Who: Charlotte Rampling and Sonia Wieder-Atherton
What: Recital Series: The Night Dances
Where: Park Avenue Armory, Board of Officers Room, 643 Park Ave. at 67th St., 212-933-5812
When: April 22-26, $75
Why: New York City’s most diverse and captivating space, the Park Avenue Armory, will host the U.S. premiere of “Recital Series: The Night Dances,” what should be a mesmerizing performance that features the one and only Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, Swimming Pool) reading the poetry of Sylvia Plath, accompanied by cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton (Little Girl Blue, from Nina Simone; Vita Monteverdi Scelsi) playing suites by Benjamin Britten.
In April 2005, Neil Young underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm. Four months later, he gathered together friends for two special nights at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, captured on film by Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, who has previously helmed such fab music docs as Stop Making Sense and Storefront Hitchcock. Neil Young: Heart of Gold was an intimate portrait of man who looked death in the face and survived; the film featured acoustic songs primarily from Young’s beautiful Prairie Wind album. But the Godfather of Grunge wasn’t about to let a little thing like a brain aneurysm stop him from rocking in the free world. As he continued his long-term project of reaching deep into his past for his archival box sets, he released Chrome Dreams II in October 2007, a sequel to an unreleased 1977 album that was rumored to include such future Young classics as “Pocahontas,” “Like a Hurricane,” “Homegrown,” and “Powderfinger.” For Chrome Dreams II, Young strapped on the electric guitar and held nothing back, joined by longtime partners in crime Ralph Molina on drums, Rick Rosas on bass, and Ben Keith on guitars and keyboards.
Greendale, Neil Young’s “musical novel” about a small American town encountering a few troubles — including drugs, corporate greed, extramarital doings, the murder of a police officer, and a little red devil — is simplistic, amateurish, silly, and a lot of fun. The music, especially “Falling from Above,” “Devil’s Sidewalk,” and “Bandit,” is awesome, featuring Young’s soaring guitar and the solid backing of Crazy Horse. There’s no dialogue in the film, just the characters lip-synching to Young’s singing. With Greendale, Young has created his own little world, and for nearly ninety minutes, it’s a pleasure to be a part of it. The direction is credited to Young’s alter ego, Bernard Shakey, who is enjoying a weeklong retrospective at the IFC Center, consisting of a 35mm print of Greendale, a digital restoration of the director’s cut of Human Highway, the twentieth-anniversary of Dead Man (with director Jim Jarmusch participating in a postscreening discussion on April 23 at 7:00), a high-definition digital projection of Journey Through the Past, a 35mm print of Year of the Horse (with Jarmusch at the IFC Center for the 9:45 screening on April 23), and other musical journeys starring Young, who continues to make vibrant music as he heads toward seventy. 
