this week in music

UNDER THE RADAR 2024: TOP FIVE

Get tickets to such shows as Volcano at the Under the Radar festival before time runs out (photo by Emijlia Jefrehmova)

UNDER THE RADAR 2024
Multiple venues
January 5-21
utrfest.org

There was quite an uproar in June when Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announced the cancellation of the widely popular Under the Radar festival, which the Public had hosted since 2006. Held every January, the series featured a diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, discussions, and live music and dance, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Eustis followed that outcry with another message:

“Last week, difficult news was shared that the Under the Radar festival would not return for the Public’s 23–24 season. We made the painful decision to place the festival on hiatus. I understand and share the hurt that those who participated in and loved the festival have expressed over the past few days. . . . Unfortunately, these are exceptionally challenging times in our field. The Public, like almost every other nonprofit theater in the country, is facing serious financial pressure. . . . In the certainty that better times will come, we continue to work to preserve the health and mission of the Public. We look forward to a time when we can fully expand back into the robust and expansive theater we need to be.”

Festival founder and director Mark Russell was determined that the show must go on, and he brought it back to life. “Festivals are celebrations. They mark harvests and other moments of abundance or recognition,” he said in a statement. “Under the Radar is a festival that each year celebrates the vibrancy of new theater, in New York and internationally. At this moment, even in very challenging times, there is still innovative work rising from communities around New York and in far-reaching parts of the globe. Under the Radar aims to spotlight this work for audiences — not only those ‘in the know’ but from a wider stretch of communities, diverse in all respects, that could benefit by engaging with these creative leaders.”

The 2024 program includes two dozen presentations at seventeen venues, taking place from January 5 to 21. Below are my top five choices, which do not include two highly praised and strongly recommended works that are making encore appearances in New York, Dmitry Krimov/Krymov Lab NYC’s Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: In Our Own Words at BRIC and Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s bilingual Public Obscenities at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. In addition, the UFO sidebar of works in progress consist of Matt Romein’s Bag of Worms at Onassis ONX Studio, Zora Howard’s The Master’s Tools at Chelsea Factory (with Okwui Okpokwasili as Tituba from The Crucible), Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon’s How does it feel to look at nothing at National Sawdust, Theater in Quarantine and Sinking Ship Productions’ live debut of the previously streamed The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy at the Connelly Theater, Jenn Kidwell and *the Blackening’s We Come to Collect [A Flirtation, with Capitalism] at the Flea, and Penny Arcade’s The Art of Becoming — Episode 3: Superstar Interrupted [1967-1973] at Joe’s Pub. In addition, a free symposium at NYU Skirball Center on January 12 at 9:30 am features Inge Ceustermans, Hana Sharif, Sunny Jain, Taylor Mac, Jeremy O. Harris, Ravi Jain, and Kaneza Schaal, hosted by Edgar Miramontes, looking at the future of independent theater.

A book club offers unique insight into Miranda July’s The First Bad Man (photo by Ros Kavanagh)

THE FIRST BAD MAN
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Samuel Rehearsal Studio, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza
January 5-13, choose-what-you-pay (suggested admission $35)
www.lincolncenter.org
www.panpantheatre.com

Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre has staged unique versions of Beckett’s Embers and Cascando as well as Gina Moxley’s The Patient Gloria. The company now turns its attention on a unique aspect of literature; for The First Bad Man at Lincoln Center’s Samuel Rehearsal Studio, audience members watch a book club dissect Miranda July’s wildly original 2015 novel, as characters and story lines intersect with reality.

A bouncy castle becomes more than just a fun children’s place in Nile Harris’s this house is not a home (photo by Alex Munro)

this house is not a home
Playhouse at Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 6-14, $30.05
www.abronsartscenter.org

A bouncy castle helps Nile Harris explore how the world has changed over the last two years, with the assistance of Crackhead Barney, Malcolm-x Betts, slowdanger, and GENG PTP along with a gingerbread minstrel, vape addicts, a movie cowboy, and others, in this house is not a home. Afropessimism is on the menu in this collaboration between Abrons Art Center and Ping Chong Company.

Hamlet | Toilet makes its NYC debut at Japan Society (photo courtesy Kaimaku Pennant Race)

HAMLET | TOILET
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
January 10-13, $35
japansociety.org

In 2019, Yu Murai and Kaimaku Pennant Race blew our minds with the outrageous Ashita no Ma-Joe: Rocky Macbeth, a bizarrely entertaining mashup of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. They’re now back with another mad mix at Japan Society; I’m not sure there’s much more to say that what’s in the press release: “Notoriously iconoclastic and scatological director Yu Murai’s Hamlet | Toilet runs the Bard’s highbrow tale of existential woe through the poop chute.” Each ticket comes with free same-day admission to the exhibition “Out of Bounds: Japanese Women Artists in Fluxus.”

VOLCANO
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
January 10-21, $54
stannswarehouse.org

Melding theater, dance, and sci-fi, Irish writer, director, and choreographer Luke Murphy (Slow Tide, Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte) introduces audiences to the mysterious Amber Project in this four-part miniseries of forty-five-minute multimedia segments starring Murphy and Will Thompson, exploring their past as they face an uncertain future.

OUR CLASS
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 12 – February 4, $68-$139
www.bam.org
ourclassplay.com

During the pandemic, Igor Golyak and Massachusetts-based Arlekin Players Theatre broke through with innovative, interactive livestreamed productions, attracting such stalwarts as Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov to join the troupe. Following shows at BAC and Lincoln Center, the company brings a timely new adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class to BAM, about a 1941 pogrom in Poland that severely impacts the relationships of a group of students. Broadway veterans Richard Topol, Alexandra Silber, and Gus Birney star, alongside Jewish and non-Jewish cast and crew members from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel, Germany, and the US.

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

JOHN ADAMS’ EL NIÑO: NATIVITY RECONSIDERED

John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered returns to St. John the Divine on December 21 (photo by Nina Westervelt)

Who: American Modern Opera Company (AMOC)
What: John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered
Where: The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
When: Thursday, December 21, choose-what-you-pay; suggested admission $35, 7:30
Why: Originally presented by American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) in 2018 at the San Martín at Fuentidueña chapel in the Cloisters, John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered was performed last December at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, in a slightly revised iteration, and it is now back for an encore presentation. A retelling of the traditional Christmas story, El Niño premiered in Paris in 2000, with a libretto by Peter Sellars. At St. John the Divine, the nativity oratorio, conceived and curated by Julia Bullock, includes soprano Bullock, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Keir GoGwilt, cellist Coleman Itzkoff, bassist Doug Balliett, flutist Emi Ferguson, percussionist Jonny Allen, pianist Conor Hanick, guest soloist contralto Jasmin White, and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street; the conductor is Christian Reif, who is responsible for the new chamber opera arrangement.

In a program note for the Met Museum digital premiere, Bullock wrote, “El Niño is one of my favorite pieces of music and I feel one of John and Peter’s greatest collaborations. . . . It is rarely programmed, either because of the resources needed or possibly because our North American holiday tradition insists upon multiple performances of Handel’s Messiah. The Messiah is, of course, a beloved work, but it doesn’t meditate solely on the nativity story; it also encompasses the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. El Niño, on the other hand, explores the central themes of the nativity — the immaculate conception, the unique relationship between mother and child, and gift giving — and also ruminates on the notion that with the promise of new life, there is the equal threat of inexplicable violence and sacrifice. In creating El Niño, John and Peter consciously decided that alongside European interpretations from the male-centric biblical canon, they would feature the contributions of women and Latin American poets.” Tickets for this special event are choose-what-you-pay with a suggested donation of $35.

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

STEREOPHONIC

Engineers Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler) chew the fat as the band readies to record in David Adjmi’s Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

STEREOPHONIC
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through December 17, sold out
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In many ways, the creation of David Adjmi’s Stereophonic mimics the record that the fictional band is making in the play. Following such well-received works as Elective Affinities, Stunning, The Evildoers, and Marie Antoinette, Adjmi announced to friends and colleagues in 2013 that he was leaving the theater, but he immediately started receiving offers of grants and residencies. A three-year residency at Soho Rep resulted in what would become the widely hailed Stereophonic, which went from a seventy-minute play to a two-act, then three-act, and ultimately four-act, three-hour epic whose premiere was delayed because of the pandemic.

In the play, a successful, unnamed rock band suddenly has an eighteen-month-old song called “Dark Night” rising on the charts and are working on a new one, titled “Bright,” echoing the up-and-down nature of personal and professional partnerships. The band is in a Sausalito recording studio in the summer of 1976 for what was expected to be quick, low-budget sessions that start turning into much more.

The band consists of British bass player Reg (Will Brill), British keyboard player and singer Holly (Juliana Canfield), British drummer Simon (Chris Stack), American guitarist and lead singer Peter (Tom Pecinka), and American singer and tambourine player Diana (Sarah Pidgeon). Reg is getting lost in a haze of booze and coke; Simon, who also serves as manager, is having trouble keeping the beat; Holly, who is married to Reg, is reevaluating her living situation; and the controlling Peter is jealous of his girlfriend, Diana, as she brings another potential hit to the group.

Grover (Eli Gelb), who lied on his resume to get the gig, is the recording engineer, assisted by Charlie (Andrew R. Butler); while Grover, a stoner, is nervous and fidgety, worried that he is in over his head, especially when the discord within the band grows, Charlie is gentle and quiet, preferring to remain in the background, their relationship somewhat recalling that between Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith’s films.

Band and crew members take a much-needed break in three-hour Stereophonic (photo by Chelcie Parry)

The show unfolds like a cool double, or even triple, LP. Not every play scene / LP song works, but the cast/band are uniformly excellent, as are the engineers/crew (with studio set by David Zinn, costumes by Enver Chakartash, lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Ryan Rumery, and music direction by Justin Craig). The songs, by former Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist and Grammy winner Will Butler, capture the essence of 1970s California rock as the angst increases among the members of the band and they attempt to balance professional and personal success. Director Daniel Aukin helms the play like a star album producer.

Sure, it’s too long at three hours in four parts, the equivalent of a quadruple album. At one point, concerned about the length of the record they’re making and one song in particular, Peter says, “We can’t fit everything. I know no one wants to cut anything and we’ve talked a whole lot about continuity. But I’m sorry. We need to have this conversation. We need to decide what we’re gonna do; we’re four minutes over and it’s not enough for a double album. . . . We need to cut stuff.” Reg asks, “Why can’t we do a double album?”

Younger audience members might not know that on cassettes and LPs, artists were limited to 22.5 minutes per side, and sometimes the songs on the cassette were in a different order than on the record, resulting in a loss of continuity. In addition, listeners had to flip the cassette or album to hear the other side; musicians couldn’t just make an album of any length that could stream online endlessly, complete with the ability to easily skip over songs they might not like.

You can’t do that in the theater. Thus, Stereophonic contains some fluff, repetition, and scenes that don’t seem to fit with the others, but for the most part it’s a fun and poignant behind-the-scenes look at artistic creation, collaboration, ego, and jealousy. We’re all the better with Adjmi deciding not to quit the band/theater; I’m looking forward to the several plays he has coming up, including an exploration, with Lila Neugebauer, of the making of Brian Wilson’s Smile album.

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

PSYCHIC CINEMA: EXPERIMENTAL FILMS — NICK DIDKOVSKY AND ROBERT KENNEDY

Who: Nick Didkovsky and Robert Kennedy
What: Experimental short films with live musical accompaniment
Where: The LetLove Inn, 21-27 Twenty-Third Ave., Astoria
When: Monday, December 11, free (donations accepted), 9:00
Why: On December 11 at the LetLove Inn in Astoria, Nick Didkovsky of Doctor Nerve and Robert Kennedy of the Flushing Remonstrance will team up for the next iteration of “Psychic Cinema,” an evening of classic experimental short films by Bill Morrison, Joel Schlemowitz, Stan Brakhage, Peter Tscherkassky, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Jordan, and others, set to all-new experimental live scores. Kennedy will be on keyboards, electronics, and voice, Didkovsky on guitar. In May, the duo performed to a collection of surrealist and Dada works by Fernand Léger, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Władysław Starewicz, Slavko Vorkapich, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Marie Menken, Wallace Berman, Tscherkassky, and Guy Maddin, which should provide insight into what awaits on December 11. Admission is free; donations are accepted.

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

MY HARRY

Photographer unknown, Harry Smith at Naropa Institute, gelatin silver print, 1990 (Harry Smith Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; gift of the Harry Smith Archives)

MY HARRY
Whitney Museum of American Art, Education Center and Hess Family Theater
99 Gansevoort St.
December 8-10, $18-$25
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The Whitney celebrates the legacy of American polymath Harry Smith in the three-day festival “My Harry.” Held in conjunction with the multimedia exhibition “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith,” which continues at the museum through January 28, the revelry features listening sessions, illustrated lectures, film screenings, conversations, live music, art workshops, and more, with appearances by friends and colleagues of Smith, who was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1923 and died in New York City in 1991 at the age of sixty-eight, leaving behind a treasure trove of music, art, and film that he both made and collected, as well as a lifelong interest in the occult. Among those participating in the weekend are Carol Bove, Ali Dineen, Bradley Eros, Raymond Foye, Andrew Lampert, April and Lance Ledbetter, James Inoli Murphy, Rani Singh, Peter Stampfel, Charles Stein, and Anne Waldman. Below is the full schedule.

My Harry: Magick and Mysticism
Friday, December 8, $8-$10, 5:30–9 pm

Listening Session: Harry Smith’s Field Recordings, 5:30

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: A Presentation by Carol Bove, with Carol Bove and Andrew Lampert, 6:30

Screening of Harry Smith’s “Film No. 14: Late Superimpositions,” 7:30

Harry Smith and the Future of Magick: A Presentation by Charles Stein, with Charles Stein and Raymond Foye, 8:00

Harry Smith, Untitled [Zodiacal hexagram sctratchboard], ink on cardstock, ca 1952 (Lionel Ziprin Archive, New York)

My Harry: Stories, Songs, and Strings
Saturday, December 9, free with museum admission, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm

Stop Motion Animation Studio and Paper Airplane Workshop, hosted by Bradley Eros, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Singing Circle with Ali Dineen, 11:00 am

Peter Stampfel and the Atomic Meta-Pagan Posse, with Peter Stampfel, Eli Smith, Zoe Stampfel, Eli Hetko, Steve Espinola, Paul Nowinski, Sam Werbalowsky, Heather Wagner, and Dok Gregory, 12:00

String Figure Workshop with James Inoli Murphy, 12:00

Paper Airplane Contest with Bradley Eros, 2:00

On Mahagonny: A Presentation by Rani Singh, 5:00

My Harry: Affinities
Sunday, December 10, free with museum admission, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Listening Session: Harry Smith’s Field Recordings, 11:00 am

On Harry’s Trail: A Presentation by Dust-to-Digital, with Lance and April Ledbetter, 12:00

Screening: A selection of films and videos featuring Harry Smith by a variety of the artist’s friends and associates, 1:00

Friendly Rivals: The Art of Jordan Belson, a Presentation by Raymond Foye, 3:00

Anne Waldman, 4:00

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

EITHER/OR: TIME | AGAIN

TIME | AGAIN
Speyer Hall at University Settlement
184 Eldridge St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
Friday, December 8, $12.71-$23.41, 8:00
www.eitherormusic.org
www.universitysettlement.org

New York City–based flexible chamber ensemble Either/Or (EO) looks to the past and the future with its next performance, December 8 at 8:00 at Speyer Hall at University Settlement. The evening begins with the world premiere of the EO commission It only has shelves by Bronx-based multidisciplinary composer Victoria Cheah. Written for violin, cello, trombone, and electronics, the piece explores layering, depth, ritual, and preparation. “To know you have a place to put something, where something can belong, where the fact of its emptiness suggests its readiness to receive instead of impose, to me suggests the possibility of belonging,” Cheah said in a statement. The work will be performed by Pala Garcia on violin and John Popham on cello — the cofounders of progressive trio Longleash — Cheah on electronics, and event curator Chris McIntyre on trombone. Cheah, a Hunter and Brandeis graduate who is assistant professor at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory and director of production of Talea Ensemble, has previously scored commissions or had pieces featured by Non-Event, Switch Ensemble, andPlay, Yarn/Wire, Wavefield Ensemble, Guerilla Opera, Ensemble Dal Niente, PRISM Quartet, and others, with such enigmatic titles as “Ocean into wire,” “We drank wine from the bottle on a rooftop next to god,” and “I watched her smile her hand.”

Either/Or presents Time | Again on December 8 at Speyer Hall at University Settlement

It only has shelves will be followed by the late Danish composer and visual artist Henning Christiansen’s 1973 Requiem of Art (NYC) (fluxorum organum II), a Fluxus “tape piece” realized for live ensemble by British-Lithuanian cellist, composer, and visual artist Anton Lukoszevieze for Ultima Festival New York in 2014. The work will be performed by the full ensemble, consisting of the aforementioned Garcia, Popham, and McIntyre joined by EO director Richard Carrick and Anthony Coleman on keyboards, Margaret Lancaster on voice and percussion, Dennis K. Sullivan on percussion, and sound technician Alex Lough on electronics as each minute provides unique experimental shifts in what we’re hearing.

Henning Christiansen (rear, left) collaborates with Joseph Beuys (in hat) at 1970 “Strategy: Gets Art” festival (photo courtesy Demarco Digital Archive)

In 2015, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Henning’s widow — the Danish composer died in 2008 at the age of seventy-six — wrote of the work, “In the summer of 1969 we made a collective film, The Search, on the heath in Jutland, Denmark. Henning Christiansen made on site field recordings for the individual scenes with Peter Sakse as sound master. The music was first used during the performance at the festival ‘Strategy: Gets Art’ exhibition organised by Richard Demarco at Edinburgh College of Art, on August 21, 1970, with Joseph Beuys and Henning Christiansen. Henning Christiansen sampled the field recording into the organ music from [Beuys’s 1968 performance film] Eurasienstab. He gave this composition subsequently the title Requiem of Art fluxorum organum II Opus 50. That means a requiem over the role of art in the 1960s.” McIntyre adds that the original Requiem was “a sort of portrait of the sound world Christiansen conjured for Beuys’s real-space rituals.” Tickets to the event are $12.71 to $23.41 and available here.

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

ARTIST FOR ACTION PRESENTS SHERYL CROW, PETER FRAMPTON, KEVIN BACON + SPECIAL GUESTS: A FATHER’S PROMISE FILM LAUNCH CONCERT

Who: Jimmy Vivino, Mark Barden, Sheryl Crow, Peter Frampton, Kevin Bacon, Bernie Williams, Rozzi, the Dumes, the Alternate Routes, Jen Chapin, Aztec Two-Step 2.0, more
What: Benefit concert for Sandy Hook Promise celebrating film launch
Where: NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
When: Thursday, December 7, $81-$256, 7:30
Why: “Music succeeds when politics and religion fail,” Darryl “DMC” McDaniels says in A Father’s Promise: The Story of a Father’s Promise to End Gun Violence, a documentary opening December 8 at LOOK Dine-In Cinema W57. Directed by Rick Korn and executive produced by Sheryl Crow, the film follows musician Mark Barden as he takes action after his seven-year-old son Daniel was one of twenty-six people murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

Barden, cofounder of Sandy Hook Promise, and filmmaker Korn teamed up with Matthew Reich and Neal Saini to form Artist for Action to Prevent Gun Violence. On December 7 at NYU Skirball, Barden and the Promise Band will join musical director Jimmy Vivino and a group of all-stars to celebrate the launch of the film; among the special guests performing live will be Crow, Peter Frampton, Kevin Bacon, Bernie Williams, Rozzi, the Dumes, the Alternate Routes, Jen Chapin, and Aztec Two-Step 2.0. The evening will be filmed for a future documentary, continuing to raise funds and awareness about the horrors of gun violence, the leading cause of death for children and teens in America.

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