this week in music

WINTER JAZZFEST 2016

James “Blood” Ulmer will be part of the Winter Jazzfest marathon this week

Multiple venues in downtown Manhattan
January 13-17, single-day marathon pass $45, two-day pass $75, full festival pass $145
www.winterjazzfest.com

While such January performance festivals as COIL, Under the Radar, Prototype, and American Realness go the multidisciplinary route, mixing things up with dance, experimental theater, installation art, opera, music, and various hybrids, Winter Jazzfest sticks to exactly what its name says it is: a winter festival of jazz music. The 2016 Winter Jazzfest takes place January 13-17, featuring more than 120 musicians, DJs, and bands playing at a dozen venues in downtown Manhattan, including the twelfth annual jazz marathon spread over two days. Below is a guide to help navigate some of the hottest shows.

Wednesday, January 13
The Ex, Bill Laswell, Colin Stetson, Happy Apple, (le) poisson rouge, $20-$25, 8:00

Thursday, January 14
Jazz Legends for Disability Pride, with Wynton Marsalis, Benny Golson, Christian McBride, Jimmy Cobb, Harold Mabern, George Coleman, Buster Williams, Louis Hayes, Bill Charlap, Monty Alexander, and others, the Quaker’s Friends Meeting House, $100, 6:30

Friday, January 15: Winter Jazzfest Marathon
Joey Arias: Basic Black, (le) poisson rouge, 6:20
Roy Hargrove, the New School Auditorium, 7:40
James “Blood” Ulmer, the New School Auditorium, 9:00
Dr. Lonnie Smith’s Evolution, Judson Memorial Church, 9:20
The Ex, the Greene Space, 11:00
Vijay Iyer Trio, the New School Tishman Auditorium, 11:20
Jeff Lederer’s Brooklyn Blowhard, Subculture, 12:20 am
Theo Croker, the Bitter End, 1:40 am

Saturday, January 16: Winter Jazzfest Marathon
Don Byron Quartet, the New School Auditorium, 6:20
Theo Bleckmann Elegy, the New School Tishman Auditorium, 7:20
Cyrus Chestnut’s African Reflections, the Greene Space, 8:20
Will Calhoun Celebrating Elvin Jones, New School Jazz Building Fifth Floor Theater, 9:40
Samy Daussat “Gypsy Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg,” the Django at the Roxy Hotel, 11:00
Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen, Judson Memorial Church, 12 midnight

Sunday, January 17
Channeling Coltrane: Rova’s Electric Ascension, with Nels Cline, Charles Burnham, Gerald Cleaver, Trevor Dunn, Jason Kao Hwang, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, and Nate Wooley and an opening set by Julian Lag, (le) poisson rouge, $25-$30, 6:00

THE NO PANTS SUBWAY RIDE

Multiple locations
Sunday, January 10, $2.75 (subway fare), 3:00-5:00
improveverywhere.com

A few weeks ago, it looked like this year’s No Pants Subway Ride would be no big deal, as it felt like spring outside. The temperature has soared downward since then, but it’s expected to be back up to fifty-one degrees on Sunday, with rain, for the fifteenth annual event, in which New Yorkers head underground in their boxers, panties, and tighty-whities. Started as a prank by seven guys in 2002, the ride — staged by Improv Everywhere, the group behind such other unusual events as Reverse Times Square, Car Alarm Symphony in Staten Island, and Carousel Horse Race in Bryant Park — hit a small bump in 2006, when 150 people participated and 8 were arrested and handcuffed, but the charges were shortly dismissed. As it turns out, it’s technically not illegal as long as the exposure doesn’t get too indecent. (Of course, we have also recently discovered that it is not against the law for women to be topless in Times Square.) Participants should gather, with their clothes on, at one of seven meeting points around the city (Hoyt Playground in Astoria, the Old Stone House in Brooklyn, Foley Square in Downtown Manhattan, Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park, the Great Hill in Central Park, and Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick); the main rule is that you must be willing to take your pants off on the subway while keeping a straight face — and hopefully having someone around to document it for social media. (You should not document it yourself, and you need to act like you merely forgot to put your pants on and that it is a coincidence so many others did as well.) When it’s over at about five o’clock, you should head over to the after-party at Webster Hall ($10 in advance, $15 at the door, 4:15 – 12 midnight), keeping your pants off (pants check is available); the festivities include DJs Dirtyfinger, Shakey, Dirty Stay Out, Jason Smith, Chris Landry, and SPLURT, live performances by the Flying Pants Brigade, the Gnomes, Helgatude, and AgroAcro, art installations by Chelsea and Melissa Brankx, Jaclyn Atkinson, and Lindsay Arden, performance art by YSLauran and Piñata Party, and more. And it should be comforting to know that the No Pants Subway Ride has spread to dozens of cities across the globe, including Adelaide, Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Madrid, Prague, Stockholm, and Vancouver.

AMERICAN REALNESS

Keyon Gaskin’s IT’S NOT A THING is part of American Realness festival at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Duncan Gray)

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 7-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org

The seventh American Realness festival consists of twenty cutting-edge theatrical presentations ($20 each), a movement workshop ($90), and four free lectures and discussions over the course of eleven days, January 7-17, almost exclusively at Abrons Arts Center. There’s so much going on that every day features between six and ten events spread throughout the venue, which includes the Experimental Theater, the Playhouse, the Underground Theater, and room 201. Two performances take place at other venues: The great Jack Ferver, who has a well-deserved rabid fan base for his deeply personal and intimate, often confessional multidisciplinary works, returns to American Realness with Mon, Ma, Mes (Revisité) at Gibney Dance (January 13-16), an updated version of a piece that debuted in 2012 at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival and in which the audience becomes part of the action. And Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen also employs interactivity in her multimedia 69 Positions (January 15-17, $15), which connects sexuality and public space in MoMA PS1’s VW Dome. Back at Abrons, the New York premiere of Heather Kravas’s dead, disappears (January 7-11) integrates Richard Serra’s Verb List into a solo work about words and movement, woman and object. In choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson’s Star Crap Method (January 9-17), performers Tyler Ashley, Talya Epstein, and Velez-Jackson and lighting designer Kathy Kaufman improvise as they examine the role of sound, light, music, and movement. In the world premiere of Erin Markey’s A Ride on the Irish Cream (January 13-17), Markey and Becca Blackwell bring to life the love between a girl and a pontoon boat/horse. M. Lamar’s Destruction (January 13-16) investigates the white supremacist world order using Negro spirituals. Sadness is at the heart of the New York premiere of Ligia Lewis’s Sorrow Swag (January 7-10), performed by Brian Getnick with live musical accompaniment by George Lewis Jr. Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey, Dominique Pétrin, Stephen Thompson, Dana Michel, and Brendan Dougherty collaborate on Culture Administration & Trembling (January 7-8), which explores the nature of spectatorship.

The festival also includes Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia (January 8-17), Keyon Gaskin’s it’s not a thing (January 8-11), Fernando Belfiore’s AL13FB<3 (January 9-12), Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships (January 9-12), Sara Shelton Mann, Hennessy, and Norman Rutherford’s Sara (The Smuggler) (January 11-13), Yvonne Meier’s Durch Nacht und Nebel (January 11-16), Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers’ Mira El! (January 12-15), choreographer Milka Djordjevich and composer Chris Peck’s Mass (January 13-15), the world premiere of the Bureau for the Future of Choreography’s Score for a Lecture, and James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s Over the River | Through the Woods diptych (January 16-17). In addition, Kravas, Lewis, Jenn Joy, and Kelly Kivland will discuss “Melancholia and Precarious Virtuosity” on January 8 at 3:30, Claudia La Rocco, Lane Czaplinski, Annie Dorsen, Yelena Gluzman, Katherine Profeta, and others will explore the question “How Should the Present Think About the Future?” on January 9 at noon, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Thomas J. Lax, Soyoung Yoon, and Cassie Mey will delve into “A Charming Uproar: On Documenting Dance” on January 10 at 3:30, Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz will lecture on “I Am Black (You Have to Be Willing to Not Know)” on January 17 at 11:00 am, and Movement Research will host the workshop “Creative Differences” with La Rocco on January 7, 10, and 12 ($90).

PROTOTYPE

Enda Walsh’s first opera, THE LAST HOTEL, is part of fourth annual Prototype festival (photo by Hugh O’Conor)

Multiple venues
January 6-17, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

The fourth annual Prototype, consisting of pioneering, cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater works by classical and postclassical composers, takes place January 6-17, consisting of seven presentations at multiple venues. The world premiere of composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek’s Angel’s Bone, about two angels returning to earth, features Abigail Fischer, Kyle Pfortmiller, Jennifer Charles, Kyle Bielfield, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and NOVUS NY and runs January 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15-17 at 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center on Greenwich St. Vavrek also wrote the libretto for composer David T. Little’s Dog Days, making its New York City premiere January 9-11 ($25-$81) at NYU’s Skirball Center; the work is based on the short story by Judy Budnitz. Greek tragedy meets the Vietnam War in composer Heidi Rodewald and librettist Donna Di Novelli’s The Good Swimmer, a first-look presentation running at HERE January 7-17. Irish playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh (Lazarus, Once, Hunger) wrote the libretto and directs composer Donnacha Dennehy’s The Last Hotel at St. Ann’s Warehouse January 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15-17 ($51-$61). Brooklyn-based five-piece Bombay Rickey brings its cinematic sound to HERE January 8-9 and 15-16 with a sixty-minute opera-cabaret work directed by Kristin Marting. Gregory Frateur and Nicolas Rombouts’s multimedia song cycle Sága makes its American premiere January 9-10 at National Sawdust. And on January 17, FIAF will host a one-time only concert reading of Jorge Sosa and Laura Sosa Pedroza’s La Reina, featuring mezzo-soprano Audrey Babcock, Laura Claycomb, and Christopher Burchett and conducted by David Allan Miller; it will be followed by a discussion moderated by Lawrence Edelson.

NEW EAR FESTIVAL

Phill Niblock will be at Fridman Gallery for inaugural New Ear Festival on January 9

Fridman Gallery
287 Spring St. by Hudson St.
January 6-12, $10 unless otherwise noted ($50 festival pass), 8:00
www.fridmangallery.com

New to the January performance festivals (COIL, Under the Radar, Prototype, American Realness, APAP) is the New Ear Festival, a celebration of sound art hosted by SoHo’s Fridman Gallery and MC Mona Chromatic. More than fifteen sound artists will be presenting works from January 6 to 12, beginning with the pairing of composer and experimental turntablist Marina Rosenfeld and Ben Vida, who enjoys recalibrating people’s ears. The impressive lineup on January 7 features Byron Westbrook, who incorporates social engagement into his work, former punk guitarist and Nam June Paik collaborator Stephen Vitiello, and improvisational electric accordionist Andrea Parkins. January 8 brings together Leila Bordreuil with Peter Evans, Jaimie Branch, and Joanna Mattrey. On January 9, multimedia minimalist Phill Niblock will be on hand for a screening of Maurits Wouters’s new documentary, The Movement of Phill Niblock, and the New York premiere of piece by guitarist David First. On Sunday, January 10, a video and sound installation by Cecilia Lopez will be on view (suggested donation, 12 noon – 8:00 pm). On January 11, the event series CT::SWaM (Contemporary Temporary:: Sound Works and Music) will present sound works and discussions. The inaugural festival concludes on January 12 (suggested donation) with Kevin Beasley’s Listening Room with Taja Cheek, Eli Keszler, Malik Gaines, and Yulan Grant. If you miss any of the performances, you can catch them later online here.

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL

Dorothée Munyaneza and Compagnie Kadidi’s SAMEDI DÉTENTE is part of Public Theater’s annual Under the Radar Festival (photo by Laura Fouqueré)

The Public Theater unless otherwise noted
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 6-17, $25 unless otherwise noted
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The Public Theater’s 2016 Under the Radar Festival features eighteen innovative music, dance, and theater hybrids from around the globe, taking place primarily at the Public’s many stages. The fun begins with the French duo of Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort and Germinal (January 6-9, the Public’s Newman Theater), who use the magic of theater to build the world from scratch. Lars Jan and Early Morning Opera combine a 1950s typewriter with kinetic light sculptures in The Institute of Memory (TIMe) (January 8-17, the Public’s Martinson Hall), as Jan delves into his father’s past as a Cold War operative. Director Andrew Scoville, composer Joe Drymala, technologist Dave Tennent, and writer Jaclyn Backhaus team up for the live podcast People Doing Math Live! (January 8 & 17, the Public’s Shiva Theater), complete with audience participation. Canadian duo Liz Paul and Bahia Watson’s two-woman show pomme is french for apple returns to Joe’s Pub on January 10 & 17, exploring womanhood in unique ways. DarkMatter, the trans South Asian spoken-word duo of Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, will perform the concert #ItGetsBitter at Joe’s Pub on January 12 & 14. Individual tickets for Martha Redbone’s new Bone Hill (January 13-16, Joe’s Pub), a collaboration with Aaron Whitby and Roberta Uno, are sold out, but you can still catch the show as part of a UTR Pack (five shows for $100). Nikki Appino and Saori Tsukuda’s Club Diamond (January 13 & 17, Shiva) combines silent film, live music, and Japanese techniques to explore the concept of truth in thirty-five minutes. Dorothée Munyaneza, who was born in Rwanda and currently lives in France, brings her Compagnie Kadidi to the Public’s LuEsther Hall for Samedi détente (January 14-17), looking back at the 1994 genocide, joined by Ivorian dancer Nadia Beugré and French musician Alain Mahé. Japan’s Toshiki Okada, who was previously at UTR in 2011 with Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech and in 2013 with the Pig Iron Theatre Company for Zero Cost House, will be back at Japan Society with God Bless Baseball (January 14-17, $35), which examines America’s pastime in Korea and Japan.

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq takes a unique look at NANOOK OF THE NORTH at Under the Radar Festival (photo by Nadya Kwandibens)

Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq will perform live to Robert J. Flaherty’s 19922 silent film, Nanook of the North, January 15-17 at the Newman, reclaiming her heritage, joined by percussionist Jean Martin and violinist Jesse Zubot. The 2016 Under the Radar Festival also includes 600 Highwaymen’s Employee of the Year (January 7-17, Martinson Hall), Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s The Art of Luv (Part I): Elliot (January 8-17, the Public’s Anspacher Theater), Sister Sylvester’s They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain (January 9 & 16, Shiva), I Am a Boys Choir’s demonstrating the imaginary body or how i became an ice princess (January 10 & 16, Shiva), Ahamefule J. Oluo’s Now I’m Fine (January 12-17, Newman), Guillermo Calderón’s Escuela (January 13-17, LuEsther Hall), Wildcat!’s I Do Mind Dying — Danse Précarité (January 14 & 17, Shiva), and Dane Terry’s Bird in the House (January 15-16, Shiva). In addition, numerous performances will be followed by Q&As with members of the creative teams, and there will be two free round-table discussions at the Public, “Assembly Required: New Media, New Dramaturgies” with Jan, André M. Zachery, and others on January 16 at noon and “Destroyer of Worlds” with Janani Balasubramanian, Abigail Browde, Calderón, Michael Silverstone, and Vaid-Menon on January 17 at noon.

COIL 2016

Ranters Theatre’s SONG kicks off COIL 2016 festival (photo by Jorge Lizalde)

Multiple venues
January 5-17, $20 unless otherwise noted
www.ps122.org

Every January, New York City is home to a handful of performance festivals that feature cutting-edge and experimental theater, dance, music, and installation art. PS122’s home at 150 First Ave. is scheduled to reopen this summer following a major renovation, but in the meantime you can experience its innovative programming at COIL 2016, taking place at various venues in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. “COIL 2016 attacks the very concept of boundaries and of limits. The boundaries between ideologies, life and death, the contemporary and historic, human and machine, light and darkness, audience and performer,” PS122 artistic director Vallejo Gantner explains on the event website. “Limitations of time, identity, age, and geography disappear. The work we will see this year deals with evolutionary transformation — personal, social, and artistic.” COIL begins on January 5 with Ranters Theatre’s Song (January 5-8), a sixty-minute immersive sound and visual installation at the New Ohio Theatre in which the audience can sit or lie down on the floor. Composer and vocalist Samita Sinha collaborates with Red Baarat percussionist Sunny Jain, guitarist and sound designer Greg Mcmurray, lighting designer Devin Cameron, visual artist Dani Leventhal, and director Ain Gordon on bewilderment and other queer lions (January 6-10, Invisible Dog Art Center), an intimate investigation of ritual and mythology through music, text, and image. Choreographer Jillian Peña’s Panopticon (January 9-17, Abrons Arts Center), a copresentation with American Realness, uses reflections to give a kaleidoscopic effect to a duet by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin.

At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Australians Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up for Morphia Series (January 12-16), an eighteen-minute phantasmal environment for twelve audience members at a time. Annie Dorsen, whose Magical with Anne Juren was a highlight of COIL 2013, is back with Yesterday Tomorrow (January 13-16, La MaMa), in which Hai-Ting Chinn, Jeffrey Gavett, and Natalie Raybould go on a multimedia musical journey from the Beatles’ “Yesterday” to Annie’s “Tomorrow.” Asia Society will be hosting Xi Ban and Po Huang Club’s one-night only Shanghai / New York: Future Histories 2 (January 13, free with RSVP, 7:00 & 9:30), which melds Peking Opera with southern blues. The festival also includes niv Acosta’s Discotropic (January 6-10, Westbeth Artists Community), Frank Boyd’s The Holler Sessions (January 6-17, Paradise Factory), Kaneza Schaal’s Go Forth (January 7-12, Westbeth), David Neumann’s I Understand Everything Better (January 10-16, the Chocolate Factory), Ranters Theatre’s Intimacy (January 11-16, New Ohio Theatre), Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation (January 13-17, Invisible Dog), Jonathan Capdevielle’s Adishatz / Adieu (January 15-17, Abrons Arts Center), and Michael Kliën’s Excavation Site: Martha Graham U.S.A. (January 15, Martha Graham Studios, 3:00 – 7:00).