Tomorrow, I’m hosting this month’s silent reading party in the Fireside Room at the Sorrento Hotel (Wednesday, April 6). The drinks special will be Maker’s Mark Manhattans ($4). The theme will be jazz and urbanism. The piano jazz will be performed by Darrius Willrich. The ubranism will be represented by Cary Moon and Lead Pencil Studio. The reading will be done silently by you. The mood will match the urban refinement of Nat King Cole’s “Penthouse Serenade“:

Here

  • “Here is Nat ‘King’ Cole at his sophisticated best in sparkling keyboard interpretations of your romantic favorites. Millions are familiar with Nat cole’s vocal stylings, but comparatively few know him as a pianist of exquisite taste and tender moods. As a matter of fact, Nat’s instrumental technique is brilliant, his style intimate…and his understanding interpretations make listening a new and colorful experience. In this album he plays as he seldom is heard outside small gatherings of his intimates…now softly and moodily, now sparkling with a flash of his better-known jazz solos. Listen, then…to “Penthouse Serenade” and the inimitable ‘King’ Cole touch!”

The reading party, which happens every first Wednesday of the month, begins at 6:00 p.m. and ends around 8:00 p.m..

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

4 replies on “Now that We’re Together, We Can Be Alone in Our Heads: A Reading Party”

  3. Kids, don’t smoke pot or you’ll turn out like Will in Seattle.

    That is, believe it or not, the only Nat King Cole record on Capitol I don’t have. Despite the commentary, I much prefer his smooth singing.

    Did you know that when he bought a house in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles in 1948, one of his new neighbors burned the word “nigger” into his lawn? This wasn’t some rough-and-tumble working-class neighborhood; it was posh, upscale, old school, and very, very white. Poisoned his dog, too. (Note — Wikipedia says “burning cross”, but their source, a biography of Nelson Riddle, isn’t as good as mine, “Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance” by Kevin Starr.

  4. Damn, @3! Visiting an ex in LA today I had to drive right past Hancock Park. It’s all bewilderingly fancy in the bits I had to linger in today.

    As for the reading party, I must just go sometime, I guess. I struggle to see the point of trying to ignore music in order to read properly, or trying to ignore my open book while listening to Darius Willrich. All while ignoring Cary Moon over in the corner waiting for someone to rhapsodize with about windswept waterfront promenades.

    I suppose enough Manhattans would make it all seem sensible, though.

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