this week in music

PUBLIC ART FUND TALKS: JACOLBY SATTERWHITE

Jacolby Satterwhite’s An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time is on view at Lincoln Center (photo by Nicholas Knight)

Who: Jacolby Satterwhite
What: Public Art Fund Talk
Where: The Cooper Union’s Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Sq., Third Ave. at Seventh St.
When: Wednesday, April 26, free with advance RSVP for in-person or livestream, 6:30
Why: In a 2021 “Meet the Artist” interview with the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich, multimedia artist Jacolby Satterwhite explains, “The influences I draw on are from pop culture, politics, my family, my personal histories, queer theory, art history, postructuralism and design, gaming. It’s sort of like, you know, the simulacra of the universe.” Born in 1986 in Columbia, South Carolina, the New York–based Satterwhite’s latest installation is An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time, on view on the fifty-foot-long Hauser Digital Wall in the Karen and Richard LeFrak Lobby in David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic.

Commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem and Public Art Fund, the nearly half-hour work explores the past, present, and future of Lincoln Center, featuring more than seventy-five dancers and more than fifty musicians from local performing art schools amid HD color video and 3D animation incorporating real-life figures, archival footage, trees, buildings, text, paintings, and photographs. On April 26 at 6:30, Satterwhite will be at the Cooper Union’s Frederick P. Rose Auditorium to discuss An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time and place it within the context of his career as well as the arts community it celebrates. “I wanted to describe time and history through a vehicle of abstraction, using color, shape, landscape, horizontality, and movement as a way to kind of reorient the history in a way that it hasn’t been normally told,” he says in the above Lincoln Center video. You can hear more on April 26 either at the Cooper Union or via livestream, both free with advance RSVP.

DOUGLAS DUNN + DANCERS: GARDEN PARTY

Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, and Christopher Williams rehearse Douglas Dunn’s Garden Party (photo by Mimi Gross)

GARDEN PARTY
Douglas Dunn Studio
541 Broadway between Spring & Prince Sts., third floor
April 24-30, $15-$20
www.douglasdunndance.com
www.mimigross.com

All dancer and choreographer Douglas Dunn needed to do was give Mimi Gross the title of his new production and the painter, set and costume designer, installation artist, and teacher was off to the races.

Born in California in 1942, Dunn has been collaborating with Gross, a native New Yorker born in 1940, since Dunn presented Foot Rules in 1979; they’ve worked together some two dozen times since, including on 1980’s Echo, 1981’s Skid, 1988’s Matches, 1995’s Caracole, 2007’s Zorn’s Lemma, and 2017’s Antipodes. They met quite serendipitously.

“I’d been working with Charles Atlas on film, video, and costumes for several years. Being then in a moment unavailable, he suggested Mimi,” Dunn explained via email. “She made wonderful apparel for an hour-long duet for Deborah Riley and me called Foot Rules. What I noticed right away was her love of color.”

“Charlie Atlas was presenting live performances which he made up and directed. That is how I first met Charlie, and then I met Douglas,” Gross added. “They had been making dances and videos together. When Douglas asked Charlie if he could make some costumes for a new dance he was choreographing with Deborah Riley, Charlie was super busy — he was working with Merce Cunningham full-time — and recommended me to do it. I had made many costumes for movies with cardboard and hot glue . . . nothing to be washed! Or worn many times! Quite a challenge. Of course, I said sure. And then through the decades on and off we have shared many projects, sets and costumes, sometimes sets, sometimes costumes, sometimes both — very open, warm, clear mutual caring to work within our shared possibilities, never knowing how it will come out.”

Douglas Dunn emerges from his pulpit in Mimi Gross’s fantastical Garden Party installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Dunn and Gross are currently at work on their latest project, Garden Party, which runs April 24-30 at Douglas Dunn + Dancers’ SoHo loft studio. Last week I attended a rehearsal of the sixty-minute piece, which features Dunn, Grazia Della-Terza, Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, Vanessa Knouse, Emily Pope, Paul Singh, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Timothy Ward, and Christopher Williams moving through the spectacular space created by Gross, consisting of lushly painted trompe l’oeil walls and ceiling and a long horizontal mirror, covered with pink, yellow, and green flowers, plants and trees, clouds, raindrops, and more. While the plants at the right are fake — Dunn told me at the rehearsal that he had “planted” some of them himself — the greenery at the left is real, repurposing the plants that were already in the studio.

There’s also a colorful pulpit where Dunn spends much of the show; he had specifically requested it, asking for it to be based on the design at Grace Church on Broadway. The dancers glide across the floor like blossoming flowers, in solos, pas de deux, and trios, celebrating birth, life, and growth; however, the soundtrack of pop and classical songs (Robert de Visée, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Bach, Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, more), birdsong, and poetry (by John Keats, Anne Waldman, Molière, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Milton, Stephanie Jacco, and others, read by Dunn, Waldman, Jacco, and Della-Terza) touch on loss and loneliness. A few of the dancers occasionally sit on an inviting white park bench, and Dunn clutches a plush bird named April.

“Mimi always helps me see color; I always see line first,” Dunn explained. “We got along just fine and knew right away how much to interact and how much to let the other alone. She often saw historical references in the dancing and she’d take off from there. We’re both dead serious but also insistent on having a good warm time relating when preparing for a new dance show. The feel of this evening was clear to me the day the title hit me (about three years ago, the pandemic postponing the project). The lavish beauty of Mimi’s set completely fulfills my initial intuition . . . as if she’d read my dancing mind.”

Douglas Dunn’s Garden Party runs April 24-30 in SoHo loft studio (photo by Jacob Burckhardt, 2023)

“The new dance had been talked about a long while ago,” Gross noted. “All of 2021-22, I made many landscape drawings, and then, when the pandemic seemed to subside, I painted these flowers last summer and called them ‘Feel Good Flowers.’ When Douglas asked me if I would make a garden and sets about ‘Early Spring,’ he said, ‘Fill up the studio.’ That was just what I was doing anyway. I asked him if I could paint it with this stylization, and that I didn’t know exactly how I would do it. He was fine with that. I made a big drawing of a bird and discussed the texture and color with Sue Julien, who fabricated it. Both Sue and David Quinn made an amazing contribution fabricating the costumes from my drawings. Douglas wanted each dancer to be different, with different leg lengths. That is all he had said. I pored over my Ballet Russe books, and Charles James and I made drawings. The only common link is the fluorescent yellow in each costume.”

The collaboration extends to Lauren Parrish, who designed the lighting and projections, and sound designer Jacob Burckhardt. The show will be preceded by live music from guitarist and composer Tosh Sheridan, who has released such albums as Tosh, Tosh Sheridan Trio, and solo/duo.

“All of these plain facts are fine and good and relate our collaborating history, but it is the depth of poetic reality where we really collaborate,” Gross concluded, “by dance and by making an atmosphere for the dance.”

And what an atmosphere Dunn and Gross have created for Garden Party.

BROOKLYN BY THE BOOK: LUCINDA WILLIAMS IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVE EARLE

Who: Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle
What: Book launch
Where: Congregation Beth Elohim, 271 Garfield Pl., Brooklyn
When: Monday, April 24, $36.84, 7:00
Why: “Yes, my family was dysfunctional, fucked up. But that’s not what really matters to me. What matters is that I inherited my musical talent from my mother and my writing ability from my father,” Louisiana-born singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams writes in her new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You (Crown, April 25, $28.99). She also admits about choosing not to attend the 1994 Grammy Awards, where her tune “Passionate Kisses” won for Best Country Song, “The truth is that I was not just self-conscious but also scared. I feared that I didn’t belong. It’s a feeling I’ve been trying to shake my entire life.” She has proved she belongs over the last twenty-nine years, being nominated for a total of seventeen Grammys and winning twice more, for Best Contemporary Folk Album for the amazing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for “Get Right with God.” Her next album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, featuring such songs as “Stolen Moments” and “New York Comeback,” the latter with background vocals by Bruce Springsteen, is due out June 30.

On April 24, Williams, who finishes up a four-show run at City Winery on Tuesday night, will be at Congregation Beth Elohim with another Bruce collaborator, Steve Earle, to discuss her life and career. Williams and Earle have been longtime friends who joined forces on Earle’s “You’re Still Standin’ There” in 1996, on Williams’s “Joy” in 2004, and for a New Yorker interview with performances during the pandemic, so it promises to be an intimate evening, which is organized by Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore. Tickets are $36.84 and come with a copy of Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You.

JAN TILLEY: EXCERPTS FROM JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

EXCERPTS FROM JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
The Cutting Room
44 East 32nd St. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Friday, April 7, $40.35, $25 food & beverage minimum per person, 7:30
212-691-1900
thecuttingroomnyc.com
www.jantilley.com

Right after the two Passover seders and before Easter Sunday, rock & roll guitarist and singer Jan Tilley offers a holiday spectacular on Good Friday, an evening of songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1971 Broadway smash, Jesus Christ Superstar. Tilley, the cofounder of the Rude Girls and an early portrayer of Krzysztof in Hedwig & the Angry Inch, has led several special concerts at the Cutting Room and will next revive her portrayal of Jesus from last year, with vocalist Lisa McQuade as Judas, singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Rachelle Garniez as Mary Magdalene, and singer and actor Joe Dettmore as Simon Zealotes, Pontius Pilate, and King Herod. The band consists of Tilley with Roger Lipson, Tim Brannigan, Paul Leschen, and Junior Pauls, ready to kick some ass on such songs as “What’s the Buzz/Strange Thing, Mystifying,” “Everything’s Alright,” “Heaven on Their Minds,” “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” and “King Herod’s Song.”

Jan Tilley brings their rock-and-roll take on Jesus Christ Superstar back to the Cutting Room on Good Friday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

If you haven’t seen Tilley rock out before at their Time Capsule 1970s/’80s shows and Heart tribute, you’re in for a treat. And with Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera closing on April 16 and his Bad Cinderella living up to its title, this is unquestionably the best Sir Andrew gig in town. (Even Ted Lasso is getting in on it all, making two Jesus Christ Superstar references in its first three episodes of season three.) Tickets are $40.35, with a $25 food and beverage minimum; the menu includes latkes in addition to burgers, salads, tacos, pizzas, and fish.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK AT BOWERY BALLROOM

Who: Robyn Hitchcock
What: Live concert with full band
Where: Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. between Bowery & Chrystie St., 212-260-4700
When: Saturday, April 1, $25, 8:00
Why: Throughout a long career that has included leading the Soft Boys, the Egyptians, and the Venus 3 in addition to extensive solo work, Paddington-born singer-songwriter and raconteur Robyn Hitchcock has regaled concertgoers with hilarious stories about the music business and wry views on the human condition while putting out a bevy of terrific albums and memorable songs. During the pandemic, Hitchcock took to Facebook in a big way, posting memories, promoting new material, and suddenly going live, playing short, impromptu online gigs from his hotel room or at home. On the Mandolin streaming platform, which lets performers get paid by fans, Hitchcock has also been performing longer living room concerts, known as “Live from Tubby’s House,” named after one of his beloved Scottish Fold cats, Tubby Vincent, who often makes an appearance, along with Ringo M. Stardust the cat, Perry the lobster, and Hitchcock’s partner, fellow singer-songwriter Emma Swift.

Emma Swift and Robyn Hitchcock are psyched to be back out on the road and not just dreaming of trains (photo by Kelley Stolz)

But live audiences are irreplaceable, and Hitchcock is beyond thrilled to be touring again, traveling the world in support of his latest record, the fabulous Shufflemania! (Tiny Ghost Records, October 2022), and sharing his journey every day on Facebook. The album is a jangly mélange of pure pop psychedelia, highlighted by such songs as “The Shuffle Man,” “Socrates in Thin Air,” “The Sir Tommy Shovell,” and “The Raging Muse.” Hitchcock explains on Bandcamp, “What is Shufflemania!? It’s surfing fate, trusting your intuition, and bullfighting with destiny. It’s embracing the random and dancing with it, even when it needs to clean its teeth. It’s probably the most consistent album I’ve made. It’s a party record, with a few solemn moments, as parties are wont to supply. Groove on, groovers!” (On April 23, Hitchcock will release the all-instrumental Life After Infinity, boasting such titles as “Plesiosaurs in the Desert,” “Tubby Among the Nightingales,” and “Mr Ringerson’s Picnic.”)

On the tour, he has played solo acoustic and electric and with different band configurations depending on where he is and which friends of his are available; on April 1, he was supposed to be joined by Kelley Stolz and Bart Davenport at Bowery Ballroom, but they both have just contracted Covid. Instead, he’ll be accompanied by Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks, the Young Fresh Fellows) on guitar, Julia Rydholm (Ladybug Transistor, Essex Green) on bass, and Patrick Berkery (the War on Drugs, the Pernice Brothers) on drums, promising that “the show will start quietly and finish loud. . . . We’ll condense forty-five years of music into ninety minutes as best we can.” In addition to Hitchcock gems, be on the lookout for witty repartee and classic covers, from Dylan, the Beatles, the Psychedelic Furs, and unexpected surprises, especially because it will be April Fools’ Day.

THE DOWNTOWN SEDER

Who: David Broza, BETTY, Bettye LaVette, Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket, Basya and Saadya Schechter, Mark Vincent, Gary Lucas and the Golem, Modi, Resistance Revival Chorus, Dr. Ruth, Mayor Eric Adams, Congressman Max Rose, Terrance Floyd, Vince Warren, Jason Flom, Lorenzo Johnson, more
What: Downtown Seder 2023
Where: City Winery, 25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St.
When: Sunday, April 2, $85-$125 (livestream free), 1:00
Why: For more than three decades, Michael Dorf has been hosting all-star seders to celebrate Passover, concentrating on freedom and justice. The latest iteration takes place on Sunday afternoon, April 2, at City Winery, which Dorf opened on Varick St. in 2008 and moved to Hudson River Park’s Pier 57 in 2020. Attendees will be seated at long, communal tables and have a vegetarian meal with four glasses of wine as they go through the Haggadah, the illustrated text that tells the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt. This year’s participants include musicians David Broza, BETTY, Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket, Basya and Saadya Schechter, Mark Vincent, Resistance Revival Chorus, and Gary Lucas and the Golem, comedian Modi, Dr. Ruth, Mayor Eric Adams, Congressman Max Rose, Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Jason Flom and Lorenzo Johnson of the Innocence Project. Terrance Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, will be asking “The Four Questions”; the setlist is also likely to include “Dayenu,” “Chad Gadya,” “Go Down Moses,” and “The Ten Plagues.”

“It says in the beginning of the Haggadah that one should recount and retell the story of the exodus from Egypt in the language that you understand. The ancient Israelites didn’t know Hebrew, so they told the story in Armenian. Americans read it in English,” Dorf said in a statement. “Our interpretation is to tell the story in the language of the arts, in ways we can relate and truly empathize with what it would be like to be in bondage, to be emancipated, and the universal civil rights we need to continually remind ourselves.” During the pandemic, City Winery livestreamed its Downtown Seders; you can check out the 2021 virtual event above. And it was just announced that the 2023 seder will be streamed live for free here.

EVERY OCEAN HUGHES: RIVER

Every Ocean Hughes’s River will be performed March 24–26 in conjunction with photography exhibit (photo courtesy Every Ocean Hughes)

Who: Every Ocean Hughes
What: Live performance
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, the Susan and John Hess Family Theater, 99 Gansevoort St.
When: March 24, 7:00; March 25, 4:00 & 7:00; March 26, 4:00, $25; exhibition continues through April 2
Why: Multidisciplinary artist Every Ocean Hughes activates her Whitney photography exhibition “Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side” with four live performances this weekend in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater. Formerly known as Emily Roysdon, Hughes investigates legacy, loss, and inheritance in “Alive Side,” consisting of photographs of the west side piers right outside the Whitney; Hughes calls them “unmarked memorials, found monuments to the lives that needed that unregulated space. To those who died living queerly. Those who died of neglect, poverty, AIDS, violence, and politics. And to those seeking life by crossing West Street.” The black-and-white photos of the dilapidated wooden piers sticking out of the water, some works sliced diagonally in half, are framed in bright pastel colors that evoke the rainbow pride flag. The exhibit also features the forty-minute video One Big Bag, in which a death doula portrayed by Lindsay Rico describes and enacts rituals surrounding the end of life; “the whole process is a creative process,” she says.

Every Ocean Hughes, The Piers Untitled (#12 collaged, #9, #14 collaged, #4), 2009-23 (photo by Ron Amstutz)

On March 24–26, the Maryland-born Hughes, who lives and works in her home state and Stockholm, will present River, a thirty-minute live performance incorporating song, text, choreographed movement, and set design exploring the crossing that takes place at death, the descent into the underworld. The cast includes Rico, Geo WyeX, Æirrinn, and Nora Brown, with movement direction by Monica Mirabile, costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, and lighting by Timothy Johnson. Tickets are $25; it is recommended they be purchased in advance.