; in its place, a prime-time concert special on Wednesday night, mixing nomination announcements with performances by Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, Foo Fighters, and many more.
The Foo Fighters (who knew they were still around) covered “You’re So Vain,” Mariah Carey sand one of the best Christmas songs ever, “All I Want for Christmas is You” “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and the Jonas Brother broke the time-space continuum by being in LA and at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting in the same night.
Leading the nominations are Lil Wayne with eight nods and Coldplay with seven. But a bigger question remains. Who cares?
