this week in music

JANE LEE HOOKER: ROLLIN’ RECORD RELEASE PARTY

Who: Jane Lee Hooker, Tom Clark and the High Action Boys
What: Record release party
Where: Hill Country, 30 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Friday, April 22, free with RSVP, 8:00
Why: At they show in the fun video for “Drive” from their brand-new album, Rollin’, fab New York blues rockers Jane Lee Hooker will not be arriving at Hill Country for their record release party in a snazzy Mercedes convertible. But on April 22, singer Dana Danger Athens, guitarists Tracy Hightop and Tina T-Bone Gorin, bassist Mary Z, and drummer Lightnin’ Ron Salvo will still find their way to the barbecue joint for some tasty tunes from the band, which formed in 2015 and has previously released Spiritus and No B! The new record, made during the pandemic, features such songs as “Drive,” “Jericho,” and “All Good Things,” in which Athens promises “all good things comin’ your way.”

Athens explained in a statement, “Somehow, amidst the chaos of a global pandemic, we were able to write and record what I feel is our best work as a band yet.” Gorin added, “Astounding that some things, like writing music with each other, will always be a beautiful and safe world, even during a worldwide health disaster like Covid-19.” And Hightop said, “We were really able to take our time and do these amazing songs justice. This album is just next level in so many respects. I can’t wait to get out there and play these songs in front of an audience!” Opening up for JLH is longtime city faves Tom Clark and the High Action Boys (Cross-Eyed and Bow-Legged). Expect “all good things comin’ your way.”

HEATHER CHRISTIAN: ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS

Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is an exhilarating journey through time, space, and shared human experience (photo by Ben Arons)

HEATHER CHRISTIAN’S ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS
Ars Nova at Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday – Sunday through May 15, $35-$65
arsnovanyc.com/oratorio

Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is a gloriously exhilarating ninety-minute celebration of life, art, and nature, an immersive journey through the complex quantum, human, and cosmic time and space of our daily existence.

Oratorio is Obie winner Christian’s follow-up to Animal Wisdom, a confessional of music and storytelling dealing with the personal and communal aspects of ritual and superstition, grief and loss, ghosts and the fear of death, and I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, a solo virtual musical about Mother Teresa, performed in drag in a closet by Theater in Quarantine’s Joshua William Gelb.

The Ars Nova production takes place in a reconfigured, in-the-round Greenwich House, where the audience sits in a few steeped rows of rafters, each section separated by a dozen steps; it’s such a small group that you feel specially privileged to be there. Twelve lovely performers (Sean Donovan, Carla Duren, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Brian Flores, Quentin Oliver Lee, Angel Lozada, Barrie Lobo McLain, Ben Moss, Onyie Nwachukwu, Dito Van Reigersberg, Kirstyn Cae Ballard, and Divya Maus) in casual, carefully considered dress move up and down the stairs and through the tiny center stage area, over which dangles a glowing orb that evokes an unstructured, abstract globe or meteor. At the top of either side is the outstanding band: Johnny Butler on woodwinds, Jane Cardona on piano, Clérida Eltimé on cello, Odetta Hartman on violin, John Murchison on upright and electric bass, and Peter Wise on percussion.

Greenwich House has been transformed into a unique communal space for Oratorio for Living Things (photo by Ben Arons)

Throughout, the singers make warm, intimate direct eye contact with the audience, signaling we are all on this planet together and need to live in unison with one another and nature. Christian’s libretto, which is handed out to each audience member as they’re seated, is in English and Latin; the lights are usually dimmed just enough to still allow you to follow along, but you certainly don’t have to.

As Christian notes in a program letter, “Don’t worry! You do not need a degree in astrophysics, antique languages, or microbiology to ‘get’ this piece. In fact, one would argue that Oratorio for Living Things could function as a Rorschach test. It’s made to engage with you at whatever level you’d like to do so.”

However, it can become a bit distracting when a lot of heads are buried in the white libretto instead of watching the performers, particularly when they’re right in front of them. But this is a judgment-free zone. (The comforting set is by Kristen Robinson, with costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, and sound by Nick Kourtides.)

The score morphs from classical oratorio to jazz, gospel, blues, and a burst of Godspell-like musical theater as Christian guides us through canticles, hymns, choruses, and poems with such titles as “Beginning (Infinite Fractal),” “Alligatum (membranes),” “Dust to Dust (water),” “Hydrogen and Helium: History of Violence,” and “Vesuvius,” which contains the warning: “Now we have arrived at something truly Frightening.”

In “Memory Harvest,” individual singers recall major and minor moments from their past, one example of which is: “I’m five years old and my cousin is seven years old and we jump from one foot to the other standing on the side of the road across from the train tracks. Our excitement builds as the train approaches, our arms flailing, pump up and down, we want the engineer to pull the chain to blow the train whistle. And he does.”

In “Carbon/DNA Iteration 4: Building DNA via Ticker Tape on Time Spent,” the performers use numbers to quantify life, including such observations as “Three and a half hours throwing away unopened mail / Forty minutes putting lids on Tupperware / Eighteen days looking for a bathroom / One year in the ‘Bag Drop’ line / Eleven days trying to remember why you came into the room / Four hours changing pants / Two and a half years being too cold / Four years and eleven days being too hot.” It’s a gorgeous, often very funny look at the little things that add up, equating a wide range of items that we all have in common and which feel particularly meaningful as we emerge from a pandemic lockdown that severely limited our presence in society and has led to so much grief and loss.

Twelve singers and six musicians envelop the audience in Heather Christian’s glorious Oratorio for Living Things (photo by Ben Arons)

Obie-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation, Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya) has just the right touch to make it all flow seemingly effortlessly, like a babbling brook where you rest and casually reflect on the beauty of everything. Evans also makes sure we don’t feel like we’re trapped in science class amid mentions of entropy, energy, evolution, chloroplasts, mitochondria, diatoms, and covalent bonds.

Inspired by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, American astronomer Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and German composer Carl Orff’s cantata “Carmina Burana,” Christian imbues Oratorio with an existential hope that fuels who we are as individuals and as a harmonic unit. In the libretto, she describes “Fields” as “a brief indulgence in an environment (now established). A reminder that because something is devoid of human consciousness or observation does not mean that it is empty.” In “Vesuvius: Dormancy,” we are told, “Do not mistake dying for stopping,” and in “Vesuvius: Eruption” that “we are in the middle / we aren’t at the end / of a loop.”

Do whatever you can to see Oratorio for Living Things, which has been extended through May 15; this extraordinary shared pilgrimage is sold out, but standby and rush tickets might be available. As Christian writes in the libretto, “A very smart person once said that given the choice between living in a universe where only some things are known and knowable and living in a universe where either everything or nothing was known, they’d take the former. Because out of mystery evolves curiosity, and out of confoundment evolves wonder.” And that is exactly what Oratorio delivers.

SEVEN SINS: RETURN ENGAGEMENT

(photo by Mark Shelby Perry)

Seven Sins is another hot and sexy night with Company XIV (photo by Mark Shelby Perry)

SEVEN SINS
Théâtre XIV
383 Troutman St., Bushwick
Thursday – Sunday through June 26, $95 – $640
companyxiv.com/sevensins

[Ed. note: Following a two-year pandemic break, Company XIV’s Seven Sins has returned to Bushwick; the below review is from March 2020.]

Company XIV founder and artistic director Austin McCormick outdoes himself with his latest baroque burlesque sensation, the decadently delightful Seven Sins. It’s so tailor-made for the extremely talented troupe that the only question is, what took them so long?

The company has previously staged outré cabaret adaptations of such fairy tales as Pinocchio, Cinderella, Snow White, and Queen of Hearts in addition to Paris! and the seasonal favorite Nutcracker Rouge. They now turn their attention to the original fairy tale itself, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Serving as host for the evening is the Devil (a fab Amy Jo Jackson), all glammed out in horns, sequins, and heels. Shortly after Adam (portrayed alternately by Scott Schneider or Cemiyon Barber; I saw the former) arrives on Earth, he is joined by Eve (Danielle Gordon or Emily Stockwell; I saw Gordon) through a bit of magic, leading to a lovely duet that incorporates contemporary dance and classical ballet to Dean Martin’s rendition of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.” Temptation threatens in the form of a long snake carried aloft by several performers; Adam and Eve are offered a glittering red apple, feel shame in their (near-)nakedness, and cover their naughty bits with fig leaves to Paul Anka singing “Adam and Eve.”

(photo by Mark Shelby Perry)

Pretty Lamé delivers an aria in latest bawdy baroque burlesque cabaret from Austin McCormick (photo by Mark Shelby Perry)

In the next two acts, they encounter Vanity, Wrath, Lust, Jealousy, Sloth, Greed, and ultimately Gluttony, each sin getting its own scene involving dance, acrobatics, and/or song, all bursting with an intense sexuality and a wicked sense of humor. The music includes original songs by Lexxe along with classical instrumentals, opera, and tunes by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Nancy Sinatra, Cab Calloway, Florence and the Machine, Cardi B, the Beatles, and others. Pretty Lamé lets loose with a pair of gorgeous arias, while the awe-inspiring Marcy Richardson struts her stuff in an aerial cage and on a swinging pole and Troy Lingelbach and Nolan McKew dangle over the audience on a double lyra.

There are multiple ways to see the show, which is staged in Théâtre XIV in Bushwick, where the sexy baroque motif extends to the two bars and every nook and cranny. There are bar chairs, petite chairs, couches, small tables, and deluxe tables where patrons are served food and drink by the performers within the narrative. The set and costumes are by the awesomely inventive Zane Pihlström, with sensual lighting by Jeanette Yew and mischievous makeup by Sarah Cimino. Conceived, choreographed, and directed by McCormick, who also curated the special cocktail menu, Seven Sins encompasses all the best parts of Company XIV, immersing the audience in a lush and lascivious fantasy world where anything can happen. It does lose a bit of its momentum with two intermissions — the total running time is about two hours and fifteen minutes — and there are no bawdy vaudeville-like acts during the breaks, as there have been at previous shows of theirs. But let him/her/them who is without sin cast the first stone. And don’t be surprised if you experience all seven sins yourself during this fantabulous evening.

DIANA OH: THE GIFT PROJECT

Who: Diana Oh
What: Live special event presented by All for One Theater
Where: Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre, 2537 Broadway at Ninety-Fifth St.
When: Saturday, April 9, 8:00, and Sunday, April 10, 3:00, $25-$35
Why: Truth Teller, Truth Seeker, Punk Goddex, Wizard Phoenix, Dance Floor, and LGBTQ Korean American Artist Diana Oh nearly tore the roof of the Flea in their recent show-stealing performance in the communal healing ritual Arden — But, Not Without You. Oh and their band now just might tear the roof off Symphony Space in The Gift Project, presented by All for One Theater at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre on April 9 and 10. The show, created by Oh ({my lingerie play} Clairvoyance) and directed by Oh and AFO founding artistic director Nicholas A. Cotz, was inspired by Oh’s meetings with “Elders of Marginalized Experience or Identity.” Oh wrote the music and lyrics after filming interviews, in collaboration with jb, with immigrant Elders born in 1956 or earlier who had overcome obstacles. Oh wrote a song for each Elder and presented it to them; the Symphony Space show will be “a rock & soul & shamanic & boomlala concert” with documentary footage of the Elders, honoring June Oh, Salomon Rettig, Xuyen Hinh, Gordon Rogoff, Shigeko Sara Suga, Kazi Khatoon, and Dr. MaryLouise Patterson.

“I feel the pang of losing the very special generation of people who moved to America and gave birth here,” Oh said in a statement. “The Americans of Immigrant and Marginalized Experience who’ve given birth to my generation: They are our Elders now and I’m scared of losing their stories and life seen through their eyes. Thanks to the pandemic, I felt the panic of the world ending and how anyone who lives beyond sixty-five years old is a miracle, and I wanted to let them know. That’s why I decided to do The Gift Project. I’d meet an Elder living in America who identifies with a Marginalized Experience or Identity, talk with them about anything, let the conversation flow: and then write them a song as a Gift: not a song about them but a song for them and then come back to see them and give the song to them as a Gift: so The Gift Project.” The band features Oh on synth and looper, music director Jack Fuller on keyboards, Matt Park and Viva Deconcini on electric guitar, Michael Maloney on guitars and bass, Serena Ebony Miller on bass, glockenspiel, and cello, and Timothy Angulo on drums, with guests Sarah Shin and Tim Hall.

MICHAEL DORF’S 60th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION: THE MUSIC OF JAMES BROWN

Who: Catherine Russell, David Gilmore, Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Nicole Atkins, John Medeski, the Millennial Territory Orchestra, more
What: Celebration of the music of James Brown and the sixtieth birthday of City Winery founder Michael Dorf
Where: City Winery New York, 25 Eleventh Ave. at Fifteenth St.
When: Thursday, April 7, $60-$75, 8:00
Why: City Winery founder Michael Dorf knows how to throw a party. For his sixtieth birthday, he is celebrating with some of his favorite musicians, who will serenade him with the music of James Brown, accompanied by fine wine for the special occasion. Among the people who will be taking the stage and performing songs by the Godfather of Soul are Catherine Russell, David Gilmore, Nicole Atkins, Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, and John Medeski; the Millennial Territory Orchestra is the house band, featuring music director Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, David Gilmore on guitar, Charlie Burnham on violin, Peter Apfelbaum on tenor sax, Briggan Krauss on baritone sax, Erik Lawrence on alto sax, Ben Allison on bass, and Ben Perowsky on drums. Tickets range from $60 to $75. In a November 2021 twi-ny talk, Dorf said, “I’m a kid in a candy shop.” Fortunately, he gets to share all his sweet treats with the rest of us.

WORD. SOUND. POWER. 2022

Who: Baba Israel, AMYRA, Drew Drake, Dizzy SenZe, Freakquencee, DJ Reborn, Jade Charon
What: Live music, dance, and spoken word performances centered around Aṣẹ
Where: BAM Fisher, Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl.
When: April 7—9, $25, 7:30
Why: BAM’s annual celebration of spoken word and hip-hop features a stellar lineup of performers honoring the power of Aṣẹ, the Yoruba philosophical concept of affirmation, life force, and verbal creation. Artist, producer, educator, and consultant Baba Israel will host “Word. Sound. Power. 2022,” which takes place April 7-9 at BAM Fisher’s intimate Fishman Space. The impressive gathering brings together Bronx-born lyrical assassin Dizzy SenZe, Newark vibe curator Freakquencee, NYC-based poet and actor Drew Drake, and Harlem musician, author, and director AMYRA, with music by Brooklyn-based DJ Reborn and choreography by Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Jade Charon. The seventy-minute showcase, exploring agency, creativity, resilience, and more, also includes student poets from Brooklyn public schools, part of a BAM in-school residency program, and will conclude with a twenty-minute Q&A with the artists.

LIVE FROM THE WOODY GUTHRIE CENTER: OKLAHOMA SINGS WOODY!

Who: Branjae, John Fullbright, David Amram, Red Dirt Rangers, Deana McCloud
What: Livestreamed concert from the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa
Where: Morgan Library & Museum online
When: Wednesday, April 6, free, 7:00
Why: The Morgan Library exhibition “Woody Guthrie: People Are the Song” takes visitors on a deep dive into the life and career of Oklahoma-born singer-songwriter Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, the folk music legend who fought for everyday Americans through his staunch activism and protest songs. The outstanding show, continuing through May 22, features hundreds of items, from Woody’s instruments, records, letters, and notebooks to photographs, postcards, lyrics, and artworks, including a rare painting. The audioguide is narrated by country folk rock troubadour Steve Earle and features snippets of songs and archival interviews with Guthrie. Talking about moving to the West Coast, Guthrie says, “They called us ‘dust bowl refugees.’ But then there’s more than one kind of a refugee. There’s refugees that take refuge under railroad bridges, and there is refugees that take refugee and . . . take refuge in public office. But when we was out in California, all that the native sons and daughters called us was just ‘dust bowl refugees.’”

Guthrie, who was born in the small town of Okemah on July 14, 1912, and died of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967, in Coney Island, left behind a legacy that reaches around the world, impacting such musicians as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Wilco, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, and so many others. On April 6 at 7:00, the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa will present the live concert “Oklahoma Sings Woody!,” with performances by Branjae, John Fullbright, David Amram, and Red Dirt Rangers, playing three songs each, their own as well as Woody’s. While the in-person show is sold out, the event will be livestreamed for free by the Morgan, supplemented with a brief virtual tour of the center by founding executive director and chief curator Deana McCloud. Throughout his too-short career, Guthrie revealed the power that music can have on politics and the populace; as he famously carved into a guitar, “This machine kills fascists.” Yes, people are the song.