The late Alex Chilton will be honored with benefit tribute show at City Winery on July 28
A NIGHT OF ALEX CHILTON’S MUSIC
City Winery
155 Varick St. between Spring & Vandam Sts.
Wednesday, July 28, $28, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
In 1987, Replacements lead singer Paul Westerberg sang, “Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ’round / They sing ‘I’m in love. What’s that song? / I’m in love / with that song.’” People by the hundreds will be singing for Chilton this Wednesday night at City Winery in a special benefit tribute as a diverse group of musicians who were influenced by and/or played with Chilton will come together and play his songs, with the money raised going to the Gulf Restoration Network. Chilton, a founding member of the Box Tops and Big Star and one of the most respected songwriters of the last forty years, died suddenly in New Orleans in March at the age of fifty-nine, right as Big Star was set to play a showcase at SXSW, a festival usually reserved for up-and-coming bands. Among those who will be on hand to honor Chilton are Yo La Tengo, Marshall Crenshaw, Doug Garrison, René Coman, Alan Vega, Jon Spencer, Fran Kowalski, Lesa Aldridge, Jay Proctor, Bill Cunningham, Terry Manning, Evan Dando, Jesse Malin, Danny Kroha, Ronnie Spector, original Cossack Chris Stamey, former Box Top Gary Talley, and Big Star’s own Jody Stephens and Jon Auer. Expect to hear such classics as “Thirteen,” “September Gurls,” “The Letter,” “I’m in Love with a Girl,” “In the Street,” and “Cry Like a Baby” and other songs you didn’t realize were affiliated with Chilton in one way or another.
The Lincoln Center Festival ends today with the second and final performance of the Pichet Klunchun Dance Company’s gorgeous CHUI CHAI (“Transformation”). Nine dancers tell the Nang Loi story from the Ramayana, in which the demon king Thodsakarn attempts to stop the war with Rama by kidnapping his rival’s wife, Sita, and having demon maiden Benyakai turn into the famed beauty and fake her death. The first half of the show features masked dancers in glittering costumes with elaborate headdresses, moving slowly in the Khon style as an accompanying song relates the tale. At one point Thodsakarn is sitting atop his throne, the back of his outfit casting stars onto a screen behind him as if he is in control of the entire universe. (The screen is also used to project several photographs of old and new Thailand.) After a brief interlude in which, through street interviews, offstage voices discuss the legend of Sita and how it translates to modern society, a bare-chested Klunchun appears as Rama, dressed only in jeans, interacting with the costumed dancers, melding the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary, centered by a breathtaking duet that brings everything together. At first Klunchun moves in the traditional style, eliciting a different emotion from the costumed dancers moving in the same way, but as he incorporates more contemporary movements, the transformation takes over. CHUI CHAI is a dazzling, evocative production that is representative of the breadth and scope of Lincoln Center’s outstanding summer festival.