Everyone is invited to participate in annual free Make Music New York festival
Multiple venues
Monday, June 21
Admission: free
www.makemusicny.org
It’s no coincidence that Aaron Friedman, president and founder of Make Music New York, holds his annual event on June 21, the longest day of the year; he is determined to squeeze in as much free music as possible all over the city, taking advantage of every second. This year’s whirlwind festival features more than one thousand bands playing indoors and outdoors, at major venues and in parks, at small art spaces and marching through the streets. It’s an awesome opportunity to sample a new group or location, catching up on the ever-widening music scene across the five boroughs. Among the special programs is a celebration of Greek composer Iannis Xenakis in Central Park; Mass Appeal, in which anyone can join in on the fun, bringing their accordion to Washington Park, bagpipes to Herald Square, cello to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, flute to the Bethesda Fountain Tunnel, gong to Merchants’ Gate in Columbus Circle, and other instruments to specific locations; and Second Line New Orleans-style parades in Hudson Square, Lincoln Square, and Harlem. In addition, British artist Luke Jerram has placed sixty pianos across the city for his installation “Play Me, I’m Yours,” which continues through July 5.
In 2004, Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, and Mike Dirnt, better known as Green Day, released AMERICAN IDIOT, considered by many to be one of the best records of the first decade of the twenty-first century. An unblinking examination of life during the post-9/11 Bush era, AMERICAN IDIOT unleashed a breathtaking suite of songs that held nothing back. Green Day has now collaborated with Tony Award–winning director Michael Mayer (SPRING AWAKENING), Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and orchestrator Tom Kitt (NEXT TO NORMAL) and Olivier Award–winning choreographer Steven Hoggett (BLACK WATCH) — to bring AMERICAN IDIOT to the stage. Whereas the album borrowed generously from Mott the Hoople, the Alarm, the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones, and even Bryan Adams, the Broadway musical borrows just as generously from HAIR, ROCK OF AGES, WEST SIDE STORY, and TOMMY. The show follows Johnny (John Gallagher Jr.), Will (Michael Esper), and Tunny (Stark Sands) as they try to break out of their hellish suburban existence only to discover that the world is an unkind, uncaring place. While Johnny falls in with drug-dealing demon St. Jimmy (Tony Vincent) in the big city and Will gets sent to Iraq, Tunny remains home in the mind-numbing suburbs with his pregnant girlfriend, Heather (Mary Faber), with happiness to be found nowhere. Green Day successfully worked with the actors and musicians to make sure the songs did not become overly Broadway-fied, which is a prime reason why this rock opera is so enjoyable. Hoggett’s choreography is energetic and, at times, inventive and thrilling, and Christine Jones’s Tony-winning multimedia set design is appropriately grungy, but the production feels long even at a mere ninety minutes, and it doesn’t really add much to what Green Day has already said on record. The book, written by Armstrong and Mayer, is riddled with clichés, and several new songs fall flat. Still, the staging is wonderful, featuring inventive uses of a bed, hospital gurneys, and a fire escape, and songs such as the title track, the “Jesus of Suburbia” suite, “21 Guns,” and “Whatsername” sound great, even in a Broadway theater.
Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith’s harrowingly frustrating documentary is precisely the type of true story that explains why the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Human Rights Watch organization itself, unfortunately needs to exist. Part of the Accountability and Justice section of the festival and chosen as the closing night film, PRESUMED GUILTY details the plight of Toño Zuniga, a young man arrested in Mexico City in December 2005 for a murder he did not commit and, despite all the evidence supporting his innocence — and even more important, no evidence proving his guilt — remains locked up, facing a long sentence. PRESUMED GUILTY is a maddening indictment of Mexico’s corrupt legal system, from cops who are paid by the arrest, to prosecutors who need to present nothing at trials, to judges who refuse to listen to the truth. Lawyers Hernández and Layda Negrete, along with documentarian Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON), are given remarkable access to Zuniga, following him in prison and ultimately filming his ever-more-ridiculous retrial, which he watches from a tiny barred area behind the judge. Zuniga himself is a fascinating character who is somehow able to hold back any anger as the inequities just keep piling on, but viewers won’t be able to temper their anger as the frustration builds to impossible heights. Smith and Hernández will participate in a postscreening discussion and reception that will bring the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival to its conclusion, until next year, when another series of politically based dramas and documentaries expose other frightening tragedies occurring all over the world.
