this week in music

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL VIDEO OF THE DAY AND AFTER-PARTY

With predictions of sunny skies and mid-80s temperatures, Saturday’s free 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport is looking better and better. Although Re-TROS had to cancel and won’t be coming from Beijing as scheduled, the rest of the lineup — Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, Speedy Ortiz, Radkey, Nude Beach, Dead Stars, Crazy Pills, the Viet Cong, and headliners Dinosaur Jr. — is set to fill two stages with sounds ranging from raucous punk to sensitive singer-songwriter guitar pop to a whole lot in between from 1:00 till 8:00. During that time, you can grab eats in the 4Knots Food Truck Courtyard, where you will find Papaya King, the Crepes Truck, Softee Xpress, Shanghai Sogo, Nuchas, twi-ny fave Uncle Gussy’s, and Yankee Doodle Dandy’s. If you feel like turning the beat around and are still ready to party as the sun sets, head to Webster Hall on Eleventh St. for the joint Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival/4Knots After-Party. The Village Voice cohosts this combined affair as well, featuring California rapper Ab-Soul and two special guests, newcomers Jarren Benton and YC the Cynic, in addition to online music curators DJ Meka and Low Key. Although the 4Knots Music Festival is free, the after-party isn’t: Tickets will run you thirty bucks.

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL SET TIMES
1:00 — Dead Stars, Front/Row Stage
1:30 — Radkey, Pier 16
2:00 — Crazy Pills, Front/Row Stage
2:30 — Speedy Ortiz, Pier 16
3:00 — Juan Wauters, Front/Row Stage
3:30 — Viet Cong, Pier 16
4:00 — Nude Beach, Front/Row Stage
4:30 — Those Darlins, Pier 16
5:30 — Mac DeMarco, Pier 16
7:00 — Dinosaur Jr., Pier 16

WARM UP 2014 / HY-FI BY THE LIVING

Expect major crowds at weekly MoMA PS1 Warm Up dance party (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Warm Up: Saturdays through September 6, $18-$20, 3:00 – 9:00
“Hy-Fi”: Thursday – Monday through September 7, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket within fourteen days except during Warm Up), 12 noon – 6:00
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org/warmup
www.momaps1.org/yap

The summer’s sweatiest dance party takes places every Saturday in Long Island City, as thousands of people gather in MoMA PS1’s courtyard for the weekly Warm Up celebration. Now in its seventeenth year, Warm Up features an international roster of prominent DJs and live performances on Saturdays from 3:00 to 9:00 on the dance floor located between the winning Young Architects Program urban design installation in the courtyard and the entrance to the old school building that became an arena for cutting-edge art back in 1971. During Warm Up, M. Wells Dinette serves alcoholic drinks indoors and hot food and cold drinks outdoors, including fried chicken, grilled mackerel yellow bean salad, a grilled veal heart hero, and maple water. On Saturdays, the exhibitions on the second and third floors close at 3:00, but the first-floor and basement shows (“Maria Lassnig,” “Korakrit Arunanondchai,” “Gavin Kenyon: Reliquary Void”) continue through 6:00. This week boasts one of the best lineups of the summer, with DJ sets by Mister Saturday Night (Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter) and Auntie Flo and live music by Cibo Matto, Archie Pelago, and Gabriel Garzón Montano; July 19 brings together Robert Hood, Objekt, Rrose, Vatican Shadow, Conatiner, and Young Male, while July 26 sees Cashmere Cat, Total Freedom, GoldLink, UNiiQU3, and Suicideyear take the stage at the top of the steps, joined by a rotating series of installations by CONFETTISYSTEM, Nightwood, the Principals, and others. Tickets are available for $18 in advance and $20 at the door; be prepared for some long lines the later you go. It’s incredibly easy to get to MoMA PS1, which is the third stop on the 7 from Grand Central. Once you get off the train, just follow the thumping music, which reverberates throughout the neighborhood.

Environmentally friendly organic towers rise in MoMA PS1 courtyard (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Next to the Warm Up area, in the center of the courtyard, stands “Hy-Fi,” the winner of MoMA PS1’s fifteenth annual Young Architects Program. Created by New York-based firm the Living headed by 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow David Benjamin, the three conjoined towers were made using nearly 100% fully compostable and environmentally sustainable biological technologies in collaboration with Ecovative, 3M, Advanced Metal Coatings, Shabd Simon-Alexander and Audrey Louisere, Build It Green Compost, Brooklyn Digital Foundry, Columbia University (where Benjamin is an assistant professor in the Living Architecture Lab), and others. “Hy-Fi” contains approximately ten thousand remarkably light handmade bricks consisting of such organic waste materials as cornstalks and mushroom mycelium, held together by mortar. The shiny, glittering bricks at the top are actually the molds in which the rest of the bricks were grown. (There are also several vertical wooden beams that hold up the entryways, primarily as protection against strong winds and storms, which came in handy last week.) The small gaps between some of the bricks are strictly artistic, resulting in streams of sunlight and shadows. Construction required no energy (except for human) and almost zero carbon emissions; when the installation, which also provides much-needed cooling, is brought down after September 7, the entire structure will be recycled. Unfortunately, because of the size and unpredictability of the crowds during Warm Up, on Saturdays visitors are not allowed inside the twisting structure, which was influenced by the designs of Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí, but you can take a break in the small pool and sit in other circular areas while drinking wine, beer, and other cocktails. The Living, which was founded in 2006 with “the mission of creating the architecture of the future,” won the YAP commission this year over Collective-LOK, LAMAS, Pita + Bloom, and Fake Industries Architectural Agonism; you can currently see an exhibition on all five submissions, as well as finalists from similar competitions in Italy, Chile, and South Korea, at MoMA’s midtown location.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: JUAN WAUTERS

Coming to the free 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport from Queens, just across the waters of the East River, is Juan Wauters. Fresh from his role as leader of the Beets, a wild and delightful guitar-pop band, singer-songwriter Wauters released his debut solo album, N.A.P. North American Poetry (Captured Tracks), this past February. He may have sold out the vinyl 7″ of his charming, upbeat pop single “Sanity or Not,” but you can still check out if he’s sane or not here. Meanwhile, his above multilingual performance of the quiet, modest trilogy of “Nena,” “Water,” and “Ay Ay Ay” should give a taste of what to expect from Wauters, who’s been compared to Daniel Johnston for his weird and wonderful lyrics and guitar work. Wauters’s recent appearances have been marked by a more personal note, and his always engaging presence should lend a quirky edge to the 4Knots lineup, which includes Radkey, Dead Stars, Mac DeMarco, Speedy Ortiz, Those Darlins, Viet Cong, Crazy Pills, Nude Beach, and, most massively, Dinosaur Jr. (You can hear a sampler of songs by all the groups here. Please note that Re-TROS has canceled their scheduled appearance.)

JAPAN CUTS: WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

Sexy Michiko (Fumi Nikaido) shows her dangerous side in Sion Sono’s outrageously fun WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (JIGOKU DE NAZE WARUI) (Sion Sono, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 8:30
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org

It might take a while for the two seemingly disparate narratives to come together in Sion Sono’s totally awesome Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but when they do, watch out, because it all leads to one gloriously insane finale. As teenagers, the nerdy Fuck Bombers — director Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), camera operators Miki (Yuki Ishii) and Tanigawa (Haruki Mika), and future action star and Bruce Lee wannabe Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi) — are determined to make a movie. Ten years later, they are still waiting to make their masterpiece. Meanwhile, Shizue (Tomochika), the wife of yakuza boss Taizo Muto (Jun Kunimura) and ambitious stage mother of toothpaste-commercial darling Michiko (Nanoka Hara), has been in prison for ten years for brutally killing three men while defending her home against an assassination attempt by the Ikegami yakuza clan, which only Ikegami (Shinichi Tsutsumi) himself survived. Ten years later, Shizue is scheduled to get out of prison in ten days, and Muto is scrambling to keep his promise to his wife that Michiko (now played by Fumi Nikaido) would be the star of a movie by the time Shizue was released. However, Michiko, who has become a bitter, dangerous young woman, is on the run, taking with her geeky innocent bystander Koji (Gen Hoshino) as her inept pretend boyfriend. When the plot lines intersect, the fun really begins, with blood and body parts battling it out for the biggest laughs.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is a riotous send-up of yakuza crime thrillers and a loving and downright silly homage to DIY filmmaking. Digging back into his past to adapt a screenplay he wrote back in the 1990s, Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish) lets it all fly, holding nothing back in this sweetly violent, reality-bending, severely twisted romantic comedy that actually has quite a big heart. And at the center of it all is Nikaido (Sono’s Himizu), splendidly portraying a sexy, black-clad ingénue/femme fatale who is capable of just about anything. Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is screening July 10 at Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, in conjunction with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival. Nikaido, who is receiving the NYAFF’s Screen International Rising Star Award, will be on hand to introduce the film and participate in a Q&A; the screening will be followed by the “Let’s Play in Hell” opening-night party with live music by New York-based Japanese punk band Gelatine.

4KNOTS VIDEO OF THE DAY: RADKEY

Fans of Missouri teen trio Radkey might “Start Freaking Out,” as their high-energy single recommends, when the SXSW sensation hits the stage at the free 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport on July 12. The three young Radkey brothers, lactose intolerant guitarist and vocalist Dee, video-gaming bassist Isaiah, and beef-jerky-loving drummer Solomon, deliver a solid dose of classic punk rhythm and speedy guitars; they’re just kicking off a tour with popular punk stalwarts Rise Against and L.A. five-piece Touché Amoré through the fall, including a stop at the Best Buy Theater on September 26. They haven’t finished their first album yet — their four-track EP, Devil Fruit, was released last October — but the 4Knots show offers an early chance to see them “melting faces” with such songs as “Little Man,” “Overwhelmed,” and “Red Letter” as well as new tunes they’re recording with Arctic Monkeys producer Ross Orton for their debut album. (You can hear “Feed My Brain” here.) 4Knots also features Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, Speedy Ortiz, Viet Cong, Nude Beach, Crazy Pills, Juan Wauters, Dead Stars, and headliners Dinosaur Jr.

4KNOTS MUSIC FESTIVAL VIDEO OF THE DAY: “MY DYING ATMOSPHERE” BY Re-TROS

It’s year four for the Village Voice’s 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport, a more-than-worthy successor to the old Siren Festival, which was held on two stages in Coney Island. 4Knots at the seaport is one of the most enjoyable free festivals of the summer: It’s easy to get to, relatively painless to navigate between stages, and packed with intriguing new and emerging talent, along with an old favorite or two. The festival, taking place from 1:00 to 8:00 on Saturday, July 12, is anchored this year by the venerable Dinosaur Jr.; one of the more exciting, lesser-known bands worth catching is Re-TROS, hailing from Beijing, China. The young band’s long name is Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, or Chong Su Diao Xiang De Quan Li (重塑雕像的权利 in Chinese). Citing such postpunk influences as Bauhaus, the Birthday Party, and Joy Division, Re-TROS have released such music as the sweet, blippy electronic single “My Dying Atmosphere” in addition to the Brian Eno–produced 2005 EP Cut Off!, which was recorded in New York and includes such tracks as “A Death-Bed Song,” “If the Monkey Becomes (to Be) the King,” and “Laugh from the Time.” Guitarist and vocalist Dong Hua, bassist and vocalist Min Liu, and drummer Hui Ma have played regularly to large, enthusiastic crowds at festivals in China, but they are not as well known as they deserve here. 4Knots is likely to change that, as they share a bill with such other performers as Mac DeMarco, Those Darlins, Speedy Ortiz, Crazy Pills, Radkey, Viet Cong, Nude Beach, Juan Wauters, and Dead Stars. (Please note that Re-TROS has since canceled their scheduled appearance at 4Knots because of passport issues and will be back in New York City in the fall.)

LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014

Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory with THE PASSENGER as part of Lincoln Center Festival (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Lincoln Center and other locations
July 7 – August 16, $45-$175
212-721-6500
www.lincolncenterfestival.org

Although there are only five companies presenting at this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, there is plenty to see at this annual summer event that makes creative use of the otherwise vacated spaces usually inhabited by the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and previously, the New York City Opera, in addition to other locations. The festival kicks off with the welcome return of Japanese Kabuki theater company Heisei Nakamura-za for the first time since the 2012 death of star actor Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, but the centuries-old family legacy continues with his two sons, Nakamura Kankuro VI and Nakamura Shichinosuke II, leading a rare revival of the nineteenth-century samurai ghost story Kaidan Chibusa no Enoki (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree) at the Rose Theater July 7-12 ($45-$175). To heighten the atmosphere, Josie Robertson Plaza will be home to a Japanese Artisan Village through July 13, selling such items as nihon ningyo (hand-painted dolls), tenugui (cotton towels), and kanzashi (traditional hair ornaments). Award-winning Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker looks back at her past with four of her earliest pieces, 1982’s Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, 1983’s Rosas danst Rosas, 1984’s Elena’s Aria, and 1987’s Bartók/Mikrokosmos, running July 8-16 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater ($35-$75). Now in her mid-fifties, De Keersmaeker will dance in two of the shows; she will also participate in a talk-back following the July 8 performance, a book presentation with Bojana Cvejić and moderator André Lepecki on July 12 (free and open to the public), and a discussion with Anna Kisselgoff on July 15 in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (free with advance tickets).

Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett team up in Lincoln Center Festival presentation of THE MAIDS (photo © Lisa Tomasetti)

The Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory July 10-13 ($45-$250) with director David Pountney’s English-language adaptation of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger, the story of a former Nazi concentration camp overseer trying to escape her past; the impressive two-floor set consists of an ocean liner above and a prison camp below. Each performance will be preceded by a chamber concert by the ARC Ensemble playing works by Weinberg; in addition, there will be a special screening of Andrej Munk’s 1963 cinematic adaptation of Zofia Posmysz’s source novel on July 8 at 6:00 in the SHK Penthouse (free with advance tickets), followed by a discussion with Holocaust survivors and others. For the first time ever, the Bolshoi’s ballet, opera, orchestra, and chorus will appear together in New York City, beginning with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride July 12-13 at Avery Fisher Hall ($35-$100) and continuing with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake July 15-20 ($35-$125), Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote July 22-23 (with new choreography by Alexei Fadeyechev), and Aram Khachaturyan’s Spartacus July 25-27, all at the David H. Koch Theater. The festival concludes in a big way with the Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, directed by Benedict Andrews and starring Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert, and Elizabeth Debicki, playing August 6-16 at New York City Center ($35-$120, partial view seats still available).