this week in music

THE GREAT HUMAN UNIFIER: UNRAVELLED AT THE MILLER THEATRE

Andrew Borba and Lucy Davenport star as Robert and Anne Adams in Jake Broder’s UnRavelled (photo by Stan Evans)

UNRAVELLED
The Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Broadway at 116th St.
Friday, October 23, 7:30, and Saturday, October 24, 1:00, $12.50 – $49.75
millertheatre.com
www.gbhi.org/unravelled
unravelledplay.com

One of the most fascinating plays that I saw during the Zoom era came from an unlikely source: the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Jake Broder’s UnRavelled is a deeply affecting ninety-minute play that shares the true story of Canadian scientist Anne Adams, who, in 1994, at the age of fifty-three, became obsessed with Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” and made a remarkable painting based on the 1928 musical work, which Ravel composed for dancer Ida Rubenstein in 1928, when he was fifty-three. As it turns out, both Adams and Ravel had the same serious brain disease, Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), which affects memory while lighting a creative fuse.

The play has now been adapted into an in-person production that is on the road, arriving at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University On October 23 and 24.

“I always imagined UnRavelled onstage, but with the pandemic, we had to pivot and present it virtually. After the first Zoom reading, the audience really came out of the woodwork to tell us their stories, and we realized how powerful this piece could be,” Broder, whose other plays include Our American Hamlet and Sense of Decency, told twi-ny. “I truly had no idea when I first made it if UnRavelled was good or effective, but once we put it in front of people, we realized we had to keep presenting this story. The twi-ny Pandemic Award [for Best Scientific Play] helped drive traffic to that version, which allowed us to present it on the West Coast and get articles and reviews about the project in Ireland and England. This helped us realize UnRavelled’s extensive reach. Quite simply, the story is only relevant to two kinds of people: those with a brain or those who love someone who has one. Having a brain is a great human unifier.”

Directed by James Bonas, the ninety-five-minute UnRavelled stars Lucy Davenport as Anne, a mathematician, chemist, and biologist, and Andrew Borba as her husband, Robert, a traffic architectural engineer. They are trying to hold together following a serious accident involving their son, but when they continue to have trouble communicating and Anne starts spending more time by herself in her studio, listening to “Bolero” and painting, Robert begins to suspect something else is going on, and Dr. Bruce Miller (David Aaron Baker) ultimately confirms that.

Anne is not necessarily alone; she is having imaginary conversations with Ravel (Leo Marks) about art, love, and science. Ravel also speaks with Rubenstein (Tracey A. Leigh), who has commissioned “Bolero,” which Ravel detests and can’t believe he actually wrote. Davenport and Marks reprise their roles from the online version. Keyboardist Aron Kallay serves as music director, with Randy Gloss on percussion, Rachel Iba on violin, Michelle Elliott Rearick on cello, and Nathaniel Edison on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, and dizi.

The real Dr. Miller is the founding director of GBHI and the director of the Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center at UCSF; you can watch the online Zoom presentation of UnRavelled here, followed by a panel discussion with Broder, Dr. Miller, behavioral neurologists Bill Seeley and Adit Friedberg, and virtual director Nike Doukas, as well as a related dance choreographed by Magda Kaczmarska.

Of course, first check it out at the Miller Theatre, in person, how it was always meant to be seen.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JUST TAKING IT IN: GOING FULL MANTIS WITH MILFORD GRAVES AND ASHANTI ALSTON

Milford Graves enjoys a bite in his garden in new documentary about the unique percussionist and philosopher

Milford Graves enjoys a bite in his garden in documentary about the unique percussionist and philosopher

MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS (Jake Meginsky, 2018)
Maysles Documentary Center
343 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Sunday, September 27, $7-$15, 2:00, free Q&A 4:30
maysles.org
fullmantis.com

Jake Meginsky’s unconventional documentary of unconventional musician Milford Graves begins with the following epigraph from Graves: “Look at the room downstairs / Look at the garden outside / Don’t try to analyze it / Just take it in.” That is not only Graves’s life philosophy but also the best way to experience Milford Graves Full Mantis, which is screening September 27 at 2:00 at the Maysles Documentary Center. Born in 1941 in South Jamaica, Queens, where he resided until his death in February 2021, Graves was an avant-garde free jazz percussionist who played and lived to his own beat. In 2004, Meginsky knocked on Graves’s door, asked to study with him, and soon became the Professor’s assistant and documentarian; the film, codirected by drummer Neil Young, who also edited and photographed it with Meginsky, features compelling live footage along with peaceful moments in Graves’s basement and expansive garden. Early on, Meginsky shows a wild excerpt from a 1973 concert at the Jazz Middelheim Festival in Antwerp in which Graves performs with Joe Rigby and Hugh Glover on reeds and Arthur Williams on trumpet; the fierce, dissonant music might not be to everyone’s taste, but it serves as a terrific counterpoint to Graves’s calmer side, pontificating on, well, sometimes it’s hard to tell what, but it’s always fascinating.

There are also clips of Graves playing solo at the Brandeis Improv Festival in 2015 and in one of Park Ave. Armory’s historic rooms in 2016; in 2011 in his basement, where he’s surrounded by African sculpture, books, and computers that record his heartbeat and nervous system, which he incorporates into his work; and in Japan in 1981 with dancer Min Tanaka at a school for autistic children, where his unique performance inspired the kids to get up and move to the groove. In his backyard dojo he explains Yara, the discipline he invented based on martial arts, African ritual dance, the Lindy Hop, and the praying mantis and which he refers to as “the black way of self protection.” There are no talking-head experts or Graves acolytes singing his praises; the only voice heard in the film is Graves’s own, and for the first half of its ninety minutes Meginsky doesn’t show the film’s subject as he talks. Instead, while Graves speaks about his past and shares his kaleidoscopic philosophies, the camera slowly focuses on his lush garden or shows some of Graves’s animations.

But eventually Graves is seen sitting in his basement, telling a long, remarkable story of a turning point in his life. He’s an engaging character, bursting with enthusiasm and a unique view of the human body, the five senses, tear ducts, and the parasympathetic nervous system. And throughout, he keeps playing those drums, holding the sticks in his trademark way on a nonstandard kit he put together himself.

The screening at MDC will be followed at 4:30 by “An Afternoon with Ashanti Omowali Alston,” a free Q&A with the revolutionary, orator, writer, organizer, motivator, anarchist, and former Black Panther Party member, in conversation with political philosopher, academic, and author Joy James, focusing on the new book Anarchist Panther: The Selected Writings of Ashanti O. Alston (AK Press, August 2026, $21.99).

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

“TO BE PUERTO RICAN IS TO BE AMERICAN”: ROBERTO LUGO IN MADISON SQUARE PARK

Roberto Lugo poses under depictions of his parents on Capicú de Cariño (I Heard It Both Ways) in Madison Square Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

ROBERTO LUGO: ALFARERO DEL BARRIO
Madison Square Park
26th St. between Fifth & Madison Aves.
Through December 6, free
www.madisonsquarepark.org
www.robertolugostudio.com
flickr slideshow and videos

“I knew of the Madison Square Park art program from Martin Puryear’s work, from Maya Lin’s work, and thinking about this as a moment to see an artist’s vision in this context, a place where everybody goes,” Roberto Lugo told me at the May opening of “Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter).” He added, “I also think about this as an opportunity, that we have this crossing of so many cultures that are intersecting here, so I thought to myself, If I ever have the opportunity to do something like that, what would my focus be? How do I represent my culture and connect to places in New York? When I think about Puerto Rican culture, I think about the Bronx, Spanish Harlem, all these places where there’s this fusion in the contribution of Puerto Ricans, and I wanted to see them come here, but even Latino people in general, people of color, when they’re coming here, it feels really good to have something bright and colorful and celebratory.”

Roberto Lugo’s Para Los Días Caliente (This Is for the Hot Ones) is not for the dogs (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter)” is a multipart installation that consists of a fifteen-foot-high graffiti-laden red fire hydrant, Para Los Días Caliente (This Is for the Hot Ones), a giant version of the first piece he made as a ceramicist and an homage to his father, who, on hot days in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia where they’re from, would cool off with his family by spraying water from a hydrant; four Domino Tables around the reflecting pool feature images of Lugo, his grandfather, baseball hero Roberto Clemente, and Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz (people are invited to bring their own dominoes and play on the tables); and Capicú de Cariño (I Heard It Both Ways) is a twenty-foot-high vase-urn made of foam, paint, and steel with portraits of Puerto Ricans around it: Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, singer Bad Bunny, Clemente, playwrights Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lemon Andersen, and Lugo’s parents, in addition to flowers, dominoes, chickens, and other lively elements. There is also a graffitied archway that allows you to walk through the vase, further immersing you in Puerto Rican culture and history.

“He remembers where he came from,” his father told me.

In his artist statement, Lugo declares, “Yo soy Boricua. / a proud domino-playing, / pasteles-making, / piragua-selling, / fire hydrant-spraying, / plantain-peeling, / salsa-dancing, / alcapurria-consuming, / limber-on the front porch-hustling Puerto Rican.” He also explains, “In recognition of the semiquincentennial of the United States of America, I wanted to recognize the diverse contributions of Puerto Ricans. ‘Alfarero del Barrio’ is a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and a visual representation of our resilience, creativity, and courage. Puerto Rican heritage has roots in African, Taíno, and Spanish culture — a sofrito that provides flavor to everything we do. The history of this intersection is filled with stories of strife, injustice, and horror, but through it all, Puerto Ricans have proven to be icons of resourcefulness and ingenuity that are celebrated through our food, music, and culture.”

On September 16 at 5:30 and October 14 at 5:00, there will be free twenty-minute evening art tours starting on the Redbud Lawn, led by the MSPC curatorial team. And on September 19, a tea ceremony will take place on the Cherry Lawn at 4:30, including a performance by Lugo, who is also a spoken-word poet, and special musical guests Lennie Simo and Marley Howard, with everyone enjoying Puerto Rican snacks and Lugo’s mother’s ginger tea in cups made by Lugo that you can keep.

The exhibition continues through December 6, so you have plenty of time to experience its meaningful beauty and, as Lugo suggests, take photos of yourself in the vase, play dominoes, have fun at the hydrant, and “see that to be Puerto Rican is to be American.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

A SURGING LEGACY: PAYING TRIBUTE TO SINÉAD O’CONNOR AT THE JOYCE

The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor celebrates the life and legacy of controversial singer-songwriter (photo by Kate Garner)

THE SURGE: AN ODE TO SINÉAD O’CONNOR
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
September 16-27, $97-$112
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org

Tickets are going fast for the North American premiere of Tony-winning, Emmy-nominated Sonya Tayeh’s The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor, running at the Joyce from September 16 to 27. A coproduction with Factory International in Manchester, England, the show pays tribute to the Dublin-born singer-songwriter who rose to stardom in the last 1980s and early 1990s with such albums as The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got before getting mired in a series of political and religious controversies, experiencing health problems, and disappearing from public view for extended periods of time before dying by suicide in July 2023 at the age of fifty-six.

The seventy-minute show features Betsy Cooper, Alison Clancy, Gabrielle Malone, Mor Mendel, Amy Miller, Jennifer Nugent, Karine Plantadit, Lisa Race, Monique Smith, and Jin Ju Song-Begin dancing to more than a dozen O’Connor songs, from “Troy” and “Mandinka” to “Never Get Old” and “Feels So Different,” as well as audio excerpts from her 2021 memoir, Rememberings.

“Her death was generating these feelings and I was dancing in my loft, surrounded by this grief and joy,” director and choreographer Tayeh says in a program note. “The Joyce and I had been thinking about what we could make together, and not finding the right thing yet, and two things began boiling in my mind. One was about how ahead of her time she was, the volume of her voice, not just as a singer but with a belief system about people, those denied, closed off and mocked. The other was about curiosity, about where all the dance artists were that were my age and older. Where are the women over forty, and why did they disappear?”

Ever since her death, O’Connor and her legacy have been going through a metamorphosis and reevaluation; The Surge should add to that grief and joy.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JOSIAH McELHENY & FRIENDS: “INSTRUMENT OBJECTS” AT THE KITCHEN

Who: Josiah McElheny, Zeena Parkins, Wendy Eisenberg, David Grubbs, Raven Chacon, Jennie C. Jones, George Lewis, Fred Moten, Claire Chase, Mary Halvorson, Ikue Mori, Tomeka Reid, Jason Moran, Craig Taborn, John Corbett
What: Programs in conjunction with the exhibition “Josiah McElheny: Instrument Object”
Where: The Kitchen at Westbeth, 163B Bank St., fourth floor loft
When: September 10 – November 7, free
Why: Josiah McElheny, who specializes in working with glass and mirrors, will be opening his latest exhibition, “Instrument Object,” on September 10 at the Kitchen at Westbeth, in which the Boston-born, New York City–based artist pays tribute to ten musicians and composers by translating their work into visual form. The multimedia installation, on view through November 7, honors the legacies of Pauline Oliveros, Lucia Dlugoszewski, Julius Eastman, John Cage, Milford Graves, David Grubbs, Big Mama Thornton, Joe McPhee, Wes Montgomery, and Sun Ra in such pieces as Bench for Archival Listening, Ladder Harp, Cosmic Blue Trumpet, and Heartline.

The show will be accompanied by a series of free live performances and gatherings, beginning September 10 at 7:00 with Zeena Parkins and continuing September 11 with a sunset duet by Wendy Eisenberg and David Grubbs, October 1 with the experimental dialogue “Limb Independence” at Giorno Poetry Systems with McElheny, Raven Chacon, Jennie C. Jones, George Lewis, and Fred Moten, and concluding November 7 and 8 with the two-day “Improvisation, Archive, and Homage” symposium with Claire Chase, Mary Halvorson, Ikue Mori, Tomeka Reid, Jason Moran, and Craig Taborn, moderated by John Corbett. In addition, there will be family art-making workshops on September 19 and 26 and October 3 at 11:00 am and 12:30 pm. All programs are free with advance RSVP.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]

TASTY TIMES SQUARE: SAMPLING SIGNATURE BITES AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD

Taste of Times Square is back with local signature bites September 9 (photo by Michael Hull for the Times Square Alliance)

TASTE OF TIMES SQUARE
46th St. between Broadway & Ninth Ave., Broadway between 45th & 46th Sts.
Wednesday, September 9, dishes $5-$10, 4:00 – 8:00
timessquarenyc.org

The international culinary flavor of the Times Square area will be on display September 9 at the annual Taste of Times Square, where more than three dozen local restaurants will be serving their signature dishes on and around Restaurant Row; there will also be live performances representing several current Broadway shows from the Broadway Dreams Foundation and Ellen’s Stardusters. Most dishes cost five dollars, with a few no more than ten bucks, purchased with “tastes”; you can get 25% off advance wristbands of $25 and $50 through September 8.

The menu lineup includes lobster toast from Rosie O’Grady’s, beef or chicken suya from Lagos, tacos from Toloache, sliders from Schnipper’s, rigatoni Bolognese from Orso, a Cuban sandwich from Havana Central, penne from Becco, escovitch fish fingers from Jasmine’s Caribbean Cuisine, tiramisu from Bond 45, cheesecake from Junior’s, and frrrozen hot chocolate from Serendipity 3. There’s also fare from the Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, and Applebee’s but not Olive Garden or Bubba Gump.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

NOT MAKING SENSE: DOUG AITKEN’S LIGHTSCAPE AT THE SHED

The audience can sit on a central wooden platform or move about the space to experience Doug Aitken’s Lightscape (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

DOUG AITKEN: LIGHTSCAPE
The Shed
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 13, pay-what-you-wish (suggested $10)
theshed.org
www.lightscapeart.org

“All of this will never make sense,” one of the characters says in Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, a seven-screen immersive installation at the Shed that is an audiovisual tone poem about the old and the new, nature and technology, and America itself — where we were, where we are, and where we’re heading. Gorgeously photographed by Chris Hadland and Aitken, it’s beautiful to watch and listen to; it makes you want to stop and look and treasure what you have, what’s around you right now.

A cowboy (Christopher Duke Blassman) hovers on the periphery before riding to a gas station in the desert. Two dancers (Daphne Fernberger and Konkrete) subtly move about in an Amazon factory. A couple (Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser) contemplate their relationship in a high-rise hotel. A man (Nikki Haas) keeps running, more toward something than away. Potentially dangerous animals lurk.

The cast also features Ray Braungart as the diving man, Megan Renee as the city driver, Benjamin Earl as the truck stop drifter, Victoria Martinez as the sleeping young woman, and Beck as the man in the donut shop. The images swirl across the screens, with shots reminiscent of the work of Robert Smithson, Andreas Gursky, Edward Burtynsky, and David Hockney, occasionally offering different angles of the same scene. Music by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Beck, LA LOM, and Aitken with Grant Gershon echoes throughout the room, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the LA Master Chorale.

Doug Aitken’s Lightscape continues at the Shed through September 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Characters rarely speak but when they do, they offer up such bons mots as “One day I’ll slip away,” “It just keeps going and going,” and “You can get lost in the blink of an eye.”

The audience can sit on the platform, facing any direction, or walk around the room; I advise checking out some of the film from behind the screens. It’s on a sixty-five-minute loop, and the abstract narrative has no obvious beginning, middle, and end, so you can enter at any time. As a woman tells us, “It’s all connected.”

A Redondo Beach native based in California and New York City, Aitken has previously presented such shows as Sleepwalkers, a multichannel video starring Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton created for MoMA’s sculpture garden and facade, 100 Yrs, which concluded with the destruction of 303 Gallery, New Horizon, involving a gondola and a hot air balloon rising into the night sky, and Station to Station, which took place on a moving transcontinental train.

With Lightscape, previously seen in unique iterations at Disney Hall and the Marciano Art Foundation, Aitken continues his investigation of art’s role in a changing world. The work doesn’t condemn the future, but it questions how we’re getting there, emphasizing how everything is connected but all of it will never make sense, able to slip away in the blink of an eye as it keeps going and going.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]