In November 2011, composer Darcy James Argue and visual artist Danijel Zezelj presented the multimedia Brooklyn Babylon at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, an audiovisual commission documenting the building of a futuristic Brooklyn, coming at a time when Brooklyn was indeed beginning to go through a major transformation, particularly around BAM’s home in Fort Greene. Argue, a Vancouver native who resides in the World’s Greatest Borough, has now recorded the show’s wide-ranging score with his band, the eighteen-piece Secret Society, resulting in the vastly entertaining Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam, April 30). The fifty-three-minute suite slides effortlessly from jazz, Klezmer, and power pop to psychedelia, Balkan folk, and swing and back again as it moves chronologically through such songs as “The Neighborhood,” “The Tallest Tower in the World,” “Construction + Destruction,” “Missing Parts,” and “Coney Island”; it also includes such empowering interludes as “Infuse,” “Enthrall,” “Bewail,” and “Arise.” The outstanding band features such performers as Erica von Kleist on piccolo, flute, alto flute, soprano sax, alto sax, and electronics, John Ellis on clarinet, bass clarinet, and tenor sax, Ingrid Jensen on trumpet, fluegelhorn, and electronics, Ryan Keberle on trombone, and Gordon Webster on acoustic and electric piano and melodica, with Argue as ringleader. It all comes together like the soundtrack for an unseen film that the listener gets to create in their head. In conjunction with the album, the Brooklyn-based Zezelj, who hails from Croatia, is publishing the limited-edition graphic novel Babilon. On April 20 at 10:00, BAMcafé Live will be hosting the Brooklyn Babylon album release party, a concert without the visuals; admission is free, and advance copies of the new record, Argue’s follow-up to his debut, 2009’s Infernal Machines, will be available for purchase.
twi-ny recommended events
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL: ALIAS RUBY BLADE
Kirsty Sword shares her compelling story about the battle for Timorese independence in ALIAS RUBY BLADE
ALIAS RUBY BLADE: A STORY OF LOVE AND REVOLUTION (Alex Meillier, 2012)
Friday, April 19, AMC Loews Village 7, 8:30
Saturday, April 20, AMC Loews Village 7, 4:00
Tuesday, April 23, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 3:30
Saturday, April 27, AMC Loews Village 7, 3:00
www.tribecafilm.com
www.aliasrubyblade.com
Alias Ruby Blade: A Story of Love and Revolution is an intimate, involving documentary that goes behind the scenes of East Timor’s battle for independence, structured like a gripping thriller with a decidedly personal edge. In 1991, Australian Kirsty Sword went to East Timor as part of a team posing as tourists while actually making a secret film about the embattled Indonesian island. Almost immediately, the Australian teacher and activist found herself right in the middle of the violent struggle as bullets flew all around her and her team, but they kept the cameras rolling, compiling amazing footage that helped alert the world as to what was happening there. Sword soon became a courier for the revolution, adopting the spy name Ruby Blade and smuggling in notes and, eventually, electronic equipment to jailed resistance leader Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, who was serving a life sentence in Jakarta’s Cipinang Prison. Armed with a camera, Sword took remarkable footage during those years, most of which has never before been shown to the public; she opened up her archives for husband-and-wife documentarians Tanya Ager Meillier and Alex Meillier and speaks extensively with them in the film, relating her involvement with the independence movement — which included falling in love with the charismatic Xanana. The Meilliers also talk with such key resistance fighters as Nobel Peace Prize winner José Ramos-Horta and diplomat Constancio Pinto as well as historian and human rights activist Geoffrey Robinson and Inside Indonesia editor Pat Walsh, who share their stories about the Indonesian occupation that lasted from 1975 to 1999, followed by a UN-sponsored referendum for independence that led to yet more horrors. But Sword, who narrates much of the film, and Xanana, who appears primarily in archival footage and photographs, never gave up their dream of a free, democratic East Timor while also considering a life together. As much as Alias Ruby Blade delves into the political situation in East Timor, it’s really about how a young, strong woman followed her heart and made a difference in a faraway part of the globe. Alias Ruby Blade will have its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it’s part of the Documentary Competition. (By the way, the less you know about how things turned out in East Timor, the more exciting the film is, so don’t read up on it before going to one of the four screenings.)
RECORD STORE DAY
Multiple locations
Saturday, April 20
www.recordstoreday.com
Once upon a time, teenage boys and girls, and those a little older, collected small and larger black discs that would spin around and make sounds when a needle was dropped into its grooves. The bigger discs came in packages that sometimes would fold out and serve as an exceptional surface on which to clean out the seeds from a bag of marijuana. Among the favorites for this important project were the Beatles’ White Album and Frampton Comes Alive! Those two elements — music and weed — will interact this Saturday for the annual Record Store Day promotion, which this year falls on April 20, when many around the world celebrate the consumption of cannabis. In New York City, you can find special one-day-only limited-edition releases, limited-run regional focus releases, and first-day releases at such stores as Rock and Soul Records, Academy Records & CDs, Second Hand Rose Music, Big City Records, Rockit Scientist Records, Kim’s Video & Music, turntable lab, Permanent Records, Disc-o-Rama, Good Records NYC, Other Music, In Living Stereo, Downtown Music Gallery, Record Runner, Generation Records, rebel rebel, Bleecker Street Records, Cake Shop, Deadly Dragon Sound, Sound Fix, earwax, normans sound and vision, and others. Not all records are available at all locations, so you might want to check in advance to see if your coveted disc will be in stock there. Below are some of the hundreds of singles, EPs, LPs, colored vinyl, picture discs, and even cassette singles that will be on sale, including the soundtrack to Dazed and Confused, which comes in a very appropriate weed-green vinyl disc.
Ani DiFranco, Buffalo (Official Bootleg)
Ben Harper, By My Side
Best Coast, “Fear of My Identity” bw/ “Who Have I Become”
Big Dipper, “Joke Outfit
Big Mama Thornton, Jail
Big Star, Nothing Can Hurt Me (Special Pressing)
Billy Bragg, “No One Knows Nothing Anymore” b/w “Song of the Iceberg”
Black Lips/Icky Blossoms, “Cowboy Knights” (colored vinyl)
Bob Dylan, “Wigwam”
Brian Jonestown Massacre, “Fist Full of Bees” b/w “Food for Clouds”
Buddy Guy, Hold That Plane
Built to Spill, Live
CAKE, “Sheep Go to Heaven” b/w “Jesus Wrote a Blank Check”
Calexico, Spiritoso
Captain Beefheart, Frank Freeman’s Dance Club (purple vinyl)
Cheech & Chong featuring Alice Bowie, “Earache My Eye” b/w “Turn That Thing Down” (Green Vinyl/Picture Sleeve)
Dan Deacon, “Konono Ripoff No. 1”
Dave Brubeck Trio, Distinctive Rhythm Instrumentals (Fantasy 3-2) (red vinyl)
David Bowie, “Drive-In Saturday Night” b/w “Drive-In Saturday Night” (Russell Harty Plus Pop Version)
dB’s, Revolution of the Mind (orange vinyl)
Dutch Uncles, “Slave to the Atypical Rhythm”
Emerson Lake and Palmer, The First Five: A Picture Disc Collection
Fela Kuti, “Sorrow Tears and Blood” b/w “Perambulator”
Flaming Lips, Zaireeka 45 RPM box set
Free Energy, “Wild Life”
Garbage, “Because the Night” (Coke bottle clear vinyl)
Grateful Dead, Rare Cuts & Oddities 1966
Hold Steady, “Criminal Fingers”
Husker Du, “Amusement”
Jimmy Eat World, “Damage”
Joy Formidable, “A Minute’s Silence”
Justin Townes Earle, “Yuma” (colored vinyl)
Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, Rattlin Bones
Marshall Crenshaw, “Stranger And Stranger”
MGMT, “Alien Days” cassette single
Mike Watt & the Black Gang, “Rebel Girl” b/w “30 Days in the Hole”
Moby and Mark Lanegan, “The Lonely Night”
Mumford & Sons, Live at Bull Moose
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Animal X” (picture disc)
Nicolas Jaar Remix, Brian Eno’s “LUX” and Grizzly Bear’s “Sleeping Ute”
Oval, Systemisch and 94diskont
Paul McCartney & Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed”
Phish, Lawn Boy Deluxe
Phoenix, “Entertainment”
Pink Floyd, “See Emily Play” b/w “Scarecrow”
Porno for Pyros, Porno for Pyros (swirl vinyl)
Public Enemy, Public Enemy: Planet Earth — The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Greatest Rap Hits (picture disc)
Public Image Ltd., “Public Image” b/w “The Cowboy Song”
Pussy Galore, “Groovy Hate Fuck”
Richard Thompson, “Salford Sunday”
Rob Zombie, “Dead City Radio and the New Gods of Supertown” b/w “Teenage Nosferatu Pussy” (explicit only)
Robyn Hitchcock, There Goes the Ice
Roky Erickson, “Mine Mine Mind” b/w “Bloody Hammer”
Sharon Van Etten, “We Are Fine” b/w “Hotel 2 Tango”
Shearwater and Sharon Van Etten, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” b/w “A Wake for the Minotaur”
Soundgarden, King Animal demos
Soundtrack, Dazed and Confused (weed green vinyl)
Stephen Malkmus and Friends, Can’s Ege Bamyasi
Superchunk, “Void” b/w “Faith”
South Park, “San Diego” b/w “Gay Fish”
Tegan and Sara, Closer Remixed
Tift Merritt, Markings
Thurston Moore & Loren Connors, The Only Way to Go
Trey Anastasio, Blue Ash and Other Suburbs (EP picture disc)
White Stripes, Elephant (10th Anniversary colored vinyl)
Willie Nelson, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
NOT SO SILENT CINEMA: BUSTER KEATON SHORTS
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Friday, April 19, $12-$15, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
www.forthesakeofthesong.com
Brendan Cooney’s Not So Silent Cinema project comes to 92YTribeca on Friday, April 19, presenting a new live score for three classic Buster Keaton shorts. In The Goat (Malcolm St. Clair & Buster Keaton, 1921), Keaton plays a man mistaken for escaped murderer Dead Shot Dan (St. Clair) and now on the run from the law. In The High Sign (Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton, 1921), Keaton fakes being a sharpshooter and ends up getting hired by the Blinking Buzzards to kill a wealthy man he is also hired to protect by his daughter (Bartine Burkett). And in One Week (Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton, 1920), a pair of newlyweds (Keaton and Sybil Seely) get a plot of land as a wedding present, along with a house-in-a-box that they put together with hysterical results. The trio of early films established the Great Stone Face as a master comedian who commented on the hard socioeconomic times while staging remarkable, extremely dangerous stunts, whether having the side of a house fall on him, jumping from a chair to a table and through a small window above a door, or riding on the front of a speeding train heading directly at the audience. Cooney’s original score, which incorporates American roots music, ragtime, blues, bluegrass, and jazz, will be performed by Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Andy Bergman on clarinet, and Cooney on piano.
SPA WEEK: SPRING 2013
Exhale is offering exciting specials during Spa Week
Spring may feel late in coming to New York this year, but Spa Week (April 15-21) returns right on time with a wide-ranging sampling of $50 spa treatments. We’ve long been a fan of this change to try new treatments or indulge in an old favorite at a great price. From fitness and facials at a modern chic hotel to classic French treatments on 57th St. to small, spotless and discreet Park Ave. area spas, here are some of our favorites.
L’Institut Sothys New York
37 West 57th St.
212-688-9400
www.sothyspa.com
The oh-so-French upscale Parisian staple Sothys opens its doors to Spa Week customers with a choice of a signature massage or a classic European facial, both 50 minutes. It’s the sort of place that makes us think of the salon where Catherine Deneuve works in the Roman Polanski classic Repulsion — it’s that French and that stately.
exhale — Gramercy
Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC
420 Park Ave. South
646-380-5330
www.exhalespa.com
Exhale’s cult is built around its Core Fusion classes, incorporating Lotte Berk-like body sculpting moves with barre and modern fitness moves to make the ladies of midtown, uptown, Murray Hill, and Gramercy work their core, and work it hard. Spa Week offers a fantastic deal for new students: $50 for a 5-pack of Core Fusion and Yoga classes (usually $315 for a 10-pack or $37/single class). Spa services for Spa Week include a Sircuit Smart Facial Peel or a Pure Manicure/Pedicure package with Ginger-Infused Lotion, Organic Lavender Foot Scrub Exfoliation, and Smoothing Organic Heel Balm. The exhale Gramercy location, a small, glass-walled room looking down on Park Ave., is a gem but fills up fast; buy a 5-pack and book your classes early.
Serene Max Laser Spa
24 East 36th St.
212-213-3003
www.serenemax.com
Tucked away behind a small door just off Madison Ave., Serene Max is serene indeed: a quiet, smart, clean, and surprisingly spacious salon and spa that offers some of the most approachably priced and effective laser hair removal in the area. We’ve tried their $50 special, offering two laser sessions for chin, lip, ears, hand, and fingers, or feet and toes, and were very pleased. Other $50 Spa Week offerings include a Laser Focus facial for age and sun spots or a single, longer laser hair removal session for larger areas, such as face, neck, underarms, bikini (regular or Brazilian), half arm or half leg, chest, stomach, shoulders, lower back, or buttocks. As with any laser treatment, multiple visits are necessary to eradicate hair that grows out at different time intervals, but the expert specialist we tried, Dayna, was precise and clear about how many sessions were necessary, neither overselling nor underestimating what additional sessions were needed.
ROSIE HERRERA DANCE THEATRE: DINING ALONE
Miami’s Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre will present New York premiere of DINING ALONE April 18-19 at BAC (photo by Adam Reign)
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Thursday, April 18, 7:30 & 9:30, and Friday, April 19, 7:30, $20
866-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org
www.rosieherrera.com
Miami-based Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre made its New York debut in January at the Joyce, performing its 2009 piece, Various Stages of Drowning: A Cabaret, appearing with such popular troupes as Doug Varone & Dancers, Brian Brooks Moving Company, John Jasperse, Stephen Petronio Company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Jodi Melnick, and Eiko & Koma. Herrera, who incorporates gesture, drama, humor, and playful props into her creations, is back in the city quickly, presenting the New York premiere of her American Dance Festival / Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County commission Dining Alone at the Baryshnikov Arts Center April 18-19. Inspired by her father, a restaurant owner, Dining Alone is about the experience of eating solo, especially as one ages and outlives spouses and friends. “I come from a culture where you never eat alone, particularly if you’re older,” Herrera, who is also a classically trained lyric coloratura soprano who sings with the Performers Music Institute Opera Ensemble, told ADF at the work’s world premiere in June 2011, adding, “We revere our citizens in Cuban culture.” In a statement, BAC artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov noted, “Ms. Herrera is a woman of ideas who draws from cultures, experiences, and training not necessarily commonly represented in New York. Miami is so rich culturally, yet we see little contemporary dance emerging from that region. The performances at BAC will provide an opportunity for New Yorkers to connect with a young and adventurous artist from that part of the country.” The fifty-minute Dining Alone will be performed April 18 at 7:30 and 9:30 and April 19 at 7:30 by Octavio Campos, Ivonne Batanero, Leah Verier Dunn, Liony Garcia, Fernando Landeros, Katie Stirman, Raymond Storms, and Melissa Toogood, with lighting by David Ferri.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “CATALINA” BY BRIEN McVERNON AND THE BLACKOUTS
Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist Brien McVernon has performed solo as well as in such groups as the Fabulous Colours, the Glam Gods, Raiding Party, and Retro Rockets, all names that inspire fast-paced, hard-edged rock and roll. McVernon will be at Arlene’s Grocery on Wednesday night at 7:00 with his latest trio, Brien McVernon and the Blackouts, slashing out to plenty of classic rockabilly. Also on the bill are the LoveHowl, PUNK 77, New York’s Finest, and the Rave-Ons.