twi-ny recommended events

GARY SHTEYNGART: SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY PAPERBACK RELEASE PARTY

BookCourt
163 Court St. between Dean & Pacific Sts.
Tuesday, May 3, free, 7:00
718-875-3677
www.bookcourt.org
www.supersadtruelovestory.com

Gary Shteyngart’s third novel, following 2003’s hugely successful The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and 2006’s Absurdistan, paints a wildly inventive and entertaining dystopian picture of New York City in the just-barely-distant future. In the New York Times Notable Book Super Sad True Love Story, now available in paperback (Random House, May 3, $15), the American government, the so-called “Restoration authority,” is falling to the Central Chinese Bank and Norwegian oil overlords while the Harm Reduction program rids Manhattan of the last remaining poor and unattractive. AssLuxury has replaced Amazon for constant consumption. All the while, hapless Russian Jewish immigrant schlemiel Lenny pursues the beautiful young Eunice to the home of her Korean immigrant parents and back. It all goes down against a backdrop of always-on äppärät (thinly disguised iPhones and such), 24/7 personal broadcasting, and corporations like the one run by Lenny’s childhood friend and boss, who sells immortality. Everything is just slightly ahead of where it is now, except the human emotions driving the super sad love story of the title. The New York City-based, Leningrad-born Shteyngart will be at BookCourt in Brooklyn on May 3 for the paperback release party of this hilarious tome about a ludicrous world that is uncomfortably close to our own.

NYFOS NEXT: PHIL KLINE & FRIENDS

Phil Kline will lead a special Movado Hour NYFOS Next program at BAC on May 3



THE MOVADO HOUR
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday, May 3, 7:00
Admission: free with advance RSVP
212-868-4444
www.bacnyc.org

Downtown avant-garde composer Phil Kline, the man behind the annual Christmas procession “Unsilent Night,” has headed such collaborative projects as “Zippo Songs” and “John the Revelator” and has written experimental music for dance and theater. On May 3, he’ll be at the Baryshnikov Arts Center for a free New York Festival of Song NYFOS Next chamber music presentation he has put together with Steven Blier, Michael Barrett, and Benjamin Sosland. Part of BAC’s Movado Hour series, the evening will consist of David Lang’s “I Had No Reason,” “I Want to Live,” and “I Found My Enemy’s Ox,” Meredith Monk’s “Prayer II,” Corey Dargel’s “Toes,” “Hooked for Life,” and “Sincerely Yours,” and Elliott Sharp’s “No Time Like the Stranger.” Kline will also perform his own compositions “Somewhere Around Barstow,” “A Strange World,” “Football Season Is Over,” and “To Make a Prairie,” the first three of which feature text by Hunter S. Thompson, the fourth by Emily Dickinson. The cast includes sopranos Katherine Dain and Lauren Worsham, bass Matt Boehler, and vocalists Dargel and Carla Jablonski, with Ashley Bathgate on cello, Todd Reynolds on violin, and Kathleen Supové and Michael Barrett on piano.

AN AUTEURIST HISTORY OF FILM: CITIZEN KANE

Orson Welles masterpiece is screening at MoMA this week as part of month-long look at 1941

CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, 1941
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
May 4-6, 1:30
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www2.warnerbros.com/citizenkane

Citizen Kane is the best-made film we have ever had the pleasure to watch — again and again and again — and it is even more brilliant on the big screen. A young, brash, determined Orson Welles created a masterpiece unlike anything seen before or since — a beautifully woven complex narrative with a stunning visual style (compliments of director of photography Gregg Toland) and a fabulous cast of veterans from his Mercury radio days, including Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Paul Stewart, and Agnes Moorehead. Each moment in the film is unforgettable, not a word or shot out of place as Welles details the rise and fall of a self-obsessed media mogul. The film is prophetic in many ways; at one point Kane utters, “The news goes on for twenty-four hours a day,” foreseeing today’s 24/7 news overload. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen it and you know what Rosebud refers to; the film is about a whole lot more than just that minor mystery. Like every film Welles made, Citizen Kane was fraught with controversy, not the least of which was a very unhappy William Randolph Hearst seeking to destroy the negative of a film he thought ridiculed him. Kane won only one Oscar, for writing — which also resulted in controversy when Herman J. Mankiewicz claimed that he was the primary scribe, not Welles. The film lost the Oscar for Best Picture to John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, but it has topped nearly every greatest-films-of-all-time list ever since. Citizen Kane will be screening May 4-6 at 1:30 as part of MoMA’s ongoing series “An Auteurist History of Film,” focusing on the director as creator and which this month looks back at that banner year of 1941 with How Green Was My Valley (May 11-13, 1:30), John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (May 18-20, 1:30), and Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve (May 25-27, 1:30).

TONY CONRAD: AT THE EDGES OF ART

Multimedia performance artist Tony Conrad will present a free illustrated lecture about his fascinating career on May 3 at the SVA Theatre

SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday, May 3, free, 7:00
212-592-298
www.schoolofvisualarts.edu
www.tonyconrad.net

For nearly fifty years, experimental sound and visual performance artist Tony Conrad has been making minimalist drone music and short films that reexamine and reinvent form, content, and structure. He has collaborated with such musicians and filmmakers as John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Tony Oursler, and Jack Smith, and he is also a faculty member of the Department of Media Study at the University of Buffalo. “My personal work feels like an oil slick on this flowing current, spreading in two or three directions at once,” he notes on his UB faculty page. On May 3, Conrad will present a free multimedia lecture at the School of Visual Arts Theatre on West 23rd St., discussing his long and varied career in a multitude of disciplines. He will also premiere newly edited versions of experimental videos he made back in the 1970s and 1980s. This is a fabulous opportunity to get inside the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most intriguing and influential underground artists.

NORTHSIDE MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL 2011

Northside Festival
Multiple venues in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
June 16-19
www.thelmagazine.com/blogs/NorthsideFestivalNews

After a terrific opening year in 2010, the Northside Festival is back June 16-19 with an even more impressive lineup of bands, including Guided by Voices, Beirut, Wavves, Surfer Blood, Sharon van Etten, Theophilus London, DOM, Takka Takka, Grooms, the Black Hollies, Pillow Theory, and dozens more, with tickets on sale now for some of the more higher profile shows (as well as festival badges [$60-$200] that will get you in to just about everything). But another component of the festival involves art and film. In fact, today (May 1) is the deadline to enter ($10 fee) the Northside DIY Film Festival, comprising shorts and feature-length works that will be screening at UnionDocs in Williamsburg and will be judged by such panelists as Rosie Perez, Ted Hope, and Todd P; features must be between 50 and 130 minutes and have a budget of $100,000 or less, while shorts must be less than 30 minutes and cost $20,000 or less, with all films having been made after January 1, 2008. The grand prize is $250, a Rooftop Films screening, and a camera rental package. In addition, Williamsburg and Greenpoint artists can register ($20 fee) through May 15 to be part of Northside Open Studios. Don’t hesitate to become part of one of Brooklyn’s most highly anticipated and growing new festivals.

WORLD NOMADS MOROCCO

Najia Mehadji’s “Mystic Dance,” from the series Volutes, will be part of multidisciplinary site-specific Moroccan exhibit at FIAF Gallery

French Institute Alliance Française (and other venues)
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St.
Le Skyroom, 22 East 60th St.
Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th St.
April 30 – May 31, free – $40
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

in its annual World Nomads celebration of global culture, the French Institute Alliance Française journeyed to Africa in 2008, Haiti in 2009, and Lebanon last year; this year’s destination is Morocco, where the festivities began April 30 with a sold-out concert featuring the Orchestra of Fes with Françoise Atlan. Special events continue throughout May, with a pair of free literature talks Sunday with Abdellah Taïa (1:00) and Mahi Binebine (5:00) at the Cooper Union, screenings of Nour Eddine Lakhmari’s controversial 2008 film, Casa Negra, which deals realistically with contemporary social problems in Morocco, on May 3 ($10), a free concert with multi-instrumentalist Brahim Fribgane and trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf on May 5 at 8:30 at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium, the New York debut of Rabat rapper Soultana at Joe’s Pub on May 6 ($15), and the installation “Untangling Threads: Soundwalk & Kantara Crafts” on May 7 that is also part of the Festival of Ideas for the New City. Other highlights include the panel discussion “Regenerating Morocco’s Architecture” on May 9 at 7:00 in FIAF’s Tinker Auditorium ($15), the May 11 keynote talk “Essaouira and Fes: Sustaining Cultures” with Royal Advisor André Azoulay and cultural critic Faouzi Skali at Le Skyroom (free with RSVP), a Master Gnaoua Musicians concert May 21 at 8:00 at Florence Gould Hall ($20, preceded by the free talk “Stories from the Gnaoua and World Music Festival”), and pianist Marouan Benabdallah performing at Zankel Hall on May 26 at 8:00 ($25). Additional screenings of Moroccan film will take place every Tuesday as part of FIAF’s regular CinémaTuesdays series, and the FIAF Gallery will hos the site-specific exhibition “Senses and Essence: Amina Agueznay, Safaa Erruas, and Najia Mehadji,” focusing on the work of three leading woman contemporary artists from Morocco (May 5-28, free).

HOBOKEN ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL 2011

The Baseball Project will take the field in Hoboken on Sunday afternoon, followed by Ian Hunter & the Rant Band

Washington St. between Observer Highway and Seventh St.
Sunday, May 1, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.hobokennj.org

One of the best double headers of the season is scheduled for Sunday, and not only does it not require separate admission, it’s absolutely free. It’s also not taking place on a grass-and-dirt diamond. The annual Hoboken Arts & Music Festival will step up to the plate with a day of cultural celebration in the city where the organized game of baseball was first played, on the Elysian Fields on June 19, 1846, with the New York Nine defeating the Knickerbockers 23–1 in a four-inning contest. On Sunday at 3:00, the Baseball Project will take the stage, an athletic supergroup consisting of R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey, the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, and the Pretty Babies’ Linda Pitmon, who also plays drums for Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3. The Baseball Project, the brainchild of huge baseball fanatics McCaughey and Wynn, are touring behind their sophomore album, Volume Two: High and Inside (Yep Roc, March 2011), the follow-up to their 2008 debut, Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. While the first disc explored such legends as Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Harvey Haddix, Curt Flood, Big Ed Delahanty, Fernando Valenzuela, Jackie Robinson, and Satchel Paige, the second focuses on such characters as Reggie Jackson, Tony Conigliaro, Mark “the Bird” Fidrych, Pete Rose, Roger Clemens, Ichiro Suzuki, and Bill Buckner. The band clearly knows its baseball, detailing specific classic situations, using the correct terminology, and sharing their obvious affection for the national pastime, with pop hooks galore. One of the most entertaining songs is “Panda and the Freak,” in which they praise dozens of the greatest nicknames of all time, from Baby Bull and the Beast to the Spaceman and Will the Thrill. If they show a bent toward the Red Sox, blame it on Wynn. They even bring in guest vocalist Craig Finn of the Hold Steady to warble “Don’t Call Them Twinkies,” a ditty about his hometown team, the Minnesota Twins. (Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, and Chris Funk and John Moen of the Decemberists also pitch in.)

Ian Hunter, Hoboken’s own Jim Mastro, and the rest of the Rant Band will close out Hoboken Arts & Music Festival on Sunday at 4:30 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

After the Baseball Project reach their prearranged pitch count, Ian Hunter & the Rant Band will be brought in to close things out. Hunter, the former leader of Mott the Hoople, is still making outstanding albums, the most recent being 2009’s Man Overboard and 2007’s Shrunken Heads (both on Yep Roc), showing that he knows how to go from a fastball to a curve to a slider like the best of them, and oh those change-ups. Songs such as “Stretch,” “Soul of America,” “Up and Running,” and “Win It All” might not actually be about baseball, but Hunter loads the bases with those newer tunes, then hits it out of the park with such longtime favorites as “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” “All the Way from Memphis,” “All the Young Dudes,” “Just Another Night,” “Michael Picasso,” and “23A, Swan Hill.” Hunter is a genuine rock star who still has Hall of Fame stuff; don’t miss this great chance to catch him and his excellent team live, and for free. (The fair itself begins at 11:00 am, with fine artists displaying their wares between Second & Third Sts., childrens’ activities in a special area on Third St. with rides, games, arts & crafts, clowns, and a puppet show, crafters showing off their handmade goods, and local restaurants offering an international selection of food. Among the many other live performers are Hudson Dance & Movement, the Fuzzy Lemons, Genesis Dance Company, and Dawnee from Peanut Butter n Jammin at the Kid Zone on Third St., Bandwidth, NYC School of Rock, Garden Street Music, Goodbye Friday, Mad Dog Mary, Gene d’ Plumber, and Frankie Morales and the Mambo of the Times Orchestra at the Sixth St. Stage, and Davey & the Trainwreck, Bern & the Brights, and the Pretty Babies at the Observer Hwy Stage.)