this week in music

ARMORY ARTS WEEK 2013

Brooklyn artist Janet Biggs will screen her latest work, A STEP ON THE SUN, at the closing night of the Armory Show, followed by a panel discussion (photo © Janet Biggs)

Brooklyn artist Janet Biggs will screen her latest work, A STEP ON THE SUN, at the closing night of the Armory Show, followed by a panel discussion (photo © Janet Biggs)

Armory Arts Week had been getting out of control, with upwards of a dozen different fairs taking place around the city during one crazy weekend. But now the fairs are essentially cut in half, with some scheduled for this week and the rest in May. The centerpiece is the Armory Show at Piers 92 & 94 (March 7-10, $30, run of show $60, dual Volta NY pass $40), which this year will celebrate the centennial of its namesake, the game-changing 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern art to New York. The 2013 edition is broken into two parts, with modern art at Pier 92 and contemporary art at Pier 94, along with a preview party March 6 at MoMA featuring a live performance by Solange Knowles. The Armory Show is once again partnering with Volta NY (March 7-10, $15, dual Armory Show pass $40), which moves to 82Mercer, where it will present more than one hundred solo projects from around the world, including Amy Bennett, Mark Jenkins, Chiho Akama, Patick Lo Guidice, and Regina Scully. The Fountain Art Fair (March 8-10, $10/day, $15 weekend pass) is back at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington and 25th St., with more than seventy-five exhibitors, including such standard-bearers as the Mighty Tanaka, McCaig + Welles, and the ever-popular Murder Lounge. There will also be a site-specific street art installation curated by Alex Emmart and Robots Will Kill and live performances by Lucas Walters, Musa and Spank Rock, Kamp!, and NSR, and DJ sets by Chances with Wolves and Nina Sky. Meanwhile, Moving Image New York (March 7-10, free) remains in its home in the Waterfront Tunnel at Eleventh Ave. and Twenty-Seventh St., where it will have monitors hanging from the ceiling and other cinematic installations showing videos by Janet Biggs, Cheryl Pope, Tommy Turner, Zhao Zhao, Kota Ezawa, Eva and Franco Mattes, and others.

The special events planned for Armory Arts Week begin on March 5 with Uptown & Museum Mile Day, featuring Harlem Armory Day at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine and a Harlem Biennale “Music in the Air” walking tour led by John T. Reddick. On March 7, Bronx Day & SoHo Night is highlighted by a live spoken-word performance at the Nuyorican Poets Café, an after-hours viewing of Walter De Maria’s “The New York Earth Room” and “The Broken Kilometer,” a presentation of Saya Woolfalk’s “Chimera” at Third Streaming, and Tsipi Ben-Haim and Jessica Diamond’s “Tributes to ‘Kusama: Art Infinity-Net’” at CITYarts, with many SoHo galleries open late. Attention moves to Long Island City on March 8 with performances, workshops, and tours at No Longer Empty’s “How Much Do I Owe You?” in the Clock Tower Building and Andras Borocz live at the “So Real” group show at Radiator Gallery. Chelsea Day and Brooklyn Night on March 9 includes brunch with Tamara K.E. at Johannes Vogt Gallery, a Cut Paste and Sew dialogue with Mia Brownell, Camomile Hixon, Duron Jackson, Jingjing Linn, and Woolfak, ICP curator Christopher Phillips in conversation with Israeli artist Ilit Azoulay at Andrea Meislin, “The World’s First Tumblr Art Symposium” at 319 Scholes Gallery, a silent auction at the Rabbithole, and an installation and performance by Jonathan Schipper at the Boiler. Events conclude Sunday night in the Lower East Side / Downtown with “The Dealer’s Perspective” beginning at Allegra LaViola Gallery, the LES Gallery Stroll, and several art brunches. There will also be special films presented each night at the Armory Show, with some followed by a panel discussion, beginning March 6 at 5:00 with Matthew Day Jackson’s In Search of . . . Zombies, March 7 at 5:00 with Pavel Büchler’s High Noon compilation, March 8 at 3:00 with The Show That Shook the World: Marcel Duchamp and the 1913 Armory Show, March 9 at 5:00 with Liz Magic Laser’s The Armory Show Focus Group, and March 10 at 5:00 with Janet Biggs’s Fade to White and A Step on the Sun.

Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” fill the entryway to Scope

Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” will fill the entryway to Scope

Over at the Park Avenue Armory, ADAA The Art Show (March 6-10, $25) is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with more than seventy galleries participating, with such solo exhibitions as Wim Delvoye at Sperone Westwater, Mona Hatoum at Alexander and Bonin, Fred Tomaselli at James Cohan, Thomas Schütte at Peter Freeman, Robert Motherwell at Lillian Heidenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe at Sean Kelly, Sean Scully at Galerie Lelong, Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures, Eadweard Muybridge at Laurence Miller, Jean Arp at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Kiki Smith at Pace, Damien Hirst at Van de Weghe, and Milton Avery at David Zwirner. The Collectors’ Forum consists of a pair of panel discussions entitled “Picturing the Frame: The Art World in the Next Decade,” with Jock Reynolds on Friday at 6:00 and Michael Findlay on Saturday morning at 11:00. The second annual Spring/Break Art Show (March 6-10, $5 suggested donation) will take place in classrooms at the Old School at 233 Mott St., with presentations from such artists and collectives as Jeremy Blake, Jennifer Chan, Grayson Cox, Fall on Your Sword, Ted Gahl, Beka Goedde, Matthew Hassell, Bel Linquist, Rachel Ostrow, and Printed Matter, curated by Marco Antonini, Ted Barrow, Elizabeth Clark, Simon Lee, Patrick Meagher, Aurora Pellizzi, Cecelia Stucker, Maureen Sullivan, Eve Sussman, and others, highlighted by Sussman and Lee’s curation of Car Wash Incident. The New City Art Fair (March 7-10, free) will set up in hpgrp Gallery at 529 West Twentieth St., consisting of works from eleven galleries from Japan in addition to an artists’ studio visit, the opening of a sake barrel, Japanese art food, and more. Also in Chelsea, more than fifty galleries will take part in the Independent (March 7-10, free) at 548 West Twenty-Second St., where the stairway gets crowded as art lovers make their up several floors of creatively and chaotically arranged installations that are generally more cutting edge than what can be found at the other shows. Be sure to get up to the roof, which has been specially designed by Christian Wassmann. But the fair with the best space might just be Scope (March 7-10, $15), which moves into Skylight at Moynihan Station in the 33rd St. post office, where connoisseurs will find shows by more than one hundred international galleries, along with such projects as Ron English’s “Culture Jam Supermarket,” Al Hamm’s “Untitled . . . Crates” entrance, Andrea Stanislav’s “The Vanishing Points,” David Rohn’s performance piece “Contact Walt Whitman,” and Sophie Hirsch’s recycled “Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.”

SPECIAL PREVIEW: HAVA NAGILA (THE MOVIE)

Documentary delves into the fascinating history behind traditional Jewish song that became an international sensation

Documentary delves into the fascinating history behind traditional Jewish song that became an international sensation

HAVA NAGILA (THE MOVIE) (Roberta Grossman, 2012)
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th St.
Thursday, February 28, $10, 7:00
646-505-5708
www.havanagilamovie.com
www.jccmanhattan.org

“What’s up with this song? So kitschy, yet so profound,” director and narrator Roberta Grossman says at the beginning of her rollicking documentary, Hava Nagila (The Movie). “And what’s the deal with the chair?” A staple at Jewish celebrations, primarily weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs, “Hava Nagila” instantly gets friends and family members out on the dance floor, forming a circle and doing the Hora. Grossman delves into the history and mystery of the catchy song, which over the years has been performed by an unlikely crew that has included Harry Belafonte, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Johnny Yune, and Regina Spektor, all of whom appear in the film and discuss the tune’s popularity. (There are also archival performances from all around the world as well as an anti-“Hava” song from Bob Dylan.) Also putting “Hava Nagila” into perspective are Yiddish theater veteran Leonard Nimoy, communications professor Josh Kun, and KlezKamp founder Henry Sapoznik, a “Hava” hater who says with a more than a touch of cynicism, “It’s relentless. It’s resilient. But then again, so are cockroaches,” a statement that exemplifies Grossman’s playful attitude, exemplified by her corny captioning and clever clips from such TV shows and movies as Laugh-In, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Danny Kaye Show, A Serious Man, Wedding Crashers, History of the World Part I, and Fiddler on the Roof. But she also reveals another side to the song, as described by professor James Loeffler, who explains, “‘Hava’ is a portal into a century and a half of Jewish history.” Grossman ( Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh) sets off on what she calls a “Hava Quest,” venturing to the village of Sadagora in Ukraine, the birthplace of the song, and later meeting with two warring families battling over authorship of the words and music. She traces its impact on the development of the State of Israel and the Jewish migration to suburban America, and, yes, she lays out precisely what the words of the song mean. Like the song itself, Hava Nagila (The Movie) is a fun and fanciful frolic into the fascinating story behind one of the most famous songs that so many know so little about. The film opens March 1 in New York, but you can catch a special sneak preview on February 28 at 7:00 at the JCC in Manhattan, followed by a conversation with Grossman.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “WE’RE ON FIRE, BABE” BY ANDERS & KENDALL

Anders Parker and Kendall Jane Meade could have called themselves Parker & Meade or chosen a completely different name, but their gorgeous debut album as a duo, Wild Chorus (Nine Mile, February 19), is credited to Anders & Kendall; using their first names is just part of the intoxicating intimacy they create on this gem of a record. Not to be confused with gospel soul singer Kendall Anders, Kendall (Sparklehorse, Helium, Juicy, current indie faves Mascott) and Anders (Varnaline, Gob Iron with Jay Farrar) have been friends and collaborators for nearly twenty years, but this new pairing finds them writing and singing songs that lift them to a whole new realm. “We’re burning through the night / Burning through the days / We’re just about as hot / As the sun’s rays,” Anders sings on the album’s first single, the infectious “We’re on Fire, Babe,” continuing, “You set my blood on fire / I’m always going off / The way we move together / How we never stop.” The album’s eleven songs, the first full-length disc recorded at former Sparklehorse drummer Scott Minor’s Wild Chorus studio in Knoxville, will set listeners’ ears on fire as Anders & Kendall move together beautifully, dropping little hints of the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, the Byrds, Lou Reed, Nirvana, and the Band while harmonizing to the heavens and engaging in vocal dialogues in songs that combine indie pop with flourishes of Americana, folk, rock, and country, from the gentle gait of “City of Greats” to the jaunty bounce of “Let’s Get Lost,” from the poetic elegance and longing of “Sleepwalking” to the driving ’60s beat of “Dreamers on the Ground.” On “Let’s Get Lost,” Anders sings, “Live as you want / Love as you want / You can really feel me / You can really see me / So run” while at the same time Kendall declares, “You know it when you know / You find it as you go / And we can walk for hours / And we just keep on talking / Don’t you know?” We suggest you run, not walk, to catch this magical duo as they hold their record release party on Sunday, February 24, at 7:00 at Rockwood Music Hall (Stage 2) with Benjamin Cartel before A&K heads out for SXSW. Listening to music, sometimes you just know it when you know it, and with Anders & Kendall, well, you just know it.

TWI-NY TALK: JOHN PIZZARELLI AND JOE COSGRIFF

Friends, coauthors, and musical colleagues Joe Cosgriff and John Pizzarelli look sharp at the Carlyle (photo by Doug Grad)

Friends, coauthors, and musical colleagues Joe Cosgriff and John Pizzarelli looking sharp at the Carlyle (photo by Doug Grad)

SANDY BENEFIT CONCERT
powerHouse Arena
37 Main St. at Water St., Brooklyn
Monday, February 25, $20, 7:00
718-666-3049
www.powerhousearena.com
www.johnpizzarelli.com

“What they don’t tell you when you sign up to become an author is how many times you will end up reading your own book,” jazz guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli writes in the finale to his first book, World on a String: A Musical Memoir (Wiley, October 2012, $26.95). “I can also tell you that I have been around the block so many times with this manuscript that I’m beginning to have issues with this vaguely familiar John Pizzarelli character who seems to get a lot of airtime in this book.” The son of legendary musician Bucky Pizzarelli, John, now fifty-two, has been recording original songs and covering standards for more than thirty years, playing with such greats as Skitch Henderson, Paul McCartney, Rosemary Clooney, James Taylor, and many others, including his wife, Jessica Molaskey, and his father. On his most recent record, Double Exposure (Telarc, May 2012), John reinterpreted a wide range of jazz, pop, rock, and folk classics by the likes of Neil Young, the Beatles, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Steely Dan, and the Allman Brothers.

For his memoir, Pizzarelli teamed up with longtime friend Joe Cosgriff, who wrote one of Pizzarelli’s most popular hits, “I Like Jersey Best.” (The book includes a riotous section on how John and Bucky went to the Jersey State Assembly when the tune was being considered for official state song.) John and Joe, a pair of Jersey-born Red Sox fans who are both proud members of the Yankee-hating BLOHARDS group, will be at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO on Monday night, February 25, in a benefit for the Brooklyn institution, which suffered significant damage from Hurricane Sandy. Pizzarelli will read from and sign copies of World on a String and will perform a rare solo set. Admission is a mere twenty bucks for what should be a unique and wonderful evening. Pizzarelli and Cosgriff recently discussed their collaboration, the Boston Red Sox, meatballs, and Sandy with twi-ny.

twi-ny: You’ve been friends for some thirty years; how did the writing process go?

Joe Cosgriff: It took us a little while to hit our stride. We started out face-to-face, which was a blast but didn’t produce finished pages. And John submitted about a third of the book in written form. But what worked best were the voice files and CDs he sent from the road. They were hilarious, and John’s prodigious output of these helped us catch up with the publisher’s deadlines.

John Pizzarelli: That’s it! Mostly we wrote about what subjects Joe thought we should explore. Then for a follow-up I would put more exact answers onto a CD.

twi-ny: Were there moments that you wanted to kill each other?

JP: Joe was really great about specific things he may have gotten wrong. If I said, “I think it happened this way,” he was more than happy to fix things. So there was no head banging, sorry to say.

JC: John and I have collaborated on projects previously, although nothing as ambitious as this one in terms of sheer volume. We had other bumps in the road — three editors and counting — but never any issues with one another. He is a natural storyteller, worked hard on the book, and he helped to make the experience about as enjoyable as it could be.

twi-ny: When will you be starting on the sequel?

JC: Sequel? We need to do a better job of letting people know about this book first.

JP: Agreed!

world on a string

twi-ny: You’re both Jersey boys who love the Red Sox and live in New York City. That can’t be easy.

JC: It’s not an easy road and not one I’d recommend. Yankee Stadium, especially the previous one, was not hospitable. But our little club, the BLOHARDS, has a lot of fun at our two annual luncheons, and John and I have a good time preparing the material. “My Bobby Valentine” was one of last year’s best songs.

JP: My first recollection of baseball was the ’67 World Series [between Boston and St. Louis]. I loved the look of that Red Sox team, especially [Carl] Yastrzemski. Since there were no Red Sox uni’s then available in New Jersey, I was [Yankees second baseman] Horace Clarke for about a year, till about 1981-ish, when the Yanks fired Dick Howser.

twi-ny: John, you’ve put out dozens of albums and played thousands of shows. How has public and critical reaction to the book compared to what you’ve gotten throughout your career as a musician?

JP: The entire routine is like putting out a CD and waiting for the reviews, etc. The book has been largely well received, which has been a very pleasant surprise.

twi-ny: Joe, you worked for a printing company for several decades before recently retiring. What’s it like to have your name on the cover of a book for the first time, after having printed so many millions with others’ names on them?

JC: Good question! The best part of this “author thing” has been hearing from people who connected emotionally with the book. A couple of people at John’s shows had tears rolling down their faces talking about what we wrote about Zoot Sims and Dave McKenna. Those experiences have been powerful and unexpected.

twi-ny: How were John’s son Johnny’s meatballs at the annual Birdland after-party? I understand that they were not made at their usual location, Cosgriff’s kitchen.

JP: We did use Joe’s stove for an earlier meatball fest. I had to get out of there, though. I didn’t want to get used to that stove; it’s tremendous. When we do anything at Joe’s, wine tasting, meatballs, or book editing, he plays the best music — Zoot Sims, Anita O’Day, Oscar Peterson.

JC: Johnny is a meatball machine at this point. There were some time constraints this time with the Birdland gig, so they did the prep on the West Side. And the prep is half the fun. One common denominator about parties with Johnny’s meatballs — no leftovers!

twi-ny: John is playing a Sandy Benefit Concert at the powerHouse Arena in DUMBO on February 25. Were both of you affected by the hurricane, either directly or indirectly?

JP: I was lucky on the Upper West Side. Our cabin up north lost power for two weeks — lost some oxtail ragu that was in the freezer, but nothing else too bad. I am happy to help out any way I can to those affected much worse than I was.

JC: My apartment lost power for five days, but this was nothing compared with the devastation sustained by friends of ours in Brooklyn. And I am traveling this week in California with friends from the Jersey Shore whose home still needs significant repairs. When we heard about the damage to powerHouse, we told them we’d like to help, and that is how this event came about.

THE TONEBURST LAPTOP ENSEMBLE

Wesleyan’s Toneburst Laptop Ensemble will play electronic works by Paula Matthusen, Doug Van Nort, and Wil Smith in Brooklyn on Sunday night

Wesleyan’s Toneburst Laptop Ensemble will play electronic works by Paula Matthusen, Doug Van Nort, and Wil Smith in Brooklyn on Sunday night

The (OA) Can Factory
232 Third St. at Third Ave., ground floor
Sunday, February 17, free, 9:30
www.share.dj

The Toneburst Laptop Ensemble (TLE) makes its public debut Sunday night, playing at SHARE at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus. Formed at Wesleyan under the directorship of composer Paula Matthusen, assistant professor of music at the Connecticut institution, TLE performs specially commissioned works in addition to pieces from the electronic music canon. Consisting of Ian Anderson, Ashlin Aronin, Tobias Butler, Dylan Bostick, Nathan Friedman, Jessie Marino, and Alex Lough, the new ensemble will perform three works in Brooklyn: Matthusen’s 2007 electroacoustic “lathyrus”; a selection from Albany-based experimental musician and sonic researcher Doug Van Nort’s “Genetic Orchestra” series; and Brooklyn-based composer and performer Wil Smith’s “Static Line,” which was written for Jody Redhage and the 2009 New Directions Cello Festival. The free TLE performance, which also includes live video samples and manipulation developed by Lough using an original patch he created in the Jitter programming environment, is part of SHARE’s mission to “blur the boundary between its participants and spectators, [engaging] all in a continually changing dialog on art and culture.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “DO THE STRAND” BY THE BRYAN FERRY ORCHESTRA

The most elegant man in the history of rock has now made his most elegant album yet in a career of elegant albums. In 1999, Bryan Ferry, who cofounded seminal British art rockers Roxy Music, released As Time Goes By, a collection of 1930s standards featuring Ferry on vocals, backed by an old-fashioned big band. Now sixty-seven, Ferry is releasing his latest record, The Jazz Age (BMG/Chrysalis), in the U.S. this week, thirteen songs selected from throughout his career, performed by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra. “After forty years of making records, both in and out of Roxy Music,” Ferry explains on his website, “I thought now might be an interesting moment to revisit some of these songs, and approach them as instrumentals in the style of that magical period — bringing a new and different life to these songs — a life without words.” For The Jazz Age, Ferry has chosen such Roxy favorites as “Do the Strand,” “Virginia Plain,” “Love Is the Drug,” and “Avalon” along with such solo hits as “Slave to Love,” “This Is Tomorrow,” and “The Only Face,” played in the style of the Roaring Twenties by longtime Ferry musical director Colin Good on piano, Robert Fowler on clarinet, Malcolm Earle-Smith on trombone, John Sutton on drums, Martin Wheatley on guitar, banjo, and ukulele, Alan Barnes on baritone sax and clarinet, Enrico Tomasso on trumpet, and Richard White on bass saxophone. The songs take on a new life indeed, bursting with fresh energy, together forming a soundtrack to a period film that doesn’t actually exist, except in the listener’s imagination. Some are more recognizable in relation to their original incarnations than others, but each one is a delight, playing off elements of their rock versions with genius and even a touch of mystery. “Slave to Love” is particularly effective, liable to cause you to start whirling around, humming along and dancing. Ferry will be touring the UK in the fall of 2013 with his rock band as well as the Jazz Age orchestra; there are no US dates announced, but you can meet the ever-elegant gentleman on Tuesday, February 12, when he’ll be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble at 7:00, signing copies of the new album. (He will not be performing.) The event space opens up at 5:00, and you must purchase the CD at B&N in order to join the line. In the meantime, you can check out the record, the best album of the year so far, for free on his website here.