this week in (live)streaming

STREAMING LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD: THE VIJAY IYER TRIO

Vijay Iyer returns to the Village Vanguard with his trio for a live performance during the pandemic lockdown

Vijay Iyer returns to the Village Vanguard with his trio for two live performances during the pandemic lockdown

Who: The Vijay Iyer Trio featuring Nick Dunston and Jeremy Dutton
What: Livestreamed concerts direct from the Village Vanguard
Where: Village Vanguard online
When: Saturday, June 20, $7, 7:00, and Sunday, June 21, $7, 2:00
Why: On May 29, the Boston-based Irish punk band the Dropkick Murphys performed a blistering live set from an empty Fenway Park, joined for two songs by Bruce Springsteen from his home in New Jersey. (You can watch the show here.) It was absolutely exhilarating; frontman Ken Casey and the band were thrilled to be able to blast out no-holds-barred music again, and their enthusiasm was contagious. I imagined that the tens of thousands of other viewers from around the world were dancing just as wildly as I was in my Manhattan apartment, making the most of this communal moment. Over the last few months, I’ve enjoyed many short concerts with singer-songwriters playing from their living rooms or groups getting together over Zoom, but the Murphs took it all to another level, for more than two nonstop hours. Live music is meant to be a shared experience; we cram into stadiums, arenas, and clubs, seeking the camaraderie of strangers who have the same great taste as we do. We might not know when concerts will come back given the pandemic lockdown, but our opportunities to gather together online are expanding, as evidenced by the Village Vanguard, the ever-shining beacon of jazz.

Since 1935, the Vanguard has been hosting live shows in its cramped, intimate downstairs space at 178 Seventh Ave. South. But with the coronavirus crisis, it has been closed since March 16 — until last week. On June 13-14, the oldest continuously operating jazz club in the city opened its doors to the Billy Hart Quartet, which performed live sets on the Vanguard stage, playing Saturday night and Sunday afternoon without any fans in person; hungry jazz aficionados tuned in to the livestream, forming a unique music community. This weekend the new series hosts the Vijay Iyer Trio, with pianist Iyer, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Jeremy Dutton. Last month, New York native Iyer released InWhatInstrumentals: Music from In What Language?, consisting of songs from a 2003 performance at Asia Society, about selective security enforcement at airports, inspired by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s pre-9/11 detention at JFK while traveling from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires.

vijay iyer

“The airport is not a neutral place. It serves as a contact zone for those empowered or subjugated by globalization,” Iyer and his collaborator, Mike Ladd, wrote in the liner notes back in 2003. “It is a center of commerce and a crossroads of cultures, as well as a place that enforces its own globo-consumer culture. It is a frontier, a place of conflict and quarantine, reception, departure, and detention.” Those words ring truer than ever in 2020; on the new release, Iyer, who helped inaugurate the Met Breuer in 2016 with his “Relation” residency, explains, “Poet-producer Mike Ladd and I created In What Language? in 2003, in post-9/11 New York City. We were just coming to terms with the facts on the ground, which today seem frighteningly ordinary: mounting intolerance and hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and other nonwhite people; traumatic raids of immigrant communities by the INS (later Homeland Security); the prospect of endless, amoral war waged under false pretenses; the callous neoliberal agendas of globalization and disaster capitalism; and an unprecedented power grab enacted under cover of jingoism and feigned incompetence.” He continues, “For us as travelers of color, the swift transformation of international airports made it all too plain. These formerly optimistic spaces of encounter and adventure swiftly devolved into irrational zones of anxiety, suspicion, surveillance, and the hyperpolicing of Black and brown bodies, even as the labor force in these spaces mostly comprised the same people being surveilled…. Something about 2020’s rolling tragedy has led me back to these old, haunted, nearly empty rooms of sound. In 2003, I hadn’t imagined that this music, so tied to its original context, could mean something seventeen years later. In the darkness of that moment, we weren’t so sure that the world would hold together for this long. But somehow back then, [producer and engineer] Scotty Hard and I chose to preserve these instrumental mixes anyway, setting them aside for a rainy day.” That rainy day is here. All proceeds from the sale of the album go to immigrant organizations and communities of color disproportionately affected by Covid-19.

The Vijay Iyer Trio might not be kickass in the same way as the Dropkick Murphys, but they will dig deep into your soul, especially as you’re sheltering in place, seeking respite from our insane world. They will be playing two sets of about seventy-five minutes each, at 7:00 on June 20 and 2:00 on June 21; online admission is a mere seven bucks, and you can set your own food and drink minimum at home. Streaming Live continues June 27-28 with the Joe Martin Quartet featuring Mark Turner, Kevin Hays, and Nasheet Waits, July 4-5 with the Joe Lovano Trio Fascination featuring Ben Street and Andrew Cyrille, and July 11-12 with the Eric Reed Quartet featuring Stacy Dillard, Dezron Douglas, and Jeremy Bean Clemons.

SANFORD BIGGERS IN CONVERSATION WITH ROSELEE GOLDBERG: THE SOMETHIN’ SUITE

Sanford Biggers will talk to Performa head RoseLee Goldberg about The Somethin’ Suite and more on Juneteenth

Who: Sanford Biggers, RoseLee Goldberg
What: Talk and screening surrounding The Somethin’ Suite
Where: Performa Instagram Live and Performa website
When: Talk: Friday, June 19, free, noon; screening: June 18 & 19, free, 7:00
Why: In honor of Juneteenth, the anniversary of the end of the Civil War and slavery, Performa chief curator RoseLee Goldberg will discuss art, politics, systemic racism, and more with New York City-based multidisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers. The talk will take place on Instagram Live at noon, in conjunction with screenings on June 18 and 19 of Biggers’s 2007 Performa commission, The Somethin’ Suite, what he called “a post minstrel cycle” and “a darke xperiment.” The twenty-five-minute performance, held at the Box, featured Martin Luther, Saul Williams, Esthero, Shae Fiol, Imani Uzuri, DJ Dahi Sundance, CX KidTRONiK, and Freedome Bradley as a wide range of characters staging a minstrel show, using spoken word, song, music, dance, and film to bring to stark light historical aspects of racism.

In a 2007 interview, Biggers, who was raised in Los Angeles, told Goldberg, “The whole institution of our popular cultural media, which started with minstrel shows and has now become the hip hop music industry — one of the most lucrative entertainment industries worldwide — originated with making a mockery of blacks. So I’m interested in how much and how little has changed in these last 150 years. We’re at a crucial moment in race relations in America right now, with a lot of old wounds being reopened and reexamined. With the ‘PC’ ethos of the ’90s having passed, and a black man being seriously considered for the US presidency, we cannot afford to not develop a more sophisticated understanding of ‘race’ and ‘otherness.’ So I thought it was a perfect time to really look at the history of how we’ve been imagining ourselves, as African Americans, how white people have projected their stereotypes onto us, and how we’ve reflected their obsession by projecting some of those stereotypes back, because neither party is solely guilty — there’s a complicity.” Given what is happening right now in America, from George Floyd to Aunt Jemima, this program could not be any more timely.

THE ANTONYO AWARDS

antonyo awards

Who: Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess, Alex Newell, Jordan E. Cooper, Teyonah Parris, Ephraim Sykes, LaChanze, Derrick Baskin, Nicolette Robinson, Jelani Alladin, Christiani Pitts, James Monroe Iglehart, Amber Iman, Kalen Allen, Nzinga Williams, Jackson Alexander, Cody Renard Richard, Ashton Muñiz, Shereen Pimentel, Kirsten Childs, Aisha Jackson, Antoine L. Smith, Griffin Matthews, Michael McElroy, Jocelyn Bioh, L Morgan Lee, more
What: Inaugural Antonyo Awards show with red carpet, musical numbers, and all-star presenters
Where: Broadway Black YouTube and Facebook
When: Friday, June 19, free, 7:30
Why: In celebration of Juneteenth, Broadway Black is hosting the inaugural Antonyo Awards, honoring the best in Black talent on and off Broadway. Online voting, which was open to the general public, has ended — you can watch the nomination ceremony here, then tune in to YouTube or Facebook on Friday night at 7:00 to see a virtual red carpet and the presentation of the awards, the name of which is a sly twist on the Tonys. Among the shows receiving multiple nominations are A Solder’s Play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, A Strange Loop, One in Two, The Hot Wing King, Slave Play, The Secret of Life Bees, We’re Gonna Die, Toni Stone, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and The Wrong Man, with nods going to such individuals as Okwui Okpokwasili, David Alan Grier, Saycon Sengbloh, Robert O’Hara, Whitney White, Raja Feather Kelly, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Camille A. Brown, Daniel J. Watts, Portia, Danielle Brooks, Audra McDonald, Blair Underwood, and Joshua Henry. In addition, the Kinship Awards (the Lorraine Hansberry Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Welcome Award, and the Doors of the Theatre Are Open Award) will be given out, and Chuck Cooper will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Scheduled to appear during the broadcast are Tituss Burgess, Jordan E. Cooper, LaChanze, Jelani Alladin, Amber Iman, Nzinga Williams, Ashton Muñiz, Aisha Jackson, Jocelyn Bioh, and many others. Founded in 2012 by Drew Shade, Broadway Black is “dedicated to highlighting the achievements and successes of Black theater artists.”

PlayGround Zoom Fest: POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED ORCHIDS

Illustration credits: Black boy by Goulwen Reboux. Prairie Fringed Orchid by Ananda Heller. Polar Bear by Candy Witcher. Arrangement by Vincent Terrell Durham. Used with permission.

New play looks at systemic racism and white fragility (Black boy by Goulwen Reboux. Prairie Fringed Orchid by Ananda Heller. Polar Bear by Candy Witcher. Arrangement by Vincent Terrell Durham. Used with permission.)

Who: Barrington Stage
What: Special Juneteenth reading
Where: Zoom, Proctors Collaborative YouTube, Capital Rep Facebook
When: Friday June 19, and Monday, June 22, free with advance RSVP (suggested donation of $10 for Black Theatre), 7:30
Why: Most of America probably had never heard of Juneteenth until the last week or so, as protests over police brutality spread across the nation and President Trump initially was going to hold a rally on June 19 — the anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves — in Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of the brutal 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. But things are changing. On June 19 at 7:30, Pittsfield-based Barrington Stage and Albany’s Capital Rep, among many other US theater companies, are joining forces with the Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project to present a live PlayGround Zoom Fest reading of Vincent Terrell Durham’s new play, Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. They will give an encore live reading on June 22 at 7:30; admission is free with advance RSVP, although $10 donations are encouraged to help support Black Theatre.

In the play, screenwriter, poet, author, and former stand-up comic Durham (The Fertile River, Vol. 1; A Post Racial America) invites the audience to a cocktail party hosted by a white liberal couple in their renovated Harlem brownstone, with such guests as a Black Lives Matter black activist, his gay white lover, and the mother of a murdered young black boy as issues of systemic racism, gentrification, police brutality, and white fragility set everyone on edge. The cast, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, features Kent Burnham, West Dews, Adrian Kiser, Tracy Liz-Miller, Michael McCorry Rose, Bianca Stinney, Matthew Tenorio, and Peterson Townsend. The Monday performance will be followed by a live Q&A with Barrington community engagement coordinator Sharron Frazier-McClain.

TO MY DISTANT LOVE (AN DIE FERNE GELIEBTE) VIA TELEPHONE

to my distant love

Who: On Site Opera
What: One-on-one telephone-based opera
Where: Your personal telephone
When: June 18 – July 6 (extended through August 23), $40
Why: New York City-based On Site Opera specializes in staging immersive opera productions at unique locations; in recent years it has brought Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw to Wave Hill in the Bronx, Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors to the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen on Ninth Ave., and the world premiere of Michi Wiancko and Deborah Brevoort’s Marasaki’s Moon to the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Met. So what’s the company to do while the pandemic lockdown has closed indoor places and public gatherings are extremely limited? On Site has decided to take the opera right to the audience with To My Distant Love, a show tailor made for this time of longing and isolation, presenting Beethoven’s six-song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Distant Beloved”), over the phone, every performance uniquely delivered to one person. At scheduled times between June 18 and July 6, a singer and pianist will call the ticket holder and perform the twenty-minute piece over the phone; the duo will be either soprano Jennifer Zetlan and pianist David Shimoni or baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco and pianist Spencer Myer. (Each pair already lives together, so social distancing is not an issue.)

The cycle features music by Beethoven and text by Austrian doctor, journalist, and writer Alois Isidor Jeitteles, who served in the fight against the cholera epidemic; the piece will be sung in German, with additional English dialogue by playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza. (The English text will be emailed to you in advance, as if you and the singer are long-lost lovers looking to finally reconnect.) “During this unprecedented pause, almost every aspect of our lives — even the way we are consuming art — has been through our computer or tablet screens,” On Site Opera general and artistic director Eric Einhorn said in a statement. “This production will untether people from their computers and bring back the feeling of live theater, where anything can and will happen. We have brought audiences to more than twenty engaging sites across four states in these last seven seasons. We now invite our audiences to bring us to their favorite sites and be a part of revolutionizing the ways in which opera can be heard, experienced, and evolved.” Tickets for the one hundred performances are $40 and going fast if you want to experience what could end up being one of the most entertaining phone calls you’ll ever receive. [Ed. note: The run has been extended through August 23, so sign up now!]

IMMEDIATE TRAGEDY

Xin Ying, Lloyd Knight, Lorenzo Pagano, and Leslie Andrea are among the Martha Graham dancers collaborating from their homes on reimagined Immediate Tragedy (photo by Ricki Quinn)

Who: The Soraya, Martha Graham Dance Company, Wild Up
What: World premiere of digital dance
Where: The Soraya Facebook page, Martha Graham Dance Company YouTube channel
When: Friday, June 19, the Soraya, free, 7:00; Saturday, June 20, MGDC YouTube, 2:30
Why: During the pandemic, Martha Graham Dance Company has opened up its vast archives — the troupe was founded in 1926, and Graham created 181 ballets throughout her long, legendary career — presenting fabulous footage of classic recorded works, followed by live discussions with special guests. On June 19, MGDC is taking its next step with the world premiere of a new piece designed specifically for online viewing. Joining forces again with the Soraya, the California-based multidisciplinary performing arts organization, and chamber group Wild Up, the LA-based modern music collective, MGDC will be debuting Immediate Tragedy, a virtual reimagining of Graham’s lost 1937 solo, which was her artistic response to the Spanish Civil War. The ten-minute work will be performed by fourteen dancers (So Young An, Alessio Crognale, Laurel Dalley Smith, Natasha Diamond-Walker, Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Landreau, Jacob Larsen, Lloyd Mayor, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Lorenzo Pagano, Anne Souder, Leslie Andrea Williams, Xin Ying) and five musicians (Jiji, Richard Valitutto, Jodie Landau, Brian Walsh, Derek Stein) performing from wherever they are sheltering in place, set to a score composed and conducted by Christopher Rountree, the founder, conductor, and creative director of Wild Up.

Rare photograph of Martha Graham performing lost 1937 solo Immediate Tragedy (photo by Robert Fraser, 1937. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources)

Choreographed by MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber and the dancers based on remnants of the 1937 original, including photos, musical notations, letters, and reviews, the work features digital design and editing by Ricki Quinn as it explores the current tragedies the world is experiencing; it will premiere June 19 at 7:00 on the Soraya’s Facebook page, followed June 20 at 2:30 on MGDC’s YouTube channel as part of the weekly Martha Matinees program, which has previously presented Lamentation, “Birth of the Modern: Martha Graham’s Revolution,” Letter to the World, and more. Each dancer was given four photos from which to develop their movement, while the musicians received snippets of notations from Cowell’s original, all using as inspiration a letter Graham wrote to Cowell in which she explained, “Whether the desperation lies in Spain or in a memory in our own hearts it is the same — I had been in a valley of despair, too. I felt in that dance I was dedicating myself anew to space, that in spite of violation I was upright and that I was going to stay upright at all costs.” Rountree said in a statement, “While the piece is really located in a ‘post Henry Cowell’ space, another big inspiration is: this moment itself, and the immediate tragedy of us all being apart. What are our modes of being together in this moment? What does it look like, what does it sound like and how do we deal with being apart like this?” The thirty-minute program will also include interviews with the collaborators and a screening of Graham and Cowell’s 1937 companion solo, Deep Song.

YES! REFLECTIONS OF MOLLY BLOOM

molly bloom

Who: Aedín Moloney of the Irish Repertory Theatre
What: Livestreamed performances adapted for onscreen viewing
Where: Irish Rep onine (link sent after RSVP)
When: Tuesday, June 16, 7:00; Wednesday, June 17, 3:00 & 8:00; Thursday, June 18, 7:00; Friday, June 19, 8:00; Saturday, June 20, 3:00, advance RSVP required (suggested donation $25)
Why: The Irish Rep has become one of the busiest theater companies in New York City during the pandemic, presenting a brand-new coronavirus-related work and hosting the Meet the Makers and The Show Must Go Online series. On May 27 it premiered The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, Darren Murphy’s short, heartbreaking work about a man (Marty Rea) in Belfast with Covid-19 unable to visit his dying mother (Marie Mullen) in Dublin, who is being cared for by her brother (Seán McGinley). Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, the play gets right to the heart of the crisis as only Irish tales can; it will be available online through October 31.

The Irish Rep now turns its attention to adapting several recent stage productions for the internet, beginning with Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom. The award-winning seventy-five-minute one-woman show, based on James Joyce’s epic Ulysses, was adapted by Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann, directed by Kira Simring, and features music by Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains (and Aedín’s father); it originally ran at the company’s home on West Twenty-Second St. in June and July of last year, with Moloney as Molly Bloom in the early morning hours of June 17, 1904, as she considers love, loneliness, and isolation. The full team has now reimagined the play for onscreen viewing, with Aedín Moloney reprising her role; it will be performed live from June 16 — Bloomsday, when Joyce’s iconic tome takes place — through June 20. Admission is free with advance RSVP, with a suggested donation of $25.

The Irish Rep continues its online foray with “Meet the Maker: Frank McCourt . . . And How He Got That Way: A Conversation with Ellen McCourt and Malachy McCourt” on June 18; “Meet the Maker: Conor McPherson” on July 2; a special gala screening with new video of Frank McCourt’s The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way on July 13; “Meet the Makers: John Douglas Thompson and Obi Abili on Breaking Barriers in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones” on July 16; Dan Butler, Sean Gormley, John Keating, Tim Ruddy, and Amanda Quaid in an online version of Conor McPherson’s The Weir from July 21 to 25; and a virtual version of Barry Day’s Love, Noël, a musical about Noël Coward starring Steve Ross and KT Sullivan, from August 11 to 15. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but I can’t wait to be at my computer to experience the joy of live theater, even if it’s through a screen.