(2 of 4)
COHASSET, MASS., South Shore Music Circus. Love blossoms amid big-city racial tensions to the music of Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story.
FALMOUTH, MASS., Playhouse revives The Desk Set with Shirley Booth in her original role as a fact-packed researcher threatened by an electronic brain.
NEW FAIRFIELD, CONN., Candlewood Theater maintains that On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
BELLPORT, L.I., Red Barn Theater. All the joys and woes of Fanny Brice, America's sweetheart of the 1920s, are put to music in Funny Girl.
WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Playhouse returns to the insane asylum in The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
CLIO, MICH., Musical Tent. Frances Wyatt yodels and waltzes through The Sound of Music.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., Starlight Musicals. Ann Blyth sings her way through Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I.
ALEXANDRIA, MINN., Theatre L'Homme Dieu revives Tennessee Williams' drama, The Rose Tattoo.
CENTRAL CITY, COLO., Opera House. A spritely sparring match between Don Ameche and Betsy von Furstenberg in There's a Girl in My Soup.
RECORDS
Jazz
DUKE ELLINGTON: "AND HIS MOTHER CALLED HIM BILL" (RCA Victor). The Ellington band plays an affectionate tribute to Billy Strayhorn, who was the Duke's alter ego and musical collaborator for 29 years before his death last year. Among the dozen fine Strayhorn selections are some mellow successes from the '40s, such as After All, Rain Check and Day-Dream. Three new songs composed just before his death make most admirable vehicles for the band: locomotive-paced The Intimacy of the Blues, which perfectly brings out its elegant, insinuating sound; Charpoy, a perking bounce; and Blood Count, a sinuous, sensitive ballad, with a Johnny Hodges alto solo, in the same vein as Passion Flower. Duke pays his respects with a pensive, if plush, rendition of Lotus Blossom, Strayhorn's own favorite.
WES MONTGOMERY: DOWN HERE ON THE GROUND (A & M). One more in a series of well-planned, well-played and welcome albums that has brought the late guitarist to the crest of his popularity. With splendid backing, and complementary arrangements by Don Sebesky and Eumir Deodato, Wes plucks another musical honor for himself. His double-octave runs and honest, single-note phrases illuminate such tunes as the rockish Wind Song, The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener, Coin' On to Detroit, and convey an especially sweet sadness in Georgia On My Mind.
ANDREW HILL ANDREW!!! (Blue Note). Pianist Hill has his own very definite views of modern jazz piano. His music is filled with gently dissonant surgings, expressive rippling lines that are as romantic as they are atonal, and intuitive, crosshatched rhythms that emerge and then break off. Helping him project this engaging moodiness are John Gilmore's thin-edged tenor sax, Bobby Hutcherson's delicate vibes, the attentive probings of Bassist Richard Davis and the irregular cymbals of Drummer Joe Chambers. The group's finest moments come in The Groits, which, despite its ugly name, consists of lovely integrated weavings of Hill's almost Monkish chords, Hutcherson's melodic accents and Davis' bass designs.