The Old Dark House

From the Food Vault Dept.: Thirty years ago I wrote the piece below, a far-too-cursory review of the food at Beardslee Castle. This is an honest-to-goodness castle in a remote stretch of the Mohawk Valley, but not terribly far from where I live. And my experience with the place went beyond merely dining there, for I also spent some years working with a murder-mystery event troupe, and Beardslee Castle was one of our performance venues. I’m impressed to note that Randall Brown still owns the place and still runs the kitchen – and that the place still hosts murder-mystery events, with upcoming shows December 4, 13, 18, and 26, 2026. (See the Castle’s events page.) Now let’s turn the clock back three decades.

                                                                                                  

DRIVE THIS STRETCH of Route 5 late on a stormy night and the building could scare the hell out of you. I mean, there it is, a castle, imposing stone battlements protecting the hillside just west of East Canada Creek. You’ve just entered Herkimer County, passing through farmland and the mix of white trash trailers and well-kept Amish houses that characterizes this part of the Mohawk Valley. Technically you’re in Little Falls, but when Beardslee Castle was built, in 1860, it was surrounded by the town of East Creek.

A remarkable history is attached. Augustus Beardslee was a member of the state legislature and a wealthy stockholder in the New York Central Railroad. When his castle was built, it included a covered walkway to the nearby railroad tracks, where the train would make a special stop for Beardslee. His son Guy owned the castle when it burned in 1919; it was rebuilt to a smaller plan, and stayed in the family until 1941, when it soon was turned into a restaurant.

And that’s how it was run, under a succession of owners, until another fire hit in 1989. Although not as drastic as the earlier blaze, it was enough to close the place, which lay abandoned for the next three years.

The Will to Swing

A REASONABLE GUESS is that Oscar Peterson made over 200 recordings under his own name—we’re talking albums here, not singles—but the number goes up to over 500 when you include the sessions at which he was merely (merely!) a sideman. Hence the challenge of narrowing the selection process. Mosaic Records has dipped into the Peterson well a couple of times before, but their newest release covers 1959 to 1965, when he was busier than ever with concerts and recordings. Therefore, it’s hardly exhaustive, but its focus brings us Oscar at his most creative and versatile. He thrived in a trio setting, and the musicians he worked with thrived as well.

“Peterson’s greatest impact was as a leader of a piano trio,” writes Bob Blumenthal in his thoughtful, thorough program notes to Mosaic’s eight-CD Classic Oscar Peterson Trio Studio Sessions with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. “Neither more intimate encounters nor grand orchestral settings threw him off his game, but his sustained work in two distinct three-piece iterations defined what the classic modern jazz piano trio was all about.”

Peterson won a talent contest in his native Montreal in 1940, when he was 15; like so many budding pianists during that era, he idolized Art Tatum’s harmonic and technical virtuosity. Unlike so many, Peterson developed the chops to make the most of his hero’s precedent. Tatum’s recorded output remains comparatively small, much of what’s there thanks to producer Norman Granz’z insistence on sitting Art down and capturing him extensively in solo and small-group settings. Granz also produced a number of Oscar’s sessions, including those that start off this set.

On Someone Else’s Dime

From the Travel Vault Dept.: I was puzzled as hell to look back at a piece that ran in Metroland in 1999 trumpeting summer travel in Newport, Rhode Island. As one who counts coal miners among his forebears, I’ve never been interested in touring the manorial piles the robber barons built through exploiting both workers and natural resources. Then I remembered that this was when I was still writing for computer magazines, and that a company that made uninterruptible power supplies at the time gave me and my wife an all-expenses-paid trip to spend time at their nearby headquarters. I figured I’d squeeze a few nickels out of the trip and write the rah-rah piece below. Remember: It dates from 1999!

                                                                                         

AT THE HEIGHT OF TOURIST SEASON, with every hotel room taken and downtown traffic crawling slower than a walking pace, you can stroll along tiny Thames Street cheek to jowl with other travelers and still have a marvelous time. That’s because the street continues to buck the chain-store trendiness that has infected much of the rest of the city and sports an eccentric array of shops and restaurants. 

The Breakers and Nearby Obscenities

House of Scrimshaw is one of a few scrimshaw shops; look for teddy bears, pottery, candles, tea and herbs, books, more pottery, even antique clock restoration and a wild array of statuary (Aardvark Antiques). The Newport Fudgery and every kind of restaurant offer comestibles, all of which helps to offset the interlopers like Banana Republic and Starbucks. And, because the street parallels the harbor, you’ll find diving gear, fly fishing equipment, and lots and lots of boats.

Newport was founded in 1639 by folks who fled a colony in Portsmouth that had fled from England, and all of this fleeing was for religious reasons. Newport’s harbor proved profitable as Colonial merchants pursued the Triangle Trade: rum, molasses and slaves. These entrepreneurs were forced to flee in 1776, however, when the British occupied the island for the next three years. 

The Second Hundred Years

From the Jazz Vault Dept.: Mosaic Records has announced a CD set chronicling the recordings Louis Armstrong made in New York in 1924 and 1925 – just before he participated in the groundbreaking Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions. Which means we’ll be hearing Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra as well as recordings with Bessie Smith and Alberta Hunter, the unmissable sound and creativity of Satchmo behind them. But even before this Armstrong recorded as part of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Let’s revisit my review of a lavish CD set devoted to those sides.

                                                                                        

JAZZ, THE UNIQUE AND DEFINING MUSIC of the United States, evolved throughout the 19th century, with New Orleans its epicenter, but couldn’t gain general-public attention until its earliest recordings were released, in 1917. Not surprisingly, these featured white musicians, but the recordings proved popular enough to open studio doors to the Black pioneers. Among them was Louis Armstrong.

In 1922 he was a young man, fresh out of New Orleans, newly installed in Joe “King” Oliver’s ensemble in Chicago. Oliver, also from New Orleans, was his mentor and hero. He had summoned his protegé to join the band, and Louis couldn’t have been more grateful. The two cornets, playing side-by-side in this seven-piece group, gained attention for their exciting duet work – and that’s generally all the space that Armstrong got. Oliver kept him leashed.

But listen to “Chimes Blues,” recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band on April 5, 1923. Louis has his first solo on record, what would turn out to be his only solo on these King Oliver sessions, and you can hear why Oliver felt threatened. That assertive Satchmo tone is all there, fully inhabiting the acoustic horn through which it was recorded. And this was part of the first of the six sessions that year that gave us the 37 sides enshrined as among the most important and influential records of that decade. Sure, Louis’s Hot Fives and Sevens were soon to come, but this is where they were born.

Keeping It in the Family

From the Food Vault Dept.: There’s some back-and-forth to the Lanzi family’s restaurant history. A Lanzi’s Restaurant opened in Amsterdam, NY’s, south side in 1920, where there was good food as well as occasional organized outdoor boxing matches. Luigi and Amalia Lanzi, who founded the place, came from Agani, Italy; after working for his parents, their son Lorenzo opened his own place, named after himself, in 1956 on Amsterdam’s Union Street. Lanzi’s closed in 1985; Lorenzo’s in 1998. But Lorenzo’s five sons all went into the business, and soon enough began opening their own places. Thus we now have Northville’s Sport Island Pub, Lakeside Tavern in Gloversville, and Lanzi’s on the Lake in Mayfield, all three on the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake; as well as Partner’s Pub in Johnstown. (Find them online at lanzifamilyrestaurants.com/restaurants)

A century later, the Lanzi family opened another restaurant where their grandfather started: Lorenzo’s Southside, where Neapolitan pizza, cooked in an authentic wood-fired oven, is a specialty. My wife and I recently dined there and had a thoroughly wonderful meal, and we’re returning soon to try to pizza we missed our first time around. Meanwhile, I rummaged through the archives and discovered my reviews of Lorenzo’s from 1990 and Lanzi’s on the Lake from 1993, which you’ll find below.

                                                                                  

THERE’S NO SIGN ON THE BUILDING. Joe Lanzi shrugs and smiles as he explains: “We never needed one.” Lorenzo’s looks like the other houses on the block save for the neon Bass Ale sign in the window. It’s on one of those Amsterdam hills, looking over the Mohawk River, a location chosen by Joe’s father in 1957 and which brought most of the nine kids into the business.

My sense is that people don’t wander into the place on their own: they’re brought by friends who want to share this Amsterdam treasure. That’s how I was introduced a few visits ago, and it was a ritual I performed the night before the Travers cup race to avoid all traces of track crowds.

Ironically, we sat next to cartoonist John Caldwell and his wife – people who know their restaurants – who were showing off the place to fellow cartoonist Jack Ziegler and his wife, up from Connecticut for the Travers and no mean restaurant fans themselves. Making this the first restaurant in a few years of reviewing for which I can offer social notes as well.

All right: no sign. Visits from celebrity cartoonists. What’s the appeal? 

Are You Now or Have You Ever?

MY FATHER, who was born in 1928, extolled the 1950s as the last decade during which “the United States made sense.” As a conservative white male military vet, his opinion wasn’t surprising: he believed he’d earned part ownership of this country. Marx would have defined that ownership as exclusionary but, to my father, Marx represented communism and communism was evil.

Joseph Lattanzi and Laura Santamaria-Mendez 
Photo Credit: Brent DeLanoy/
The Glimmerglass Festival

And communists were being systematically revealed and removed from their jobs, both in Hollywood and in Congress. Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel “Fellow Travelers” is set during that era, but takes the persecution further by placing at its center two men who become lovers while working in Washington, D.C. as the spectre of being outed – and thus career-ruined – draws closer and grows more ominous.

Although the story is better known as a TV mini-series (taking the story well beyond the bounds of the book), the opera packs a greater emotional punch, because that’s what good opera does. The shrewd melding of music and words bypasses that part of the brain we use to decode novels and goes straight to our emotional nerve centers. TV writing, no matter how critically lauded, is too formulaic to allow for emotional depths. Even if ads aren’t part of your streaming service, TV writing is structured to accommodate ads.

And That’s the Way It Is

SOME YEARS AGO, The Onion, a satirical periodical, sported a headline proclaiming
“Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Place Shakespeare Intended.” The ensuing story suggested that a community-theater director would actually set “The Merchant of Venice” in 16th-century Venice.

Gregory Feldmann, Kevin Burdette, 
and Travon D. Walker | Photo Credit: 
Brent DeLanoy/The Glimmerglass Festival

It was a welcome jab at those who shoehorn classic theater pieces into supposedly innovative environs, and nowhere is this more apparent, in my experience, than in the world of opera. The practice seems to me to be more a creative-team indulgence than some manner of bold choice, so I was dismayed to learn that the Glimmerglass Festival’s new production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” would be set on a 20th-century college campus rather than 18th-century Naples. 

I’m here to eat crow. Two helpings, in fact. In the past, I have roundly criticized in-house dramaturg Kelly Rourke’s translations. I’m a stickler for correct rhyming when the original is written rhyming verse, and line endings that don’t match as intended hurt my ears. But it turns out that Rourke’s new libretto for old “Così” (title has been truncated) is a festival of witty jokes and glorious rhymes.