STAGE: Blind Lemon Blues

Playing now thru October 4: Blind Lemon Blues celebrates the legacy of Blind Lemon Jefferson and his profound influence upon the development of American popular music. Jefferson was a blind street musician, who played his guitar at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in Dallas, Texas, until a Paramount Records scout discovered him. Between 1926 and 1929, Jefferson made more than 80 records and became the biggest-selling country blues singer in America.

Blind Lemon Blues is set in New York City in 1948 at the last recording session of the legendary Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, and combines elements of traditional blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, doo-wop, and rap to evoke the enduring legacy of Blind Lemon and his contemporaries, Blind Willie Johnson, Lillian Glinn, Hattie Hudson, Bobbie Cadillac, Lillian Miller and Lead Belly himself. (source)

STAGE: The Confidence Man

Playing thru 9/26: Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence Man is a colorful tale of a con man aboard a riverboat (on the Mississippi River en route to New Orleans) in the mid-19th century. The story follows the protagonist as he charms and then cheats his fellow passengers. As disarmingly relevant today as it was in the 19th century, The Confidence Man begs the question: in whom may we safely place our confidence?

The Woodshed Collective’s production of The Confidence Man will be composed of a series of interwoven and simultaneously performed vignettes, and will evoke the whirlwind of both a riverboat journey and the everyday urban chaos of New York City. The audience will choose what to see and which character’s story to follow just as one selects which newspaper stories to read, which YouTube videos to screen, or which online links to click. By allowing audience members to immerse themselves in the experience, the production seeks to blur the line between performer and patron, reclaim confidence in the power of live theater, and leave the lingering impression that the audience members themselves may not be immune to the confidence man’s charms or cons. (source)

BOOK: New Stories From The South

OUT NOW: In the twenty-fourth volume of this distinguished anthology, Madison Smartt Bell chooses twenty-one distinctive pieces of short fiction to tell the story of the South as it is now. This is a South that is still recognizable but no longer predictable. As he says, "to the traditional black and white recipe (ever a tricky and volatile mixture) have been added new shades and strains from Asia and Central and South America and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe." Just as Katrina brought out into the open all the voices of New Orleans, so the South is now many things, both a distinctive region and a place of rootlessness. It's these contradictions that Madison Smartt Bell has captured in this provocative and moving collection of stories.

Here you'll find the well-known—Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Spencer, Jill McCorkle—alongside those writers just making their debuts, in stories that show the South we always thought we knew, making itself over, and over. (source)

STAGE: Memphis The Musical

Previews begin today (9/23) at the Shubert Theatre for Memphis: TURN UP THAT DIAL! From the underground dance clubs of 1950s Memphis, Tennessee, by way of hit runs at the La Jolla Playhouse and Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, comes a hot new Broadway musical - inspired by actual events - with heart, soul and energy to burn. He's a young, white radio DJ named Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball), whose love of music transcends race lines and airwaves. She's a black singer named Felicia Farrell (Montego Glover), whose career is on the rise, but who can't break out of segregated clubs. When the two collaborate, her soulful music reaches radio audiences everywhere, and the Golden Era of early rock 'n' roll takes flight. But as things start to heat up, whether the world is really ready for their music - or their love - is put to the test. (source)

PHOTO: Robert Frank @ The Met

Robert Frank - Trolley - New Orleans 1955

Frank was not Southern but many of his photos, including the one above, were taken there.

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans
September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010

	Learn more about a special one-day lecture and panel event.

This exhibition will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. Although Frank’s depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, it soon became recognized as a masterpiece of street photography. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank is considered one of the great living masters of photography. The exhibition will feature all 83 photographs published in The Americans and will be the first time that this body of work is presented to a New York audience. In addition, the exhibition will include a full set of contact sheets that Frank used to create the book; earlier photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York; a short film by the artist on his life; and his later re-use of iconic images from the series. (source)

SHOP: Alabama Chanin @ Barney's

Fashion's Night Out

September 10, 2009
6 - 8 pm

Alabama Chanin @ Barneys New York

Join Natalie and all of us @ Alabama Chanin for a night of music, beverages, dress-up, conversation, play and sewing on the 5th floor @

Barneys New York.
660 Madison Avenue

New York NY 10065