Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The piano man John Legend has been nominated for eight Grammys, and he’s going to perform in the Super Bowl half-time show.
Before he took off for Detroit, he was in New York to celebrate his recent success, not to mention his brother Ronald’s 29th birthday. Songwriter and producer Denise Rich was the hostess of the bash in her Fifth Avenue apartment, which also celebrated her own recent birthday.
“Denise, this is a beautiful place. I want to move in. You have such a nice piano, I’ll serenade you every morning,” Mr. Legend told Mrs. Rich.
Mr. Legend didn’t play at the party, leaving the ivories to jazz pianist Bryn Roberts. The fete included ample amounts of fried chicken, ham, sweet potatoes, and green beans prepared by Janice Combs. Tonight Mr. Roberts is back to his less luxurious everyday life, performing at Barbes in Park Slope.
One of the brothers behind the nightclub PM, Francois Alexander, is rooting for Mr. Legend to win at least one Grammy, “because he’s soulful, and that’s missing from the business now.” Mr. Alexander plans to release his own soulful record soon.
As for Mr. Legend, he’s “just happy to be nominated.” And at the Super Bowl, he’ll be rooting for the Steelers.
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The Atlantic Monthly held a “Viewing Dinner” Tuesday to “discuss and debate” the 2006 State of the Union address. Those who gathered at the St. Regis Hotel included Julia Stiles, Betsy Gotbaum, Andy Borowitz, and Moby. But I, for one, was – on this one night only – a tad jealous of my friends in Washington, because the Atlantic’s State of the Union party there took place at the Library of Congress. Say what you will about the social dullness of our nation’s capitol, its grandest buildings make for the grandest party settings.
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It was worth buying a raffle ticket at the New York City Ballet’s annual luncheon yesterday. Prizes included a private viewing of Coco Chanel’s apartment in Paris and a private tour of the new Morgan Library before it opens in the spring. The event drew 730 guests and raised $380,000 for the company. Right in step with the recent warm weather, David Monn turned the Promenade into a garden-style dining room with green chairs and white butterflies popping out of the centerpieces. The principal dancer Joaquin de Luz admired the balconies, which reminded him of his native Madrid.
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The 10th anniversary celebration of the New York Public Library’s President’s Council drew some of the library’s most generous supporters, chief among them the council’s co-chairmen, Louise Grunwald, Gayfryd Steinberg, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn.
Just before the 150 guests dug into their caviar pie (beef and cake followed), Ms. Grunwald presented the bottom line: Since it was founded in 1996, the group has raised $15 million for the library’s operating budget – “the hardest money to raise, and money that’s critical to pay for books and curators,” Ms. Grunwald said.
The dinner took place in the McGraw Rotunda, whose arched bays are decorated with murals by Edward Laning that tell the history of the written word.
The event started in the newly renovated Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, where the assistant chief of the map division, Matthew Knutzen, showed off items in the collections: a Bernard Ratzer map of New York right after the Revolution; one of the only cloth maps ever made, and a fire safety map that included a penciled-in sketch of the Ebbets Field diamond with the names of players on the bases.
Some guests don’t have to visit the library to see great maps. Ms. Steinberg’s husband, Saul Steinberg, owns the maps the British commissioned to fight the Revolutionary War, and also the ones Washington had made.
“You should see the cases for the British maps. They are unbelievably heavy, and show how out of touch they were. …Washington’s were much more primitive,” Mr. Steinberg said.
The jazz quartet Eric Person and Meta-Four performed John Coltrane compositions from handwritten scores that recently entered the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. They were “Out of a Dream,” “Lover Man,” and “The Back Beat.”
