this week in music

GOLDEN AGE

Sicilian composer Vincenzo Bellini (Lee Pace) and diva Maria Malibran (Bebe Neuwirth) discuss art and love in Terrence McNally’s GOLDEN AGE (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Through January 13, $85
www.goldenageplay.com

In It’s Only a Play, Terrence McNally took audiences behind the scenes of a Broadway production’s opening night. In The Lisbon Traviata and Master Class, McNally focused on opera star Maria Callas. He brings those two themes together in the light but charming Golden Age. Sicilian composer Vincenzo Bellini (Lee Pace) is presenting the world premiere of I puritani on January 24, 1835, at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, the first of his operas to open outside Italy. The composer of such previous triumphs as I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, and Norma is joined by a quartet of popular singers who just might be as famous as he is: baritone Antonio Tamburini (Lorenzo Pisoni), who continually stuffs vegetables down his pants to enhance his manhood; soprano Giulia Grisi (Dierdre Friel), who cannot decide how much jewelry to wear when she takes the stage; bass Luigi Lablache (Ethan Phillips), who laments the always minor roles given to those of his vocal range; and tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who is preparing to hit a high F-natural above high C that has never before been achieved. At Bellini’s side is his biographer and lover, Francesco Florimo (Will Rogers).

Luigi Lablache (Ethan Phillips) and Giulia Grisi (Dierdre Friel) get serious during premiere of Bellini’s I PURITANI (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony-winning director Walter Bobbie (Venus in Fur, Chicago) has the four Puritans move from individual dressing rooms to backstage area (where Bellini makes use of a piano) and then up steps to the opera hall on Santo Loquasto’s dramatic set, their singing “voices” heard in the background as those still downstairs discuss the French versus the Italians (and the English), egotistically praise their own talents, debate whether the composer or singer is more important, and wonder about who is in the audience, from rival composers such as Donizetti and Rossini (George Morfogen) to such other opera stars as Giovanni Matteo Mario and Maria Malibran (Bebe Neuwirth). When the Malibran does indeed show up, the talk turns to love, romance, and heartbreak as well. Combining factual events with his vivid imagination, four-time Tony winner McNally (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Love! Valour! Compassion!) investigates the nature of art and its very creation in Golden Age, exploring inspiration, influence, and truth. What is occurring backstage often mimics what is happening in the opera itself, especially as Grisi gets ready for her mad scene and various characters declare their love for others. The acting is exemplary throughout, ranging from appropriately bombastic to somewhat more subdued, with Neuwirth a standout as she poetically recites a song by Bellini. And McNally and Bobbie have crafted Golden Age in such a way that the audience doesn’t need to know anything about opera, or be an opera fan at all, in order to enjoy this inside look at a magical moment in time.

MINGUS MONDAYS

The Mingus Big Band will celebrate Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve at Jazz Standard (photo by Yuka Yamaji)

Jazz Standard
116 East 27th St. between Park & Lexington Aves.
Monday, December 24, $25, 7:30 & 9:30
Monday, December 31, $125, 7:30; $195, 10:30
212-576-2232
www.jazzstandard.net
www.mingusmingusmingus.com

The Mingus Big Band has been keeping the legacy of legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus (1922-79) alive since 1991, under the direction of the Angry Man of Jazz’s widow, Sue Mingus. The fourteen-piece band, which has been nominated for numerous Grammys, is back for another “Mingus Mondays” residency at Jazz Standard, and they’re not taking off for the holidays, playing two shows Christmas Eve ($25) and two on New Year’s Eve ($125 & $195, including three-course Blue Smoke barbecue feast). Trumpeters Alex Sipiagin, Tatum Greenblatt, and Philip Harper, saxophonists Wayne Escoffery, Abraham Burton, Alex Foster, Scott Robinson, and Lauren Sevian, trombonists Ku-umba Frank Lacy, Robin Eubanks, and Dave Taylor, pianist Helen Sung, bassist Boris Kozlov, and drummer Donald Edwards play a repertoire that features such Mingus favorites as “Moanin’,” “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” “Gunslinging Bird,” “Boogie Stop Shuffle,” and “Nostalgia in Times Square.” The Mingus Orchestra takes over on January 7, with the Big Band returning January 14, 21, and 28.

NOT FADE AWAY

The British Invasion changes the life of a suburban New Jersey high school kid in David Chase’s NOT FADE AWAY

NOT FADE AWAY (David Chase, 2012)
Opens Friday, December 21
www.notfadeawaymovie.com

Inspired by his brief stint as a suburban New Jersey garage-band drummer with rock-and-roll dreams, Sopranos creator David Chase makes his feature-film debt with the musical coming-of-age drama Not Fade Away. Written and directed by Chase, the film focuses on Douglas (John Magaro), a suburban New Jersey high school kid obsessed with music and The Twilight Zone. It’s the early 1960s, and Douglas soon becomes transformed when he first hears the Beatles and the Stones — while also noticing how girls go for musicians, particularly Grace (Bella Heathcote), whom he has an intense crush on but who only seems to date guys in bands. When his friends Eugene (Jack Huston) and Wells (Will Brill) ask him to join their group, Douglas jumps at the chance, but it’s not until he gets the opportunity to sing lead one night that he really begins to think that music — and Grace — could be his life. Not Fade Away has all the trappings of being just another clichéd sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll movie, but Chase and musical supervisor (and executive producer) Steven “Silvio” Van Zandt circumvent genre expectations and limitations by, first and foremost, nailing the music. Van Zandt spent three months teaching the main actors how to sing, play their instruments, and, essentially, be a band, making the film feel real as the unnamed group goes from British Invasion covers to writing their own song. Even Douglas’s fights with his conservative middle-class father (James Gandolfini) and his battle with Eugene over the direction of the band are handled with an intelligence and sensitivity not usually seen in these kinds of films. Not Fade Away does make a few wrong turns along the way, but it always gets right back on track, leading to an open-ended conclusion that celebrates the power, the glory, and, ultimately, the mystery of rock and roll.

100 x JOHN: A GLOBAL SALUTE TO JOHN CAGE IN SOUND AND IMAGE

A four-day program at White Box celebrates the centenary of the birth of revolutionary sound artist John Cage

White Box
329 Broome St. between Grand & Delancey Sts.
December 20-23, suggested donation $10
www.eartotheearth.org
www.whiteboxnyc.org

New York City’s celebration of the centennial of John Cage’s birth continues with an impressive collection of audiovisual programs December 20-23 at White Box. Held in conjunction with Ear to the Earth and MA.P.S (Media Arts, Performance, and Sound), “100 x John: A Global Salute to John Cage” consists of one hundred compositions and sound projects, beginning Thursday at 5:00 with “Phill Niblock: Four Videos from Working Title, in which Niblock will present a multimedia examination of his life and art. At 7:00, “Cagean Mix #1: Sounds from Around the World” is highlighted by a sound collage organized by Joel Chadabe and video improvisation by Luke DuBois, followed at 8:00 by solo soundscapes by Rodolphe Alexis, Adam Gooderham, Walter Bianchi, Warren Burt, Thomas Gerwin, and Arsenije Jovanovic. Friday night’s program includes “Cagean Mix #2: Sounds of Water and the Natural World” at 7:00 and performances by Joseph Kubera, Susan Kaprov and Don Bosley, and David Rothenberg. On Saturday at 12 noon, “Sounds and Images” comprises solo pieces by David de Gandarias, Jovanovic, Alexis, Leah Barclay, and Annea Lockwood, followed by a book talk at 3:00 with Kay Larson, author of Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists; at 8:00, there will be performances by Garth Paine, Guy Barash, and Richard Lainhart. The festival concludes on Sunday with a Christmas party and “Cagean Mix #3: Sounds of New York City” at 5:00 and “Shelley Hirsh, Katherine Liberovskaya, Gil Arno: New York Stories” at 8:00. To get a sneak peek at some of the “100 x John” soundscapes, go here.

LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR

Tom Morello offers his version of creative response in LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR

LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR (Antonino D’Ambrosio, 2012)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Friday, December 14
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.letfuryhavethehour.com

In his recently released book Let Fury Have the Hour: Joe Strummer, Punk, and the Movement That Shook the World, author, editor, and visual artist Antonino D’Ambrosio writes, “Let Fury Have the Hour, the book and film, is a call to celebrate the art of living, or being for, not against. For the movie, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, D’Ambrosio brought together some fifty artists to talk about how they use creative response in a positive way to deal with the social, political, and economic outrage that began in the 1980s with the separatist policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and has exploded today. Shot over the course of seven years, the film features intelligent discourse from such musicians as Billy Bragg, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Wayne Kramer from the MC5, Chuck D from Public Enemy, Eugene Hütz from Gogol Bordello, and, perhaps most eloquently, Ian MacKaye from Fugazi and Minor Threat. In addition, street artist Shepard Fairey (whose designs can be seen throughout the film), spoken-word poet Staceyann Chin, comedian Lewis Black, filmmaker John Sayles, author Edwidge Danticat, playwright Eve Ensler, choreographer Elizabeth Streb, skateboarder Tommy Guerrero, and many more share how the DIY punk aesthetic influences them in their work and their daily life as they continue to fight the power through artistic self-expression that understands the interconnectedness of everything. “Our freedom of speech is our freedom from death,” Chuck D states. The jumping-off point for many of those in the film, as well as D’Ambrosio himself, was the music of the Clash; the title comes from a line in the Clash classic “Clampdown.” D’Ambrosio and editor Karim Lopez supplement the original interviews, which are all conducted in personal settings unique to each individual, with dramatic archival footage of political and artistic movements from around the world throughout the twentieth century, backed by a score composed by Kramer with songs by Public Enemy, Hütz, Sean Hayes, and others. It all comes together in a rousing wake-up call that is a direct counter to Reagan’s “Morning in America” agenda. “A citizen is someone who participates,” DJ Spooky says in the film. D’Ambrosio is seeking to spread his message of creative response by getting as many citizens as possible to participate in any way they can, making an ambitious film that avoids coming off as propaganda and instead feels necessary in these hard times.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “DIRTY MONEY” / “HIM BELLY NO GO SWEET” BY ANTIBALAS

Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, 132 Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg was home to four men who would soon be making their marks in two of Brooklyn’s most popular bands. While roommates Tunde Adebimpe and Dave Sitek formed TV on the Radio, Gabriel Roth and Martín Perna started the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Melding the Afro-fusion of Fela Kuti with Latin jazz, Antibalas became a New York City staple, encompassing a dozen members or more as they relentlessly toured and released such records as Liberation Afrobeat, Talkatif, Who Is This America? and Security. After a long road trip in support of their first album in five years, the simply titled Antibalas (Daptone, August 2012), which they recorded at Daptone’s House of Soul Studios with Roth, the band is returning to its roots with a welcome-home show December 14 at Brooklyn Masonic Temple with Red Baraat. On the new album, lead singer Amayo, keyboardist Victor Axelrod, guitarists Marcos García and Luke O’Malley, bassist Nikhil Yerawadekar, percussionist Marcus Farrar, and horn players Perna, Stuart Bogie, Aaron Johnson, Jordan McLean get plenty funky on a half dozen groovy tunes that range in length from 6:15 to 8:07, keeping the party going on such tracks as “Dirty Money,” “Him Belly No Go Sweet,” “Ari Degbe,” and ‘Sáré Kon Kon,” coming together, then breaking off into solos galore that will get even the most laconic booties shaking. It should be one wild and crazy homecoming indeed.

VIDEO OF THE DAY — “DEVILS LOOK LIKE ANGELS” BY THE REVEREND PEYTON’S BIG DAMN BAND

Sporting one of the best beards in the business, the Reverend J. Peyton has been leading his trio, the Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, through a rollicking brand of foot-stomping country blues for the last decade. On such albums as The Pork n’ Beans Collection, Big Damn Nation, The Whole Fam Damnily, and The Wages, Peyton, a real-life Kentucky Colonel, evokes such heroes as Charley Patton, B.B. King, and Jimi Hendrix. On the Indiana-based group’s latest record, Between the Ditches (SideOneDummy, August 2012), guitarist Peyton, his wife, “Washboard” Breezy Peyton, and drummer Aaron “Cuz” Persinger, whose kit includes a five-gallon bucket, take listeners on a thrilling journey through the back roads of America, proclaiming on the opener, “Devils Look Like Angels,” that “the devil don’t live / down in hell / the devil’s right here / doing very well / and it’s hard to tell / it’s hard to tell / when the devils look like angels / and angels look like hell.” Peyton went through hell himself when he was told as a teenager that he would never be able to properly use his left hand again on the six-string, but he proved the doctors wrong, and he continues to defy belief on Between the Ditches. “On this record, people are gonna think that there’s two guitars on it, and there’s not,” he explained at the album release show at Indy CD and Vinyl in August. “I promise, I swear, there’s no iPod, there’s no computer, there’s no loop pedal, there’s no guy hiding behind somewhere. It is all me, all right? My thumb plays bass, just like this. While my thumb’s playing bass, my fingers play the lead. Simple as that.” On the new disc, the group tears it up on such songs as “Big Blue Chevy ’72,” “Shake ’em Off Like Fleas,” “Brokedown Everywhere,” and “Something for Nothing,” creating a big yet intimate sound that just plain kicks ass. Known for their exuberant live shows where just about anything can happen, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band will be at Mercury Lounge on December 9 with Johnnie Lee Jordan and the Boys and Rosco Bandana. “I have felt a lot of love from our fans lately,” the rev. recently wrote on his blog, “and I just want to say that I promise to always bring you real, handmade, from the heart, organic music in return.” That’s a lot better deal than one with the devil.