Richard Schickel ruminates on an American art form.

It was no surprise that Charlie Haden and Kenny Barron struck such rich chords Tuesday night at the Blue Note, the first in a series of duet concerts that Haden, one of the great bass players in jazz, is headlining—six nights, four different pianists—at the club in Greenwich Village. Haden is best known as the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, but it’s a mistake to tag him as a “free jazz” musician, in the usual sense. Above all, Haden is a romantic—he loves ballads and waltzes, he plucks a thick, juicy tone—and Barron is a lush balladeer. A few moments in the opening set didn’t quite click (maybe because Haden, now 70 but still youthful, recently had a hernia operation), but most of it did, Barron cruising triplets on the keyboard, Haden responding with undisguised but tightly harnessed emotion. The duet recording he and Barron made several years ago, <I>Night and the City</I>, seems a simple pleasantry if you play it in the background, but listen closely, there’s so much intricacy between the two—and yet, at every level, the music above all delights and charms.

This might be the hottest day of the year. It feels like a hundred degrees out there. It's really hot. On what might be the hottest day of the year, all of our bus and subway systems &#151; connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and, of course, New Jersey &#151; were absolutely crippled.

Sam Leith gets the spa treatment.

On the advice of Gavin J. Grant, who is guest-blogging <A HREF="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2007_08.php#011539"><I>Blog of a Bookslut</I></A>, I read Margo Lanahan's "Singing My Sister Down" this morning. Now I can't stop thinking about it.