this week in music

POSTPONED: VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL

The fourth annual Vital Vox Festival explores the far-reaching capabilities of the human voice

VITAL VOX FESTIVAL: VOX ELECTRONICS
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.
October 29-30, $15, 8:00
917-267-0363
www.vitalfoxfest.com
www.roulette.org

The fourth annual Vital Vox Festival, dedicated to exploring the seemingly limitless range and power of the human voice, will present a half dozen cutting-edge performers over the course of two nights at Roulette in Brooklyn. Monday, October 29, will consist of a cappella jazz and blues singer and composer Philip Hamilton’s “Vocalscapes: Solitude” for voice, percussion, and electronics; excerpts from New York-based, Uruguayan-born audiovisual artist Sabrina Lastman’s “An Encounter with ‘El Duende,’” which pays tribute to Federico García Lorca using voice, movement, sound, bowed psaltery, megaphone, and visuals; and San Francisco-born, Brooklyn-based violinist, composer, vocalist, and poet Sarah Bernstein’s Unearthish, a duo with percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. Tuesday’s program features Lisa Karrer’s “Collision Theory: Works and Premieres for Voice & Multi-Media,” a collaboration with partner David Simons that will include her “Meeting Max: Vocal Experiments with Interactive Video Mixer” and his “The Opera Within the Opera,” with electronics, triggered Theremin, and keyboard; multidisciplinary artist, composer, and teacher Sasha Bodganowitsch’s “Mirror Upon Mirror,” a song cycle involving live looping and processing, dance and movement, text, and such instruments as the syrinx, fujara, koncovka, halo drum, and karimba; and San Francisco-based Pamela Z’s “Works for Voice, Live Processing, and Video,” with excerpts from “Memory Trace” along with other short pieces. [Ed. note: The Vital Vox Festival has been postponed because of Hurricane Sandy; new dates will be available shortly.]

JOHN CAGE: THE SIGHT OF SILENCE

John Cage, “New River Watercolor, Series I (#3), watercolor on parchment paper, 1988 (courtesy National Academy Museum)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 13, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

The National Academy continues its transformation with the cleverly curated multimedia exhibition “John Cage: The Sight of Silence,” held in conjunction with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the seminal avant-garde artist. A controversial minimalist composer, music theoretician, Zen practitioner, I Ching follower, and longtime partner of Merce Cunningham, Cage was also a watercolorist, and the National Academy show features more than four dozen of his paintings, drawings, and etchings made primarily during his residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia in the 1980s and early ’90s. A short documentary reveals Cage’s fascinating process using local stones, feathers, and the same ideas of chance and complex numbering systems he employed in creating his musical compositions, resulting in gentle, spiritual works with colorful circles on paper sometimes prepared with smoke. A vitrine contains some of the elements Cage used for the pieces, which were hung by the National Academy on the walls of two galleries by chance as well, through a series of four rolls of the dice. The show also includes Cage’s 1969 Plexiglas homage to Duchamp, “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel”; one of his unique scores; and a 1976 self-portrait. “The Sight of Silence” is supplemented by several video presentations, highlighted by a 1960 appearance Cage made on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, performing “Water Walk,” a composition for water pitcher, iron pipe, bathtub, goose call, bottle of wine, electric mixer, whistle, sprinkling can, ice cubes, two cymbals, mechanical fish, quail call, rubber duck, tape recorder, vase of roses, seltzer siphon, five radios, bathtub, and grand piano. In addition, another monitor plays the John Cage section of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 documentary Four American Composers, which captures unusual live performances, interviews, and Cage’s interstitial “Indeterminacy Stories.” It all makes for a charming show that is likely to surprise Cage devotees as well as those unfamiliar with his oeuvre.

John Cage performs “Water Walk” on I’VE GOT A SECRET

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” Cage once explained. “There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” The National Academy is making sure there is always something to see and hear with “Chance Encounters,” a series of public programs ranging from book readings and panel discussions to live dance and concerts. Among the special events: On October 28 at 3:00, William Anastasi, who played chess with Cage every day for nearly fifteen years, will read from The Cage Dialogues: A Memoir; on November 10, Joan Retallack, who wrote Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art Music with Cage, will present “Conversation with Cage”; on December 1, exhibition cocurator Ray Kass will direct a performance of Cage’s “STEPS” by Stephen Addis; and on January 5, Du Yun will perform “Water Walk.”

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “BOW DOWN” BY XAVIER RUDD

“Do you feel like any of this is wrong? Do any of you feel like any of this is wrong? Coz I feel like some of this is wrong,” Australian musician and activist Xavier Rudd declares on “Comfortable in My Skin,” one of thirteen eco-friendly tracks on his seventh studio album, Spirit Bird (SideOneDummy, June 2012). A one-man band who fights for the environment, indigenous cultures, animal rights, and other causes, Rudd again plays a multitude of instruments on the new record, including numerous guitars, keyboards, harmonica, drums, a stomp box, and the yidaki, (didgeridoo). In addition, several songs feature bird and whale samples; one of Rudd’s current causes, and whose call can be heard on Spirit Bird, is the endangered black cockatoo. Rudd is currently participating in an online auction sponsored by the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre, where he recently visited. He has donated a specially commissioned, signed Tjukurtjarra Didgeridoo on which he has written, “One love / One mob / For country / Arms up / Thank you, Kaarakin!” (The current bid is $2,200; the auction continues through October 31.) Rudd’s world music sound mixes elements of folk, pop, dance, and reggae with African and aboriginal rhythms that often border on New Age before picking up speed, especially on the epic, mostly instrumental ten-minute “Full Circle.” The album ends with Rudd pleading, “Please patience please patience please / I’m creating a dream.” You can join Rudd’s ever-growing movement on October 28, when he plays Irving Plaza with Yeshe.

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE: IN THE SPIRIT OF WOODY GUTHRIE

Justin Townes Earle will lead Woody Guthrie centennial tribute at Pace on October 26-27 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PACE PRESENTS
Pace University, Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts
3 Spruce St.
October 26-27, $25-$50, 7:30
www.pace.edu
www.justintownesearle.com

Since his 2008 debut record, The Good Life, Nashville-born singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle has been wearing his heavy heart — and his diverse influences — on his long sleeves. Melding his own American roots-rock blend of folk, rock, jazz, pop, and blues, Earle doesn’t hide that he is the son of Steve Earle and was named for his father’s mentor, Townes Van Zandt. “I hear my father on the radio / Singin’ ‘Take Me Home Again’ / Three hundred miles from the Carolina coast and I’m / I’m skin and bones again / Sometimes I wish that I could get away / Sometimes I wish that he’d just call,” Earle sings on “Am I That Lonely Tonight?,” the opening track of his most recent album, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot, March 2012). The follow-up to 2010’s Harlem River Blues and 2009’s Midnight at the Movies, the younger Earle’s latest is an exploration of love and loneliness seen through the eyes of a man still searching for his place in the world. “So, please, baby, just drive / Carry me out into the night / Carry me out into the night / ’Cause I need to know / That there’s something more to this life / That there’s something more to this moment,” he pleads on “Passin’ Through Memphis in the Rain.” Among Earle’s other influences are Bruce Springsteen, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Newman, and Woody Guthrie. On October 26 & 27, Earle will be at Pace’s Michael Schimmel Center honoring that last influence for the special program “In the Spirit of Woody Guthrie,” being held in conjunction with the centennial of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie’s birth. Earle will host two nights of music and stories featuring original songs and covers, with Earle and his specially chosen guests, which include Deer Tick’s John McCauley, the Low Anthem, Joe Pug, and bestselling author and columnist Joe Klein.

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812

The cast of NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 toasts creator Dave Malloy, who also plays Pierre (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 17, $30, 8:00
212-352-3101
www.arsnovanyc.com

Inspired by a section of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 epic, War and Peace, Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is a rousing and rollicking immersive rock opera filled with treachery, deceit, romance, humor, and food and drink. Scenic designer Mimi Lien has transformed Ars Nova into an 1812 Moscow club, where patrons are seated together at small tables, banquettes, and a long, curved bar and greeted by a complimentary bottle of vodka and a plate of potato pierogis and pumpernickel bread. The action takes place everywhere, as the actors pop up on the bar, sit at a table, and wander through the audience, Bradley King’s expert lighting and Matt Hubbs’s sound design helping people locate the actors. Russian epics can get rather complicated, so the show opens with a prologue in which the characters introduce themselves one by one and set up the story, which involves a beautiful young woman, Natasha (Phillipa Soo), who is engaged to Andrey, who is off fighting the war against Napoleon, but Natasha soon falls for engaging cad Anatole (Lucas Steele), who is the brother of town tart Hélène (Amber Gray), who is married to the hapless cuckold Pierre (Malloy, who also plays piano in the live band, which is scattered throughout the space). “Everyone’s got nine different names,” the cast sings, “but look it up in your program / We’d appreciate it / Thanks a lot.” Indeed, the program includes a plot synopsis as well as a map of who’s who and how they are connected.

Natasha (Phillipa Soo) is caught in a dangerous love triangle in rollicking new rock opera (photo by Ben Arons)

The talented cast also features Brittain Ashford as Natasha’s well-meaning cousin Sonya; a scene-stealing Blake DeLong as Andrey’s crotchety father, Prince Bolkonsky; Amelia Workman as Natasha’s overprotective godmother, Marya D; Gelsey Bell as Andrey’s very serious sister, Mary; Nick Choksi as Anatole’s best friend, Dolokhov; and associate musical director Paul Pinto as troika driver Balaga. The bawdier first act is followed by a mellower second act highlighted by a show-stopping performance by Bell as Sonya laments what has befallen Natasha. The rock-solid music is played by cellists Brent Arnold and Raymond Sicam III, clarinetist Mark Dover, bassist John Murchison, oboist Sally Wall, and violist Pinky Weitzman, giving a Russian twist to the Jesus Christ Superstar-like score. Directed with flair and verve by Rachel Chavkin, who previously worked with Malloy (Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage, Clown Bible) on the Obie-winning Three Pianos, the world premiere of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 offers adventurous theatergoers a fabulously good time, a unique experience that is fun for all in a wide variety of ways.

ROD STEWART

Barnes & Noble
555 Fifth Ave. at 46th St.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 5:30
212-697-3048
www.randomhouse.com
www.rodstewart.com

“Obviously I was a mistake,” rock legend Rod Stewart writes in the beginning of his brand-new tome, Rod: The Autobiography (Crown, October 23, 2012, $27). But it’s no mistake that Stewart is one of the greatest performers in rock-and-roll history, having released such hit albums as Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, Blondes Have More Fun, Tonight I’m Yours, It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, and others over the course of a career that has spanned more than fifty years. In his book — which joins such other recent rock-star tell-alls as Keith Richards’s Life, Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, and Pete Townshend’s Who I Am, Stewart shares tales of his youth, his friendships with the likes of Elton John and Ronnie Wood, his numerous sexual relationships, and the true story behind an ugly rumor that has followed him around for decades. “No one ever forgets their first view of Manhattan, rising into the sky ahead of them, nor their first drive up its concrete canyons,” he writes about his first trip to New York City, with Ron Wood. “Woody and I were in ecstasy – possibly even silenced momentarily, gawping at the scale of it all.” Rod the Mod has returned to New York City many times since then, selling out Madison Square Garden and other venues, and he will be back in town on October 23, making his only NYC literary appearance at 5:30 at the Fifth Ave. Barnes & Noble at 46th St., signing copies of Rod; there is a three-book maximum, and he will not be signing any other memorabilia. In addition, photography is not allowed once patrons approach the table, so you will not be able to take a posed picture with him. But how often do you get to be thisclose to the man behind “Maggie May,” “Hot Leg,” “Mandolin Wind,” “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” “Young Turks,” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

BEYOND CAGE

Petr Kotik, seen here with John Cage in August 1992, will lead the Cage centennial celebration October 22 – November 7 (photo by John Maggiotto)

CAGE AT 100 / MUSIC AT 2012
Multiple venues
October 22 – November 7, free – $25, passes $50-$250
718-488-7659
www.semensemble.org

Minimalist maestro John Cage would have turned one hundred last month — he died in August 1992 at the age of seventy-nine — and his centennial is being honored by the nonprofit S.E.M. Ensemble through a series of special events taking place at several venues October 22 through November 9. Founded in 1970 by Petr Kotik, who collaborated with Cage, the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble will kick off the “Beyond Cage” festival on October 22 with a simultaneous performance of the avant-garde theorist, composer, and musician’s “Atlas Eclipticalis” and “Winter Music,” followed by Christian Marclay’s “Shuffle,” at Carnegie Hall, featuring Joseph Kubera and Ursula Oppens on piano, with Kotik conducting. On October 26, Kotik, Kubera, composer Joel Chadabe, author Richard Kostelanetz, and Christian Wolff, Cage’s only student, will gather for the panel discussion “John Cage’s Musical Legacy” at the CUNY Graduate Center. On October 27, the FLUX Quartet will perform works by Cage, Kotik, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, and Luigi Nono at the Paula Cooper Gallery, followed the next night by “New Works by Emerging Composers” at the Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn. On October 30, Kotik will conduct Ostravská banda & Talujon Percussion, featuring mezzo soprano Katalin Károlyi, in a program at the Bohemian National Hall that includes three works by Cage as well as Karlheinz Stockhausen, James Tenney, and Salvatore Sciarrino. On November 2, the S.E.M. Ensemble will play Kotik’s “Many Many Women,” with text by Gertrude Stein, at Paula Cooper. On November 4 at Roulette, “Cage & Kubera: Grand Piano Solos” consists of pieces by Kotik, Cage, and Roscoe Mitchell performed by Ostravská banda, Kubrera, violinist Conrad Harris, saxophonist Mitchell, and flutist and conductor Kotik. On November 5, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava will be at Alice Tully Hall for “Morton Feldman: Major Orchestral Works.” The following night, Peter Graham will present the talk “Cage, Cunningham & Rauschenberg in Prague & Ostrava (1964)” at the Bohemian National Hall, where the festival concludes November 7 with “Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava: Cage, Wolff, and Vítková,” which includes the New York premiere of Cage’s “103.”