this week in music

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).

MIDNIGHT MOMENT CONCERT FOR DOGS: HEART OF A DOG BY LAURIE ANDERSON

Laurie Anderson has created a three-minute version of HEART OF A DOG that will be shown every night in January in Times Square — along with a special concert performance for dogs on January 4

Duffy Square, Times Square
Broadway between 46th & 47th Sts.
Monday, January 4, free, 11:00 pm
www.timessquarenyc.org
www.laurieanderson.com

Multidisciplinary performance artist Laurie Anderson has created a special three-minute version of her latest film, the poetic and deeply personal Heart of a Dog, that will be shown every evening from 11:57 pm to 12 midnight on fifteen signs throughout Times Square as part of the monthly Midnight Moment program, which turns the Crossroads of the World into an enormous digital art gallery courtesy of the Times Square Advertising Coalition and Times Square Arts. Her first full-length film since 1986’s Home of the Brave, Heart of a Dog, which is about the death of her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, and the loss of her husband, Lou Reed, has been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar; for Midnight Moment, Anderson has edited it down to a visual collage from a section about consciousness and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “I love Times Square. It’s a dream,” Anderson said in a statement. “Desire, speed, the explosions of color, patterns and energy. What a great way to start the New Year! The ball drops and Heart of a Dog leaps onto all those massive screens at three minutes to midnight. Who could have predicted the unraveling dreams of my dog would be magnified up there like this? And sound too!” On January 4, Anderson will present the free, one-time-only “Midnight Moment Concert for Dogs,” a performance being held in honor of 9/11 first-responder canines; from 11:00 to 11:15 pm in Duffy Square, silent-disco headphones will be distributed to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. The audience will include dogs from the NYPD, MTA, and other city agencies, along with their handlers; the public is encouraged to bring their dogs as well. At 11:30, the concert will begin, broadcast through the headphones in addition to low-decibel speakers for the dogs. At 11:57, the three-minute version of Heart of a Dog will be shown, just as it will be every night in January. It should be another fascinating work from Anderson, who continues to test the boundaries of art, music, and film time and time again.

NEW YEAR’S EVE COUNTDOWN TO 2016

The seventh annual live webcast of the ball drop in Times Square will begin at 6:00 pm, kicking off more than six hours of commercial-free live music, celebrity interviews, and behind-the-scenes stories as 2015 turns into 2016. Host Allison Hagendorf will be joined by Maggie Rulli, Andrea Boehlke, and Jeremy Hassell, with performances by Daya (“Hide Away”), Maluma and La Banda with Becky G., and Jessie J, who will play throughout the webcast, including “Imagine” right before midnight. Up through 12:15 am, the webcast will follow four themes: “One World Revealed,” “The Story Behind the Show,” “Times Square,” and “Celebration, Reflection, and Renewal.”

STEVE EARLE WINTER RESIDENCY

Steve Earle will be joined by John Doe on January 19 at City Winery

City Winery
155 Varick St. at Vandam St.
January 2, 11, 19, 27, $45-$65, 8:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.steveearle.com

Singer, songwriter, actor, and activist Steve Earle returns to City Winery for his annual winter residency in January, teaming up with specially selected guests for one-of-a-kind experiences. He’ll be shuttling back and forth between the City Winery locations in Chicago, Nashville, and here in New York, where he will be performing January 2, 11, 19, and 27. On January 2, he’ll be joined by Aoife O’Donovan, the Massachusetts native whose second album, In the Magic Hour, is due January 22. On January 11, Earle will hang out with Nashville’s Nikki Lane, the self-described First Lady of Outlaw Country, whose sophomore record, All or Nothin’, came out in May 2014 and was produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. Earle was once considered the future of outlaw country himself, so they should make a good duo. On January 19, Earle will take the stage with the one and only John Doe of X and the Knitters for some high-falutin’ punkabilly fun. Earle’s residency concludes January 27 with Kevn Kinney from Atlanta’s Drivin’ n’ Cryin’, whose most recent album is 2012’s A Good Country Mile with the Golden Palominos. Earle fans might also want to check out Steve’s son, Justin Townes Earle, who will be playing City Winery on January 6 & 7, with Frankie Lee opening.