this week in (live)streaming

THE ALCHEMIST

Manoel Felciano, Reg Rogers, and Jennifer Sánchez play a trio of swindlers in Red Bull revival of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE ALCHEMIST
New World Stages
340 West Fiftieth St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through December 19, $70
Available for streaming January 12-26
www.redbulltheater.com
newworldstages.com

Red Bull Theater was one of the most active companies during the pandemic, presenting livestreamed reunion readings of previous productions, the online interview series RemarkaBULL Podversations, and deep explorations into Othello and Pericles. So it’s disappointing that its return to live, in-person theater is an overbaked version of Ben Jonson’s 1610 Jacobean farce, The Alchemist.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Jesse Berger — the same team that gave us the superb 2017 revival of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector — The Alchemist is a hot mess, a frantic, unrelenting satire laden with anachronistic references and modern speech that bury what Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously referred to as one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned.” (The other two, in his opinion, were Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.)

The tale is set in 1606 in the Lovewit mansion in London as plague rips through the land; the wealthy master has left for the countryside, reminding us that the rich haven’t changed much, considering their response to the current coronavirus pandemic. A voiceover announces at the start, “Some wear masks, just like you do, that cover the nose and mouth and comply with CDC guidelines at all times, including during the show, except while actively drinking at your seat, so if you’re going to drink, drink actively.”

Lovewit’s manservant, the rogue Face (Manoel Felciano), has teamed up with the charlatan alchemist Subtle (Reg Rogers) and their bawdy colleague, Dol Common (Jennifer Sánchez), to con members of the local community out of their money. When the trio learns that Lovewit is unexpectedly returning in two hours, they ramp up their schemes as they attempt to defraud the tobacconist Abel Drugger (Nathan Christopher), the law clerk Dapper (Carson Elrod), the deacon Ananias (Stephen DeRosa), and the knight Sir Epicure Mammon (Jacob Ming-Trent) and his butler from Brooklyn, the surly skeptic known as Surly (Louis Mustillo).

Red Bull returns to in-person theater with The Alchemist at New World Stages (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Subtle might think he is in charge, but Face is quick to remind him, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past known to all the neighborhood as that scurvy beetle who nothing did but loiter at the corner in moldy rags so thin scarce covered they your buttocks. I took pity on you, gave you roof and a bed, replaced your tatters with well-cut cloth, and introduced you to that household item called the bathing tub.” Subtle responds, “Recollect, sir: you were not long past that lowly servant who nothing did but sit your master’s house with no one to converse with save your brooms and dustpans. Twas I took pity on you, raised you up to your potential, taught you to present yourself so convincingly as a captain with a beard so nautical it could fool a blind man who’s never been to sea. Twas I conceived the scheme, tis I should take the largest share!” Meanwhile, Dol points out about their Venture Tripartite, “Well, if we three do not this treasure equal share, you two shall not share mine.”

Despite already having a heavy chest brimming with ill-gotten gains and Lovewit’s arrival fast approaching, Face and Subtle can’t control their greed when they learn of a wealthy widow, Dame Pliant (Teresa Avia Lim), who has come to town with her protective brother, Kastril (Allen Tedder). So they set out to scam her as well, agreeing not to tell Dol. Their nefarious plans play out in real time, a grandfather clock ticking away throughout the nearly two-hour show as things grow more and more frenetic and overwrought.

Red Bull and founding artistic director Berger know their way around classic works, as evidenced by their stellar adaptations of John Ford’s 1630s drama, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners, The School for Scandal, and Jonson’s 1606 English Renaissance satire, Volpone. But they try too hard to make The Alchemist relevant to this moment in time, sacrificing story for slapstick. Alexis Distler’s two-floor set is filled with doorways, a staircase, and surprise entryways, but the timing of the various door slams is too often slightly off. At one point Rogers ad-libbed about having to run up and down the stairs again, and we feel his pain. As always with Red Bull, the costumes (by Tilly Grimes) are wonderfully extravagant, as is Tommy Kurzman’s wig and makeup design.

The show suffers from being in the 199-seat Stage 5 at New World Stages, which is too small and intimate for such a broadly played farce; you’re liable to get whiplash from swiveling your head back and forth and up and down so much, particularly as Subtle changes from “a mystic newly come from Rotterdam” to “a fortune teller late of Portugal” to “a Swedish hypnotist learned in financial planning.” Perhaps it will be easier to take when it is available for streaming January 12-26.

In a program note, Hatcher wryly admits, “Of course, I did screw around with the plot. Ours is a slimmed down version of the play, with fewer characters and one setting instead of four. So, apart from dumbing down the highbrow jokes, ruining the perfect plot, tossing in anachronisms, and adding a song very much like one sung by Shirley Bassey in 1964, the play is pretty much your grandmother’s The Alchemist.” The talented cast, led by Obie winner Rogers, does its best with this dumbing down, seeming to enjoy themselves immensely, as did much of the audience the night I went. I wish I felt the same.

FLASH FORWARD: DEBUT WORKS AND RECENT FILMS BY NOTABLE JAPANESE DIRECTORS

Masayuki Suo takes the audience on a wild ride in Talking the Pictures

FLASH FORWARD
Japan Society online and in-person
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
December 3-23, free – $10 online for three-day rental, $15 in person December 11 & 17, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society and the ACA Cinema Project (Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan) follow up their inaugural festival, “21st Century Japan: Films from 2001-2020,” with “Flash Forward: Debut Works and Recent Films by Notable Japanese Directors,” running December 3-23 online and in person.

The three-week series highlights the work of six established Japanese directors, pairing their debut with a more recent film. Available on demand as a three-day rental for ten dollars or fifteen dollars per bundle are Naomi Kawase’s 1997 Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Suzaku and 2018 Vision, Miwa Nishikawa’s 2003 Wild Berries and 2016 The Long Excuse, Shuichi Okita’s 2009 The Chef of South Polar and 2020 Ora, Ora Be Goin’ Alone, Junji Sakamoto’s 1989 Knockout and 2016 The Projects (see review below), and Masayuki Suo’s 1989 Fancy Dance and 2019 Talking the Pictures. Akihiko Shiota’s 1999 Moonlight Whispers was supposed to be teamed up with his 2019 Farewell Song but will not be shown because of music rights issues; it has been replaced by his fourth film, the 2002 drama Harmful Insect.

The “Filmmakers on the Rise” section comprises recent works by six directors who might be part of “Flash Forward” if it were held again in 2040: Masakazu Kaneko 2016 The Albino’s Trees, Yuko Hakota’s 2019 Blue Hour, Omoi Sasaki’s 2017 A Boy Sato, Eisuke Naito’s Forgiven Children, Kyoko Miyake’s 2013 My Atomic Aunt, and Hiroshi Okuyama’s 2019 Jesus. These films are available for free on demand. Also free are two online talks, “Conversations with the Filmmakers,” with Kawase, Nishikawa, Okita, Sakamoto, Shiota, and Suo, and the panel discussion “Debut Works and Beyond,” with Columbia assistant professor Takuya Tsunoda, UCLA assistant professor Junko Yamazaki, and writer, curator, and filmmaker Jasper Sharp, moderated by Yale professor Aaron Gerow.

Two in-person screenings at Japan Society celebrate the late master Sadao Yamanaka, who made more than two dozen films in the 1930s, few of which survive, before dying in Manchuria in 1938 at the age of twenty-eight. On December 11 at 7:00, a new 4K restoration of Yamanaka’s 1935 Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo will have its North American premiere, followed December 17 at 7:00 by the international premiere of the 4K restoration of Yamanaka’s 1936 Priest of Darkness.

THE PROJECTS

Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita’s (Ittoku Kishibe) lives change once again with the return of Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh) in The Projects

THE PROJECTS (DANCHI) (団地) (Junji Sakamoto, 2016)
film.japansociety.org

“Nothing is impossible in a housing project,” several people say in Junji Sakamoto’s delightfully absurdist and downright weird black comedy The Projects, which made its North American debut at Japan Society’s tenth annual Japan Cuts Festival in 2016. Elderly couple Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji Yamashita (Ittoku Kishibe) have moved to an inexpensive suburban Osaka housing project, known as a danchi, after closing their popular herbal remedies shop following the tragic death of their son, Naoya. The couple lives quietly, unable to process their grief or move forward, but they’re back in business when one of their strangest customers, the well-dressed, oddly speaking Shinjo (Takumi Saitoh), tracks them down and essentially demands, in his calm, direct manner, that they begin making his special remedy again. Meanwhile, Seiji, who would rather be left alone, is dragged into the race for head of the tenant association, running against Gyotoku (Renji Ishibashi), who is having an affair with a younger resident and is married to Kimiko (Michiyo Okusu), who is obsessed with properly separating the danchi’s garbage, and young upstart Yoshizumi (Takayuki Takuma), who is not afraid to discipline his son, Kitaro (Hiroaki Ogasawara), in full view of his neighbors. After Seiji loses, he decides to hide from everyone, retreating under the floorboards whenever someone stops by, which leads a gossiping group of ladies (Hikaru Horiguchi, Yukari Taki, Mayu Harada, Mari Hamada, and Miyako Takeuchi) to believe that Hinako has actually killed her husband and chopped up the body. As the media and police get involved, things get crazier and crazier as the totally bizarre conclusion approaches.

Fujiyama and Kishibe are absolutely charming as the Yamashitas, moving and talking with a sweetly warm, slow demeanor, asking little from a life that has let them down. Sakamoto wrote The Projects specifically for comedian and stage actress Fujiyama; the two last worked together on the award-winning 2000 film Face, Fujiyama’s first film, and the pairing is another marvel. Fujiyama is wonderful in the role, imbuing Hinako with a wry, very funny sense of humor that is splendidly complemented by Kishibe’s more serious Seiji. Lovingly shot by Ryo Ohtsuka and featuring a playful score by Gorô Yasukawa, The Projects is pure fun all the way through, with many laugh-out-loud moments even as it deals with some heavy subjects, right up to its out-of-this-world finale. Don’t let the title fool you; “projects” in Japan were much-desired apartment complexes originally built in the 1950s to supply suburban public housing for the growing post-WWII Japanese population. Although they are not as popular today, they are not the kind of projects associated with drugs and crime in America. The Projects is paired with Sakamoto’s 1989 debut, Knockout (Dotsuitarunen), in “Flash Forward: Debut Works and Recent Films by Notable Japanese Directors.”

JARED MEZZOCCHI: ON THE BEAUTY OF LOSS

Who: Jared Mezzocchi
What: Interactive virtual presentation
Where: Vineyard Theatre Zoom
When: Monday, December 6, $15, 8:00
Why: From November 11 to 21, the Vineyard Theatre presented Jared Mezzocchi’s interactive Zoom show On the Beauty of Loss, in which the Obie-winning director, actor, playwright, associate professor, and designer (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, How to Catch a Star) reflects on personal and communal grief, relating the 2004 death of his father to the 2020 passing of his grandfather. In the show, he re-creates the same road trip north that he made on both those occasions, putting them in context with the tragedies we’ve all endured during the coronavirus crisis, set to an original score by Lee Kinney.

In the above trailer, Mezzocchi, who codirected the virtual hit Russian Troll Farm, explains, “I was thinking to myself, it would be pretty cool to have a digital road trip where I invited a bunch of people in a car that was driving in real time and we worked together to figure out how to process grief while we are all still apart from one another. I’ve been writing this piece my whole life.” The Vineyard has added a special encore performance on December 6 at 8:00, the seventeenth anniversary of Mezzocchi’s father’s death; audience members can choose to either watch the livestream or participate over Zoom.

EGON SCHIELE SYMPOSIUM

Who: Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Verena Gamper, Franz Smola, Sandra Tretter, Elisabeth Leopold, Elisabeth Dutz, Christian Bauer, Jane Kallir, Gemma Blackshaw, Stefan Kutzenberger, Karin Maierhofer, Sandra Maria Dzialek
What: Fourth Egon Schiele Symposium
Where: Leopold Museum online
When: Friday, December 3, free with advance RSVP, 3:45 – 11:30 am
Why: The Leopold Museum, whose Egon Schiele collection comprises 42 paintings, 184 watercolors, drawings, and prints, and numerous writings and miscellaneous texts, will be hosting its fourth Egon Schiele Symposium on December 3, streaming live from Vienna beginning at 3:45 am EST. Interest in Schiele, who died in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight of the Spanish flu, has continued to grow over the last decade, from a centennial exhibition at St. Galerie Etienne to the documentary Portrait of Wally to John Kelly’s remounting of his one-man show Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte.

The symposium, the first of which was held in 2016, features twelve presentations, including one in English by Galerie St. Etienne head and Kallir Research Institute director Jane Kallir, “Reconfiguring Gender: Egon Schiele and the Gay Subculture.” If, like me, you miss Kallir’s extraordinary essays about the gallery’s exhibits, her talk should be a special treat. Below is the full schedule; the symposium will be available for on-demand viewing following the livestream, which will have an interactive Zoom chat.

9:45 am: Welcoming Remarks, with Leopold Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Leopold Museum Research Center head Verena Gamper

10:00 am: Egon Schiele’s Painting Jugendströmung [Current of Youth] – New Findings About Schiele’s Contribution at the International Art Show Vienna 1909, with Österreichische Galerie Belvedere curator Franz Smola

10:30 am: Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele at the Vienna Art Show in Berlin 1916, with Klimt Foundation deputy director Sandra Tretter

11:00 am: “I Went Through Klimt”: On Egon Schiele’s Painting Hermits and the Faculty Paintings of Gustav Klimt, with Elisabeth Leopold of the Leopold Museum Private Foundation

11:30 am: Schiele’s Death Masks – New Findings of the Ongoing Research at the Albertina’s Egon Schiele Archive, with Albertina curator Elisabeth Dutz

1:30 pm: The Body Electric: Erwin Osen – Egon Schiele, with Leopold Museum Research Center head Verena Gamper

2:00 pm: Erwin Dominik Osen: An Approach, with Egon Schiele Museum curator Christian Bauer

2:30 pm: Reconfiguring Gender: Egon Schiele and the Gay Subculture (English), with Kallir Research Institute director Jane Kallir

3:00 pm: “Dear Curator …”: Correspondence as Care for Erwin Osen’s Lustknabe [Catamite] (English), with art historian and curator Gemma Blackshaw and architectural historian and artist Adam Kaasa

4:00 pm: Blue Lady in Green Nature: A Workshop Report from Silicon Valley – Egon Schiele and Artificial Intelligence, with writer, curator, and literary scholar Stefan Kutzenberger

4:30 pm: Egon Schiele’s Painting Young Mother – Insights into the Research and Restoration Project, with Wien Museum restorer Karin Maierhofer

5:00 pm: Egon Schiele’s Towns – the Leopold Museum Holdings from a Material-Technology Perspective, with Leopold Museum restorer Sandra Maria Dzialek

NETFLIX’S PASSING: SCREENING AND CONVERSATION

Who: Rebecca Hall, Ruth Negga, André Holland, David Nugent
What: Screening and conversation
Where: 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St., Buttenwieser Hall and 92Y online
When: Friday, December 3, $25 in person, 6:30; $20 online, 8:20
Why: In her directorial debut, Passing, award-winning actress Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Machinal) makes her father, the late Sir Peter Hall of the RSC and the National Theatre, proud. The black-and-white Netflix drama stars Tessa Thompson as Irene “Reenie” Redfield, a Black woman living in Harlem who meets up with an old friend, Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), who is living her life passing as a white woman. Although Reenie is uncomfortable with Clare’s decision, she takes advantage of certain situations where she can pass as well. As Clare starts spending more time with Reenie, her secret threatens to be exposed. Set during the Harlem Renaissance, the tense, beautifully photographed Passing, based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, also features André Holland as Reenie’s husband, Brian Redfield, Alexander Skarsgård as Clare’s bigoted spouse, John Bellew, and Bill Camp as Hugh Wentworth, a friend and mentor to Reenie. On December 3, the 92nd St. Y is hosting a rescheduled hybrid event in which the Ethiopian-Irish Negga (Loving, Shirley), Alabama-born Holland (Selma, Moonlight), and London native Hall will screen and discuss the film with Hamptons International Film Festival artistic director David Nugent at Buttenwieser Hall; the conversation can be livestreamed beginning at 8:20.

ESN: SONGS FROM THE KITCHEN — CHANUKAH EDITION!

Lorin Sklamberg, Sarah Gordon, and Frank London celebrate a Yiddish Chanukah with food and music

Who: Sir Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg, Sarah Gordon
What: Streaming Chanukah event
Where: National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene online
When: November 28 – December 6, free (donations accepted)
Why: Named for the Yiddish word for eat, “essen,” National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s ESN series combines cooking and music. It now turns to the Festival of Lights for a special presentation available on demand November 28 through December 6. The show, in English and Yiddish, features ESN creators Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics and fourth-generation Yiddish singer Sarah Mina Gordon sharing holiday music and cooking demonstrations. Directed and edited by Stephanie Lynne Mason and Adam B. Shapiro, “Songs from the Kitchen — Chanukah Edition!” will feature latkes, syrniki, varenikes, banya pontschkes, and schmaltz and gribnenes alongside fun, festive tunes.

TWI-NY TALK: MICHAEL DORF / CITY WINERY

Entrepreneur and impresario Michael Dorf takes a much-deserved break during the pandemic (photo courtesy Michael Dorf)

City Winery New York
25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St.
646-751-6033
citywinery.com
michaeldorf.com

In Indulge Your Senses: Scaling Intimacy in a Digital World, music entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael Dorf writes about opening night at his new club, City Winery: “By then, the smartphone and social-media revolution was underway, and I realized why music fans were showing up in droves. Like me, they had inadvertently let technology disrupt their connection to music — and now they were coming to City Winery to get away from their devices. They were eager to escape their hermetic digital bubble, excited to watch their favorite musicians pluck real guitar strings and slam actual drum skins while also nourishing their other senses — the dramatic sight of a legendary performer up close, the aroma of the winery, the taste of great food and wine, the touch of a nearby friend. . . . Man, it feels great to be back in the real world.”

The Wisconsin-born longtime New Yorker and married father of three wrote those words in 2019 about a 2008 New Year’s Eve concert by Joan Osborne, but he could just as easily have written them today, as the country emerges from a lengthy pandemic lockdown. The amiable and driven Dorf started the much-loved Knitting Factory in 1986 with Louise Spitzer, when he was a twenty-three-year-old Washington University psychology and business graduate. (“We had no idea what we were doing!” he has admitted.) In 2008 he opened City Winery on Varick St., an intimate venue where fans came for food, wine, and music. Among the many acts who played there were Richard Thompson, Kasey Chambers, Robyn Hitchcock, the Mountain Goats, Living Colour, Bob Mould, Nanci Griffith, Eric Burdon, Los Lonely Boys, Lucinda Williams, Todd Rundgren, Steve Earle, Ian Hunter, Ed Sheeran, and Prince. Dorf has also presented “The Music Of” concerts at Carnegie Hall, paying tribute to such musicians as Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, the Who, and Joni Mitchell with all-star lineups, raising money for music education in schools.

In 2020, just before the coronavirus crisis stopped the world, City Winery moved to a thirty-two-thousand-square-foot space on Pier 57 in Hudson River Park. During the pandemic, Dorf and City Winery hosted special livestreamed holiday concerts for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Father’s Day and virtual seders for Passover. Early on, Dorf, who also runs City Vineyard, became a vocal advocate for the reopening of bars, restaurants, and music venues, citing numerous inconsistencies and incongruities in government regulations. Following strict CDC guidelines, City Winery is back in business, with music, food, and wine flowing. The upcoming schedule includes Suzanne Vega, John Waters, Betty, Los Lobos, Aimee Mann, and David Broza.

On December 13, City Winery and the Town Hall are joining forces for the seventh annual John Henry’s Friends benefit to raise funds for the educational needs of autistic children; the concert features Steve Earle and the Dukes with special guests Bruce Springsteen, Rosanne Cash, Willie Nile, and the Mastersons.

Dorf recently shared his thoughts with twi-ny on coming out of the lockdown, charity concerts, the future of livestreamed shows, and how great it feels to be back in the real world.

twi-ny: You were one of the leading advocates for reopening New York City, especially entertainment venues. What were the major issues that you felt the government wasn’t getting?

michael dorf: We all agreed, we needed to do things safe. But in the bureaucratic fear in the beginning, there was no practical thinking around seating vs. standing, paid tickets vs. just free music, etc. We wanted to take the smart Dr. Fauci approach to the gatherings, whether it was rapid testing, social distancing, and provide real world producer input so that we could follow what was being advised but dovetailed for live performances.

twi-ny: A lot of people like to knock Sen. Schumer, but he really pushed Save Our Stages. What was his involvement like?

md: People like to bash everyone and that is unfortunate. Chuck Schumer and several others helped enormously to push for our industry. He understood live music, theater, dance, and the impact it was having, not just on our venues, but on all our people, the ecosystem of the live entertainment world. I have tremendous respect for him because of this.

twi-ny: Your virtual seders were a blast. Going forward, will you do some kind of hybrid Passover?

md: Breaking bread (in this case matzah) around the table with other human beings is the essence of the seder. Now, my Passover event, which I’ve been doing in New York City for over twenty-five years now, is certainly not your normal seder. So, I think a hybrid is our future, three hundred people live in on our room in NYC and another few thousand around the globe.

twi-ny: You also hosted several special holiday streaming shows with artists from around the country, and you have livestreams coming up with Jacob Whitesides, Sa-Roc, the Empty Pockets, and Woofstock. Will you be doing more of that in the future, or do you see that coming to an eventual end?

md: Again, our business is to create live, intimate gatherings of people and sell them food, wine, great service, and an experience they will remember. We can’t do that as well virtually (especially the selling of wine), but certainly when it is practical for us to add the livestream for shows and events so that people who can’t travel to any of our venues can partially experience the event.

twi-ny: When you first reopened, what was the reaction of artists and audiences? Was there any initial hesitancy on the part of either or both?

md: Audiences are still a bit hesitant, especially as we live in a world where breakthrough cases happen, even with all our strict protocols of vaccine-only admissions and masks for all unless eating and drinking. Nevertheless, people miss the magic of live entertainment and when you get to it, it is an emotional experience that one misses. Artists are so grateful to be working again and audiences grateful to be entertained. Together, we are seeing lovefests every night with very happy fans and artists.

twi-ny: Were those reactions different at your various locations? Or was the situation pretty much the same in Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Philly, the Hudson Valley, and DC?

md: It is similar. In Nashville, perhaps a little weirder given the local political insanity and freer laws. But for the most part, we have worked hard to push smart policies on admission and staff throughout the pandemic. It’s not over either.

twi-ny: No, it’s not. City Winery is renowned for its vintages. Has the pandemic, as well as climate change, affected your vineyards?

md: Well, thanks for the positive on the wine. The pandemic has only made working in the winery and harvest more difficult from a labor perspective. However, global warming, the fires and temperature out west and in Europe, has severely affected the crop, the yield. The lack of water has made some vineyards not be able to deliver their grapes. It is only going to get more difficult for a supply of grapes, and prices on wine will be going up.

twi-ny: Are you loving your new location on the Hudson? What do you think of your neighbor, Little Island?

md: Love our new location; the entire neighborhood is filled with the arts — architecture, visual arts, cool businesses, and, yes, Little Island is very cool. We are also near the Whitney Museum, the Meatpacking District, the High Line, and so many other cool buildings.

twi-ny: City Winery has always put on terrific benefit shows, raising money for music education in schools with your annual “The Music Of” concerts at Carnegie Hall. Next up is Carly Simon in March, with Darlene Love, Livingston Taylor, Bettye Lavette, Jimmy Webb, and more to be announced. Can you share who might be feted in the future?

md: I’m a kid in a candy shop, thinking about the future shows at Carnegie. The music of Stevie Wonder, CSN, Dolly Parton, U2, Sting, so many other great songwriters out there to do. There are so many artists that love them and want to pay homage to them. And there remains much-needed cash to the music programs that serve undersupported youth in schools around the country.

twi-ny: On December 13, you’re teaming up with the Town Hall for the seventh annual John Henry’s Friends Benefit, featuring Steve Earle & the Dukes and several of his amazing colleagues. What can you tell us about that show and the charity?

md: We have done this to support our friend Steve Earle, who is really the hero of this evening. His son is autistic and goes to the Keswell School, which this benefits. Steve makes the importance of this real by explaining to the audience the severity and challenges and why we need to support this program. It’s very powerful stuff, and this year’s show is going to blow people away. It feels great for all of us at City Winery to help raise these important funds.

twi-ny: You seem to have been going nonstop for decades; do you ever take a break? When you’re not at City Winery, what cultural things are you doing elsewhere?

md: I like to hike, need to hike. I like to golf, need to golf. I like wine, I like my kids, I like my friends. But I love what I do. I love creating spaces where people can gather, indulge their senses, and creating lasting memories. It keeps me going, and we have a lot more still to do and grow. Five new locations in 2022 and many more before I am done.