this week in music

FIRST SATURDAYS: WITNESS

Philip Guston, “City Limits,” oil on canvas, 1969. (© The Estate of Philip Guston)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its April First Saturdays program, the Brooklyn Museum turns its attention on the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which many Americans want to get rid of completely), in conjunction with the exhibition “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties,” which features painting, sculpture, video, and installation by such artists as David Hammons, Philip Guston, Barkley L. Hendricks, Robert Indiana, Sam Gilliam, Norman Rockwell, Jae Jarrell, and Norman W. Lewis. The evening will include live music by Gedeon Luke & the People, Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely, and CharlieRED; Ping Chong + Company’s Brooklyn ’63 theater piece; a curator talk with Kellie Jones about “Witness”; a Hands-On Art workshop in which participants can make protest posters; pop-up talks on activism and art; Jennifer Scott discussing the Weeksville Heritage Center and oral history; a screening of Stanley Nelson’s 2013 film Freedom Summer, followed by a Q&A with the director; an interactive performance with Aisha Cousins, Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy, and Yolanda Zama; Kevin Powell lecturing on “Civil Rights: Then & Now”; and a dance party with DJ Mursi Layne. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” and other exhibits.

TAIWAN: A WORLD OF ORCHIDS

Queens Botanical Garden
43-50 Main St., Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Saturday, April 5, free with garden admission ($2-$4), 9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Exhibit continues Tuesday – Sunday through
718-886-3800
www.queensbotanical.org

“Just as I wonder / whether it’s going to die / the orchid blossoms,” writes Sam Hamill in his poem “The Orchid Flower,” continuing, “and I can’t explain why it / moves my heart, why such pleasure / comes from one small bud.” The New York Botanical Garden isn’t the only local oasis celebrating the beautiful flowering plant that delivers such pleasure. (“The Orchid Show: Key West Contemporary” continues there through April 21.) On Saturday, April 5, in conjunction with the opening weekend of the garden’s seventy-fifth anniversary since being constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair and fiftieth anniversary since the 1964 fair, the special exhibit “Taiwan: A World of Orchids” will feature a host of special activities, presented with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO-NY). Taiwan just happens to be the largest exporter of orchids in the world. “It is particularly appropriate that QBG is leading off its World’s Fairs Anniversary Season with ‘Taiwan: A World of Orchids,’” QBG executive director Susan Lacerte said in a statement. “Taiwan was the first nation to break ground on its pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair and fifty years later, our friends at TECO-NY are celebrating the anniversary with us by sponsoring this exquisite event.” In addition to what promises to be a dazzling orchid display, there will be arts and crafts all day long, an appearance by “Techno Prince” Dancing Doll at 12:45, a garden tour at 1:00, a traditional tea ceremony and guqin performance at 1:45, Taiwanese snacks and giveaways, and more.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “MARS” BY JON LANGFORD

“The subtext of the album is maybe the things our civilization thinks of as fixed and immovable might actually be redundant/obsolete/discredited and it’s up to us to question and find new rocks to be washed up on,” musician and painter Jon Langford says about his latest release, Here Be Monsters (In De Goot, April 1). Through four decades, the Welsh-born, Chicago-based Langford has been questioning and finding new rocks in such bands as the Three Johns, the Waco Brothers, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Wee Hairy Beasties, and, primarily, the Mekons, one of the greatest bands in the history of the planet. On April 4, Langford will be playing the Bell House in support of Here Be Monsters, joined by his touring band, Skull Orchard, which first recorded with him back in 1998. (The current lineup features Jim Elkington on guitar and keyboards, Alan Doughty on bass, and Joe Camarillo on drums.) “When they didn’t know quite what was there, they put ‘Here Be Monsters,’” Langford says of the album’s title, referring to cartographers of long ago. “When I think of where my career has gone over the last thirty-five years, it’s usually in that area — off the map.” Langford continues going off the map on the new disc, a collection that shows off his unique melding of alt-country folk and punk rock, taking on governmental profiteering in the sea shanty “What Did You Do in the War?,” political secrets in “Weightless,” stealth warfare in “Drone Operator,” religion in “Don’t Believe,” and a future that ranges from bleak in “Summer Stars” to somewhat more hopeful in “Sugar on Your Tongue.” And oh, that melody on “Mars.” (You can download “Mars” and a trio of album demos here.) There’s also a visual component to the record, as Langford has created an individual piece of art for each song. And as great a songwriter as he is, he’s a sensational live performer as well, in all his incarnations, where just about anything can happen. (In addition, Langford will be releasing the seven-inch single “Days & Nights” b/w “Here’s What We Have” as a Record Store Day exclusive on April 19.)

VIDEO OF THE DAY: PIĘTNASTKA

The fourth annual Unsound Festival, which highlights cutting-edge experimental electronic music from around the world, features more than two dozen artists who will be playing such venues as Issue Project Room, Cameo Gallery, the First Unitarian Church, Experimental Intermedia, BAMcinématek, and the Wick from April 2 to 6. Among the performers are Evol, Phil Niblock, Kapital, Håkon Stene, Stara Rzeka, and, opening night at Issue, Oren Ambarchi with Sinfonietta Cracovia Quintet & Friends. In addition to ticketed performances, there are several free events: the multimedia olfactory “Ephemera” art exhibition at AVA on the Lower East Side; “Lixiviation,” a collaboration between Suzanne Ciani and Neotrantrik on April 3 at 7:30 at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium, with Piętnastka opening; and a Listening Session with Porter Ricks’s Thomas Köner on April 5 at 1:30 at the Goethe-Institut, followed by a conversation between Ciani and Andy Votel at 3:00 and the panel discussion “Network Theory — an Intro into ICAS (International Cities of Advanced Sound)” at 4:30 with Mat Schulz, Oliver Baurhenn, Malcolm Levy, and Martin Craciun, moderated by Andy Battaglia.

TWI-NY TALK: RAYYA ELIAS

Rayya Elias and Elizabeth Gilbert will be at powerHouse on April 2 for launch of HARLEY LOCO paperback (photo by Bill Miller)

RAYYA ELIAS IN CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH GILBERT
powerHouse Arena
37 Main St. at Water St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, April 2, free (advance RSVP appreciated), 7:00
718-666-3049
www.powerhousearena.com
www.rayyaelias.com

“This book is the story of my life,” Rayya Elias writes in the first chapter of the painfully poignant yet ultimately inspiring Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side (Penguin, March 2014, $16). “This is my truth, and it may not be pretty, but I own it.” Pretty it isn’t, as the Syrian-born Elias details her battles with drug addiction, her time in prison, her struggles with sexual identity, and her eventual recovery from a shocking rock bottom. Clean since August 1997, Elias is a gregarious woman with an infectious personality that lights up a room. She “always wanted to be the center of attention,” she notes in the book, and she’s spent much of the last year doing just that, promoting Harley Loco — the title refers to her Rikers Island nickname — around the world. A musician, filmmaker, hair stylist, and major football fan, Elias will be at Brooklyn’s powerHouse Arena on April 2 for the launch of the paperback edition of her memoir. She will once again be joined by her close friend Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of such books as The Signature of All Things and Eat, Pray, Love who wrote the introduction to Harley Loco. Last fall, we appeared on Elias’s sports-and-fantasy podcast, “Football Riffs and Chicks,” and now she is returning the favor, answering intimate questions for a very personal twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: You just lost your pitbull, Ricky. How are you doing?

Rayya Elias: Well, the grief comes and goes. It’s only been a few days since he passed, so I’m still in shock, I think. Ricky was my kid and companion for thirteen years, so there is a huge gaping hole in my heart. We were meant for each other; he was beaten up quite dramatically (used as a bait dog), and he had the scars to prove it, yet he was so good inside. We did quite a bit of healing together.

twi-ny: For the last year, you’ve spent a lot of time on the road promoting your memoir. What’s that experience been like, especially as you have to keep going back over some very difficult times in your life?

Rayya Elias: Writing the book was the ultimate cathartic experience for exercising those demons. Sometimes, when I was in the midst of working on the book, I doubted my own memory because it was almost too much to grasp. It got pretty deep.

twi-ny: What’s been the best part of the tour?

Rayya Elias: When I was on the road promoting it, it became like a testimonial. My favorite part was that people came out of the woodwork to tell me their stories, whether it was an eighteen-year-old child who had gone missing due to drugs or a gray-haired lady who related to being fat as a kid or being bullied as a teenager. So many people wanted to be heard because they related to many parts of my story. That’s what really kept me in the zone.

twi-ny: How about the worst?

Rayya Elias: There is no worst. Honestly, I love all of it. It’s something I’ve longed for, so I’m taking it all in, the hotels, the road food, even the airports, and especially when friends I haven’t seen in years show up at a reading/performance, I love it.

twi-ny: Is there a question that you’ve been surprised you haven’t been asked yet?

Rayya Elias: Not really; people have pretty much dissected it. I was really happy that a college radio station in Brisbane, Australia, asked about methadone detox. No one in the States really bothered giving that one any thought. I was pretty grateful, as I have a strong opinion about it!

twi-ny: You’re very good friends with Elizabeth Gilbert. How did the two of you meet?

Rayya Elias: Liz and I have been friends since the year 2000. She came into my studio and needed an intervention. Not a drug intervention like I was used to, but a hair intervention. I cut her hair and we told each other stories. She was writing for GQ at the time and asked me to style a story that Mary Ellen Mark was shooting. We clicked on a level that neither of us really understood. It was deep, and very real, and she became a part of my life. Then, many years later, she bullied me into writing my memoir. Ha!

twi-ny: Do you want to offer a sneak peek at the powerHouse event? For example, will you have your guitar with you?

Rayya Elias: I will absolutely have my guitar, and I will play a few songs. A new one is called “Touch the Ground,” inspired by Liz’s book The Signature of All Things. I recorded it, and with Barb Morrison producing, it sounds amazing.

twi-ny: Last November, we appeared on “Football Riffs and Chicks.” That was a lot of fun. Will there be another season?

Rayya Elias: I loved having you and Ellen on “FR&C”; it was so much fun. Yes, I will definitely do it again; this year I will concentrate a little more on fantasy, I think.

twi-ny: Your fantasy football team, which is named the Pittbulls, after Ricky, finished in a three-way tie for the best record in our fantasy football league. Were you happy with your team’s performance?

Rayya Elias: I’m never happy with my team’s performance unless I win. My guys were getting hurt every week, so I really had to study and pick up the next best available athlete for the position. It was hard going. I can’t imagine what the real live sport is like for the coaches. That’s why I’m in awe of the game.

twi-ny: You were born in Syria and still have family there; how has the political situation there affected them and you?

Rayya Elias: It’s been extremely difficult. The country is torn, my family is torn, my heart is broken for the Syria I visited just four years ago. I spent Christmas and New Year’s with family in Aleppo and Damascus. Now they are struggling and I haven’t heard from some of them in quite some time. No one saw it coming because the country seemed to be on the verge of a tourism breakout and everything seemed to be going well.

twi-ny: Okay, so you’re a writer, musician, hair stylist, podcast host, filmmaker, and big-time football fan; what’s next for you?

Rayya Elias: I’m wrapping my head around a new book, a novel of sorts. I’ve never tried to write fiction, but I’m gonna give it a whirl. Music is something that is constant in my life, so that’s a given. The rest is up to what inspires me. I’m the type of person who loves to be involved in creative endeavors and make stuff. Once an idea enters my head and my heart, it starts to take over my being, and once it’s too much to hold in, then I gotta let it out. If I can’t keep it in, I gotta let it out!

WHITNEY BIENNIAL PERFORMANCES AND SPECIAL EVENTS

Lisa Anne Auerbach will activate her “American Megazine” on Friday nights at the Whitney Biennial (photograph © Lisa Anne Auerbach)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through May 25, $18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
Many programs require advance registration and/or tickets
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

The 2014 Whitney Biennial, the last to be held in Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith’s 1960s building on the corner of Madison and Seventy-Fifth, is another mixed bag, further complicated by the curious decision to have three floors organized by three different curators, creating a more disjointed survey of the state of American art than usual. Perhaps the best time to take in this year’s model is when you get the added bonus of a special performance or program, many of which require advance RSVP or tickets. On May 7 at 7:30 ($8), the curators, Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner, will participate in a roundtable discussion with Jay Sanders that should shed plenty of light on their choices, but there are lots of other events as well. From April 2 to 6 in the second-floor Kaufman Astoria Studios Film and Video Gallery, Academy Records and Matt Hanner present the concurrent film loop The Bower with the three-hour audio No Jets, combining visuals of a cherry tree with audio of flight delays immediately following the events of September 11, while Gary Indiana’s Stanley Park merges images of a Cuban prison with shots of jellyfish. Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst’s twenty-three-minute short, She Gone Rogue, plays April 2-6 and 9-13 in the lobby gallery. On April 4, New York City teens in grades nine through twelve are invited to a free artist workshop led by the collective My Barbarian; the program continues April 11 with Joshua Mosley. On Friday nights through May 23, Lisa Anne Auerbach will activate her large-scale American Megazine on the third floor.

Miguel Gutierrez and Mickey Mahar team up for dance performance that examines midcareer anxiety (photo by Eric McNatt)

On April 6 at 4:00, James Benning’s re-creation of the 1969 classic Easy Rider will be shown in the Kaufman gallery in conjunction with Julie Ault’s “Afterlife: a constellation.” Composer Robert Ashley and director Alex Waterman will present the world premiere of their opera, Crash, April 10-13 ($20); their Spanish-language TV opera, Vidas Perfectas, runs April 17-20 ($20), while their reimagined speaking opera, The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices for Crimes Against Humanity, with Amy Sillman, Wayne Koestenbaum, Mary Farley, and Barbara Bloom, plays April 23-27 ($20). Fred Lonidier will lead a teach-in on April 11 at 7:00 that looks at art and labor. On April 12 and 26 ($10 per family), Whitney Wees offers kid-friendly tours and workshops for families with children ages four to five, in addition to the sketching tour “Sculpture and Drawing” for families with kids ages six to ten ($10); also on April 12, Mosely will be leading an Artist’s Choice Workshop for families with children ages eight to twelve ($10), and the Open Studio program, for kids of all ages, will examine Sheila Hicks’s “Pillar of Inquiry / Supple Column.” (Other family workshops are scheduled for April 26 in the Whitney Studio, May 2 with Dan Walsh, May 10 for kids with autism and with My Barbarian, and May 17 with Sara Greenberger Rafferty.) From April 16 to 20, Taisha Paggett will debut a new performance piece in the lobby gallery. On April 17 at 7:00 ($8), Miguel Gutierrez and My Barbarian’s Alexandro Segade have put together “Take Ecstasy with Me,” an evening of performances and reflections by Kalup Linzy, Jacolby Satterwhite, Nao Bustamante, Jorge Cortiñas, A. L. Steiner, Kate Bush Dance Troupe, Juliana Huxtable, and others, inspired by the work of the late Cuban theorist José Esteban Muñoz; Gutierrez will perform the duet Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ with dancer Mickey Mahar April 23 – May 4 ($20).

Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and Michelle Grabner will discuss their curatorial choices at May 7 panel discussion (photo by Filip Wolak)

On April 18 at 7:30, Kevin Beasley, with Leon Finley and Christhian Diaz, will present the interactive audio piece “Public Programs in Sonic Masses.” (Beasley will also host a teen workshop on May 2 and activate his sound sculptures on May 14 at noon, May 16 at 1:00, and May 17 at 3:00 in the lobby gallery.) On April 26 at 6:30 ($8), Triple Canopy will investigate “Media Replication Services.” Doug Ischar’s Come Lontano, Tristes Tarzan, and Alone with You will screen April 30 – May 4 in the Kaufman gallery. On May 1 at 6:30 ($8), Joseph Grigely will deliver a “Seminars with Artists” lecture about communication and miscommunication, followed by Susan Howe’s talk on the “telepathy of archives” on May 14 at 6:30 ($8) and Amy Sillman examining the materiality of color on May 22 at 6:30 ($8). On May 6 at 7:00 ($8), Ault, Benning, and William Least Heat-Moon will discuss “Histories of Place.” On May 11, Travis Jeppesen will read his novel The Suiciders in a durational performance on the third floor. And on May 19 at 7:00 ($8), Dawoud Bey will lead a roundtable Conversations of Art discussion about the portrayal of southern blacks during the civil rights movement. Tickets are available in advance for all of the above events that require an additional fee, as indicated in parentheses; some free programs require preregistration, so don’t hesitate if you want to attend any of these Whitney Biennial bonuses.

THE MINISTRY OF SILLY DANCES: SILLY DANCE CONTEST

The Emerson
561 Myrtle Ave. between Emerson Pl. & Classon Ave.
Saturday, March 29, $5 to compete (includes silly shot), free to watch
Sign up begins around 10:00 pm, competition begins around 11:00 (after NCAA game)
www.facebook.com

Do you dance with a reckless wild abandon, not caring what others think of how you move and groove? Perhaps you have a little Elaine Benes in you? Then this weekend’s Silly Dance Contest should be right up your alley. On Saturday night at the Emerson in Brooklyn, the Ministry of Silly Dances is hosting this crazy competition, with the silliest dancer winning a $50 bar tab; two runners-up will earn a $25 bar tab apiece. It’s free to watch, but it will cost you five bucks to get on the floor and strut your stuff (and get a free silly shot). The Ministry of Silly Dances, whose critical mission is “to rid the world of grim groovers and sober strutters,” will guide the evening through three rounds, followed by the finale with the silliest three competitors. There will be short breaks, with music provided by DJs Max Power and Maggit and free drinks for particularly extraordinary dancers.