Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout (born 6 February 1956, Cape Girardeau, Missouri) is a critic, biographer and blogger. He is the drama critic of "The Wall Street Journal", the music critic of "Commentary", and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Saturday "Wall Street Journal". He blogs at [http://www.terryteachout.com About Last Night] along with Chicago-based critic Laura Demanski (who writes under the name "Our Girl in Chicago") and North Carolinian blogger Carrie Frye and has written about the arts for many other magazines and newspapers, including the "New York Times" and "National Review".

Life and writings

Teachout grew up in Sikeston, Missouri. He attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland; William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, where he received his B.S. in music journalism; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lived in Kansas City from 1975 to 1983, working as a jazz bassist and writing about classical music and jazz for the "Kansas City Star". He moved to New York City in 1985, working as an editor at "Harper's Magazine" (1985-87) and an editorial writer for the "New York Daily News" (1987-93) and as the "News"' classical music and dance critic (1993-2000). In 2004 he was appointed by President Bush to the [http://www.nea.gov/about/NCA/About_NCA.html National Council on the Arts] , the advisory and review panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. In late 2005 he was hospitalized with congestive heart failure, but has since recovered. Teachout married Hilary Dyson on October 7, 2007. A political conservative with wide-ranging cultural interests and sympathies, he maintains cordial relationships with artists, critics, and bloggers from all parts of the political spectrum.

Teachout recently finished writing "A Cluster of Sunlight", a biography of Louis Armstrong (forthcoming from Harcourt in the fall of 2009), and the libretto for "The Letter", an opera by Paul Moravec based on the 1927 play by W. Somerset Maugham that will be premiered in 2009 by the Santa Fe Opera.

He is also the author of "All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine" (2004, Harcourt), "A Terry Teachout Reader" (2004, Yale University Press), "The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken" (2002, HarperCollins), and "City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy" (1991, Poseidon Press). He is the editor of "Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics" (1990, Poseidon, introduction by Tom Wolfe) and "Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959" (1989, Regnery Gateway). In 1992 he rediscovered the manuscript of "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy" among H.L. Mencken's private papers and edited it for publication by Alfred A. Knopf (1995).

Teachout wrote the forewords to Paul Taylor's "Private Domain: An Autobiography" (1999, University of Pittsburgh Press), Elaine Dundy's "The Dud Avocado" (2007, New York Review Books Classics), and William Bailey's "William Bailey on Canvas" (2007, Betty Cuningham Gallery) and contributed to "The Oxford Companion to Jazz" (2000, Oxford University Press), "Field-Tested Books" (2008, Coudal Partners), and Robert Gottlieb's "Reading Dance" (out in November from Pantheon). He has written liner notes for CDs by jazz musicians Karrin Allyson, Gene Bertoncini, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Julia Dollison, Jim Ferguson, Roger Kellaway, Diana Krall, Joe Mooney, Marian McPartland, Mike Metheny, Maria Schneider, Kendra Shank and Luciana Souza, and the unclassifiable Chanticleer, Lascivious Biddies, Nickel Creek and the Trio Solisti.

External links

* [http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2007/01/about_about_last_night.html Brief biography] and [http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2007/01/about_terrys_books.html#more list of publications] for Terry Teachout at "About Last Night"
* [http://www.santafeopera.org/news/press.php#199 Santa Fe Opera press release announcing the cast, production team, and performance dates for The Letter]
* [http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/linernotes/teachout-text.html "Jerry Jazz Musician" interview with Terry Teachout on his book about Louis Armstrong and other writings]
* [http://maudnewton.com/blog/?p=3970 Maud Newton interview with Terry Teachout on his book about George Balanchine and other writings]
* [http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory111502.asp "National Review" interview with Terry Teachout on his book about H.L. Mencken]