this week in music

CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 2016

The legacy of Charlie Bird Parker will be celebrated in annual free SummerStage festival

The legacy of Charlie “Bird” Parker will be celebrated at annual free SummerStage festival

SummerStage
The New School, Marcus Garvey Park, Tompkins Square Park
August 24-28, free
www.cityparksfoundation.org

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn,” saxophone great Charlie Parker once said. “They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” The Kansas City native, known as Bird and Yardbird, blew away all boundaries on his sax during a career that was cut short by his death in 1955 at the age of thirty-four. His legacy will once again be celebrated at the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival as part of the City Parks Foundation free SummerStage programming. This year’s tribute begins indoors on August 24 at 7:30 (free with advance RSVP here) with a screening of N. C. Heikin’s documentary Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story at the New School, followed by a Q&A with alto sax player and Morgan protégée Grace Kelly and Morgan manager Reggie Marshall. On August 25 at 7:30 (RSVP here), the New School will host a screening of Bruce Spiegel’s Bill Evans: Time Remembered, followed by a discussion with Spiegel. The live music gets cooking August 26 at 6:00 in Marcus Garvey Park with performances by Jason Lindner: Breeding Ground, Antoinette Montague, and DJ Greg Caz, followed the next day in the Harlem park by a 2:00 master class with Samuel Coleman and a 3:00 concert with the Randy Weston African Rhythms Sextet, Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles, the Artistry of Jazzmeia Horn, and Charles Turner III. The festival concludes on August 28 at 3:00 in Tompkins Square Park with the great lineup of DeJohnette – Holland – Moran, Allan Harris, the Donny McCaslin Group, and Kelly.

BONUS TICKET ALERT: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND AT METLIFE STADIUM

Gothenburg might have welcomed Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band back home last month, but they’ll actually be back in Jersey this week (photo by Natalie Greppi)

Who: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
What: Stadium leg of the River Tour
Where: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey
When: New tickets on sale August 22 at 12 noon for shows Tuesday, August 23, Thursday, August 25, and Tuesday, August 30, $68-$150, 7:30
Why: After Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s U.S. arena tour celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of The River, during which the 1980 double LP was played in its entirety every night, and a European leg in which the setlists changed, with chunks of the album featured along with an evolving roster of deep cuts (“New York City Serenade,” “Roll of the Dice,” “Reason to Believe,” “Streets of Fire”), classic covers (“Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “You Never Can Tell,” “Summertime Blues,” “Lucille”), and rarities (“None But the Brave,” “Frankie,” “Iceman,” “The Promise”), the group returns to the States for a brief stadium jaunt beginning August 23, 25, and 30 at MetLife Stadium. Yesterday it was announced, “Now that the exact location for the stage on the field is set and production has been finalized, additional tickets have become available.” That usually means pretty good seats, as these kinds of changes don’t impact the faraway locations that are practically in another area code. Bruce and the band are in top form, and Springsteen might be ultra-juiced because his autobiography, Born to Run, and companion CD, Chapter & Verse, are being released on September 27, four days after his sixty-seventh birthday.

“DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for . . . fame? . . . love? . . . admiration? . . . attention? . . . women? . . . sex? . . . and oh, yeah . . . a buck. Then . . . if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just . . . don’t . . . quit . . . burning,” Springsteen writes in the book’s foreword. “These are some of the elements that will come in handy should you come face-to-face with eighty thousand (or eighty) screaming rock ’n’ roll fans who are waiting for you to do your magic trick. Waiting for you to pull something out of your hat, out of thin air, out of this world, something that before the faithful were gathered here today was just a song-fueled rumor. I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable ‘us.’ That is my magic trick. And like all good magic tricks, it begins with a setup. So . . .” Might any of the extreme rarities on the new album, which include tunes from Bruce’s earliest bands, the Castiles and Steel Mill, work their way into the show? We wouldn’t complain if he played the amazing “He’s Guilty” on August 25….

HARLEM WEEK 2016: SUMMER IN THE CITY / HARLEM DAY

Free outdoor screening of WHEN WE WERE KINGS is part of Harlem Week festival

West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, August 20, and Sunday, August 21, free, 12 noon – 10:00 pm
Festival continues through August 27
harlemweek.com

The annual Harlem Week festival continues August 20 with “Summer in the City” and August 21 with “Harlem Day,” two afternoons of a wide range of free special events along West 135th St. Saturday’s festivities include the Higher Education Fair & Expo, New Yorkers Are “Dancing in the Street” (with Alvin Ailey instructor Robin Dunn teaching a hip-hop ballet and African dance class, with WBLS DJs), the Fabulous Fashion Flava Show, the first day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a parade, sports clinics, health testing, arts & crafts, and more), Harlem Honeys & Bears swimming activities for seniors in the Hansborough Recreation Center, an International Vendors Village, the Uptown Saturday Concert paying tribute to Nina Simone, and the Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival screening in St. Nicholas Park of Leon Gast’s Oscar-winning 1996 documentary When We Were Kings, about Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s Rumble in the Jungle. Sunday’s Harlem Day celebration features the “Harlem and Havana Classics” Upper Manhattan Auto Show, tennis clinics, the “Village within Our Village” health village, the second day of the NYC Children’s Festival (with a Back to School theme), an “International Roots of Jazz” program, the Upper Manhattan Small Business Expo & Fair, live music, dance, and spoken-word performances, a kids fashion show, and musical tributes to Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire leader Maurice White.

HUDSON RIVER PARK BLUES BBQ

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band will headline the seventeenth annual Hudson River Park Blues BBQ on August 20

Hudson River Park, Clinton Cove
Pier 97 at West 55th St.
Saturday, August 20, free, 2:00 to 9:00
www.hudsonriverpark.org

The seventeenth annual Blues BBQ is moving to a new location this year, taking place August 20 at Pier 97 in Hudson River Park. The free afternoon will feature live performances by Gaye and the Wild Rutz (2:00), Cash Box Kings (3:15), the Bernard Allison Group (4:30), the Sugaray Rayford Band (6:00), and the one and only Dirty Dozen Brass Band (7:30). Food and drink will be available for purchase from such hot joints as Arrogant Swine, Fort Gansevoort Bar-B-Cue, Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. The Blues BBQ is sponsored by the Hudson River Park Trust, which is dedicated to, among other things, “operate and maintain the park at a high level so that it remains a community asset and economic generator, and continues to serve the millions of New Yorkers and tourists who use it annually.”

LIC BLOCK PARTY

lic block party

SculptureCenter
Purves St. at Jackson & 43rd Aves.
Saturday, August 20, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
www.sculpture-center.org

SculptureCenter, one of the coolest places to see art in the five boroughs, is hosting the annual LIC Block Party on August 20 in Queens. The free afternoon, taking place inside and outside the gallery, will include live performances by Erin Markey, Daisy Press, OTIUM, Jessica Lang Dance, and Bianca Benson, DJ sets by Tygapaw, activity booths by Schuyler Tsuda, Jeannine Han & Eliza Fisher, Sam Stewart, Lauren Halsey, Jan Mun & Gil Lopez, Sydney Shen, Emma Banay & David Scanlon’s Quilt Music, Other Means, and Diamond Stingily, and an artists market with booths by American Chordata, Desert Island, Fastnet, Mixed Media, Packet Biweekly, the Perfect Nothing Catalog, Peradam, Sanguis Ornatus, and Workaday Handmade. There will also be food and drink available from such local restaurants as Bartleby & Sage, Doughnut Plant, Hibino LIC, Rockaway Brewing Co., and Stolle USA. Among the partners in the block party are the American Folk Art Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Noguchi Museum, Sculpture Space NYC, and Socrates Sculpture Park.

TICKET ALERT — CHITA: NOWADAYS

The legendary Chita Rivera will make her Carnegie Hall headlining debut on November 8 with special guests (photo by Laura Marie Duncan)

Who: Chita Rivera, Alan Cumming, Andy Karl, more
What: “Chita: Nowadays”
Where: Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, 881 Seventh Ave. at 57th St.
When: Monday, November 7, $40-$135, 8:00
Why: Tickets are on sale now to see Broadway legend Chita Rivera in her first-ever headlining show at Carnegie Hall. On November 7, Rivera, who has won two Tonys in addition to earning another eight nominations, will be joined by several leading men, including Tony winner Alan Cumming (Cabaret, Macbeth), two-time Tony nominee Andy Karl (Rocky, On the Twentieth Century), and others to be announced. The eighty-three-year-old Rivera will be celebrating a film, television, and stage career that began in the early 1950s and features such stage productions as West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Sweet Charity, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman as well as the film versions of Sweet Charity and Chicago. “Chita: Nowadays” will consists of old favorites, new songs, and special collaborations, directed by Graciela Daniele, with musical director Michael Croiter leading a fifteen-piece band. “I’m absolutely thrilled to play one of the most prestigious venues in the world, Carnegie Hall,” actress-singer-dancer Rivera, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, said in a statement. “We’re going to have a ball!”

ERIC BURDON AND THE ANIMALS

Eric Burdon spills the hippie blues at City Winery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

City Winery
155 Varick St. between Spring & Vandam Sts.
Monday, August 8, and Tuesday, August 9, $85-$125, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.ericburdon.com

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Eric Burdon let the hippie blues flow Monday night at City Winery, where he and the latest iteration of the Animals performed the first of two intimate shows to a delighted audience. Burdon, who recently turned seventy-five, might not have the same vocal range that he displayed back during the British Invasion, but he is still one of the best song interpreters of his generation. Over the course of his fifteen-song set, he told stories about Nina Simone, Lead Belly, Bo Diddley, and the Monterey Pop Festival while playing a show heavy with hits, several of which featured expanded arrangements. He and his crack band, consisting of guitarist Johnzo West, keyboardist Davey Allen, bassist Justin Andres, saxophonist Ruben Salinas, trombonist Evan Mackey, and drummer Dustin Koester, opened with a funky version of “Spill the Wine” — preferably not the Eric Burdon Cabernet Sauvignon that City Winery was selling for the occasion — followed by a string of classics, including “See See Rider,” “When I Was Young,” “Monterey,” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.” Burdon then paid tribute to Elias McDaniel, better known as Bo Diddley, with “Bo Diddley Special,” from his fine 2013 album, ’Til Your River Runs Dry. “I was given this gift without asking,” Burdon sings. As the evening went on, his gift was ever more in evidence, performing a stirring version of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines,” then picking up power as he brought the house down with “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “The House of the Rising Sun,” and a massive “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” that finally got the somewhat reserved, older crowd shaking and grooving, which reached its apex with the encores, a defiant “It’s My Life,” with Burdon declaring that “he ain’t no saint, no complaints,” then concluding with Sam & Dave’s “Hold on, I’m Comin’.” Watching Eric Burdon in 2016, more than fifty years after the Animals first invaded America and the pop charts, still fills you with rebellious spirit; when everyone in the audience screams out together, “It’s my life and I’ll do what I want / It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want,” you feel like anything is possible. And at least for one night, it was. (Alberta Cross leader Petter Ericson Stakee opened up with a solo set that never had a chance over the rudely chattering crowd.)