Word: jazzman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Aficionados had much the same reaction to two sophisticated young pianists who made New York City debuts last week. One was jazzman Matt Savage, who led his trio through a swinging, bop-tinged evening at Manhattan's Blue Note. His sets ranged from the standard My Favorite Things to originals like Groovin' on Mount Everest. He traced melodies simply, sometimes decorating them with trills, and shifted between softly gliding passages and furious fantasias with his arms whipping up and down the keyboard, using even his fist to bang out a climactic chord. "Scary," marveled jazz pianist D.D. Jackson...
...Aesthetically, much of Williams' work vacillates between inert and abysmal. The rural comedy of "Juke Joint" is logy, as if the heat had gotten to the movie; even the musical scenes, featuring North Texas jazzman Red Calhoun, move at the turtle tempo of Hollywood's favorite black of the period, Stepin Fetchit. And there were technical gaffes galore: in a late-night scene in "Dirty Gertie," actress Francine Everett clicks on a bedside lamp and the screen actually darkens for a moment before full lights finally come up. Yet at least one Williams film, his debut "Blood of Jesus...
...Salton Sea is a body of salt water lying some 225 feet below sea level in California's Imperial Valley. It is a dead lake, and the landscape around it is also desolate and eerie. For obscure reasons, a jazzman, Danny Parker (Val Kilmer), and his wife are vacationing there. They ask for directions at a forbidding house inhabited by methamphetamine dealers. While they are there, masked criminals break in, and Danny's wife is killed by the intruders...
...wiped out all the disappointment and then some. He learned he had been tapped for a coveted MacArthur Fellowship, the $500,000 "genius grant" awarded for brilliance above and beyond the call of duty, a prize never before given to a classical performer. (Previous arts fellows include avant-garde jazzman Ornette Coleman, modern-dance choreographer Mark Morris, indie filmmaker John Sayles and The Lion King's Julie Taymor.) "It was a complete surprise and a total shock," he says, with happy amazement warming up his well-bred English accent...
...each other; another character spends the entire second act paralyzed by a stroke; and yet another doesn't come to life until after he's dead. That "Thou Shalt Not" doesn't become a complete downer is a tribute largely to the flavorful music of Harry Connick Jr., the jazzman making his first foray into Broadway. Connick does best, not surprisingly, with the Dixieland-style numbers meant to evoke the period. But he also shows impressive range, with Sondheim-esque character songs, a sweet children's ditty ("Tug Boat"), and the jabbing bass notes that italicize the moments of violence...