this week in music

NEW YEAR’S EVE MUSIC

Matt & Kim will ring in the new year at the Hammerstein Ballroom (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

If you’re looking to catch some great music on New Year’s Eve, you’re too late for Patti Smith and her Band at the Bowery Ballroom or Deer Tick at Brooklyn Bowl, but there are still tickets left for some other very cool shows. VHS or Beta will be playing a DJ set at DROM, the always entertaining Matt & Kim are headlining the Hammerstein, the relentless Ted Leo & the Pharmacists are at Maxwell’s, Cheryl and Midnight Magic will be making midnight magic at Public Assembly, O’Death will be breathing life into the new year at Spike Hill, the Fleshtones will be shaking some flesh at the Bowery Electric, Assembly of Dust will conclude its New Year’s Eve Weekend at Mercury Lounge, Gogol Bordello will be partying it up at Terminal 5, and the Dark Star Orchestra will take audiences on a long, strange trip at the Wellmont.

THE MACCABEATS: A HANUKKAH CELEBRATION

B. B. King Blues Club & Grill
237 West 42nd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Sunday, December 25, $35-$50, 7:30
212-997-4144
www.bbkingblues.com
www.maccabeats.com

The Festival of Lights and Christmas overlap this year, so it only seems appropriate that the Maccabeats, the all-male a cappella group from Yeshiva University, will be performing a special Hanukkah concert on Christmas night. Since 2007, the Yeshiva bochers have been singing traditional songs and parodies that follow Torah u-Madda, a combination of secular and religious knowledge. This philosophy is central to their debut album, Voices from the Heights (Sameach Music, March 2010), which includes versions of such prayers as “Aleinu,” “Oseh Shalom,” and “Lecha Dodi” (set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”), the Israeli national anthem, “HaTikva,” and such English-language songs as “Go the Distance,” “Bad Day,” and a cover of Matisyahu’s “One Day.” But the college boys might be best known for their inventive reimagining of Justin Bieber’s (and Taio Cruz’s) “Dynamite,” transforming it into the Hanukkah sensation “Candlelight.” (Ever on the cutting edge, they’ve also turned OneRepublic’s “Good Life” into “Book of Good Life” and Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” into “Purim Song.”) Chanina Abramowitz, David Block, Michael Greenberg, Noey Jacobson, Josh Jay, Nachum Joel, Ari Lewis, Mordy Prus, Jeff Ritholtz, Buri Rosenberg, Meir Shapiro, and Yonatan Shefa will be at B. B. King’s in Times Square on December 25, bringing a little Hanukkah into your Christmas. As they sing on their new cover of Matisyahu’s “Miracle,” “New York City, wanna flex your muscle.”

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS


John Danielle of the Mountain Goats wishes Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak (and her cats) a merry little Christmas in this live solo performance for A.V. Club in Chicago. The Mountain Goats will be in New York City this spring, participating in “The Music of the Rolling Stones: Hot Rocks 1964-1971” at Carnegie Hall on March 13 and the Ecstatic Music Festival with Anonymous 4 at Merkin Concert Hall on March 24. You can find Wye Oak’s A.V. Club cover of Brenda Lee’s “Christmas Will Be Just Another Day” here.

KLEZ FOR KIDZ FAMILY CONCERT

The Museum at Eldridge Street will host Klez for Kidz family concert on Christmas Day (photo by Rachel Rabhan)

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Sunday, December 25, adults $12, children under twelve $6, 1:00
Admission: free
212-219-0302
www.eldridgestreet.org

Continuing its 125th anniversary, the Museum at Eldridge Street will present a special Klez for Kidz family concert on Christmas Day featuring Klezmerfest! Led by clarinetist Greg Wall, the New York City-based band, part of the Simcha All-Stars, brings back the sounds of the old country, playing festive Eastern European and Yiddish dance music, including freylachs, bulgars, doynas, and chassidls. The afternoon will conclude with the audience participating in a musical shtetl wedding. As always when you’re at the historic Lower East Side institution, be sure to marvel at the recently restored building, which last year added a new stained-glass window by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans. And there will also be hot chocolate, cider, and eggnog available all day long.

HANUKKAH AT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE

Husband-and-wife-team Aaron Hartman and Alicia Jo Rabins, the leaders of Girls in Trouble, will give a special Hanukkah concert at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on December 21

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
36 Battery Pl.
646-437-4202
www.mjhnyc.org

The Museum of Jewish Heritage will be celebrating the Festival of Lights with two special presentations this week. On December 21 at 7:00 ($15), Brooklyn’s Girls in Trouble, led by singer-violinist Alicia Jo Rabins and her husband, bassist Aaron Hartman, will play dark tales of biblical women featured on their two JDub albums, their eponymous 2009 debut and this year’s Half You Half Me, which include such songs as “I Was a Desert,” “I Fell Off My Camel,” “We Are Androgynous,” “Bethesda,” and “Waltz for a Beheading.” (Sadly, JDub Records, which focused on music by Jewish artists, recently announced it is closing because of financial difficulties.) The concert is being held in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibit “Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles.” On Christmas Day, MJH will be hosting “I Lift My Lamp: A Statue-esque Hanukkah,” with arts and crafts for children ages three to ten, family-friendly tours, and a trio of film screenings, beginning at 11:00 with An American Tail (Don Bluth, 1986) and continuing at 1:00 with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 espionage thriller Sabaoteur and at 3:00 with Ghostbusters II (Ivan Reitman, 1989). In addition to the Emma Lazarus exhibition, also on view are “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” “Voices of Liberty,” and “Let My People Go! The Soviet Jewry Movement, 1967-1989.”

AN EVENING IN MEMORY OF MICHAL THE GIRL

Friends, fans, and strangers will gather together and reach out to help at 12/19 benefit for Micahl the Girl

The Canal Room
285 West Broadway at Canal St.
Monday, December 19, donations accepted at the door, 8:00
212-941-8100
www.canalroom.com
www.thesnydertwins.com
www.michalthegirl.com

On November 25, 2011, forty-four-year-old Michal Lura Friedman died after giving birth to twins. She and her husband, Jay Snyder, had been trying to have children for seven years. “She wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world,” Snyder told the Daily News shortly after his wife died following complications from a C-section. The tragic story of Friedman, Snyder, and twins Jackson and Reverie has captured the heart of the city. On December 19, friends, family, colleagues, fans, and others will come together to celebrate the life of Friedman, a Buddhist who recorded under the name Michal the Girl, and to raise much-needed funds for Snyder and the babies, at a benefit being held at the Canal Room. Among the performers will be Tiff Randol, Drew Blood, Cresta Kruger and Briana Winter of Kisser, Chris Goerke, Mike Beans Benigno, Todd Rengal, Mike Manza, Steve Dawson, Ben Toro, Shannon Conley, Dave Doobinin, Sarah Greenwood, and Joe McGinty. A local favorite, Michal the Girl released two albums, 2001’s Tongue Tied and 2005’s Strung Out, featuring such songs as “Blanket,” “Bittersweet,” “Transmission,” “Do Over,” and “Eyes Wide Open.” Sadly, Michal the Girl’s official website still lists what would have been her most recent performance, December 6 at Symphony Space.

NEW YORK CITY GAY MEN’S CHORUS: HOLIDAY HOUSE OF LOVE

The Town Hall
123 West 43rd St. between Sixth Ave. & Broadway
Sunday, December 18, $40-$75, 3:00 & 8:00
212-840-2824
www.the-townhall-nyc.org
www.nycgmc.org

The New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, consisting of more than two hundred gay men, will dish out plenty of seasonal spirit on Sunday at two “Holiday House of Love” concerts at the Town Hall. Celebrating peace, love, and unity, the chorus will present original songs and familiar classics, albeit with jazz and gospel twists. Special guests include Broadway star Lillias White, who won a Tony for The Life, and the first openly gay Anglican bishop, V. Gene Robinson. Chorus member Ryan Scobie has been actively promoting the shows, which take place at 3:00 and 8:00, on Facebook, promising, “You get to see me be a church lady, a lion, a sexy elf, and sing a solo. What more could you ask for?!” We couldn’t agree more.