twi-ny recommended events

MUSIC AT CASTLE CLINTON: PATTI SMITH

Patti Smith will be joined by her band for free July 14 show at Castle Clinton (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

RIVER TO RIVER FESTIVAL
Castle Clinton, Battery Park
Thursday, July 14, free, 7:00
212-835-2789
www.rivertorivernyc.com
www.pattismith.net

It’s been quite a year for Patti Smith. The New York City-based writer, poet, musician, and always captivating ethereal presence won the National Book Award for her moving, revealing memoir, Just Kids, which focused on her relationship with visual artist Robert Mapplethorpe, and in May she won Sweden’s prestigious Polar Music Prize. “By devoting her life to art in all its forms, Patti Smith has demonstrated how much rock ‘n’ roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock ‘n’ roll,” the award committee said in a statement. Over the last year, she’s given a series of intimate performances, including celebrating the fortieth anniversary of her seminal 1971 show at the Poetry Project by returning to the venue with Lenny Kaye and presenting a special program at the Morgan Library in conjunction with the exhibition “William Blake’s World: A New Heaven Is Begun.” She even recently guest-starred on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. But she’ll be returning to her rock-and-roll roots on July 14 as she plays a free show with her band at Castle Clinton in Battery Park; tickets will be given out starting at 5:00 for the 7:00 concert, but you’re going to have to get there early if you want to grab one of the limited, coveted seats. Smith will also be participating in the Escape to New York three-day festival in Southampton on August 5 ($100, with Best Coast, Chairlift, Lissy Trulie, the Postelles, and the Static Jacks), and there are still some tickets left ($40) for “Patti Smith: Artist and Muse,” her December 2 tribute to Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she’ll be performing with her daughter, pianist Jesse Smith. But there’s nothing quite like seeing her with her full band, rocking out to such classic songs as “Gloria,” “Because the Night,” “Frederick,” “Dancing Barefoot,” “Wicked Messenger,” “Waiting Underground,” “Peaceable Kingdom,” and “People Have the Power.”

WHITE HILLS RECORD RELEASE PARTY

Dave W. and White Hills will celebrate release of their latest album at Union Pool on July 14 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Union Pool
484 Union Ave. at Meeker
Thursday, July 14, $8, 9:00
www.myspace.com/whitehills
www.unionpool.blogspot.com

White Hills are hopping mad. Frustrated by corporate control over government, the New York City-based space-rock trio blast away against the status quo on their latest record, the explosive H-p1 (Thrill Jockey, June 2011). Guitarist Dave W., bassist Ego Sensation, and drummer Lee Hinshaw let loose all over the disc, recorded in a two-day flurry in Williamsburg, joined by such special guests as Shazzula Nebula on synthesizers (seven tracks), Antronhy on drums and electronics (two), and Kid Millions on drums (two). Powering through a sea of psychedelic madness using a distortion box instead of a compressor and influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, While Hills surges through the subtly screeching twelve-minute “Paradise,” the hard-driving neo-classic rock of “Upon Arrival,” the ten-minute space-age “No Other Way.” Hard-to-decipher lyrics show up in three of the songs, floating in the background like another instrument. The album is bookended by the propulsive “The Condition of Nothing” and the massive title track, a seventeen-minute opus of rage and fury. “We can barely pay our rent each month but we are willing to pull out our credit cards and go into debt each time a new iPhone promises a better connection. The joke is on us,” explains Ego. “H-p1 is symbolic of the simplification of complex ideas to keep the masses from questioning the system.” A dark, exciting live band that often features Ego and Dave W. in wild costumes and face makeup, White Hills will be celebrating the release of H-p1 on July 14 at Union Pool with Man Forever (with Kid Millions) and Weird Owl. Prepare to be taken away into another galaxy.

MANHATTANHENGE 2011: PART 2

Manhattanhenge is back for a return engagement July 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SUNSET ON THE MANHATTAN GRID
East side of Manhattan
Wednesday, July 13, 8:00 – 8:25 pm
Admission: free
www.haydenplanetarium.org
manhattanhenge may 30 slideshow

On May 30, New Yorkers got a gorgeous example of Manhattanhenge, and it’s back for a return engagement on July 13. Between approximately 8:00 and 8:30, the sun will align with Manhattan’s off-center (by thirty degrees) grid to send spectacular bursts of sunlight streaming across the streets. Coined by master astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2002, Manhattanhenge takes place twice a year; for 2011, those dates are May 30 and July 13, when the sun will create “a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid,” Tyson explains on the planetarium website. “A rare and beautiful sight. These two days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball’s All Star break. Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball.” Photographers will once again line up along the city’s wider thoroughfares on the east side, including Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and Fifty-seventh Sts., risking their physical safety against oncoming traffic as the try to capture that exact moment when the sun is half above the horizon, half below it. Wrongly called the Manhattan Solstice, the event “may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe,” Tyson explains. We experienced the May 30 edition, and it was well worth rearranging our schedule for. You should do it to with this second chance.

SEASIDE SUMMER CONCERT SERIES: JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts will strut her impressive stuff at free Seaside Summer Concert Series in Coney Island on Thursday night

West 21st St. & Surf Ave.
Thursday, July 14, free, 7:30
Series continues Thursday nights through August 18
718-222-0600
www.brooklynconcerts.com
www.joanjett.com

Since she was a teenager in Maryland, Joan Jett has been showing how much she loves rock and roll, turning her Suzi Quatro obsession into a nearly forty-year career that has featured some of pop and punk’s most endearing classics. First with the Runaways and then with the Blackhearts, Jett has powered her way through a memorable collection of originals and covers, from “Cherry Bomb” and “Bad Reputation” to “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)” and “Crimson and Clover,” from “Fake Friends” and “Everyday People” to “Little Liar” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” from “Light of Day” and “Love Is Pain” to “Bits and Pieces” and “Change the World.” Live she’s a bundle of furious energy, sweating it up in a bikini top that reveals her taut figure. Although she’s released only one studio album since 1995, the 2006 record Sinner, which included such tracks as “Naked” and “Androgynous” (and several collaborations with riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna), she never feels like a mere retro act, giving it all she’s got night after night. One of the legendary women of rock, Jett will be kicking off Marty Markowitz’s free Seaside Summer Concert Series this Thursday night with Girl in a Coma at 7:30 at West 21st St. & Surf Ave., next to the Brooklyn Cyclones’ MCU Park in Coney Island. The series, which has moved from its previous location in Brighton Beach’s Asser Levy Park because of problems with the local community, continues through August 18 with such groups as the Monkees, the Spinners, and Cheap Trick.

NYAFF 2011: THE CHASER

The chase is on in South Korean thriller loosely based on the exploits of a real-life serial killer

THE CHASER (CHUGYEOGJA) (Na Hong-jin, 2008)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Thursday, July 14, $13, 3:15
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinemanews.com

A huge hit in South Korea, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser is a tense, gripping thriller that is both extremely violent and deeply emotional. Kim Yun-suk stars as Jung-ho, a disgraced former cop now working as a pimp. Angry that several of his high-class prostitutes have left him, he demands that Kim Min-ji (Seo Young-hee) take on a client even though she is feeling ill. Soon after, he uncovers evidence that leads him to believe that the client he just sent Min-ji to is selling off his girls, so he sets out to find her, but he winds up caught in the middle of what could be a gruesome serial-killer case as he is continually thwarted by the mysterious john and would-be killer, Young-min (Ha Jung-woo). With Min-ji missing, Jung-ho tries to use his policing skills — he gets little help from the local cops, a group of lazy bunglers more interested in protecting the mayor of Seoul from another feces attack — to track her down while also suddenly feeling responsible for the young daughter (Kim Yoo-jeong) he didn’t know she had. Loosely based on the exploits of real-life serial killer Yoo Young-cheol, The Chaser, which is being remade in English by Warner Bros., does a good job of getting inside the head of a troubled man whose world is unraveling before his eyes and might not be able to stop it. The film is screening July 14 at 3:15 as part of the Sea of Revenge Focus at the New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center, with director Na in attendance.

DAVID LaCHAPELLE AND JOHN BYRNE — DARKNESS TO LIGHT: FACILITY OF MOVEMENT

John Byrne’s “Facility of Movement” takes place Wednesday afternoons at 1:00 in conjunction with David LaChapelle’s installation in Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

David LaChapelle: “From Darkness to Light”
Lever House Art Collection, 390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Exhibition continues through September 2, with free performances Wednesdays at 1:00 through July 13
John Byrne: Transcending Form
Theatre 80, 80 St. Marks Pl. at First Ave.
Wednesdays through August 24, $15, 8:00
212-388-0388
www.theatre80.net
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
facility of movement slideshow

Introduced by nightclub fixture Amanda Lepore, photographer and director David LaChapelle and dancer-choreographer John Byrne dated for three years in the mid-2000s and, remaining close friends, are now collaborating in a different way. LaChapelle recently installed “From Darkness to Light” in the glassed-in Lever House lobby gallery, a combination of photographs and collage that references life and death, from Théodore Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa” to the creation of humankind. The display features “Chain of Life,” a series of hundreds of connected photographs of nude men and women, dangling from the ceiling and nearly reaching the floor; “Adam Swimming Under a Microscope” and “Eve Swimming Under a Microscope,” intensely colorful circular configurations of waterborne nudes placed directly on the walls as if stained-glass rose windows in a house of worship; and “Raft of Illusion,” which re-imagines “Raft of the Medusa” as a swarm of swirling naked bodies battling the elements. Every Wednesday afternoon at 1:00 through July 13, Byrne, who has performed with such companies as Paul Taylor, Corbin Dance, and Erick Hawkins, is presenting “Darkness to Light: Facility of Movement,” an evolving site-specific piece in which Debra Zalkind, Ryan Braun, Christine Gerena, Vincent Marra, Farrah Olieri, Lior Shneior, Rob Laqui, and Kimberly Mhoon interact with LaChapelle’s installation, making their way through the Lever House lobby as well as the outside courtyard. Dressed like workers from all walks of life on their lunch hour, wearing suits or uniforms that instantly identify them, the dancers weave in around themselves, the works, and random New Yorkers on their own lunch breaks sitting outside, all set to live classical music (including the Jewish prayer “Kol Nidre”) on cello and violin. Admission is free to this wonderful reason to get away from the office for a little while.

John Byrne’s TRANSCENDING FORM takes place Wednesday nights at 8:00 at Theatre 80 in conjunction with David LaChapelle’s installation in Lever House (photo by David LaChapelle)

Byrne and LaChapelle are also collaborating on Transcending Form, Byrne’s first evening-length dance piece. Held Wednesday night through August 24 at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Pl., where LaChapelle had his first studio back in the 1980s, the seventy-minute work features the “Facility of Movement” performers along with Byrne, singer Gina Figueroa, guitarist Juancho Herrera, and the James Solomon Benn Choir. The disjointed, overly feel-good work, which is ostensibly about the creation of life and exploration of love, consists of such sections as “On Endeavor,” “Factory,” “Dysfunction,” “Before, Love,” “Ascend,” and “Compassion,” with music ranging from printer sound effects and Shirley Brown to Schubert and Elvis Presley. LaChapelle contributes art to the piece, photographic fabric images of each of the characters displayed on a clothing line at the back of the ramshackle set. The community-theater-like production, which focuses on Marra as Bambini and Olieri as the Holy Spirit, has a suggested admission of $15 but you can pay what you wish, will all proceeds going to Education in Dance and the Related Arts, which brings the arts to students in more than sixty metropolitan-area public and private high schools.

TWI-NY TALK: THE LONDON CANDY COMPANY — JIGS PATEL & KHALIDRA LEVISTER

London Candy Co. owner Jig Patel (right) is happy to unveil Knock-Off pastries (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The London Candy Company
1442 Lexington Ave. at 94th St.
212-427-2129
www.thelondoncandycompany.com

Whenever we go to London, we make sure to bring back a large bag of British chocolate; our favorites include Galaxy Minstrels and Flake, Aero, Crunchie, and Lion bars. But we no longer have to travel across the pond to fill our coffers; in April, Jignesh Patel opened the London Candy Co. on the Upper East Side, at the corner of Lexington Ave. and 94th St., offering a multitude of queen-approved delicacies. Last month the flagship store added Knock-Offs to their repertoire, original, individual-sized chocolate-covered cakes inspired by Coconut Bounty, Double Decker, Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Cadbury’s Turkish Delight, Topic, After Eight Thin Mints, Milky Bar, Smarties, Mars Duo, and Blackcurrant and Strawberry Fruit Pastilles. For pastry chef Khalidra Levister, the challenge in making the Knock-Offs was to re-create the taste of the classic English sweets without using the exact same ingredients, which would have been a copyright infringement; she particularly nailed the Topic and Double Decker cakes. Second-generation sweets-shop owner Patel and Levister, the chef of confections at Flavorprint and executive vice president of 4food, recently discussed Knock-Offs and more with twi-ny.

twi-ny: Where did the idea for Knock-Offs originate?

Jigs Patel: My parents also owned a sweets shop, so there was always candy around. It simply couldn’t be helped. My mother, desperate to keep me from eating all of it, decided to go ahead and start baking the chocolates into desserts. After all, I could sneak a cake into my bag less easily than a Bounty bar. When I opened the London Candy Company, I wanted to do something similar. We toyed with the idea of cupcakes, but it wasn’t quite right. When Khahlidra Levister, our pastry chef, came in with her ideas, I was blown away. The Knock-Offs are a brilliant way to honor my mother’s original work, to showcase the candy, and to please and surprise customers.

Khahlidra Levister: When I first visited the London Candy Company, my first thought was the layout and aesthetic is very sophisticated. When I heard they were thinking of offering cupcakes, I began thinking of a way to take the cupcake to the next level. Jigs and I spoke over the phone about his love of cakes and his childhood experiences and set up a meeting. At the meeting, I presented him with a cake I created based on the flavors of Terry’s Chocolate Orange. The name “Knock-Offs” came naturally during early development, as I was “knocking off” the candy-bar flavors.

twi-ny: What was the most difficult part of making them?

KL: The most difficult part of making a Knock-Off is translating candy bars to cake while maintaining the integrity of the original product. To do so, I make all the fillings from scratch—nougat, caramel, Turkish delight.

twi-ny: Which are your personal favorites?

JP: My absolute favorite cake is the Bounty-inspired one. I’m such a huge coconut fan and Khahlidra got this one just right. The cake is fantastic, the coconut is delicious, and the chocolate brings it all together. I can hardly believe that I’m not eating the real thing.

KL: My personal favorite is the After Eight Knock-Off, but I’ve always been a sucker for mint and dark chocolate.

Knock-Offs re-create the flavor of classic English sweet treats at London Candy Co. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: Did you try any others that didn’t work out?

JP: We tried to re-create the Mars bar—chocolate and caramel—but it just wasn’t working for me. It didn’t have that extra something that we’re looking to bring to our customers.

KL: I haven’t figured out quite how to represent the Flake bar, or the Aero.

twi-ny: What makes British chocolate so much better than American chocolate?

JP: The Brits use real sugar in their chocolate—never corn syrup. Also, many American manufacturers use wax to stabilize their chocolate so it doesn’t melt; British manufacturers don’t. A fun fact: In England, chocolate must contain at least 20% cocoa solids, whereas in the U.S., cocoa solids need only make up 10%. A Cadbury Dairy Milk bar contains 23% cocoa solids, while its American counterpart contains just 11%.

twi-ny: How has the public reacted to the store in general and the Knock-Offs in particular?

JP: People come into the store very excited to try anything and everything from our selection. For a lot of people, the sweets bring out a sense of nostalgia for travel or treats from their childhood. Others are just excited to try something new. There’s been quite a bit of interest in the Knock-Offs. Since the cakes are single serving, they’re not much of a calorie or money investment and people are willing to take a chance. The bestsellers so far have been the After Eight, which is a chocolate cake layered with mint fondant, and the Turkish Delight.