In preparation for the release of their third full-length record, I Love You, It’s Cool (Dead Oceans / Hometapes, April 3), Brooklyn-based trio Bear in Heaven has put out two versions of one of the songs on the disc, “The Reflection of You,” the album cut as well as the Lovelock remix courtesy of the Creators Project. You can get a taste of the rest of I Love You, It’s Cool on the band’s website, where the full album is streaming for free — at a speed four hundred thousand percent slower than recorded, so it might not be quite what you expected, but we’ve been mesmerized by it for two days now. Bear in Heaven — singer-keyboardist Jon Philpot, guitarist Adam Wills, and drummer Joe Stickney — will be at the Bowery Ballroom on May 8 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 9 with Doldrums and Blouse.
this week in music
FIRST SATURDAYS: BLACK MALES DEFYING STEREOTYPES
Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas, with Kamal Sinclair and Bayeté Ross Smith, stills from “Question Bridge: Black Males,” multichannel video installation, 2012 (courtesy of the artists and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum turns its attention to Black History Month for its February First Saturdays program, focusing on the exhibition “Question Bridge: Black Males,” in which Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair traveled around the country interviewing 150 black men in a dozen locations and editing the results into a multiscreen video installation. On Saturday night there will be an Action Station where visitors can add their own questions on the topic of identity, a discussion with the creative team, pop-up dances by Renegade Performance Group inspired by the exhibit, an interactive workshop led by “Question Bridge” education director Samara Gaev, and a dance party with DJ Stormin’ Norman featuring songs by black men. In addition, there will be live music by Game Rebellion, curator Shantrelle P. Lewis will discuss her Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts exhibit “Dandy Lion: A Re(de)fined Black Masculine Identity,” hands-on art will help attendees create a mixed-media piece based on Kehinda Wiley’s work, museum guides will lead a tour about defying gender stereotypes, Daniel Bernard Roumain will play parts of his “Symphony for the Dance Floor” with Lord Jamar, Carla Peterson will discuss her book Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, and the Brooklyn Circus will host a fashion runway show. And the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” “Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin,” “Raw/Cooked: Shura Chernozatonskaya,” “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919,” “Work of Art: Kymia Nawabi,” and “19th-Century Modern.”
FIRST FRIDAYS: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975
Angela Davis speaks out about the Black Power movement in compelling documentary
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 166th St.
Friday, February 3, free, 6:00 – 10:00
Admission: free
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org
www.blackpowermixtape.com
From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black and white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is screening on February 3 as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ free First Fridays program honoring Black History Month and will be followed by a Q&A with coproducer Joslyn Barnes. There will also be performances by GIF, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mahogany L. Browne, and M.C. K~Swift, and the galleries will remain open until 10:00, giving visitors plenty of time to check out the exhibition “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx” and the Acconci Studio long-term installation “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being.”
BILL MORRISON — A MODERN MASTER OF SILENT FILM: DECASIA
DECASIA (Bill Morrison, 2002)
World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Friday, February 3, free, 7:30
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
www.billmorrisonfilm.com
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s production company is called Hypnotic Pictures, and for good reason; the Chicago-born, New York-based auteur makes mesmerizing, visually arresting works using archival found footage and eclectic soundtracks that are a treat for the eyes and ears. In conjunction with the upcoming theatrical release of his 2011 film The Miners’ Hymns at Film Forum next week, the World Financial Center is presenting “Bill Morrison: A Modern Master of Silent Film,” curated by WNYC’s John Schaefer as part of the “New Sounds Live: Silent Films/Live Music” series. The free four-night festival began Tuesday with a screening of The Miners’ Hymns, accompanied by a live score performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra, and continued Wednesday with Morrison’s latest, The Great Flood. Tonight features 2010’s award-winning Spark of Being, based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the big finale on Friday, when Morrison’s masterpiece, Decasia, will be shown. Made in 2002, Decasia is about nothing less than the beginning and end of cinema. The sixty-seven-minute work features clips from early silent movies that are often barely visible in the background as the film nitrate disintegrates in the foreground, black-and-white psychedelic blips, blotches, and burns dominating the screen. The eyes at first do a dance between the two distinct parts, trying to follow the action of the original works as well as the abstract shapes caused by the filmstrip’s impending death, but eventually the two meld into a single unique narrative, enhanced by a haunting, compelling score by Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, which begins as a minimalist soundtrack and builds slowly until it reaches a frantic conclusion. The on-screen destruction might seem random, but it is actually carefully choreographed by Morrison, who wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film. As an added bonus, Decasia will be accompanied by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble performing Gordon’s score live, which should make for a senses-shattering experience.
MEET MIKE DOUGHTY: THE BOOK OF DRUGS
Mike Doughty will be at TriBeCa B&N on February 2 for a special performance, signing, and discussion (photo by Deborah Lopez)
Barnes & Noble
97 Warren St. at Greenwich St.
Thursday, February 2, free, 6:00
212-587-5389
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.mikedoughty.com
Mike Doughty first entered the New York scene back in 1991, when he was writing about life and music for the New York Press in its early heyday; using the names M. Doughty and Dirty Sanchez at the alternative weekly, he was part of a cast of characters that also included Sam Sifton, Jim Knipfel, Jonathan Ames, and Amy Sohn. The forty-one-year-old former Knitting Factory doorman started the band Soul Coughing in 1992, releasing such well-received albums as Ruby Vroom and Irresistible Bliss before breaking up in 2000. Doughty digs deep into the details of that time in The Book of Drugs (Da Capo, January 2012, $16), a no-holds-barred look at that old music cliché, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. “I can’t renounce drugs. I love drugs,” he writes in the memoir. “I’d never trade the part of my life when the drugs worked, though the bulk of the time I spent getting high, they weren’t doing shit for me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t do drugs first. This part of my life — even minus the bursts of euphoria — is better, sexier, happier, more poetic, more romantic, grander.” Doughty gets right down to business in the book, telling it like it is, at least as far as he can remember, making no excuses or philosophizing about the things he did as Soul Coughing exploded and then imploded. He talks about hanging out and doing drugs with Jeff Buckley, spends three pages listing random women that he screwed, admits that “puking became so normal that I stopped kneeling,” and regularly questions his own talent. Well, he needn’t worry about that last thing, as Doughty is damn good at what he does, as evidenced by this lighthearted yet involving memoir, his work with Soul Coughing, and such solo records as 2005’s Haughty Melodic, 2009’s Sad Man Happy Man, last year’s Yes and Also Yes (named after his profile headline on an online dating site), and the just-released The Question Jar Show, a live album interspersed with Doughty answering questions from the audience in between songs. The Brooklyn-based Doughty will be at the TriBeCa Barnes & Noble on February 2 at 6:00, signing copies of The Book of Drugs, talking about his life and career, taking questions, and playing a few songs as well.
VIDEO OF THE DAY: PHILIP GLASS AT 75
One of the most influential musicians and composers of the last fifty years, Baltimore-born Philip Glass turns seventy-five today. Never one to slow down, the composer of an endless array of operas, symphonies, dances, and films will be celebrating the event with a series of special concerts and performances over the next several weeks, beginning tonight with a 75th Birthday Concert at Carnegie Hall in which he will premiere his ninth symphony, performed by the American Composers Orchestra, with Maki Namekawa at the piano. Though not technically part of his birthday celebration, Glass will once again serve as artistic director for the Tibet House Concert on February 13 also at Carnegie Hall, where it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Laurie Anderson, Antony, James Blake, Das Racist, Stephin Merritt, Rahzel, Lou Reed, and Dechen Shak-Dagsay sing “Happy Birthday” to Glass at the twenty-second annual event. And Glass will be the centerpiece of the Park Avenue Armory’s second annual Tune-In Music Festival next month, when “Celebrating the American Icon” honors Glass’s late friend Allen Ginsberg and the classic poem “Kaddish” with Bill Frisell, Hal Willner, and Chloe Webb and visual design by the great Ralph Steadman on February 23, then continues with “Philip Glass and Patti Smith: The Poet Speaks” on February 24 (also paying tribute to Ginsberg), “Music in 12 Parts” with the Philip Glass Ensemble on February 25, and concluding on February 26 with an afternoon concert featuring Nico Muhly and Nadia Sirota, Tania León, Samuel Torres, Zack Glass, Ruben Gónzaléz, Ashley Marcus, and Tirtha with Vijay Iyer, Prasanna, and Nitin Mitta, the artist talk “Composers in Conversation” with Glass, Iyer, Muhly, León, and Zack Glass, moderated by Kristy Edmunds, and “Another Look at Harmony — Part IV” with the Collegiate Chorale, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and organist Michael Riesman.
BILL MORRISON — A MODERN MASTER OF SILENT FILM: THE MINERS’ HYMNS
Bill Morrison’s THE MINERS’ HYMNS will be screened at the World Financial Center on January 31 with a live score performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra
THE MINERS’ HYMNS (Bill Morrison, 2011)
World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Tuesday, January 31, free, 7:30
Series runs January 31 – February 3
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
www.billmorrisonfilm.com
Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia), who uses found footage and often delves into the cinematic process itself in his fascinating work, collaborates with Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in the elegiac The Miners’ Hymns, a tribute to the now-gone collieries, or coal mines, of Northeast England. The fifty-two-minute documentary opens with new aerial shots of the locations where the Durham coal mines were, since replaced by luxury housing and megastores. The film shows the birth and death dates of several collieries going back to the nineteenth century, then seamlessly blends into archival black-and-white footage of the miners at work underground, the community coming together for a local fair, and a union rally during a strike that includes a confrontation with the police. There is no text and no narration in The Miners’ Hymn; instead, Morrison’s savvy editing of the found footage, consisting of both moving pictures and still photographs primarily acquired through the British Film Institute and the BBC, brings the old-fashioned town and its old-fashioned ways to vibrant life even though they roll across the screen in slow motion. Jóhannsson’s score punctuates the proceedings with an occasional brassy flare when not sounding more funereal. Despite the lack of text and narration, Morrison’s point of view is clear and all too obvious, paying homage to something that has been lost, and he is never quite able to make an emotional or personal connection with the viewer. However, The Miners’ Hymns contains remarkable footage that still manages to tell an important story, even if it is one-sided and lacking at least a little more historical context. Prior to its theatrical release on February 8 at Film Forum, The Miners’ Hymns is being shown on the big screen in the World Financial Center on January 31 as part of WNYC host John Schaefer’s annual free New Sounds Live Silent Film Series, featuring a live score performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra. The series continues February 1 with Morrison’s latest work, The Great Flood, followed on February 2 with Spark of Being and February 3 with the amazing Decasia, with Michael Gordon’s memorable score performed live by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble.