this week in music

CULTUREMART 2016

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEBMLED IDENTITY is part of the 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEMBLED IDENTITY is part of 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 2-12, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

We nearly forgot about HERE’s annual CULTUREMART performance festival, which usually is held in January/February, but fortunately we were reminded of this forward-thinking series just in time as March began. A project of the HERE Artist Residency Program, or HARP, the multidisciplinary festival features eleven workshop productions from March 2 to 12, with all tickets only $15. Things get under way March 2-3 with one of New York’s most innovative teams, Reid Farrington and Sara Farrington, who repurpose footage of old films to create something new with live actors. This year they are presenting CasablancaBox, in which they go behind the scenes of the making of Casablanca. In Things Fall Apart (March 5-6), Kate Brehm uses folding chairs to examine her place in the world; it’s on a double bill with Rob Roth’s audiovisual Soundstage. RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking explores the ocean in O (March 5-6), which is being shown with Adam J. Thompson / the Deconstructive Theatre Project’s live-cinema Venice Double Feature, which examines social media and voyeurism. Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard delve into the science behind identity in Assembled Identity, part of a March 8-9 double bill with Lanie Fefferman’s math-centric chamber opera, Elements. Also on March 8-9, Paul Pinto goes inside the mind of the political activist and philosopher in Thomas Paine in Violence; also on the bill is Leah Coloff’s ThisTree, stories and songs about family and legacy. CULTUREMART concludes March 11-12 with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a dance-theater work dealing withtalent and fame, teamed with Chris M. Green’s American Weather, which looks at our very questionable future.

EDM ANTHEMS — FRENCH TOUCH ON FILM: DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

The fascinating history of French EDM pioneers Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo is detailed in DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED

DAFT PUNK UNCHAINED (Hervé Martin Delpierre, 2015)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, March 1, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through April 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

You might think that the phrase “the French Touch,” which is part of the title of FIAF’s March-April edition of its CinéSalon series, refers to the unique style of such French auteurs as François Truffaut, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Éric Rohmer, and others whose films are often included in these Tuesday-night festivals. But the term actually describes a group of DJs and bands associated with electronic dance music, or EDM, in France. So it is rather appropriate for the series, “EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film,” to kick off with Daft Punk Unchained, a thumping documentary about the patron saints of that movement, the iconoclastic duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, better known as Daft Punk. Director Hervé Martin Delpierre, who cowrote the film with Marina Rozenman, had his work cut out for him, as he had to make the film without the participation of Daft Punk itself, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo, who have not shown their faces in public this century and rarely give interviews of any kind. But Delpierre gets just about everyone else who has ever worked with them to open up, allowing others to interpret the band’s musical evolution and cultural impact as he traces DP’s career from 1992, when they were in the somewhat more traditional bass-guitar-drum combo Darlin’, to the worldwide sensation of their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, as they melded American disco, German techno, and Manchester industrial into something wholly new. A special focus is placed on their mind-blowing show at Coachella in 2006, which single-handedly changed the future of EDM.

Amid rare photographs of Bangalter and de Homem-Christo without their trademark robot helmets or masks and audio clips of radio interviews, Delpierre speaks with such Daft Punk collaborators as Kanye West, Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Pete Tong, Todd Edwards, Pharrell Williams, Skrillex, and Paul (Phantom of the Paradise) Williams, in addition to special effects master Tony Gardner, anime director Leiji Matsumoto, and filmmaker Michel Gondry, who first put DP in helmets. Also sharing insight into what makes the duo so significant are former manager Pedro (Busy P) Winter as well as various journalists, record label heads, and friends. “I just think they’re a unique set of individuals. I have a hard time calling them human, just because musically the robots are something else,” Pharrell, who scored a huge hit with Daft Punk on eventual Grammy favorite “Get Lucky,” says. “I just never experienced working with individuals like them. Everything is so concise. There’s a reason behind everything. Nothing is done by coincidence, by accident or mistake. It’s always with an intention to serve a purpose.” What also serves their purpose is avoiding promotion or publicity that would involve their making an appearance of any kind. Thus, we don’t learn about Bangalter and de Homem-Christo’s private lives, how they work with each other, or what they even look like today. But with everyone stressing how individualistic Daft Punk is, how they insist on doing things their own way no matter what, we wound up rooting for them to keep those helmets on and let the groove-heavy mystery linger on. Daft Punk Unchained is screening at FIAF on March 1 at 4:00 and 7:30; the later show will be followed by a Q&A with Delpierre and DJ Superpoze. In addition, Winter will lead a French Electronic Music Master Class on March 3 with Boston Bun, Superpoze, Jacques, and Julian Starke, and there will be a party celebrating the FIAF series on March 4 at Le Bain with Busy P, Boston Bun, Jacques, and Superpoze. The series continues through April 26 with such other films as Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, and Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, which are either set in the club scene or feature EDM-based soundtracks.

SOUNDWALK 9:09

The Met Breuer photograph by Ed Lederman; The Met Plaza © MMA

Free app will provide site-specific soundscape for trip between the Met Breuer (photo by Ed Lederman) and the main Met (photo © MMA)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
The Met Breuer
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Free app available March 1
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org
johnlutheradams.net

In 2011, it was announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art would take over the landmark Breuer building that served as the Whitney Museum of American Art’s third home, from 1966 to 2014. With the Whitney now firmly entrenched on Gansevoort St. at the south end of the High Line, the Met is ready to move into 945 Madison Ave., where it will focus on the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The modernist building, which was designed by Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer with Hamilton Smith, will open to Met members March 8-13 and to the general public March 18-20, but on March 1 the institution will start offering a unique way for people to familiarize themselves with the short trip between the Met’s main museum on Fifth Ave. and Eighty-Second St. and the Breuer. MetLiveArts has commissioned Mississippi-born American composer John Luther Adams, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Become Ocean, to create his first New York City work, “Soundwalk 9:09,” two new pieces that last nine minutes and nine seconds, the amount of time it is estimated it takes to go from the Met to the Met Breuer. “Soundwalk 9:09,” which includes sounds Adams recorded between the two buildings in addition to crowd-sourced material, will be available for free through the Met and WQXR.

SPLIT SINGLE OF THE WEEK: “NO FUTURE” BY TITUS ANDRONICUS AND CRAIG FINN

Craig Finn and Titus Andronicus kick off tour February 29 at Webster Hall

Who Titus Andronicus and Craig Finn
What: “No Faith / No Future / No Problem” tour
Where: Webster Hall, 125 East Eleventh St. between Second Ave. & Bowery, 212-353-1600
When: Monday, February 29, $23, 8:00
Why: Last July, Brooklyn-based indie punks Titus Andronicus teamed up with Greenpoint-based Hold Steady leader Craig Finn on a raucous version of the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” at Shea Stadium in Bushwick, even if Finn, who was raised in Minneapolis just like the ’Mats, forgot some of the words. They had so much fun — the set also included Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right,” with more garbled lyrics — now they’re going out on the road together, kicking off their “No Faith / No Future / No Problem” tour February 29 at Webster Hall. Titus Andronicus is supporting its latest release, last year’s The Most Lamentable Tragedy, while Finn is highlighting his second solo record, last September’s Faith in the Future. The future is what this tour is all about, as they just released a split single in which Finn, with the help of Patrick Stickles and Adam Reich, covers TA’s “No Future,” which has appeared in four parts on three of the band’s albums, while TA (Stickles and Reich), with the help of Finn, covers Finn’s “No Future,” from his first solo disc, Clear Heart Full Eyes. You can check out both songs here. We have a feeling they’ll all make sure to remember the words this time around.

TICKET ALERT: THE FREEDOM SEDER

freedom seder

Who: David Broza, Peter Yarrow, Michael Dorf, and more than a dozen other special guests
What: Sixteenth annual Downtown Seder
Where: City Winery, 155 Varick St. between Spring & Vandam Sts., 212-608-0555
When: Wednesday, April 13, $75-$135 ($25 surcharge for glatt kosher)
Why: A limited number of tickets will go on sale to the general public on Thursday, February 25, at 3:00 for the sixteenth annual Downtown Seder, aka the Freedom Seder, hosted by City Winery owner Michael Dorf. Among those performing at the interactive event, which is being held on April 13, nine days before the actual beginning of Passover, will be beloved Israeli musician David Broza and legendary American singer-songwriter-activist Peter Yarrow. Past participants have included Al Franken, Harvey Fierstein, Lewis Black, Dr. Ruth, Judy Gold, Lou Reed, Neil Sedaka, and many others. Tickets for VinoFile members go on sale two days earlier, at 3:00 today (February 23), so you’ll have to act quickly if you want to partake in the ritual about the Exodus from Egypt in one of New York’s best music venues. How can you go wrong with a setlist likely to include “Dayenu,” “Chad Gadya,” “Mah Nishtnanah,” and “The Ten Plagues”?

THE MARIINSKY AT BAM: A TRIBUTE TO MAYA PLISETSKAYA

Mariinsky principal dancer Uliana Lopatkina is part of four-night tribute to Maya Plisetskaya at BAM (photo by Natasha Razina)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
February 24-28, $30-$175
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.mariinsky.ru/en

Last May, Maya Plisetskaya, who became an international star with the Bolshoi Ballet in the 1950s and ’60s, passed away at the age of eighty-nine. Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre will be honoring the legacy of the legendary prima ballerina in its second annual residency at BAM this week. “It has always seemed to me that books were written by people who were absolutely extraordinary. Supersmart. Superscholarly,” the absolutely extraordinary dancer and choreographer writes in the preface to her 2001 memoir, I, Maya Plisetskaya. “And here was a ballerina picking up the pen. It reminded me of an old joke. When a huge ship, practically the Titanic, sank in the ocean, only two passengers survived, because they could float: a government minister, because he was such a big turd, and a ballerina, because she was an airhead.” Running February 25-28, “A Tribute to Maya Plisetskaya” is divided into four programs, featuring current Mariinsky principals Uliana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva, neither of whom have been called airheads, performing live with the Mariinsky Orchestra, with musical direction by Mariinsky artistic and general director Valery Gergiev and either Gergiev or Alexei Repnikov conducting. (As a bonus, on February 24, Gergiev will conduct “Folk, Form, and Fire: The Prokofiev Piano Concertos,” with the Mariinsky Orchestra and soloists George Li, Alexander Toradze, Daniil Trifonov, Sergei Redkin, and Sergei Babayan.)

Woman in the Room (photo by Gene Schiavone)

Diana Vishneva will perform “Woman in a Room” as part of Mariinsky tribute to Maya Plisetskaya at BAM (photo by Gene Schiavone)

On February 25, Vishneva and other members of the Mariinsky Ballet Company will perform Carmen Suite, choreographed by Albert Alonso specifically for Plisetskaya and with music by Rodion Shchedrin after Georges Bizet; Lopatkina will dance Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Dying Swan, choreographed by Michel Fokine; and, on film from 1975, Plisetskaya will be seen in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, choreographed by Maurice Béjart. The February 26 schedule consists of ten pieces honoring Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, who had profound effects on Plisetskaya’s career; the evening includes Valeriya Martinuk and Alexei Popov performing the pas de deux of Colombine and Harlequin from Robert Schumann’s Le Carnaval, choreographed by Michel Fokine; Maria Shirinkina and Vladimir Shklyarov joining in Carl Maria von Weber’s Le Spectre de la rose, also choreographed by Fokine; Lopatkina and Roman Belyakov teaming up in Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Pavlova and Cecchetti, choreographed by John Neumeier; and Martinuk and Popov taking on Tchaikovsky’s pas de deux of Princess Florine and the Bluebird from The Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by Marius Petipa. Vishneva is the star attraction on February 27, performing Carmen Suite and 2013’s Woman in a Room, with choreography by Carolyn Carlson and music by Giovanni Sollima and René Aubry, inspired by the films of Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky. The tribute concludes February 28 with a dozen works celebrating Plisetskaya, Pavlova, and Galina Ulanova, with Ekaterina Osmolkina and Maxim Zyuzin performing the Maria and Vaslav adagio from Boris Asafyev’s The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, choreographed by Rostislav Zakharov; Lopatkina and Andrey Ermakov in Gustav Mahler’s La Rose Malade, choreographed by Roland Petit; Lopatkina and Shklyarov in an excerpt from Shchedrin’s The Little Humped Back Horse, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky; and Martinuk and Zyuzin performing the act III adagio from Farid Yarullin’s Shurale, choreographed by Leonid Yakobson. “I planned the book for a local, Russian audience,” Plisetskaya explains in her memoir. “But I was also thinking about a far-away Western audience. The far-away ones who know very little about the byways, the delirious fantasies, the masquerades of our strange, incredible, and unbelievable former Soviet life.” For four nights, all of that will be brought together in Brooklyn at BAM, where you can also currently see the Maly Drama Theatre’s marvelous version of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

IMPRESSIONS OF HAMMERSHØI — THE POETRY OF SILENCE WITH THE NIKOLAJ HESS TRIO

Special “Impressions of Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence” concert with the Nikolaj Hess Trio will take place in the Scandinavia House gallery on February 22

Who: The Nikolaj Hess Trio
What: Live concert featuring improvisational pianist, composer, producer, and arranger Nikolaj Hess
Where: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Ave. between 37th & 38th Sts., 212-779-3587
When: Monday, February 22, $15, 7:00
Why: “Impressions of Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence,” the series of concerts held in conjunction with Scandinavia House’s beautiful exhibition “Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark,” concludes February 22 with the Nikolaj Hess Trio. New York- and Denmark-based pianist Nikolaj Hess, who has released such albums as 3xHess: Music for Mum and Dad, Hess/AC/Hess Spacelab, and Playin’, will be joined by a bassist and a drummer for an evening of compositions and improvised soundscapes performed in the third-floor galleries among the stunning, contemplative canvases, which are divided into portraits, interiors, landscapes, and empty cityscapes. The music will be a direct response to the captivating works, which are bathed in a quiet, magical light. The exhibition has been extended through March 26; on February 27, Scandinavia House will host the final “Capturing the Art of Mystery” workshop for children ages six to eleven ($12, 2:00).