Can theater survive in a world of tweeting and Facebook, iPads and PlayStations, and films in 3D that cost more to make than some nations’ gross domestic product? If it is as simple, good, and devastatingly truthful as “What Rhymes with America,” the brilliant new play at Manhattan's Atlantic Theater Company by Melissa James Gibson, theater will not only survive, it will thrive.

    Ms. Gibson gives us a stark, antiseptic world in which the only color in the landscape is that of the humans in it. But their colors do not form a rainbow; rather, they sit alone, in disconnected pools of drab color.

    Entering the theater we are greeted by Laura Jellinek’s stunning white-on-white set, giving us a space with multiple possibilities: a dying man’s hospital room, a Manhattan apartment, a stage door outside the Met, and more. There is a stainless steel exhaust fan spinning in a free-standing column stage right.  Playing in the background is a subtle tonal song by Ryan Rumery, the composer of the production’s sound and music.

    When the play begins, we see Hank (Chris Bauer), an unemployed economist, with his 17-year old daughter, Marlene (Aimee Carrero). Hank is standing outside the door to the apartment he used to share with Marlene and her mother, from whom Hank is estranged. Even though her mother is away, Marlene refuses to open the door to see her father, obeying her mother’s orders.

    They speak through the closed door.

    “It’s just a temporary situation,” Hank tells Marlene.

    “It is?” she asks.

    “Yes.”

    “You guys hate each other,” Marlene says.

    “We don’t hate each other.”

    Marlene interrupts her father. “Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway.”

    Marlene is studying for her SAT’s. She is also a volunteer at a local hospital, one that is clearly short-staffed, where she finds herself doing pretty much everything.

    “I don’t think they’d even notice if I started operating,” she says.

    Temporary is the key word with Hank. His estrangement from his wife is temporary, as is the apartment he has lived in for the last six months, with a mattress on the floor and sour milk in the refrigerator.

    Temporary, too, is his job as a supernumerary at the Met. It is there that he meets Cheryl (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), with whom he sneaks cigarette breaks in an alleyway outside the stage door.

    Ms. Randolph makes the kind of entrance in “What Rhymes with America” that most actors dream of but few could pull off. It must be tempting to an actor with so much power to go over the top, but she keeps a leash on it, to devastating effect.

    Cheryl is an artist, seeking purity on the stage. She critiques Hank’s performance as a supernumerary gladiator.

    “I look over at you sometimes, and you don’t look triumphant,” she tells him.

    Temporary, too, it turns out, is Hank’s fling with Lydia, played by the very funny Seana Kofoed. Hank meets Lydia at the hospital, where he has gone in a desperate attempt to connect to his elusive daughter.

    Lydia’s father has just died (a wonderful scene with Ms. Kofoed and Ms. Carrero). She feels a failure because she never had children.

    “Were you ever married?” Hank asks her.

   “I dated briefly,” she answers.

    Lydia is a writer who was recently fired from her job with a medical journal. She was hired by the journal, despite knowing nothing about medicine, to make the words flow better, she tells Hank. As she kept writing, she began to believe that she understood what she was writing about.

    “Then, once I added a symptom that I just made up,” she says.

    “Words are little fuckers,” she concludes.

    Mr. Bauer, who has a house in Sag Harbor and is on the board of Bay Street Theatre there, gives a wonderful performance as Hank, seamlessly moving from straight man to comic and back again.

    Wonderful, too, is Ms. Carrero, who picks up a guitar after the first scene, searching for musical rhymes. She has a lovely voice and a simplicity about her acting that is quite attractive.

    All four actors come close to achieving the impossible in contemporary theater, the feel of an ensemble company, in which actors have worked together for years. Impossible, because actors at this level of talent have agents and projects and people to meet and places to go. But for 90 minutes, these four manage to make all that disappear.

    The design team does achieve the ensemble feel, all elements working together to enhance the text. Besides the aforementioned set (which I would go see even without the play) and the sound and music, kudos should be given to Matt Frey’s lighting design (the doorway that is such a crucial element in the show is imaginary, suggested only by two pools of light, separated by about a foot and a half) and the costumes by Emily Rebholz, which capture the look and feel of the piece.

    Ensemble, too, is this team of writer and director. The director Daniel Aukin shares Ms. Gibson’s work with us in a way that pulls us into each character’s world. Scenes overlap, as they do in life, and we are allowed to see four people, each on their own island, each wrestling with their own demons.

    It may be pointless to try to describe Ms. Gibson’s writing in words. As she says, they are such “little fuckers.” Suffice it to say she gives us the music of our language in a compelling, theatrical way.

    Hank’s journey ends where it began, outside the door to his daughter’s apartment. This time, they touch hands through a crack in the door, but it is not a triumphant moment. It is a moment of despair, and perhaps that is what rhymes with America.

    “What Rhymes With America” is playing at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater at 336 West 20th Street in Manhattan through Dec. 30.

   It has been well established that the Internet, for all its wonders, early on fell into the wrong hands and since then has tended to bring out the worst in people. Rage, for one thing, as Bill Henderson of Springs points out in his editor’s note for “Rotten Reviews Redux,” a new reissue of the Pushcart Press’s popular 1986 “literary companion.” Rage that when paired with the safety of anonymity leads to an explosion of dreck online the spray of which reaches even a Luddite like Mr. Henderson, who professes to own no computer.

   He writes of angry reviews, specifically, and, more specifically, of an ad hominem attack he endured related to “a little, otherwise well appreciated memoir I wrote,” presumably “All My Dogs.” Thus, this little book, a kind of corrective serving up example after example of reviewers’ wrongheadedness — even, or especially, on the part of history’s most eminent writers.

    In 95 pages of quotations, you first of all expect a heavy dose of humor. And that it’s got: “We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation,” The Saturday Review wrote of the work of Charles Dickens. “Oblivion lingers in the immediate neighborhood” where dwells an “eccentric, dreamy, half-educated recluse” who defies “the laws of gravitation and grammar,” The Atlantic Monthly said in dismissing Emily Dickinson.

    Further, the genius of Jane Austen was never such, in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s consideration of her “vulgar,” “sterile,” “pinched and narrow” novels. Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? “Insipid, ridiculous,” recorded the great London diarist Samuel Pepys.

    The snippets refer back as far as Chaucer (“obscene and contemptible”: Lord Byron), on up to 1961 and Walker Percy’s memorable “The Moviegoer,” snarkily judged by The New Yorker to be in need of “oil and a good checkup.”

    But there’s more than that, more than karmic revenge. In the Sag Harbor writer Anthony Brandt’s original introduction, which alone is worth the $18.95 price of admission, he touches on not only his own queasy bout as a critic but the history of newspaper reviews (pure flackery at first), Kurt Vonnegut’s belief that fiction writers should never betray their own kind in print, and something harder to get at: When Virginia Woolf calls James Joyce’s “Ulysses” “brackish,” “pretentious,” “underbred,” and “a misfire,” we feel awe at the enthusiastic hacking at the great man’s knees, admiration at the verbal cannonade upon the walls of received wisdom. At this late date, it seems fresh.

    “Rotten Reviews Redux” comes illustrated by Mary Kornblum and in a 5-by-7-inch format suited to the inside of a hung stocking.

East End Women Artists

In New Book

    “Danger! Women Artists at Work,” a new book by Debra N. Mancoff and published by Merrill, features Lee Krasner, Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman, and Elizabeth Peyton, who have all lived and worked at one time on the East End, or still do.

    The book examines women’s place in the artistic canon from when they first were documented in the Renaissance until today. In a long introduction she traces women artists from Roman times, looking at how they first engaged with art, typically as daughters of artists, and how they were received. Some of the other artists profiled are Judith Leyster, Angelica Kauffman, Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot, Louise Bourgeois, the Guerilla Girls, Bridget Riley, Tracey Emin, and many more.

New Years Open House

    Kathryn Markel Gallery in Bridgehampton will present paintings by Toby Haynes, Ann Trusty, and John Hulsey, beginning on Tuesday with a New Year’s Day open house from 4 to 6 p.m.

    The art will be in a variety of media and subject matter, including landscape, still life, botanicals, and portraiture. Cider and cookies will be served on Tuesday. At the official reception on Jan. 12, wine and cheese will be served.

Festival Passes

    The Hamptons International Film Festival is offering its founders passes at reduced rates through the end of the year. The passes, which provide priority access to screenings, conversations, and other festival events are now $1,250, a 25 percent discount off this year’s rates.

    The pass also supports the festival’s programs throughout the year such as SummerDocs and special New York City screenings. Passes are available through the festival’s Web site, hamptonsfilmfest.org. Purchases are tax deductible. Next year’s festival will be held over Columbus Day weekend from Oct. 10 to 14.

Center Stage Auditions

    Center Stage at Southampton Cultural Center will hold open auditions for Tina Andrews’s “Buckingham” on Jan. 5 and 6 at 1 p.m. at the Cultural Center on Pond Lane. Ms. Andrews, who wrote the film “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and the miniseries “Sally Hemmings, An American Scandal,” will direct.

    Rehearsals will begin Jan. 19 and performances will be Feb. 1 through Feb. 10. The play is set in 1760 and dramatizes the real life family dysfunction of Princess Charlotte Sophia of Germany, who hid her Moorish skin tone under heavy white Elizabethan makeup in order to marry Britain’s King George III. The king did not discover her true ethnicity until their wedding night.

    The parts will include King George, the Earl of Bute, Duchess Elizabeth, Grand Duke Adolph Frederick, Lena Baptiste, Jon Baptiste, Lady Sarah Lennox, Johann Christian Bach, Wilhelm Albertina, and Lord Gregory. Scene sides and more information are available by e-mailing thetaogroup@ gmail.com or [email protected].

Chrysalis Gallery Opening

    Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton Village will present “Color Fields,” featuring the work of Joe Bucci, this weekend. On Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. the exhibit will be complemented by poetry readings and refreshments. Guests have been encouraged to wear their favorite color and join in the poetry readings related to color.

Syd Solomon at Spanierman

    Spanierman Modern gallery in Manhattan will hold a Syd Solomon solo exhibition beginning next Thursday. The show will focus on his works from the 1960s and 1970s and will be joined by “Abstract Strength,” a group show including several of his contemporaries. The shows will remain on view through Feb. 9.

    A key member of the group of Abstract Expressionists who settled in Springs and East Hampton around the middle of the last century, Solomon was known for his work in acrylic and his use of color and multilayered compositions. He divided his time between here and Sarasota, Fla., where he also taught.

    “Abstract Strength” will include work by Mary Abbott, Perle Fine, Gertrude Greene, and Charlotte Park, all of whom worked in and around East Hampton.

A Triple Installation

    Molly Morgan Weiss, a former Ross School student, artist, and curator, will have a solo exhibition at Greenwich House Music School in Manhattan beginning next Thursday, with an opening reception from 6 to 10 p.m.

    The show, titled “Home Sleep Home,” is an installation of three bodies of work by the artist, including elements of performance photography, oil painting, and video. A handmade set of bound books written by Ms. Weiss will also be on view through Feb. 4.

    The opening event will feature performances by Katya Grokhovsky, Hannah Townsend, and Andrina Smith, and a music/sound performance by Jessi Brooks, Abigail Levin, and Ms. Weiss.

An Exhibit You Can’t Refuse

    The Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett will hold its annual Salon des Refuses beginning tomorrow. The invitational exhibition will feature James Jahrsdoerfer, with other South Fork artists contributing their interpretation of the nude.

    The show is held in the confrontational tradition of the works spurned by the Paris Salon of 1863. Some of the most revered names in Impressionist art exhibited their rejected works in that show, perhaps most famously Edouard Manet’s “Le dejeuner sur l’herbe.” The art on view may be provocative and sexually charged.

    Mr. Jahrsdoerfer has a background in technical illustration, costume and prop design for professional wrestlers, book jacket design, graphic design, and video, as well as painting and drawing. Other artists on view will include Tina Andrews, Barbara Bilotta, Malcolm Blair, Lance Corey, Jim Gingerich, June Kaplan, Diane Marxe, Andrea McCafferty, Stephanie Reit, Daniel Schoenheimer, Evan Thomas, and Bob Tucker.

    The show opens on Saturday with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and will be on view through Jan. 27.

Jeff Muhs’s “Nymphs”

    The Lyons Weir Gallery in Manhattan will present “The Origin of Nymphs,” an exhibition by Jeff Muhs, who is from Southampton.

    The show, which begins on Saturday, will include works influenced by Mr. Muhs’s study of classically inspired academic painting through the ages, particularly the work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the French neoclassicist. A reception will be held on Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. in the West Chelsea gallery and the show will remain on view through Feb. 9.

Watermill Summer Application

    The Watermill Center International Summer Program, which will be held this year from July 15 to Aug. 18, is now accepting applications, which can be downloaded at watermillcenter.org.

    The annual summer program in Water Mill, now two decades old, is led by Robert Wilson, the center’s creative director. Some 65 artists from around the world participate in a program of “creative exploration and artistic development” in a communal laboratory environment with established artists. Participants work on their own projects and are also expected to assist with chores, cooking, gardening, construction, or collection maintenance. 

    Artists from all disciplines who are interested in “contributing to workshops of new international productions and exhibitions, creating and executing site-specific performances and installations, designing and excecuting landscaping projects, and attending lectures by scholars and established artists,” have been invited to apply.

‘Les Troyens’

    Guild Hall will screen the Met: Live in HD’s presentation of “Les Troyens,” an opera by Berlioz based on Virgil’s “Aeneid,” on Saturday at noon. Fabio Luisi will conduct. The production stars Marcello Giordani as Aeneas, Deborah Voigt as Cassandra, and Susan Graham as Dido.

    The five-act epic has a running time of 300 minutes, with two intermissions. It is based on Francesca Zambello’s 2003 production, receiving its first Met revival this season. Joyce DiDonato will host the transmission and conduct backstage interviews with the stars.

    Tickets cost $22, with reduced admission for museum members and students. They can be purchased in advance at theatermania.com or at the box office three hours prior to curtain.

    On Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., the Naked Stage and Guild Hall will give a free reading of the play “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” by Stephen Adly Guirgis, with Joshua Perl as the lead artist.

‘Other People’s Money’

    The Hampton Theatre Company will stage Jerry Sterner’s play “Other People’s Money” at the Quogue Community Hall beginning next Thursday and running for three weeks. Although the play is now decades from its premiere in 1989, the story of capitalism run amok, Wall Street-style, is as relevant as ever.

    The cast includes Edward Kassar as Lawrence Garfinkle, a corporate raider; Terrence Fiore as Andrew Jorgenson, the chairman of a company about to be the subject of a raid (a role he played previously at the Southampton Cultural Center); Adrianne Hick as Kate Sullivan, a sexy and smart lawyer, and Diana Marbury as Bea Sullivan, Jorgenson’s assistant and Kate’s mother.

    “Other People’s Money” will run for three weekends, through Jan. 27. Showtimes are Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets, which cost $25, $23 for those over 65, and $10 for students under 21, can be purchased in advance at hamptontheatre.org.

Dressing for Success

    The Southampton Cultural Center will present Nora and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” beginning next Thursday and running through Jan. 27 at the Pond Lane theater.

    Ilene Beckerman wrote the original book, but the Ephrons adapted it for the stage as a series of monologues based on the memoirs of several women about using their wardrobes to address the good and bad times in their lives. Ms. Beckerman will join some of the rotating casts, which will also include Brooke Alexander, Barbara Jo Howard, Katie Lee, Gretta Monahan, Bethany Dellapolla, Susan Cincotta, Paula Brannon, Deborah Marshall, Susan Wojcik, Catherine Maloney, and Edna Perez Winston. Michael Disher will direct.

    In a release, Mr. Disher said that the rotating casts have been vital to the show’s success. “The mass appeal of the piece deserves to be voiced by as many women as possible, so we have gathered a group of talented and diverse women to present this piece. How each actor interprets each piece brings something new and unique to the production.”

    The show had its premiere at Guild Hall in 2008. It has since toured internationally and won awards such as the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. Performances will be on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets cost $22, $12 for students, and are available through the cultural center’s Web site.

“Women in

Long Island’s Past”

Natalie A. Naylor

History Press, $19.99

   Natalie A. Naylor, a Hofstra University professor emerita, has assembled a useful and much-needed reference work on women’s history. Her focus in “Women in Long Island’s Past” is on Nassau and Suffolk Counties, where she found the public contributions of the “Eminent Ladies” and “Everyday Lives” of her book’s subtitle, as well as those of other women worthy of note.

    The earliest women addressed are Algonquians who participated in the sale and leasing of tribal land, activities revealed in 17th-century documents. The book ends with a chapter on historians and preservationists that sketches contributions of women from the 1930s to the 1980s. In this section, East Hampton’s Jeannette Edwards Rattray, who died in 1974, is noted for her many works on local maritime and community history.

    The early chapters, from pre-European settlement times to the start of the Civil War, are most effective in placing the lives of individual women within the social and economic trends of the periods. Women played a role in events that led up to the American Revolution. For example, in the 1760s, in response to the English Parliament’s enactment of taxes on certain imports, women supported economic boycotts by refusing to purchase British goods. A 1769 Boston newspaper reported that in order to replace imports, “young Ladies at Huntington on Long Island . . . agreed to try their Dexterity at the Spinning-wheel” and spun many skeins of “good Linen Yarn.”

    To support their families, some women became more engaged in work beyond the “domestic sphere,” in jobs made available by the expansion of commerce and the founding of new institutions. Wives helped their husbands run taverns, and, by the 19th century, women operated boarding houses. Through their churches, wives, widows, single women, and nuns raised money, nursed the sick, and taught school. Women even prepared the bodies of child and female victims of shipwrecks off the south shore of Long Island for burial.

    In a chapter that is a transition from an integrated historical narrative to a concentration on individual women, Ms. Naylor documents the differing connections that five of the nation’s first ladies have had to Long Island. The first, Anna Symmes, had boarded in East Hampton while attending Clinton Academy around 1790. She served for only a few months before the death of her husband, President William Henry Harrison, in 1841.

    Julia Gardiner married President John Tyler in 1844. She was born on Gardiner’s Island and grew up in East Hampton. She ended “her reign as First Lady with a grand farewell ball with three thousand guests.” In 1868, former first lady Julia suggested to President Andrew Johnson that portraits of presidents’ wives be hung in the White House. “Hers was the first to be hung.”

    Two other first ladies associated with Long Island were Edith Kermit Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. Finally, Jacqueline Bouvier, who was born in Southampton Hospital and had a grandfather who had summered in East Hampton beginning in 1912, served as first lady from 1961 to 1963 as the wife of President John F. Kennedy.

    The last two-thirds or so of “Women in Long Island’s Past” concentrate on Ms. Naylor’s “Eminent Ladies,” or close thereto, in specific roles and work-force occupations. Among the biographical sketches of writers, editors, artists, philanthropists, and humanitarians is a profile of Margaret Olivia Slocum, who married the industrialist Russell Sage in 1869. Upon his death in 1906, she became one of America’s wealthiest women. Among her local projects, she helped fund Pierson High School, Mashashimuet Park, and the John Jermain Memorial Library, all in Sag Harbor.

    The painter Lee Krasner was born in Brooklyn in 1908 and with her husband, Jackson Pollock, moved to Springs after World War II. Krasner died in 1984, having bequeathed most of her estate to establishing the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in support of visual artists.

    Besides the “traditional occupations in the enlarged domestic sphere,” including nurses in hospitals and clerical staff in businesses, Long Island nurtured women entrepreneurs and scientists. Alicia Patterson and her husband, Harry Guggenheim, bought the “remnants of a defunct newspaper in Hempstead in 1940 and started Newsday.” After her husband was recalled to the Navy in World War II, Patterson managed the paper alone and remained its editor after the war. “Under Patterson, Newsday grew into the largest suburban newspaper in the country,” Ms. Naylor writes.

    In science, Barbara McClintock, a geneticist who grew up in Brooklyn, joined the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1941. She received a Nobel Prize for her discoveries in 1983.

    Among the innovators who chose a course that knowingly placed their lives at risk were Long Island’s “Pioneering Pilots.” To this reader, their feats are the most dramatic of those discussed in this book, even though they were probably not uniquely long-lasting in promoting the field of aviation.

    During the first decade of the 1900s, early flights took place on Nassau County’s Hempstead Plains because the area was flat and treeless. Among the many aviators surveyed by the author, Bessica Raiche stands out: She was the first woman to fly over the Plains, in 1910, and was proclaimed the First Woman Aviator of America. These were among the activities that led to the development of Long Island’s aircraft industry. During World War II, about 30 percent of the employees at Grumman Aircraft in Bethpage were women and roughly 60 percent at Republic Aviation in Farmingdale.

    Long Island’s wealthy women who were innovative in their thinking stood out in the movement to achieve women’s suffrage. They were “Socialite Suffragists.” Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, a divorcee in 1895 with a large financial settlement, devoted much of her fortune and time to women’s suffrage after the death of her second husband. She worked in Newport, R.I., and New York, where she founded the Political Equality Association. Belmont organized a branch of the organization on Long Island in 1911 and remained active in the suffrage movement until the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which gave women the right to vote nationwide. That same year, civic activists organized the Nassau County League of Women Voters.

   Many women trained as librarians. Among them was Ernestine Rose, who was born in Bridgehampton in 1880. A graduate of Wesleyan, Rose received her library degree from the New York State Library School. She served many years at branches of the New York Public Library, among them the Harlem Branch. She became a leader in the founding of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

    Historical preservation and museum support engaged many women on Long Island and Ms. Naylor identifies them throughout the book. House restorations and schoolhouse museums are placed in their historical contexts. An example is Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island and its late owner Alice H. Fiske, whose husband was a descendant of the 1652 Sylvester settlers.

    Extensive and detailed endnotes close out the book. They will be helpful to general readers and to researchers. An index would have been useful, although its need is mitigated by the division of the book into topical chapter and subchapter headings and by the brevity of the text.

    Ann Sandford is the author of “Grandfather Lived Here: The Transformation of Bridgehampton, New York, 1870-1970.” She lives in Sagaponack.

   Aside from the familiar (sometimes over-familiar) carols, nothing suits the Christmas season better than blazing choral music of the Baroque. The Choral Society of the Hamptons, under Mark Mangini, has made something of a specialty of music of the 17th and 18th centuries, with a recent focus on the English anthems and oratorios of George Frederick Handel. But Sunday’s concert — actually concerts; there were two of them back to back — at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church moved the musical scene across the channel from the sterling zone to the home of the euro.

    The ancient text of the Magnificat does not technically belong to the Christmas season, but its mixture of celebration and piety has attracted composers from Monteverdi to Bach to the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and the musical results certainly suit the season.

    The program began and ended with two roughly contemporary Italian settings from the early 18th century, one typically misattributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the other securely assigned to Antonio Vivaldi, a composer better known for his instrumental music.

    No composer has had more works misattributed to him than Pergolesi, who died young and then became internationally famous long after his death. Perhaps not surprisingly, we discover that what we know as Pergolesi’s Magnificat was actually by his teacher, Franceso Durante, a composer much admired in his day for his sober church music and then long forgotten, except by musicologists.

    No such musicological shenanigans surround the Vivaldi Magnificat or his “Beatus Vir,” both works that combine the composer’s more familiar concerto-like instrumental style with a considerable dramatic flair. Vivaldi wrote reams of everything, including more than 40 operas, so it shouldn’t surprise us that his religious music has more than a touch of theatricality.   

    The Choral Society under Mr. Mangini’s direction was very much at home in this late Italian Baroque music, capturing both its vigor and its sweetness as well as its solid lines and dramatic light-and-shade. The singing in the Durante Magnificat might be described as restrained, perhaps not surprising in a rather formal work that came early on.

    Things eased up later and the two Vivaldi works, in a more familiar style, were fluid and dramatic in the way that Italian religious painting from the Baroque to the Rococo can be theatrical. The Italian word for that light-and-dark contrast is chiaroscuro; the expression is commonly used for Baroque painting but is equally important in the music of the period. This concept was well understood and displayed in the dynamism and musical projection of a chorus that has been well and sensitively trained by its director.

    Another element of contrast was between the soprano soloists, Mary Hubbell and Emily Eagen, both with clear, angelic voices, and the more operatic mezzo, Suzanne Schwing. In fact, Vivaldi’s writing for the mezzo voice was clearly more in Baroque operatic style than his writing for the sopranos, so this turned out to be a bit of good casting.

    J. Andy McCullough, who doubled as tenor soloist and mainstay of the chorus tenors (necessitating a couple of athletic dashes from the tenor section in back to the solo lineup out front), and the baritone Mischa Bouvier were the excellent, fresh-voiced male soloists.

    This was not purely an Italian program. There was a charming Christmas cantata by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, set up as a kind of dialogue between the baritone and the chorus about the Nativity. The other work on the program was the curious “In Dulci Jubilo” by the German early-Baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude, consisting of variations on an antique mishmash of German and Latin lyrics set to a tune that is better known nowadays as “Good Christian Men, Rejoice.” What an odd piece; a snapshot perhaps of an unformed Baroque style very much still in progress.

    Just before the turn to Vivaldi, the string ensemble performed Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 8, a work known as the Christmas concerto. Although the basic string ensemble was strong, there was a problem with the continuo keyboard part, here played on the church organ situated in the rear of the church. It was noticeable only a few places and, frankly, I missed the rhythmic edge of the harpsichord that usually provides the solid underpinning of the strings, particularly in support of the bass lines, here represented by only a single cello and double bass.

    In choral music, organ continuo is perfectly legitimate, but it needs to be used with more emphasis; in the Baroque period, it would often have been accompanied by a theorbo, or bass lute, to help with those rhythmic bass lines.

    None of this impacted the choral performance or the overall effectiveness of the program. I was told that the second performance of the day was even better than the first. Judging by the way things warmed up throughout the course of the afternoon, I would not have been the least bit surprised if that were the case. And if that second time through was better than the first, it must have been pretty good indeed.

    The program ended with — what else? — some familiar carols. At the 3 p.m. performance, chorus and orchestra were joined by the East Hampton High School Vocal Camerata, David Douglas, director, to help sing an elegant arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard on High,” that most Baroque of traditional Christmas carols.

    A series of recordings of Eric Salzman’s music-theater works are appearing on Labor/Naxos; already issued are “Civilization and its Discontents” (with Michael Sahl); “The Nude Paper Sermon,” and the four works that make up Wiretap (laborrecords.com/lab7089.html). For ordering information, laborrecords. com/lab7092.html. Mr. Salzman’s “Big Jim and the Small-time Investors,” workshopped last spring, is scheduled for production by the Center for Contemporary Opera in 2014.

   Created in a burger joint on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike in the spring of 2009, the Jazz Jam Session will celebrate its accomplishments and internationally renowned musical guests at its first CD release party at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor next Thursday. A success by all accounts, Claes Brondal and his core Thursday Night Live Band brought not only business to a roadhouse-style restaurant, but an experience that led to more live music throughout Sag Harbor.

    The Jam Session is a partnership between John Landes, an attorney, music lover, an owner of Bay Burger, and chairman of the board of Peconic Public Broadcasting, and Mr. Brondal, an accomplished Danish drummer with a dream of sharing the musical message of jazz diversity with a community of all ages and demographics.

    Mr. Brondal wanted to provide a creative venue where musicians could practice their craft before a live audience, network with other musicians, and showcase their talent. The jam became an important open venue for jazz musicians, Mr. Landes said, which “means a lot.” Mr. Landes has grabbed the microphone and sang himself a few times, and he also has a guitar and a dream.

    With its current house band including Bryan Campbell on guitar, Peter Martin Weiss on bass, and Mr. Brondal on drums, the Thursday Night Band’s jam has been recorded and broadcast weekly on WPPB. About 100 hours of live recorded material from their weekly two-hour shows has resulted in the CD “Live On Thursday Nights.”

    Aiming for a mix of special guests and regular performers whose styles varied from Latin jazz to funk, the task of choosing tracks was not a simple endeavor. Two of the tracks were recorded at a benefit concert for Bay Street Theatre that featured the All That Jazz All Star Super band, which was also born out of the Jam Sessions.

    Mr. Brondal is responsible for bringing in master musicians who join the core band’s guitar, bass, drums, and almost always a piano. As word spread, “jammers just walked in the door,” said Mr. Landes last Thursday. They included Bernard Purdie, who “stopped by this summer.” Mr. Landes said the unexpected performance from the man who played drums with Ringo Starr on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” is part of the excitement of the jam.

    Special guests also include Morris Goldberg, who played on Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album, Randy Brecker, a multi-Grammy Award-winning composer and musician, and Dick Behrke, who has arranged for Bobby Darin, known for playing with a white glove. Many other acclaimed musicians have graced the restaurant and are on the CD, too. Several are expected at the release party.

    Despite its esteemed guests and several calls for reservations, the Jam Session is not stuffy in the least. Performances must be family-friendly, because the “happiest moments are when kids dance,” Mr. Landes said. His grandson, Leo, has been coming for the two years since he was born, and Mr. Brondal’s son is in attendance weekly as well, soon to be joined by his new brother, who is just a few weeks old.

    With more of a casual, party atmosphere than the usual jazz concert, there  is food available from Bay Burger’s menu and “Nobody is stuck to a table,” Mr. Landes said. On warm days the crowd spills out onto an outdoor patio, with no complaints from the next-door neighbors, Dale Haubrich and Bette Lacina, owners of the Under the Willow Organics farm.

    Since Bay Burger closes down for four months in the winter, Mr. Landes happily supports the Jam Session’s move to other local venues during that time, which have included the Bay Street Theatre lobby and Page at 63 Main. “It’s good for the village,” he said.

    Before the Jam Session, Mr. Landes explained, Sag Harbor had essentially shut down live music. He contributed his legal expertise to the creation of a music ordinance a few years ago, he said, after it was demonstrated how live music could be done in an “elegant way” in a restaurant.

    The Jam Session’s success and vibe also inspired Kelly Connaughton to start up the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, Mr. Landes said, which is now held annually in the village at the end of September. The jam also fosters young musicians, he said, and gives them exposure.

    “Cool, hip tunes and good energy” can be expected from the CD, according to Mr. Brondal. It includes six cuts, each about 10 minutes long, taken from the live radio recordings. It is “well-produced,” Mr. Landes said, by himself, Mr. Brondal, and George Howard, the sound engineer and owner of Plus Nine Productions, who recorded the live sessions and then engineered the tracks at his Rockin’ Horse Studios.

    “Live music will never go away,” Mr. Brondal said. His favorite part of all of his music endeavors is the live performance and the emotional connection he feels with the audience and the other musicians. When not on stage, he teaches drumming clinics to high school students, among them a Roots and Rhythm workshop that focuses on music and drumming history, and Rhythmology, the study of life and rhythm. He says on his Web site that he seeks to encourage students to “pursue passions of their own, and experience the power of submerging oneself 100 percent.”

    Mr. Brondal also fronts the Groove Gumbo Super Band, an eclectic band rooted in Latin beats, Nordic folk songs, jazz, and world music. Called a musical playground, the band is a collaborative of musicians formed during the Jam Session that “cooks up a diverse gumbo of musical styles.” He also plays in the All That Jazz! Super Band.

    With no arrangements so far for a Jam Session this winter, Mr. Brondal said it may be the first winter since its inception that a suitable venue has not been found. “The math just didn’t add up,” he said. With no cover charge, the musicians have always played for donations only, dependent on listeners attending to support the restaurant, which pays the house band.

    Next Thursday’s party will go down in the lobby of the Bay Street Theatre from 7 to 9 p.m. There will be a cash bar and complimentary catered food. The CD will be sold with hopes of many giving the gift of music to their loved ones for the holidays. “Live on Thursday Nights” will also be available at Jam Session performances, local retail shops, and cdbaby.com.

Pollock-Krasner House

Receives Grant

    The Helen and Claus Hoie Charitable Foundation of East Hampton has given the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center a $14,700 grant, which the center will use for educational purposes.

    The grant will allow the center to purchase 20 mini digital audio units to offer tours in several languages to visitors to the house and site. The same system is used in museums and historic sites all over the globe.

    The center will also use the money for two interactive kiosks with a touch screen that will display paintings by Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner that were created on the Springs property, but are now in major museums and collections. The center expects to have these tools in place by the time it opens again in the spring.

The End of the World

As We Know It?

    Neoteric Fine Art is observing the possible apocalypse tomorrow with “Amagansett Armageddon,” a show devoted to artists’ renderings of the end of the world. Taking its cue from the Mayans, the theme of the show is also a possible rebirth and a new chapter for life here on Earth.

    The artists offering their visions of doom or prophesies include Scott Bluedorn, Rossa Williams Cole, Rory Evenson-Phair, Melissa Mapes, Virva Hinnemo, Nika Nesgoda, and Christine Sciulli.

    The reception tomorrow is from 7-11 p.m., but in a note of hope, the exhibition will remain on view through Jan. 15.

“The Women”

In Bridgehampton

    Peter Marcelle Gallery in Bridgehampton will present “The Women, Part I,” the first in a series chosen thematically and dedicated to women artists on the South Fork. This first installation will feature artists who are figurative in their approach to subject matter such as Miriam Dougenis, Cornelia Foss, Gina Gilmour, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Janet Jennings, Jane Johnson, Anna Jurinich, Brooke Laughlin, Elizabeth Malunowicz, Mary McCormick, Michelle Murphy, Louise Peabody, Susan Lazarus Reimen, and Alexandra Strada. The second installation will examine the more abstract female artists among us.

    The exhibition will open Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and remain on view through Jan. 7. The second show will open on Jan. 12.

More East End Stories

    The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will hold one more edition of East End Stories on Screen this year, tomorrow at 6 p.m. The presentation will include selections from “14 Americans,” a film by Michael Blackwood Productions with six artists associated with the East End — Laurie Anderson, Alice Aycock, Peter Campus, Chuck Close, Dennis Oppenheim, and Dorothea Rockburne.

    Andrea Grover, the museum’s curator of special projects, has organized the screening. The films will be introduced by Terrie Sultan, the museum’s director, and Alicia Longwell, a curator of art and education, among others. Tickets cost $10, $8 for Parrish members.

Spelunking at Harper’s

    Harper’s Books has delved deep into its basement archive for a selection of prints, photographs, posters, and books for the picky aficionado to offer “Harper’s Books Bizarre” an evening of music, booze, and sales on Saturday.

    From 6 to 9 p.m., D.J. Mister Lama will work the boards with some “sexy vinyl.” Shopping, drinks, and snacks will also be available all day.