twi-ny recommended events

BLUE NOTE JAZZ FESTIVAL 2013

Wayne Shorter will be celebrating his eightieth birthday with a special show at Town Hall as part of the Blue Note Jazz Festival (photo by Robert Ascroft)

Blue Note Jazz Club, 131 West Third St., 212-475-8592
Highline Ballroom, 431 West 16th St., 212-414-5994
B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 West 42nd St., 212-997-4144
Smalls Jazz Club, 183 West Tenth St., 212-252-5091
Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave. 718-963-3369
The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd St., 212-997-1003
IFC Center, 212-924-7771
June 1-30
www.bluenotejazzfestival.com

The Blue Note has been bringing the sweet sounds of jazz to Greenwich Village for more than three decades, but this month is merely the third year of the Blue Note Jazz Festival, which spreads the American musical form across the city. More than one hundred events are taking place at such venues as the Highline Ballroom, Brooklyn Bowl, B.B. King’s, Smalls Jazz Club, Town Hall, and the Blue Note itself, with a wide range of performers that includes rock, pop, and folk in addition to jazz and blues and even spoken word, comedy, and film. The lineup is once again impressive, from old-timers to young up-and-comers, from legendary names to lesser-known groups worthy of more attention. Here is just a mere sprinkling of the talent involved: Gato Barbieri, the Joshua Redman Quartet, Jerry Douglas, Willie Colón, Saul Williams, Delbert McClinton, the Rebirth Brass Band, McCoy Tyner & the Latin All-Stars, Paul Mooney, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Buffy Sainte-Marie, John McLaughlin & the 4th Dimension, Buddy Guy, Wyclef Jean, Leon Redbone, Yasiin Bey, Willie Nile, Roy Haynes, and Garland Jeffreys. On June 22, Magic Man Sam Waymon will pay tribute to his sister, Nina Simone, with a free show at Lucille’s. On June 24, the IFC Center will host a screening of Bertrand Tavernier’s ’Round Midnight in honor of what would have been Dexter Gordon’s ninetieth birthday, followed by a panel discussion with Ashley Kahn, Maxine Gordon, Bruce Lundvall, Michael Cuscuna, and Jimmy Heath. On June 28, Wayne Shorter will celebrate his eightieth birthday at Town Hall with his quartet (pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade) in addition to such friends as ACS: Allen Carrington Spalding and Sound Prints (consisting of Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas). And that’s just a small taste of what will be going on all month.

THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE

The fur-clad governor’s wife (Mary Testa) has more on her mind than her baby in Brecht revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 23, $65
212-677-4210
www.classicstage.org

There’s a whole lot going on in Classic Stage Company’s inconsistent yet involving production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, including a brief prologue in Russian, a self-referential play-within-a-play, seven actors performing twenty-four roles, a convergence of multiple Russian/Soviet periods, an eerie big-headed doll/dummy used to portray a child, and even an audience sing-along. Not all of it works, and some of it causes confusion, but at its center is a story that is beautifully compelling. In the city of Nukha in Grusinia, the governor has been beheaded, and his wife (Queen of the Mist’s Mary Testa, who will be replaced by Lea Delaria beginning June 11) is more concerned with her furs than the revolution that is going on all around her, or even than her own newborn son, whom she thoughtlessly leaves behind as she is hustled to safety. A young maid, Grusha (Elizabeth A. Davis), rescues the infant, risking her own freedom as all hell breaks loose. Although she has accepted a proposal of marriage from soldier Simon Chachava (Alex Hurt), she is chased by a trio of Ironshirts led by a creepy corporal (Tom Riis Farrell) who is determined to reclaim the governor’s child in order to have the kid put to death. In the second act, Azdak (Christopher Lloyd), a wild and unpredictable menial clerk, unknowingly offers shelter to the Grand Duke (Jason Babinsky), then ends up being granted a judgeship and having to decide, ultimately, who the baby belongs to. Inspired by Li Xingdao’s Yuan dynasty masterpiece Circle of Chalk, Brecht’s play tackles such subjects as war, power, wealth, politics, and justice in the face of love.

Azdak (Christopher Lloyd) finds himself in a new position in postrebellion Russia (photo by Joan Marcus)

Adapting James and Tania Stern’s translation, with lyrics by W. H. Auden and original music by Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening), director Brian Kulick incorporates unique creative flourishes into the production, including using old suitcases as multiple props, depicting rain by having actors squeeze wet sponges into buckets, staging a wedding/funeral with glowing candles and a mysterious song, and having characters tear down a statue of Lenin. But the play-within-a-play aspect grows tiresome, especially when the characters specifically mention Classic Stage Company (and when they speak in untranslated Russian), and the acting is hit-or-miss; Davis, who was nominated for a Tony for Once, is terrific as Grusha, wonderfully combining dedication and desperation with a touching vulnerability. Farrell severely overplays the Fat Prince and the Corporal, while Hurt underplays Simon. Lloyd spends the first act as the Singer, serving as narrator (but never actually singing), then is allowed to cut loose in the second act, which he does with great fervor and madness, melding his two iconic roles, Jim Ignatowski from Taxi and Doc Brown from the Back to the Future trilogy. Tony Straiges’s set design features chairs and rope hanging from the ceiling and red-and-white posters that equate Marx and Lenin with Coca-Cola a little too easily and obviously. But Brecht’s populist parable still manages to shine through, examining the state of the world as well as theater itself.

GARSON YU: T.I.N.Y. (THE INTERACTIVE NEW YORK)

Artist Garson Yu shows how it’s done at his new multimedia public art installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pier 57, 15th St. & the West Side Highway
Daily through June 16, free, 9:00 am – 7:00 pm
www.hudsonriverpark.org
t.i.n.y. slideshow

As part of the continuing transformation of Hudson River Park’s Pier 57, Garson Yu has installed the site-specific “T.I.N.Y. (The Interactive New York),” a participatory art project that uses shipping containers to create a unique trip through the sights and sounds of the city. A former New Yorker who was born in Hong Kong and is currently based in Los Angeles, Yu runs yU+co, an award-winning company that has designed titles for such films and television series as Life of Pi, 300, The Walking Dead, Watchmen, and Oz the Great and Powerful. For “T.I.N.Y.,” Yu collaborated with his son, Adrian, an NYU Cinema Studies student who shot video across the city, capturing speeding subway trains, midtown traffic, mobs of pedestrians, skateboarders, street musicians, birds, ballplayers, kids riding the swings in Coney Island, and waves on the beach. Those images are projected onto two rows of shipping containers, where they can be viewed from a third, center row of containers between them, set up to look like a subway car, with windows on either side. The accompanying soundtrack includes dogs barking, cars honking, kids screaming, and many other city noises. “Straphangers” can leave messages on the walls of the central row using colored chalk; in addition, they are encouraged to make sounds into microphones placed in colanders, the loudness and frequency affecting the projections’ speed and motion, even making them go backward, like memories flashing past. A sign by the entrance advises, “Shout Yell Holla Make Some Noise.” When we stopped by on June 1, a man kept going over to several of the microphones, hooting and hollering with abandon; it turned out that it was Yu himself, who was sticking around to check out how people were reacting to the piece and to set off a chain reaction, which worked, as various men, women, and children followed suit. Meanwhile, from up above, Yu’s friend Ik-Joong Kang’s white sculpture of a boy with binoculars sitting atop a raised shipping container keeps watch. “We are storytellers,” yU+co explains on its website. “T.I.N.Y.,” which also features a family-friendly Sound Hunt on weekends, invites people of all ages to be part of the ongoing tale.

QUEER/ART/FILM: PERFORMANCE

Mick Jagger puts on quite a show in Nicolas Roeg’s trippy PERFORMANCE

Mick Jagger puts on quite a show in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s trippy PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Monday, June 3, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

A British gangster on the run hides out with a psychedelic rock star in this strangely enticing film from Donald (The Demon Seed) Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (making his big-screen directorial debut). James Fox didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed on to play Chas, a mobster who finds sanctuary with mushroom-popping rock-diva has-been Turner, played with panache by Mick Jagger. Throw in Anita Pallenberg, a fab drug trip, and the great “Memo to Turner” scene and you have a film that some consider the real precursor to MTV, some think a work of pure demented genius, and others find to be one of the most pretentious and awful pieces of claptrap ever committed to celluloid. We fall somewhere in the middle of all of that. Performance is screening in a 35mm print June 3 at 8:00 as part of the IFC Center series “Queer/Art/Film” and will be followed by a discussion with artist, writer, documentarian, and activist Gregg Bordowitz. The monthly series, which consists of films selected by gay New York City artists, continues July 22 with Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night, chosen by Amadéus Leopold, and August 19 with Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette, picked by Chitra Ganesh.

THE ARTFUL RECLUSE: PAINTING, POETRY, AND POLITICS IN 17th-CENTURY CHINA

Xiang Shengmo, “Invitation to Reclusion,” detail, ink on paper, handscroll, 1625–26 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund)

Asia Society
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Through Sunday, June 2, $10, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-288-6400
www.asiasociety.org

The state of the world getting you down? Considering just getting away from it all, leaving everything behind and heading to the mountains to live a life of quiet contemplation and study? As the Ming dynasty fell in China in 1644 to the Manchus, many public servants, who were also painters, poets, and calligraphers, did just that. Their work is documented in the beautiful, meditative exhibit “The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in 17th-Century China,” consisting of paintings, drawings, artist books, vertical wall scrolls, and horizontal handscrolls of some twenty feet in length. Splendidly curated by Peter C. Sturman and Susan Tai, the show features works by such talented recluses as Chen Jiru, Dong Qichang, Xiang Shengmo, Chen Hongshou, Gao Jian, Shitao, and madman Bada Shanren, scholar-painters who paid tribute to the past while often slyly commenting on the present and future as the Qing dynasty took over. The scenes depicted often include a solitary subject who is hard to find, perhaps out on the river, inside a hut, or on a mountain path, a mere spec in the vast natural world. Divided into such sections as “Summoning the Recluse: Landscape as Refuge,” “1644: A Landscape Transformed,” “Nanjing: City of Memories,” and “Returning Home: Stability and Normalcy,” the exhibition includes excellent wall labels accompanying each work, shedding light on such gems as Xiang’s “Summoning the Recluse” and “Invitation to Reclusion,” Zhang Feng’s “Immortals’ Secrets in a Stone Cave,” Bada’s “Small Fish,” Shen Shichong’s “Landscape,” and Dong’s “Contemplating the Dao with Emotions Cleansed.” The show runs through June 2, giving visitors the chance to cleanse their own emotions and wonder just what it might be like to really get away from it all.

CELEBRATE ISRAEL PARADE — PICTURE ISRAEL: THE ART AND THE CRAFT

Bad weather couldn’t dampen the spirit of the 2012 Celebrate Israel Parade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

57th to 74th St. up Fifth Ave.
Sunday, June 2, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
celebrateisraelny.org

On May 14, 1948, “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” proclaimed, “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” It’s been more than a little bumpy along the way, but Israel will be celebrating its maturation into senior citizenship on Sunday, June 2, with festivities in honor of its sixty-fifth birthday. The day kicks off with an 8:00 morning run through Central Park, followed by the Celebrate Israel Parade; the theme this year is “Picture Israel: The Art & the Craft,” focusing on “Illustrate, Create, Paint, Frame It.” The grand marshals are Long Island philanthropists Marty and Melodie Scharf and Israel Consul General Ido Aharoni, while special guests include Dr. Ruth Westheimer, journalists Harry Martin, Robert Moses, and Becky Griffith, and the Israel National Soccer Team, who will be taking on Honduras at Citi Field at 4:00. Among the many performers at the parade will be SOULFARM, the Brooklyn Jumbies, the Areyvut Mitzvah Clowns, Gilad Segev, the Barynya Entertainment Dancers, Amir Gwirtzman, the Rafi Malkiel Ensemble, Mama Doni, the BaRock Orchestra, Eyal Rob, and the Hebrew Wizards Band.

FIRST SATURDAY: LIFE, DEATH, AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE AMERICAS

“Raw/Cooked: Michael Ballou” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Michael Ballou, “Go-Go,” acrylic board, monofilament, wire, plywood, plastic cups, rug, with soundtrackby Kurt Hoffman and David Scher, 2013 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, June 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s long-term installation “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas” is the centerpiece of the June edition of its popular First Saturday program, with a special focus on Peru. The free monthly program will include live performances by Claudia Acuña, Chicha Libre, Rebel Diaz, Marcos Napa, and Mariachi Flor de Toloache, pop-up gallery talks, storytelling presented by the Redhawk Native American Arts Council, a curator talk of the featured exhibit led by Nancy Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller, a Hands-On Art workshop in which participants can make a clay figure, and a participatory despacho ceremony, in which Q’ero healers Don Francisco and Doña Juana invoke reciprocity and loving-kindness. The galleries will remain open late so visitors can also check out “John Singer Sargent Watercolors,” a lovely collection of nearly one hundred stunning works that are a celebration of light and color; “LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital,” moving black-and-white portraits of Frazier and her mother and grandmother; “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” devastating woodcut prints by the German Expressionist artist that display the horrors of battle, influenced by the loss of her son in WWI; “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” a revelatory career retrospective of the fascinating oeuvre of the African artist who uses bottle caps and found metal and wood to create fascinating pieces; “‘Workt by Hand’: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts,” comprising nearly three dozen American and European quilts; “Raw/Cooked: Michael Ballou” and “Dog Years” by the Williamsburg-based artist, who plays with light and shadow in the former, man’s best friend in the latter; and “Valerie Hegarty: Alternative Histories,” in which Hegarty wreaks havoc on two of the museum’s Period Rooms.