Pianist Nargiz Aliyarova and cellist Sergey Antonov will perform an all-Chopin concert at Carnegie Hall on March 15
Who:Nargiz Aliyarova,Sergey Antonov What: Benefit concert of Chopin music Where:Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, 881 Seventh Ave. at West 57th St. When: Tuesday, March 15, $30-$60, 8:00 Why: “I am so excited,” New York–based Azerbaijani pianist Nargiz Aliyarova told me recently about making her Carnegie Hall debut. “Any musician in the world would be happy to be on this stage!” Aliyarova, who is also a professor with a doctorate in art, will be joined by US-based cellist Sergey Antonov in a special all-Chopin program at Weill Recital Hall on March 15. The concert is being presented by the National Music & Global Culture Society, a nonprofit organization founded by Aliyarova “to unite our multicultural community through the advocacy of music from around the world,” focusing on providing lessons to disadvantaged youth, hosting contests and festivals, and publishing a quarterly online magazine.
Aliyarova, who began giving recitals at the age of nine and was awarded a diploma “for outstanding contribution to the legacy of Frédéric Chopin” by the Polish government in 2010, has released three albums of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Chopin in addition to two CDs of Azerbaijani music, including compositions by Jovdet Hajiyev, Gara Garayev, Franghiz Alizadeh, Vagif Mustafazadeh, and Javanshit Guliyev. The Russian-born, Grammy-nominated Antonov, a gold medal winner at the XIII International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2007, began playing the cello when he was five; he has released Elegy with pianist Ilya Kazantsev, Strauss & Rachmaninov: Sonatas for Cello & Piano, and an album of music by Robert Schumann. He is also a member of the Hermitage Piano Trio with Kazantsev and violinist Misha Keylin.
The Carnegie Hall program features an exciting mix of works by Chopin, the Polish Romantic composer and pianist who passed away in 1849 at the age of thirty-nine. Aliyarova and Antonov will be performing Polonaise Brillante for cello and piano Op. 3, Sonata for cello and piano Op. 65, Nocturne Op. post in C sharp Minor, Waltz Op. 34 N.2 in A minor, Waltz Op. 64 N.2 in C sharp Minor, Ballade in F minor, Op. 52, and the world premiere of Chopin and August Franchomme’s Grand Duo concertant in E major, B. 70, arranged for cello and piano by Lala Jafarova. Antonov and Aliyarova previously played together at the International Mugham Center in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku in September 2021, performing works by Chopin and Claude Debussy. The Carnegie Hall concert by these internationally renowned musicians is both a respite from the latest news and a reminder of how important it is “to unite our multicultural community through the advocacy of music from around the world.”
Who: Eugene Hütz, Gogol Bordello, Craig Finn & Franz Nicolay, Jesse Malin, Lady Lamb, Marc Roberge, Matisyahu, Patti Smith, Stephin Merritt, Suzanne Vega, more What:Benefit concert for Ukraine and the Come Back Alive Foundation Where:City Winery on Mandolin When: Thursday, March 10, $20, 8:00 Why: City Winery’s all-star benefit for Ukraine sold out almost instantly, but you can still catch it from the comfort of your own home while donating to help a sovereign nation deeply in need of support, with nearly two million refugees seeking new places to live. City Winery will be livestreaming the show, raising funds for Ukraine and the Come Back Alive Foundation, an organization, founded in 2014, that declares: “Ukraine is the Shield of Europe. We believe that a threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. We are here defending the values we share across Europe and the world. We are doing our best to make sure Putin’s values do not spread further, even beyond our borders. Our Army is strong and determined, but they are underequipped.”
For a mere twenty bucks, you can watch a parade of musicians take the stage at the Far West Side venue, hosted by Eugene Hütz and his band, Gogol Bordello; Hütz was born in Ukraine to a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother. “Ukraine belongs to Ukrainians! We are an ancient independent nation distinctly and forever different from this criminally insane neighbor,” Hütz said in a statement. “The proof you all see now in the fierce mind-blowing battle that the world is witnessing, a battle of Ukrainian people’s choice of freedom and democracy against a psychotic totalitarian regime next door. Please help us to win this battle, help us to end this catastrophe immediately and bring the intruder to justice. Please stand with Ukraine in the battle for its democracy and freedom. Please donate and fundraise with us. Ukraine needs all of you. All your support counts.”
The lineup, so far, includes Craig Finn and Franz Nicolay of the Hold Steady, Jesse Malin, Lady Lamb, Marc Roberge of O.A.R., Matisyahu, Patti Smith, Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, and Suzanne Vega. You can also join the waitlist to see the concert live and in person. Хай живе, вільна Україна!
Who: Rozzi, Demi Ramos, Stalking Gia, Cloe Wilder, Ok Cowgirl, Scarlet Fiorella What: Concert in honor of International Women’s Day Where:Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave. When: Wednesday, March 9, $25, 8:00 Why: The theme of International Women’s Day 2022, taking place March 9, is #BreakTheBias, with a mission to: “Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women’s equality.” Women That Rock, which has been presenting femme-focused concerts since 2018, returns to the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, the site of its inaugural show, on March 9 for a live event featuring performances by Rozzi, Demi Ramos, Stalking Gia, Cloe Wilder, Ok Cowgirl, and Scarlet Fiorella. WTR “seeks to lift up badass grrrls making waves in the music world and to foster a community of womxn supporting one another through music,” so expect a badass night.
Who:Stéphane Wrembel and guests What: Long-running celebration of Django Reinhardt Where:The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd St. between Sixth Ave. & Broadway When: Saturday, March 5, $47-$77, 8:00 Why: Rescheduled from May 15 of last year because of the resurgence of Covid-19, the thirteenth Django a Gogo is taking place March 5 at the Town Hall, where French guitarist, teacher, and composer Stephane Wrembel will be joined by special guests to honor of the musical legacy of Belgium-born master Django Reinhardt. Wrembel, who started the festival in 2003, has released several albums with his band, the Django Reinhardt Experiment, as well as Django L’Impressionniste, a book featuring transcriptions of seventeen of Reinhardt’s solos. At the Town Hall, Wrembel will take the stage with guitarists Raphael Faÿs, Laurent Hestin, Sebastien Felix, Russell Welch, Josh Kaye, and Tommy Davy, saxophonist Aurora Nealand, violinist Daisy Castro, bassist Ari Folman-Cohen, drummer Nick Anderson, and David Langlois on washboard. Grammy winner Wrembel, who is from Fountainebleau, France, has also composed music for three Woody Allen films, including his latest, Rifkin’s Festival. Django a Gogo is part of a six-day celebration that also includes concerts in Maplewood and Brooklyn and a guitar camp in New Jersey.
ARDEN — BUT, NOT WITHOUT YOU
Flea Theater, the Sam
20 Thomas St. between Broadway & Church St.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 6, $17-$37 theflea.org
Arden — But, Not Without You is a ritual cleansing of the Flea, a messy, scattershot baptism looking toward a new era. Named for the forest in Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, which itself was named for the Bard’s mother-in-law, the show is described by standout performer Diana Oh in the program as “Four Generations of Deeply Intimately Bound All-Kinds-of-Doing-Shit Artists sharing of themselves in a Tender-Ass Room full of Queer Femme Shamanic Energy who Genuinely and Gently Welcome You: Social Anxieties, Yummy Freakiness, and All.”
In June 2020, Flea performer Bryn Carter had a public exchange with the theater’s artistic director, Niegel Smith, and producing director, Carol Ostrow, accusing the Flea of racism, sexism, nonpayment of actors, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ ignorance, bullying, and body shaming. Ostrow left the company, and the resident troupe, the Bats, was eliminated. Smith and the Flea have pledged a “new path forward,” promising “a dedicated focus on Black, brown, and queer artists in experimental theater [that] comes at a moment in which a national spotlight is shining widespread — and longstanding — on the inherent value of BIPOC voices.”
Founded in a Tribeca storefront in 1996 by Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver, the Flea moved first to White St. and now Thomas, where it has several theater spaces. Its inaugural production following the pandemic lockdown and its new guidelines and mission is Arden, a slapdash collaboration, codirected by Smith and Nia Witherspoon, that boasts all-star talent while also serving as a communal acknowledgment and mass healing. While the beginning and ending are moving and powerful, most of what comes in between feels dogmatic and exhortative, as if we’re listening in on the Flea making confession, something that needs to be done in private.
When you check in, you are given a card to fill out with two prompts: “1. Describe the last time someone touched you. 2. What is a question that you want to find the answer to?” As you approach the upstairs Sam, you can first stop at “Journey to the Clearing,” an empty chair with fluorescent lighting and a tree branch seemingly floating, and an altar featuring items and offerings from the company. Once inside the theater, you bring your card to a table where the masked Peter Born and Okwui Okpokwasili turn the comments into song as audience members find their seats, which surround the central floor space except for the far corner, where a band will later play. It’s an engaging way to form everyone into a kind of collective, which is further enhanced by Born’s sparse set that features four hanging light fixtures, bulbs surrounded by family photos and mirrors.
The singing morphs into “Do Not Let Go,” in which Born and Okpokwasili, who are married and have previously worked together on such projects as Pent Up: A Revenge Dance,Poor People’s TV Room, and Bronx Gothic, proclaim, “I want to know / Who stands beside me / When I tell you / this house is in ruins. / total collapse / is looming. / The storm is surging / The walls are caving in. . . . Will you / Welcome the storm? / Will you / Praise the bones / wrested from the wreckage / And build anew?”
Smith and Harlem MC, composer, and musician Jack Fuller next take a backward “spirit walk” following a rectangular chalk outline. “This place is fraught,” Smith declares. “This place has celebrated a vision of Black and brown folks / dependent on white saviors. / This house is in ruins. . . . I choose to fight / I fight for this artistic home.” This section proves flat and didactic, overemphasizing the theme of the rededication of the Flea.
Other company members join in the walk as the soundtrack turns to a captivating story by multidisciplinary artist Carrie Mae Weems detailing a powerful childhood memory, accompanied by footage of her mother giving a speech. It’s a gripping story about secrets and deception, love and betrayal. Following a trance dance, Diana Oh takes over, becoming our host while blasting out a few raucous, energetic songs, joined by guitarist Viva Deconcini, percussionist Bernice “Boom Boom” Brooks, bassist and cellist Serena Ebony Miller, and Fuller on keyboards. Linda Cho dresses them all in flowing white costumes that harken back to Greek statuary.
Oh, a multidisciplinary artist, takes hold of the room, getting the audience to hum along with her, improvising a recommendation letter supporting a creator of color, and singing like she’s leading a revival meeting. She seemed to be genuinely shocked when one person in the audience essentially professed their love for Oh; otherwise, she was firmly in command. The show would have benefited from more Oh and less Smith.
In As You Like It, Touchstone the fool tells Rosalind and Celia, “Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.” In the Flea’s Arden — But, Not Without You, not everyone can see the forest through the trees.
Who: Philip Glass, Keanu Reeves, Trey Anastasio, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, Gogol Bordello, Nathaniel Rateliff, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Angélique Kidjo, Margo Price, Punch Brothers, the Fiery Furnaces, Jesse Paris Smith, Tenzin Choegyal, Rubin Kodheli, Camerata — Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, the Scorchio Quartet, Paul Simon, Stephen Colbert, Iggy Pop, Bernard Sumner What: Annual benefit concert for Tibet House US Where:Mandolin streaming platform When: Thursday, March 3, $25-$250, 8:00 Why: The annual Tibet House US benefit fundraiser always features a wide-ranging group of special guests, gathering under the leadership of artistic director Philip Glass. The thirty-fifth annual event is no exception, with the added celebration of Glass’s eighty-fifth birthday. This year’s performers will once again be streaming in live and prerecorded from around the world instead of joining together at Carnegie Hall. The roster includes Glass, Trey Anastasio, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Cyndi Lauper, Gogol Bordello, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Angélique Kidjo, Punch Brothers, the Fiery Furnaces, and others as well as greetings from the Scorchio Quartet, Paul Simon, Stephen Colbert, Iggy Pop, and Bernard Sumner.
All proceeds benefit Tibet House US, “a nonprofit educational institution and cultural embassy that was founded at the request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who at the inauguration in 1987 stated his wish for a long-term cultural institution to ensure the survival of Tibetan civilization and culture, whatever the political destiny of the six million people of Tibet itself.” Tickets start at $25, with additions of a Katak blessing scarf, limited edition benefit poster, event T-shirt, mala beads, and more at higher levels.
Rashaad Newsome’s Assembly is an immersive multimedia exploration of the intersection of humanity and technology (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)
ASSEMBLY
Park Ave. Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $18 exhibition, $40 performances www.armoryonpark.org rashaadnewsome.com
The Muthaship has landed — and taken root inside Park Ave. Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. New Orleans–born interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome’s immersive multimedia installation Assembly is an open call to end colonialism, white supremacy, systemic racism, homophobia, and other societal ills based in bigotry and inequality, through music, movement, art, and storytelling grounded in Black queer culture. A kind of group healing focusing on opportunity, Assembly is hosted by Being the Digital Griot, an artificial intelligence project Newsome developed at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI).
When you enter the hall, you are met by Wrapped, Tied & Tangled, a thirty-foot-tall scrim on which a series of performers in bright red, yellow, and blue costumes appear to be dancing and drawing in space while a robotic voice makes affirmations. “Dig into your mind. Welcome to your insides,” Being offers in a gentle, caring tone. “I am here to listen and provide you with a new beginning for your journey. . . . There is only breath, heartbeat, rhythm, and peace. . . . No matter what, you are enough. . . . You are the most beautiful you. You are the master of your own self. You are radiant. You are divine. Always. Ever. Only. Enough. This is your solution. An infinite everything.” The dancers morph into one another — and then into Being, as if we all are one and the same, a spiritual melding of humanity and technology.
Large screens surround the scrim on three sides; to your right, the dancer in yellow moves proudly, with an army of tiny dancers arranged on their head like cornrows, while to the left, the dancer in blue moves in the universe, where miniature dancers align like stars. The screens in front feature computer-generated diasporic imagery of flowers, fractals, twerking, and abstract shapes seemingly coming to life. And behind you, above the entrance, site-specific projections interact with the wall and windows, from more dancers and flashing lights to a facade evoking a plantation house collapsing and figures emerging in silhouette. The textile-like flower imagery is repeated as wallpaper and across the floors.
Tuesday through Sunday at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00 (free with general admission), workshops are held on the other side of the far screens, in a 350-seat classroom that also serves as a live performance venue Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 9:00 ($40). In the workshop, the onscreen Being leads the class through a series of movements the AI relates to oppression, suppression, the power of consumption, the culture of domination, the ownership of narrative, and freedom by exploring voguing and its highly stylized modes of catwalking, duckwalking, spin dipping, and ballroom.
Being hosts an interactive workshop as part of Assembly (photo by Stephanie Berger Photography / Park Avenue Armory)
Speaking about how spin dips conclude with falling to the floor, Being explains, “I see that collapse as the transgressive moment when we let go of the binary of imperfect and perfect and engage in the incredible pedagogy of resistance by thinking critically about our process, acknowledging that we don’t have the visionary skills at that moment to make the most liberatory decision and then stop, reflect, and try again.” Workshop participants are invited to come down from their seats and join in the movement. “Floor performance leads into the embodied pedagogy aspects of vogue femme, centering the erotic and rejecting the patriarchal legacy of the mind-body split,” Being says. After Being’s presentation, audience members can share their thoughts and ask questions of the AI, who supplies analytical answers generated by key words and algorithms through which Being continues to learn.
The AI also celebrates their father, Newsome, and declares that author, activist, and feminist bell hooks, who passed away on December 15 at the age of sixty-nine, is their spiritual mother, while strongly suggesting that we read Paulo Freire’s 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed to better understand what we are all facing as a society. The text of the presentation was inspired by the writings of hooks, Audre Lord, Alok Vaid-Menon, and Assembly performer Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes. Among the other performers are rappers Ms. Boogie, TRANNILISH, and Bella Bags, a ten-piece band, opera singer Brittany Logan, and a six-member gospel choir. The choreography is by Wrapped dancers Kameron N. Saunders, Ousmane Omari Wiles, and Maleek Washington, with music by Kryon El and booboo, lighting by John Torres, scenography by New Affiliates (Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb), and sound by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Mark Grey.
Ansista has a leg up in front of Twirl,Isolation, and Formation of Attention (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Around the back of the classroom is a semicircle of other works by Newsome, who is based in Brooklyn and Oakland. At either end are Ansista and Thee Variant, lifesize iterations of Being, one wearing red heels and a West African print dress, the other styled like a dominatrix with spiky black leather pants, stilettos, and a helmet mask, with warped facial parts that are also evident in nine framed collages featuring such titles as Isolation,Formation of Attention,It Do Take Nerve,O.G. (Oppositional Force), and JOY! In addition, there are monitors at either end of the armory hallway and in the gift shop, showing the twerking video Whose Booty Is This, the 2015 King of Arms parade and coronation, and the 2021 postapocalyptic Build or Destroy. Be sure to check out the cases in the shop, as Newsome has snuck in some hand-carved mahogany and resin African objects alongside the armory’s historic pieces, including Adinkra,Gemini,Brolic, and Unity. On February 20, the armory hosted the salon “Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation,” an all-day seminar examining art, technology, and Black queer culture and quantum visual language that you can watch here.
Given the history of hate and oppression that Assembly takes on, it is a surprisingly hopeful, forward-thinking installation, as Newsome envisions a “utopian future [of] beloved togetherness” at the intersection of humanity and technology, where “racial hierarchies and biases” can be overcome through what he calls a “real reboot.” Being and Assembly are only the beginning.
