this week in music

TICKET ALERT: LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2016

Jonathan Pryce will play Shylock in Shakespeare’s Globe production of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE at Lincoln Center Festival this summer (photo by Manuel Harden)

Multiple venues at Lincoln Center
July 13-31, $30-$125
Tickets on sale now
www.lincolncenterfestival.org

For twenty years, one of the highlights of every summer arts season has been the Lincoln Center Festival, and 2016 is no exception, with another stellar lineup of dance, music, opera, and theater from around the globe. The festival begins with six presentations by Japan’s Kanze Noh Theatre at the Rose Theater in Jazz at Lincoln Center. Led by Grand Master Kiyokazu Kanze, the troupe, which rarely ventures outside its home country, will perform Okina with Kanze’s son, Saburota, and Hagoromo on July 13, Sumida Gawa, Busshi, and Shakkyo on July 14, Hagoromo, Kaki Yamabushi, and Sumida Gawa on July 15, Okina and Aoi No Ue on July 16 at 1:30, Hagoromo, Busshi, and Aoi No Ue on July 16 at 7:30, and Okina and Shakkyo on July 17. From July 13 to 16 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, visual artist Jennifer Wen Ma directs composer Huang Ruo’s Ming Dynasty romantic opera, Paradise Interrupted. Japan’s Takarazuka Revue will bring “All That Jazz” and more to the David H. Koch Theater July 20–24 with an all-female version of Chicago, with a rotating cast, lyrics in Japanese, and Bob Fosse’s original choreography. Shakespeare’s Globe, which recently staged the marvelous Broadway double shot of Twelfth Night and Richard III, will make its Lincoln Center debut July 20–24 at the Rose Theater with Jonathan Pryce in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Jonathan Munby. British company 1927 reinvents a traditional tale in Golem, incorporating animation, puppetry, crazy set design and costumes, and general absurdity July 26–31 at the Lynch.

Japan’s Takarazuka Revue will present an all-female version of CHICAGO at Lincoln Center Festival (photo by Maiko Miagawa and Nobuhiko Hikichi)

The National Ballet of Canada waltzes into the Koch Theater July 28–31 with Tony winner Christopher Wheeldon’s unique take on The Winter’s Tale, featuring music by Joby Talbot, scenic design by Tony winner Bob Crowley, and silk effects by Basil Twist. In addition, Goran Bregović’s Wedding and Funeral Orchestra marches into David Geffen Hall July 15–16; Reich/Reverberations pays tribute to Steve Reich July 16, 19, and 21 with Sō Percussion, Ensemble Signal, and JACK Quartet; C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s version of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme goes for laughs July 20–24 at the Lynch, directed by Denis Podalydès and with choreography by Kaori Ito; musicians Wang Li and Wu Wei team up on July 23 at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse; and a few days later Sō Percussion’s Trilogy takes over the Penthouse, with Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting playing works by Reich, Dessner, and Lang on July 28, Xenakis, Ergun, and Trueman on July 29, and Cage, Lansky, and Mackey on July 30. There are various special ticket packages that can save you between twenty and thirty-five percent if you go for multiple shows, but those deals are going fast.

ROARKE MENZIES: CORPOREAL ALBUM RELEASE

Roarke Menzies will celebrate the release of his sophomore album, CORPOREAL, at Sunnyvale on April 7 (photo by Josh Simpson)

Who: Roarke Menzies, Imaginary Tricks, the Despot, Breanna Barbara, O Paradiso
What: Album release party for Corporeal
Where: Sunnyvale Brooklyn, 1031 Grand St. at Morgan Ave., 347-987-3971
When: Thursday, April 7, $7, 9:00
Why: This past October, we talked to New York City-based artist and composer Roarke Menzies about his debut solo album, Shapes. The Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based Menzies, who also composes electronic scores for film, dance, and spoken-word theater (with Paul Rome), hasn’t wasted much time, already preparing to release his sophomore album, Corporeal. “A blank hard drive — no memories, just structure, architecture, an empty page — is marked with human data: mouth sounds, sung melodies, lips, teeth, breath, traces of bodily presence,” he states about the project. “Corporeal is a series of musical collages that consider the repetitive, hypnotic acts of the body in performance, as well as the storied, figurative romance — utopian and fatal — between human and machine.” The seven songs, which feature such titles as “For Vinyl-Covered Stages,” “Flicker Film,” “Apparatus or Caress,” and “The Wake,” combine found and created sounds with mysterious vocals to create atmospheric aural adventures that come alive with the rattle and hum of real life. As Menzies describes, “A voice echoes down an audio cable. A sewing machine is cranked by human hands. Fists pound and beat on a sheet of steel.” Menzies will be the release of Corporeal on April 7 at Sunnyvale in Brooklyn; also on the bill are Imaginary Tricks, the Despot, and Breanna Barbara, with DJ sets by O Paradiso. You can find out more about the event here and check out a sample song and pick up the album here.

FIRST SATURDAY: A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

Maya Azucena will perform for free at Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program on April 1

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates spring with the April edition of its free First Saturday multidisciplinary program. There will be live music by Falu, the Brown Rice Family, and Maya Azucena; a dance performance and workshop by Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance; poetry readings by Desiree Bailey and Laura Lamb Brown; screenings of Guy Reid’s Planetary, followed by a talkback, and Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon’s BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, followed by a talkback with Gordon and Imani Uzuri; an art workshop led by Steven and William Ladd for a community mural project in City Point; a dance break hosted by WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money podcast; and pop-up gallery talks. In addition, the galleries are open late so you can check out such exhibitions as “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),’” “This Place,” and “Agitprop!”

DE MATERIE (THE MATTER)

Heiner Goebbels’s adaptation of Louis Andriessen’s DE MATERIE is an audio and visual wonder — complete with sheep and light-up zeppelins (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
March 22–30, $85-$195
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Regardless of how well prepared you think you are for Heiner Goebbels’s awesomely strange spectacle De Materie, you’re not; get ready to be confused, amazed, bewildered, delighted, mesmerized, and frustrated, often all at the same time. Goebbels’s awe-inspiring version of Dutch new music composer Louis Andriessen’s four-part masterwork, initially presented at the 2014 Ruhrtriennale at a former power plant in Germany, is making its North American stage premiere this month in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, where it fits like a glove. The nearly two-hour work is divided into four very different sections that explore freedom and innovation through the age-old philosophical battle between matter and spirit. De Materie is constructed like an architectural magnum opus of experimental music, dance, art, theater, opera, and science, with many memorable parts that come together to form an ever-greater whole . . . or not, as tenor Pascal Charbonneau explains, intoning passages from Dutch physicist Gorlaeus’s Idea physicae. A small choir sings “Plakkaat van Verlatinghe,” the Act of Abjuration declaring Dutch independence from Spain, and later adds sections from a 1690 primer on shipbuilding (“Aeloude and hedendaegsche Scheepsbouw en Bestier”) by Nicolaas Witsen. Subtitles are projected onto glowing zeppelins, walls, and tents in which silhouettes mysteriously gather.

DE MATERIE features music, dance, theater, art, spoken word, philosophy, mysticism, and even boogie-woogie (photo by Wonge Bergmann)

Thirteenth-century devotional mystic poet Hadewijch (soprano Evgeniya Sotnikova) sings of corporeal love with God as black-covered figures on benches behind her change position every time the lights go off and then on again. Piet Mondrian’s 1927 “Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue” is brought to life with swinging pendulums as Gauthier Dedieu and Niklas Taffner dance the boogie-woogie and the theory of the line is discussed through texts by mathematician and theosophist M. H. J. Schoenmaekers. Madame Curie (Catherine Milliken) reads from her Nobel Prize acceptance speech and the diary she kept following the death of her husband. And one hundred sheep from Pennsylvania bleat from the back of the hall, although no translation is provided. The dramatic, varied score is performed with vigor by the fifty-plus members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and ChorWerk Ruhr, conducted by Peter Rundel. The sets and lighting by Klaus Grünberg and sound design by Norbert Ommer are mind-blowing; the fab costumes are by Florence von Gerkan, with choreography by Florian Bilbao. So, when put together, what’s it all about? In his director’s note in the program, Goebbels, who previously presented Stifters Dinge at the armory in December 2009, writes, “Our visual solutions for this piece — tents in the first act, benches in the second, the pendulum in the third, and the sheep in the fourth act — aren’t symbols for something that needs to be deciphered or understood. They all are what they are: tents, benches, pendulum, and sheep — and zeppelins. But what you feel or imagine about them — that is your business alone. Just don’t underestimate the sheep.” Actually, you shouldn’t underestimate any of this equally dazzling and head-scratching adaptation of one of the great new-music compositions of the twentieth-century.

RELATION: A PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY BY VIJAY IYER

Resident artist Vijay Iyer inaugurates the Met Breuer with “Relation” (photo by Paula Lobo)

The Met Breuer
Tony and Amie James Gallery, lobby
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 31, free with suggested museum admission of $12-$25
212-731-1675
www.metmuseum.org
vijay-iyer.com

Jazz musician and native New Yorker Vijay Iyer continues his stint as the Met Breuer’s inaugural resident artist with one more week of specially curated events, through March 31. Iyer, a pianist and composer who has released such albums as Tragicomic, Historicity, and Mutations, has put together a wide range of artists who will perform with him or present their own works all day in the lobby gallery. “Relation” also features the sound installation “Fit (The Battle of Jericho)” by Mendi + Keith Obadike, which is activated in between live performances. For the final week, Iyer will perform with Heems (Himanshu Suri), Rafiq Bhatia, and Kassa Overall (THUMS UP) on March 25 at 2:00 and 3:15 and Prasanna and Nitin Mitta (Tirtha) at 6:30, with Liberty Ellman and HPrizm on March 26 in the morning and Grégoire Maret and Okkyung Lee in the afternoon, with Marcus Gilmore and Matt Brewer (Trioing) on March 27 in the morning and Gilmore, Brewer, Elena Pinderhughes, and Adam O’Farrill in the afternoon, and with Craig Taborn (Radically Unfinished) on March 29. Other performers include Courtney Bryan, Brandee Younger, and Fieldwork with Tyshawn Sorey and Steve Lehman. In addition, Prashant Bhargava’s captivating thirty-five-minute film, Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, will be shown every day. Bhargava and Craig Marsden, armed with DSLR cameras, capture the Indian festival of spring known as Holi, celebrated with bonfires, dancing, and wild crowds dousing each other with vividly colored powdered dyes and water. The film was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts in honor of the centennial of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” so Iyer asked Bhargava to collaborate on a work about the Hindu ritual, built in twelve arcs that alternate between footage of the real Holi taking place in Mathura and a fictional imagining of the myth of Radha and Krishna, in which actress Anna George portrays an erotically charged version of Princess Radha, waiting to make love with Krishna. Divided into sections called “Adoration” and “Transcendence,” the film, which gets its title from a traditional Hindu greeting, is a visual and aural delight, with a beautiful score by Iyer. Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi screens daily at 12:45 and 4:00 in the gallery, which is arranged with two rows of chairs on three sides of a narrow horizontal space; the setup works well for the music, but some of the seats do not offer prime viewing for the film.

DE MATERIE

Heiner Goebbels’s multidisciplinary reimagining of Louis Andriessen’s DE MATERIE runs at the Park Avenue Armory March 22-30 (photo by Wonge Bergmann)

Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. between 66th & 67th Sts.
March 22–30, $85-$195
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s four-part magnum opus, De Materie, makes its North American stage debut this month at the Park Avenue Armory, in a wildly inventive production directed by Heiner Goebbels, whose Stifters Dinge had its U.S. premiere at the armory in December 2009. Andriessen’s visionary work weaves in dance, spoken text, choral singing, jazz, science, philosophy, poetry, Renaissance music, and more, with Goebbels adding, among other things, one hundred sheep. Among those being referenced in the piece, which explores the relationship between matter and spirit, are Madame Curie, Piet Mondrian, Hadewijch, David Gorlaeus, and the De Stijl art movement. The work will be performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), conducted by Peter Rundel, with the ChorWerk Ruhr, more than two dozen actors and dancers, and others; tenor Pascal Charbonneau is Gorlaeus, soprano Evgeniya Sotnikova is Hadewijch, and Catherine Milliken is Madame Curie. The stage and lighting design is by Klaus Grünberg, with costumes by Florence von Gerkan, sound by Norbert Ommer, and choreography by Florian Bilbao. “This highly imaginative collaboration asks us to appreciate the inherent connections between all manner of innovation throughout society — from the discovery of radioactivity to the creation of a work of art,” new Park Avenue Armory artistic director Pierre Audi said in a statement. In addition to the six performances, there will be four special programs to shed more light on this monumental undertaking. On March 23 at 8:00 ($60), Andriessen will team up with pianist Jason Moran for “Improvisations: Louis Andriessen and Jason Moran,” an exploration of how jazz is used in De Materie while discussing improvisation in general. On March 24 at 6:00 ($15), WNYC’s John Schaefer will host “De Materie: Matter & Spirit,” a conversation with Goebbels, Columbia music professor and musician and composer George E. Lewis, and composer Missy Mazzoli. On March 25 at 6:00 ($15), Schaefer will moderate “Four Different Ways: Celebrating Louis Andriessen,” with Bang on a Can cofounder Julia Wolfe, electronic experimental musician and composer Nathan Michel, and Princeton music professor Donnacha Dennehy. And finally, on March 26 at 6:00 ($15), Audi will lead an artist talk with Goebbels, Rundel, and Andriessen.

THE WILDNESS

Lauren Worsham is the pregnant ringleader of Sky-Pony’s delightful indie-rock fairy tale, THE WILDNESS (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday – Saturday through March 26, $36
212-352-3101
arsnovanyc.com
www.sky-pony.com

Brooklyn-based eight-piece collective Sky-Pony presents a captivating treat for adventurous theatergoers with the DIY indie-rock opera The Wildness, which has been extended at Ars Nova through March 26. A collaboration with the Play Company, The Wildness is a multimedia fairy tale that filters such popular musicals as Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell through a Narnia-like aesthetic and video-game narrative that fantasy fans will go ga-ga over. The premise is that a group of “agnostic, generally apathetic millennials” is putting on its fifth annual ritual, known as the Wildness, in order to “purge out doubts and fears.” But their leader and founder, Michael, is missing, so they forge ahead without him. Everyone plays two characters, one a member of Sky-Pony, the other in the fable. Tony winner Lauren Worsham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) serves as the host and plays Zira, a villager who accompanies Ada, the messianic princess (Lilli Cooper), on her dangerous travels through the Wildness, where they discover a mysterious cabin, belonging to “the builder,” filled with strange objects. We are told that the role of Ada is usually performed by Michael, but Lilli, his sister, has stepped in at the last minute, starting off by delivering the invocation: “Here’s to the artists, freaks, and wanderers too, we dedicate tonight to you.” The cast also includes Katie Lee Hill and Sharone Sayegh as handmaidens and backup singers, David Blasher as the cellist and the Powerful But Aging Ruler, and Obie winner Kyle Jarrow as the keymaster and the Voice from the Boombox, with Jamie Mohamdein on bass, Kevin Wunderlich on guitar, and Jeff Fernandes, wearing a Mr. Tumnus headpiece, on drums and playing villagers as well. Over the course of ninety minutes, the story explores faith and doubt, fear of death, sin and forgiveness, temptation and salvation, the coming rapture, wandering blind, and adherence to the old ways, haunted by a prophecy: “The spring turns foul when our faith falters / only the blessed heir can make it pure again. / On sunrise of the second day of the third week of the fourth moon, / Ada will lead us into a rapturous new era.”

Sky-Pony struts its stuff in multimedia indie-rock opera at Ars Nova (photo by Ben Arons)

Religious references abound throughout The Wildness, which is divided into twelve sections, although it is no mere tent revival. Ada is identified as “the blessed heir with the facial hair”; Ada and Zira have names that evoke the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; several characters and two audience members deliver “overshares,” public confessions with a decidedly twelve-step edge; and Ada and Zira find a book in the cabin that changes everything. The Wildness is also very much about the fear of growing up, of the millennial generation staring adulthood in the face. Tony-nominated director Sam Buntrock (Sunday in the Park with George, Turn of the Screw at BAM) lets Sky-Pony strut its stuff, keeping up a rollicking, frolicking pace. The musical numbers, some of which appear on Sky-Pony’s debut album, December 2015’s Beautiful Monsters, include “The Lost Ones,” “The Waltz of the Inevitable Triumph of Doubt,” “Dragon,” and “Everyone Will Die,” with videos appearing on the many monitors throughout the space, which has been transformed by Kris Stone; a long, narrow stage (reminiscent of a cross?) cuts the theater in two, with the audience seated on both sides, either on ottomans or comfy couches. Tilly Grimes’s costumes are steampunk hip, Chase Brock’s choreography is fun, Sara Morgan’s props are utterly charming (oh, that miniature cabin on the ceiling!), and the clever text, by husband-and-wife Jarrow and Worsham (who, in a neat twist, is pregnant), is playfully self-referential. “I’m doubting whether I can pull off these sequin panties,” Lilli opines at one point. In the fifth section, Lauren says, “Ada’s mind was filled with questions. Her father had taught her about the Wildness that trapped them in their troubled village. But no one had actually seen a dragon. Could it be they weren’t there at all?” Lilli responds, “Zira didn’t wonder this. She knew we believe in many things we don’t see.” It’s a statement that sums up what the Wildness, and life itself, is really all about.