Four months of jazz adaptation, resilience, response to epidemic From early March on, there have been increasing demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own. – Howard Mandel Two Silk Strings: Mehrinigor Abdurashidova at the Sharq Taronalari Festival 2019 I regret that I can only offer you my camcorder’s sound complete with audience noise. But there is enough spirit and inspiring artistry to make up for that, I think. – Michal Shapiro “Live” But Not Too Lively: Auction Torpor (not Fever) at Sotheby’s Evening Sales Sotheby’s “LIVE GLOBAL AUCTION EVENT” was, per yesterday’s post-sale press release, “an unprecedented live-streamed event, with banks of telephone-bidding colleagues beamed in from around the world.” This complicated set-up worked well enough, but at the expense of “auction fever,” the contagion that can spread when bidding happens the old-fashioned way: concentrated in one salesroom packed with live attendees. – Lee Rosenbaum The presence of the absence I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive the simultaneous losses of my beloved spouse and the art form to which I have devoted more than a decade and a half of my life. But I’m still here, and if Hilary’s death and the closing of America’s theaters didn’t kill me, then I figure I’m in it for the long haul. I hope you are, too. – Terry Teachout |