twi-ny recommended events

TICKET ALERT: LITTLE ISLAND SUMMER SEASON 2026

Concrete tulip pillars welcome visitors to Little Island, which just announced its summer performance season (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LITTLE ISLAND SUMMER SHOWS
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
July 29 – September 6, $25 unless otherwise noted, 8:30
littleisland.org

In 2015, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg cemented their local legacy by donating $113 million to Little Island, a lovely paradise built on the remnants of a ramshackle pier at West Thirteenth St.

Little Island is a warm and welcoming oasis rising more than 60 feet above the Hudson River; it is shaped like a large leaf, bursting with more than 350 species of flowers, trees, and shrubs, a 687-seat amphitheater for live performances known as the Amph, the Play Ground plaza where you can get food and drink, and stage and lawn space called the Glade. More than 66,000 bulbs and 114 trees were initially planted, taking into account the changing seasons and even the differences in light between morning, afternoon, and night. It all sits upon 132 concrete pillars of varying heights that resemble high heels or slightly warped tulip Champagne glasses.

Lovers of the live arts have been waiting impatiently for the announcement of Little Island’s summer schedule, and at last it is here. There are only seven presentations, so it’s not nearly as expansive as previous years, but you better act quickly, because tickets are only $25 (and free for the Summer Legacy Ball). Below is the full schedule.

Wednesday, July 29
Thursday, July 30
Friday, July 31
Justin Vivian Bond: Summer’s Eve, with Justin Vivian Bond, Bernice “Boom Boom” Brooks on drums, Nath Ann Carrera on guitar, Claudia Chopek on violin, Mike Jackson on bass, and Matt Ray on piano

Saturday, August 1
Summer Legacy Ball, hosted by Qween Jean, with honorees Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Boom Boom Balenciaga, Kiara St. James, and Brenda Continental Milan Soulja, preachers Samora Pinderhughes and Dr. Jehbreal Jackson, MCs Julz Romell and Thunda, performer Haus of Telfar, panelists Luna Luis, Tracey Africa Norman, and Mother Pandora West, ball DJ Blaize, and afterparty DJ DANIRO, free

Wednesday, August 5
through
Sunday, August 9
Anthony Roth Costanzo: Minimalism, with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and different formations of Sandbox Percussion, Bryan Wagorn or Vicky Chow on piano, PUBLIQuartet, and mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson

Wednesday, August 12
through
Sunday, August 16
Cécile McLorin Salvant: Tin Pan Alley, with different lineups including vocalists Lillias White, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Mikaela Bennett, Billy Stritch on piano, Kyle Poole or Buddy Williams on drums, George Coleman on sax, Sullivan Fortner on piano, and Paul Sikivie on bass

Wednesday, August 19
through
Sunday, August 23
Louis Cato: The Harlem Renaissance, with bandleader Louis Cato on guitar, vocalist Catherine Russell, Louis Fouché on alto sax, Alphonso Horne on trumpet, Philip Kuehn on bass, Jeffrey Miller on trombone, Tivon Pennicott on tenor sax, Mathis Picard on piano, and Evan Sherman on drums, featuring recorded interviews with Ron Carter, Catherine Russell, and others

Saturday, August 29
and
Sunday, August 30
Julio Torres & Martine Gutierrez: Marina, conceived by Julio Torres & Martine Gutierrez, written and directed by Julio Torres, composed by Lia Ouyand Rusli, choreographed by Ryan McNamara, and starring Martine Gutierrez, River L. Ramirez, Spike Einbinder, Brandon Flynn, Scully James, and more, commissioned for the Whitney Biennial

Wednesday, September 2
through
Sunday, September 6
Thomas Bartlett: Allen Ginsberg at 100, with various configurations including curator Thomas Bartlett on piano, consultant Laurie Anderson, poet Anne Waldman, Oren Bloedow on guitar, Jason Burger on drums, vocalists Jennifer Charles and Davóne Tines, Spencer Murphy on bass, and Douglas Wieselman on sax, featuring special guests Rufus Wainwright on September 2, Bill Frisell on September 3, and others to be announced

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

COPLAND & TWAIN, COPELAND & COREA, DUNBAR & HUGHES, AND MORE: CELEBRATING AMERICA’S 250th IN CHELSEA

Pianist Min Kwon reimagines “America the Beautiful” at Chelsea Music Festival

CHELSEA MUSIC FESTIVAL: EVERY STORY COUNTS
St. Paul’s German Church and other venues
June 20-27, $65-$150, season pass $500
chelseamusicfestival.org

“This season, our theme, ‘Every Story Counts,’ draws inspiration from the phrase ‘Every Vote Counts,’ where each person’s vote is dignified and counted in a democracy,” 2026 Chelsea Music Festival artistic directors Melinda Lee Masur and Ken-David Masur said in a statement. “This summer, we celebrate the power of music and storytelling to preserve and elevate the voices of people from all walks of life in America. As we contemplate America’s 250th anniversary, we welcome the voices of composers, musicians, artists, chefs, and creators who contribute to the cultural fabric of this country and strive to elevate our shared humanity. Our hope is to continue providing a stage and safe haven for the exchange of ideas and differences, and a fertile ground for artistic collaborations between the performing, visual, and culinary arts.”

The seventeenth annual event, running June 20–27, consists of nine special presentations, with seventeen New York premieres and two world premieres; tickets for some are near capacity or already sold out, so you better hurry if you want to be part of this year’s fest.

Invitation to Love — Opening Night with Clara Osowski
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Saturday, June 20, $85, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianists Dimitri Dover and Melinda Lee Masur lead a six-piece ensemble in an evening of works that explore the American immigrant experience and the poetry of Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar, comprising Mark Carlson’s Stars — The Dream Keeper, Aaron Copland’s Three Old American Songs, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Three Songs, Libby Larsen’s This Unbearable Stillness: Songs from the Balcony, Reinaldo Moya’s DREAM Songs, Frederick Piket’s The Dream Keeper, Damien Sneed’s All Night, All Day and I Dream A World, and Steven Ward’s Invitation to Love.

Mark Twain–inspired Southern Sunday Brunch
City Winery Bistro
25 Eleventh Ave.
Sunday, June 21, $100, 12:30
chelseamusicfestival.org

Food and drink aren’t the only things on the menu at this City Winery brunch with Melinda Lee Masur and Ken-David Masur, joined by director, writer, and producer Bill Barclay for a talk about the making of Copland & Twain (see below), along with music by violinists Yuyu Ikeda and Carlos Rafael Martinez Arroyo. Oh, yes, there is food and drink as well; the menu features buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk fried chicken and waffle, farm egg scramble, Saratoga potatoes, heirloom tomato, and warm apple pie.

America/Beautiful
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Monday, June 22, $65, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

During the pandemic, pianist Min Kwon initiated her America/Beautiful project, in which she asked more than seventy composers around the country, “What is America — is it beautiful, was it ever, or will it ever be?” Some of the results will be heard when she teams up with pianists Timo Andres, Chaihun Kim, and Jorges Tabarés and violinist Claire Bourg to perform America-themed works by Stewart Copeland, Vijay Iyer, Nico Muhly, and others, accompanied by landscape photography by Park Joon.

Verona Quartet at Poets House
Poets House
10 River Terr.
Tuesday, June 23, pay-what-you-wish, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

The Verona Quartet — Jonathan Ong and Dorothy Ro on violin, Abigail Rojansky on viola, and Jonathan Dormand on cello — perform Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 2 “Company,” George Walker’s Lyric for String Quartet, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s MoonStrike, and arranger Peter Myers’s Twenties Tunes Jazz Suite, with narration by Byron Singleton and poetry from Wayne Koestenbaum, followed by a wine reception.

American Street Food Stories with Chef Hinnerk von Bargen
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Wednesday, June 24, $75, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

CIA professor and Street Foods author Hinnerk von Bargen hosts an evening of culinary delights from street food stalls, including sloopy bun, curry wurst, cold Sichuan-style sesame noodles, and fruit sandos.

Aaron Copland and Mark Twain join forces in unique theatrical concert

Copland & Twain — A Theatrical Concert
Open Jar Studios
1601 Broadway, floor 11
Thursday, June 25, $150, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

One of the highlights of the festival is Bill Barclay’s Copland & Twain — A Theatrical Concert, a genius pairing of Brooklyn-born composer Aaron Copland and Missouri-born humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Their lives barely overlapped — Copland was nine when Twain died in 1910 at the age of seventy-four — but writer-director Barclay and Concert Theatre Works have produced an evening that brings together Copland’s Music for the Movies and Music for the Theater and Twain’s Diaries of Adam and Eve, performed by the Festival Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Ken-David Masur, and actors Caleb Mayo, Chloe McFarlane, Maurice Emanuel Parent, Robert Walsh, and Carson Elrod, in costumes by Arthur Oliver.

“This program began by imagining how to publicly go about celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. How could this event serve such a polarized time in our history? I have always been moved by some of the traditional American tunes and hymns, but the state of our country called for something else, something I couldn’t quite identify at first,” Barclay explains. “I now realize that for some reason or other, I wanted to laugh. I wanted to release energy, not summon it. I wanted the community of joy, not the burden of politics. And it seemed that avoiding politics entirely was ignoring the elephant in the room. A symphony audience today may be one of the last public spaces of American life that is truly politically heterogeneous. Classical music plays to Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. This prompts a follow-up question: Is there a way we can laugh about ourselves without excluding people?”

Shelters in the Desert — An Evening with Vu, León, Susman, Smirnóv, Hernández
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Friday, June 26, $85, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

Water, memory, and transformation are the underlying themes of Shelters in the Desert, in which the Festival Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Ken-David Masur, plays Ania Vu’s Water Realms, Tania León’s Esencia — I. Agua de Florida for strings, Grigóry Smirnóv’s Impromptu, J. E. Hernández’s Desert Shelter, and William Susman’s Clouds and Flames, the last piece inspired by Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers; a reception follows.

Family Event: Every Storybook Counts
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Saturday, June 27, free with RSVP, 10:30 am
chelseamusicfestival.org

American composers are celebrated in this interactive family-friendly morning with Paul Collins, the creator of the Unbannable Library.

Jazz Finale: Warren Wolf plays Chick Corea
St. Paul’s German Church
315 West Twenty-Second St.
Saturday, June 27, $85, 7:00
chelseamusicfestival.org

The 2026 Chelsea Music Festival concludes with a jazz finale celebrating the life and career of multi-instrumentalist legend Chick Corea, who died in 2021 at the age of seventy-nine. Vibraphonist Warren Wolf and pianist Alex Brown, joined by the Ivalas Quartet (violinists Tiani Butts and Reuben Kebede, violist Marcus Stevenson, cellist Pedro Sanchez), will perform Brown’s The Old Line and the New York premiere of Corea’s Lyric Suite for Sextet, with a reception to follow.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DON’T LOCK HIM AWAY: STAYING IN A WORLD WITH PETER ASHER

Peter Asher signs autographs with Gordon Waller, as seen in Peter Asher: Everywhere Man

PETER ASHER: EVERYWHERE MAN (Dayna Goldfine & Dan Geller, 2025)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Thursday, June 18
quadcinema.com
thefilmcollaborative.org

Peter Asher: Everywhere Man is so utterly engaging and delightful, so happy-making and surprising, that I actually wanted to crawl inside the screen and enter Peter Asher’s extraordinary life.

In Terry Gilliam’s 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, John Neville stars as the title character, who tells a fanciful, impossible-to-believe story based on Rudolf Erich Raspe’s 1785 collection The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, consisting of heavily embellished tall tales loosely inspired by the real-life eighteenth-century German nobleman Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen, whose name was given to the mental disorder Munchausen syndrome, a subtype of factitious illness in part characterized by, according to the National Library of Medicine, “pseudologia fantastica, a pattern of fabricating detailed falsehoods regarding personal history, education, and achievements.”

In the extraordinary documentary Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, the title figure tells his fanciful, impossible-to-believe story — but in this case, it’s all remarkably true, including that his father, endocrinologist Dr. Richard Asher, is credited with introducing the term “Munchausen syndrome.”

Born in England in 1944, Asher has lived a charmed, and charming, life. He and his sisters, Jane and Clare, three redheads, were child actors affectionately known as the Carrots of Wimpole Street. At Westminster School, he met Gordon Waller, a fellow guitarist, and they formed a duo, Peter and Gordon, who joined the British Invasion and scored a series of huge hits, anchored by “A World without Love,” written for them in 1964 by Jane’s boyfriend, Paul McCartney, who was living in the Asher home at the time. Other songs followed: “I Don’t Want to See You Again,” “Woman,” “I Go to Pieces,” and “Nobody I Know,” and they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Asher’s mother, Margaret, was an oboist and professor who taught music to George Martin, the Beatles’ innovative producer.

Asher opened the highly influential Indica bookstore and gallery, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono. After serving as head of A&R for Apple Records, he became producer and then manager of a rising young folk singer named James Taylor, which led to him working with Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, and so many others (Diana Ross, Cher, Neil Diamond, Morrissey, Elton John, Rodrigo y Gabriela, 10,000 Maniacs, Robin Williams). He threw the party at which Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull fell in love, even though she was married to one of Asher’s Indica partners, John Dunbar. He put together backing bands with such musicians as King, bassist Leland Sklar, guitarists Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Gold, and drummer Russ Kunkel, and he listed them on albums, something that previously was not done on pop records. And he did all of it with little or no training, just thriving on improvisation and experience.

“I think that Peter just got better and better at what he did,” Kortchmar says in the film. “Producing is a very broad term. Sometimes it means he’s a musical prodigy, and sometimes it means he’s a social worker or a therapist. And sometimes it means he or she just enables somebody who’s musically gifted to do their thing and get out of the way. And I think he probably can wear any of those hats.”

Directors and producers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller structure the documentary around Asher’s cabaret show, A Musical Memoir of the ’60s and Beyond, which they saw in December 2019 with Ronstadt. In the multimedia performance, Asher narrates his story and sings various songs with a band, along with projections of archival photos and videos. Editor Darren Lund intercuts new interviews with Monty Python veteran and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen costar Eric Idle, Steve Martin, Lyle Lovett, McCartney (voice), Twiggy, Kortchmar, Pattie Boyd, Paul Jones (Manfred Mann), Taylor and his sister Kate, Rolling Stone journalist Ben Fong-Torres, Indica cofounders Dunbar and Barry Miles, Natalie Merchant, and Asher’s longtime personal assistant, Chris O’Dell, among others, in addition to clips from a 2006 interview of Waller. They also follow Asher around London as he gives a tour to his daughter, Victoria.

Asher is generous with his time, although every now and then he prefers not to go into deep detail. When he is asked about drugs back in the 1960s and ’70s, he admits that he partook, although Ronstadt points out, “Cocaine was a lot of fun but it ruined everything.” Meanwhile, he had the unique ability to go where the action was, or create it himself.

Peter Asher relaxes in his office surrounded by many of his successes in an extraordinary career

Throughout it all, Asher, with his shock of bright red hair and dapper style, seems to have remained a warm, gentle, and caring individual who would do whatever it takes for his clients and friends, without seeking stardom for himself, at least since Peter & Gordon broke up in 1968. However, Wachtel states, “He’s a ham like the rest of us.”

“I suppose I do have this sort of generally optimistic view of what I set my hand to seems to work out okay, and I don’t think it’s necessarily to my credit at all,” he says humbly. “I think it could all just be a series of fortunate circumstances. But I’ve never really known what I was going to be doing next.”

Asher, a three-time Grammy winner and CBE (Commander of the British Empire), has touched so many people around the world over the last seven decades, whether they realize it or not, and it’s to his credit that he doesn’t get caught up in that, although he is clearly proud of his nearly endless accomplishments, as he should be. The film, to its credit, captures that beautifully. Asher was so often in the room where it happened, and is still happening, and Goldfine and Geller bring audiences into those very rooms.

Peter Asher: Everywhere Man opens June 18 at the Quad, with Goldfine and Geller (The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song) participating in Q&As following the screenings on June 18 at 7:15 (moderated by Alan Light), June 19 at 7:00 (Dennis Elsas), June 20 at 7:00 (Joe Neumaier), and June 21 at 2:30 (Neumaier). You can find a Spotify playlist for the film here.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FOUR TEENS TAKE A CHANCE ON MUSIC AND MORE AT THE VINEYARD

Four teen girls explore their lives through music in world premiere play by Eisa Davis (photo by Carol Rosegg)

||: GIRLS :||: CHANCE :||: MUSIC :||
Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 21, $37.80-$106.92
www.vineyardtheatre.org

Eisa Davis’s ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| unfolds like an improvisatory jazz theatrical piece, transforming the concept of the creation and playing of music into subtle and not-so-subtle metaphors about growing up and making choices. It explores chaos and empathy, education and impermanence, and building — or not building — family and community, with time jumps and forays into alternate realities.

If you’re one of the first twelve people entering the Vineyard Theatre, you’ll be offered the opportunity of selecting a note on a keyboard chart that will, when done, form a unique tone row for that night’s performance, serving as the underlying musical theme. The cast will develop it at the start of the play, asking the audience to participate, and the tune will make appearances later on as well.

The show follows four teenagers of color as they prepare for their final project at a girls summer music program in Berkeley. Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) is a straightforward flutist who mostly stays in the background; Fax (Hillary Fisher) is a vocalist who always prefers to have a plan; Margot (Naomi Latta) is a wildly unpredictable drummer; and Rile (Yeena Sung) is a pianist who enjoys experimenting.

Early on, Rile is playing the end of “Una Voce Poco Fa” from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville when she makes a mistake and improvises around it, completely throwing Fax off. “I mean it’s about being intentional with your juxtaposition,” Fax says, clearly unhappy. Rile responds, “Putting things together that don’t seem like they’ll fit.” Soon after, Fax declares, “Don’t do random shit onstage that’s different from what we practiced.”

Over the course of 105 minutes, the four characters face such issues as race, class, gender, and sexuality as they try to find their place not only in music but in the world itself, one filled with trouble and danger. “I love getting up in the morning to come here — when the world feels like one disaster after another,” Fax says.

Margot later explains, “Quake wasn’t random and it wasn’t planned / just cause and effect from billions of years ago to now / we’re given an effect and we get to make a new cause with it / which makes a new effect and / it’s a chain / a network of exchange.”

Margot (Naomi Latta) and Fax (Hillary Fisher) form a unique bond in ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Nina Ball’s set consists of four small platformed music sections, one for each character, surrounded by angled columns that harken back to Greek tragedy; it evokes how the girls are four distinct individuals who can benefit from working together as a kind of band instead of on their own, like in life. Loneliness is a leitmotif. When Margot and Fax art talking about being artists — and human beings — Margot advises, “We’re supposed to do things we’re not supposed to do . . . you have to go out on a limb to do anything crucial,” but Fax replies, “But then you’re like lonely.” Fax has a home to go back to, one that seems to be growing by the day, while Margot is much more on her own.

Mel Ng’s costumes change often, with cool little touches that at first define the characters by specific color schemes. Russell H. Champa’s lighting gives each of the girls their personal moment to take center stage. It’s a strong, talented ensemble, like a tight-knit jazz quartet, although the narrative does occasionally meander off track, becoming too abstract, but it always finds its way back to the melody. Fisher (The Notebook, Between the Lines) and Latta, in her impressive off-Broadway debut, play off each other with a gorgeous rhythm, with Sung (Mary V, Comfort Women: A New Musical) riling things up just enough as Rile, and Rivera, in her off-Broadway debut, providing the right elements as the ending approaches.

Produced by the Vineyard in conjunction with American Conservatory Theater, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is conducted — er, directed — with an understanding, guiding hand by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), who turns Davis’s (Bulrusher, The Essentialist) complex script into a mini-symphony.

It is both a perplexing and rewarding play, weaving in and out of time and reality, expectations and desires, as four teenagers contemplate — or don’t — what’s waiting for them around the corner, and what their role in taking those next steps might be.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LIFTING US UP: RACHAEL SAGE AND CASSANDRA KUBINSKI AT DROM

RACHAEL SAGE AND CASSANDRA KUBINSKI
DROM
85 Ave. A between Fifth & Sixth Sts.
Saturday, June 20, $23.49 (plus $20 table minimum per person), VIP $46.97, 7:00
dromnyc.com
rachaelsage.com
cassandrakubinski.com

“Every time that you touch my hand I feel love / Every time you look in my eyes I feel love / Every time that you touch my cheek I feel love / Every time you give me a squeeze I feel love,” Rachael Sage sings on “Just Enough,” the lead track on her beautiful 2025 album, Canopy. It’s hard not to feel love when listening to the Port Chester native’s music, either across more than twenty LPs and EPs or live with her band, the Sequins.

“I wished and I waited / So quiet, so patient / I thought I would never hear it come / But here it comes now / I want it to thrill me / Cut through me, come fill me up / I’m ready, so let me / Sing it out, sing it out,” Cassandra Kubinski sings out on “This Is the Sound,” the lead track on her alluring 2023 EP, The Saratoga Sessions: Songs + Stories. It’s hard not to feel the thrill when listening to the Connecticut-born, NYC-based artist’s music, either across more than a half dozen LPs and EPs, as bandleader on The Never Settle Show, or as a featured songwriter on Dance Moms (as is Sage).

On June 20, the two singer-songwriters will team up for a special concert at DROM, playing separately and together. Joined by the Sequins, Sage will highlight tunes from her upcoming record, Under My Canopy, an acoustic reimagining of Canopy. Kubinski will focus on tunes from her upcoming record, Dance Moms Acoustic & Lyrical Solos, which includes such tracks as “Timeless,” “Save You Tonight,” and “There Is Only Love.”

“I am bursting with excitement to finally share the stage with Cassandra after so many years of knowing one another and having both had our music so heavily featured on the TV show Dance Moms,” says Sage, the founder, president, and art director of MPress Records and winner of three Great American Song Contests, the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, the Billboard Songwriting Contest, four OUTmusic Awards, and five Independent Music Awards. “What makes this upcoming show so special isn’t only that we’re both unveiling new material and unique acoustic arrangements — along with a video premiere — but that we are and have long been two fiercely independent, strong female artists who’ve advocated for and enjoyed intense community with the NYC music scene for decades. That shared sensibility of wanting to show up for and lift up other women while pursuing our creative bliss has always been something that’s bound us within the New York scene . . . and now we’ll finally get a chance to sing together — and about what it means to be resilient and inspired by one another’s journeys. Plus, I just adore her songwriting and vocal abilities, so there’s a ton of respect and admiration right now, which will make this night especially fun.”

Kubinski agrees wholeheartedly.

“I’m so excited to premiere songs from my forthcoming album. I’m also looking forward to sharing the stage with Rachael Sage for the first time,” adds Kubinski, who is also a voice actress, the former global co-chair of membership for the international nonprofit Women in Music, and winner of a Women in Sync Award. “It’s a unique connection, as our music has been central to the world of dance competitions. It’s gratifying when these different creative threads combine to form something memorably distinctive. I so respect Rachael’s songwriting and work ethic. Playing in NYC, the heartland of the arts, is a very special honor, and it’s a city I’ve loved performing in over the years.”

Tickets for the DROM show are $23.49 with a $20 table minimum per person; the VIP package is $46.97 and comes with priority seating, a signed, personalized commemorative poster, and autographed CDs from both Sage and Kubinski.

On “Nexus (Acoustic),” the first single from Under My Canopy — originally written about nonbinary high school student Nex Benedict, who died by suicide after being bullied and whose death became a national incident — Sage sings, “We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of doing nothing / We can lift each other up with our resolve instead of giving up.”

There should be a lot of lifting up at DROM on June 20 when these two extraordinary women take the stage.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HOW DO YOU KEEP GOING? THE GAS STATION ATTENDANT AT DCTV FIREHOUSE CINEMA

The Gas Station Attendant tells the intimate story of a father and a daughter through hard times

THE GAS STATION ATTENDANT (Karla Murthy, 2025)
DCTV Firehouse Cinema
87 Lafayette St.
June 12-18
www.thegasstationattendant.com
www.dctvny.org

“The stories behind our smiling family are complicated and sometimes painful to tell,” Karla Murthy says in her new documentary, The Gas Station Attendant. “But isn’t everyone’s? It reminds me of the saying my cousin recently told me, while we were cooking, about all families having problems: ‘Everybody’s dosas have holes in them.’”

The Gas Station Attendant is a poignant, intimate tale of a family whose dosas have more than their share of holes. It’s about the immigrant experience and the search for the American dream, told by the daughter of a gentle man, H. N. Shantha Murthy, who spends his entire life trying to make things better for everyone around him despite meeting obstacles nearly every step of the way.

Murthy started recording her family on video when she was a little girl; later, as an adult, she began taping phone conversations with her father when he was forced to take a late-night job as a gas station attendant to pay the bills. During those talks, he shares details of the complicated, painful life he led, anchored by his deep love for his family.

He ran away from his home in India when he was ten, escaping horrific poverty, only to soon consider suicide. “I can still see myself as a boy,” he tells Karla. “I’m hiding here and there, not having food to eat for weeks. I used to sleep on the street, looking at the stars and moon, and always prayed: Someday, somehow, my life will change.” His life did change when, as a teen working at a hotel, he served a white couple from Texas who decided to sponsor him in America, paying for his education, and he became an engineer.

Following a mass layoff at Boeing, he struggled to earn a living, taking on a series of odd jobs, not wanting his family to experience any hardship. His first wife died too young, and he got remarried to a caring woman; both were Filipino, and he had two kids with each. Through it all, he grits his teeth and smiles, making friends wherever he goes — he and his second wife sold small gift items at trade shows around the country, something Karla sees for herself when she accompanies her father on one of those trips and he falls ill.

“Dad, how did you get up and keep going?” she thinks to herself.

The Emmy-nominated Murthy (The Place That Makes Us, Love, Jamie) wrote, directed, edited, and produced the eighty-three-minute film, incorporating archival footage, family photos and home movies, and numerous shots of empty gas stations, concerned for her father’s safety in what is a very dangerous job.

“And so here I am, reliving the past while trying to live in the present, wondering what it means to be a good father, a good daughter, a good mother,” Karla says.

Named Best Documentary Feature at the Nashville and San Diego Asian Film Festivals, The Gas Station Attendant will run June 12–18 at DCTV Firehouse Cinema, with Murthy participating in four postscreening Q&As: June 12 at 7:00 with writer Mira Jacob, June 13 at 6:00 with composer and podcaster Jad Abumrad, June 14 at 5:00 with New York Taxi Workers Alliance founder Bhairavi Desai, moderated by executive producer and Basement Bhangra founder DJ Rekha (who makes a cameo in the film), and June 18 at 6:30 with Economic Hardship Reporting Project executive director Alissa Quart.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!! THE ART OF SOCCER AT METROGRAPH

THE ART OF SOCCER
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
June 12 – July 5
metrograph.com

It may take a few days for World Cup fever to take over New York City, which is currently owned by the Knicks, but the international game of soccer is being celebrated just about everywhere you look. At Metrograph, “The Art of Soccer” consists of a half dozen fútbol classics, beginning June 12 with Wim Wenders’s 1972 The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick and continuing with a new restoration of José Antonio Garcia and Ícaro Martins’s once-banned 1983 Onda Nova, Jafar Panahi’s 2006 Offside, Alexandre Koberidze’s 2021 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, Abbas Kiarostami’s 1974 The Traveler, and Daniel Schmidt and Gabriel Abrantes’s 2018 Diamantino.

Diamantino

Giant fluffy puppies get in the way of a Portuguese soccer star’s dreams in Diamantino

DIAMANTINO (Daniel Schmidt & Gabriel Abrantes, 2018)
Metrograph
Dates to come
metrograph.com/art-of-soccer
www.kinolorber.com

At the fifty-sixth annual New York Film Festival in 2018, you could catch a documentary, foreign-language picture, political thriller, high-tech crime chiller, comedy, romantic melodrama, fantasy and sci-fi, and more — all in one wildly entertaining film. Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s full-length feature debut, is an absurdist multigenre mashup that is as tense as it is funny, an unpredictable romp that evokes Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Michel Gondry, Philip K. Dick, South Park, Cinderella, James Bond, Being There, Minority Report, and Au Hasard Balthazar while feeling wholly original. Carloto Cotta stars as the title character, Diamantino Matamouros, a Portuguese soccer star à la Cristiano Ronaldo (pre-sexual assault allegations) who sees giant fluffy puppies when he is on the field. After botching a penalty kick in the World Cup Final, the stupendously beautiful star learns that his beloved father and mentor (Chico Chapas) has died. His evil twin sisters, Sónia (Anabela Moreira) and Natasha (Margarida Moreira), become his agents and make a secret deal with the mysterious Dr. Lamborghini (Carla Maciel) and a government minister (Silva Joana). Meanwhile, investigators Aisha Brito (Cleo Tavares) and Lucia (Vargas Maria Leite) — lovers who are soon to be married — are looking into Diamantino’s finances and devise a plan to get close to him by having Aisha pose as a male refugee named Rahim who Diamantino adopts as his son.

Diamantino

Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta) is surrounded by images of himself in Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s dazzling feature debut

Everyone except his sisters, who know better, thinks he is some kind of genius mastermind, but Diamantino is actually an addled simpleton who understands very little about life. He enjoyed playing soccer, likes eating Nutella and whipped cream sandwiches, and, following his tearful retirement, hangs out with his cat, Mittens, and dedicates himself to raising Rahim, who he does not realize is actually a grown woman. He’s reminiscent of Chance the Gardener (Peter Sellers) in Being There, but his airheaded statements — which are outrageously funny — are seldom mistaken for brilliance, except when he’s manipulated into making fascistic political statements he doesn’t understand. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week, Diamantino is stunningly photographed by Charles Ackley Anderson, who quickly adapts the film’s visual style as it switches from fantasy to love story to futuristic thriller, with numerous memorable shots, including Lucia in a white nun’s habit on a motorbike, Diamantino and Rahim sleeping on pillows with large images of the soccer star’s head, and a huge fluffy puppy playing goal in the championship game. American-born directors and longtime collaborators Abrantes and Schmidt, who edited the film with Raphaëlle Martin-Holger, show a deep love and respect for movies, infusing Diamantino with charm and energy, humor and compassion, honoring, in their own way, the history of cinema. The rest of the cast and crew do their part as well, from art director Bruno Duarte and composers Ulysse Klotz and Adriana Holtz to the Moreira sisters and multidisciplinary Portuguese star Manuela Moura Guedes as television interviewer Gisele.

A group of women risk their freedom to watch a soccer match in Jafar Panahi’s Offside

OFFSIDE (Jafar Panahi, 2006)
Metrograph
Dates to come
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www.sonyclassics.com

Filmed on location in and around Tehran’s Azadi Stadium and featuring a talented cast of nonprofessional actors, Jafar Panahi’s Offside is a brilliant look at gender disparity in modern-day Iran. Although it was illegal at the time for girls to go to soccer games in Iran — because, among other reasons, the government did not think it was appropriate for females to be in the company of screaming men who might be cursing and saying other nasty things (the regulations have been somewhat loosened recently) — many try to get in, facing arrest if they get caught. Offside is set during an actual match between Iran and Bahrain; a win will put Iran in the 2006 World Cup. High up in the stadium, a small group of girls, dressed in various types of disguises, have been captured and are cordoned off, guarded closely by some soldiers who would rather be watching the match themselves or back home tending to their sheep. The girls, who can hear the crowd noise, beg for one of the men to narrate the game for them.

Meanwhile, an old man is desperately trying to find his daughter to save her from some very real punishment that her brothers would dish out to her for shaming them by trying to get into the stadium. Despite its timely and poignant subject matter, Offside is a very funny film, with fine performances by Sima Mobarak Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ida Sadeghi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi, and Nazanin Sedighzadeh as the girls and M. Kheymeh Kabood as one of the soldiers. The film was selected for the 2006 New York Film Festival, but Panahi, who was supposed to attend the opening, experienced visa problems when trying to come to America and was later arrested by the Iranian government for his support of the opposition Green movement; he was sentenced to six years in prison and given a twenty-year ban on making new films, something he comments on ingeniously in This Is Not a Film.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]