this week in music

MORE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

THOMAS JEFFERSON, MARIA COSWAY, AND THE MUSIC AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium
417 East 61st St. between First & York Sts.
Saturday, December 17, $50-$100, 8:00
www.mbhe.charityhappenings.org

It’s right there in the Bill of Rights at the very beginning. Adopted on December 15, 1791, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The separation of church and state has been a central issue in America for hundreds of years, and with good reason as fundamentalists from many religions continue to seek to take hold of the political discourse. Since 1947, the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State has sought to “preserve the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all Americans.” On Saturday, December 17, the organization, headed by executive director Barry W. Lynn, will host a benefit at the Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium in Manhattan, raising funds and strongly defending the very basic need for the separation of church and state. Award-winning actors Melissa Errico, Matthew Modine, and Kathleen Chalfant will read from the letters of Thomas Jefferson and composer-artist Maria Cosway, who had a lifelong correspondence after meeting when Jefferson was the U.S. envoy in Paris. “Those, which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on, for nothing is ours which another may deprive us of,” Jefferson wrote to Cosway in his famous “Dialogue of the Head vs. the Heart” in 1786. “Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Even in our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride serene & sublime above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth & nature, matter & motion, the laws which bind up their existence, & that eternal being who made & bound them up by those laws. Let this be our employ.” The two also discussed art and music, some of which will be performed by members of the Clarion Society Orchestra and guest soloists Jessica Gould (soprano) and Karim Sulayman (tenor), including works by Sacchini, Hewitt, Corelli, Duphly, and Cosway. Directed by Erica Gould, the evening will take place in the elegant auditorium at the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden, a historic location built in 1799, during the time that Jefferson and Cosway were well in the midst of their very passionate epistolary relationship.

CAROLING AT THE MORGAN

Charles Dickens’s original marked-up manuscript of A CHRISTMAS CAROL is on view at the Morgan

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Friday, December 16, free, 6:30 – 8:30
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

As part of its free Friday programming on December 16, the Morgan Library will feature singers from the Mannes College the New School for Music performing Christmas carols throughout the museum from 6:30 to 8:30. And you can continue the holiday spirit at the Morgan exhibition “Charles Dickens at 200,” which celebrates the Christmas Carol scribe’s life and career with original manuscripts, letters, books, photographs, illustrations, caricatures, and more. There will be a docent tour of the show, which runs through February 12, on Sunday at 2:00. As Dickens wrote in the preface to the book in 1843, “I have endeavoured, in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it!” To which we add, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

SEE THE LIGHT(S): HANUKKAH AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM

Maurice Sendak has gathered together menorahs for the Jewish Museum exhibition “An Artist Remembers” (photo of final illustration of GRANDPA’S HOUSE courtesy the Maurice Sendak Collection, Rosenbach Museum & Library)

Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
December 15-27, free – $20
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org

What better place to celebrate Hanukkah than at the Jewish Museum? The stately Fifth Ave. institution will be partying up for the Festival of Lights with a series of programs and exhibitions over the next two weeks. On Thursday night, December 15 ($12-$15, 8:00-11:00), “Cheryl Does Chanukah” will feature techno dreidels, sweet sufganiot, a one-hour open bar, a dance party hosted by DJ Nick, and a live performance by Brooklyn-based quartet Cheryl. On Saturdays, admission to the museum is free, so be sure to check out the special exhibition “An Artist Remembers: Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak,” a group of lamps chosen by the children’s book legend from the Jewish Museum’s permanent collection. Sunday is Hanukkah Family Day, with a menorah workshop for children three and up and live music by Ben Rudnick and Friends. On Monday (free with museum admission, 12 noon – 3:00), there will be a tour of “An Artist Remembers,” followed by Hanukkah-themed tours of the permanent exhibition, “Culture and Continuity,” at 1:15 on December 22, 23, 26, and 27. The Macaroons will perform three holiday shows on Sunday ($15-$20, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00); look for such seasonal favorites as “Dreidel Bird” and “Hurry Up and Light the Candles.” And Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Band Allstars will say goodbye to Hanukkah by rocking out on December 27 ($45, 7:30) with their inspiring brand of Jewish roots music.

FIVE POINTS: TAKE DANCE + PULSE — PART II

Merce Cunningham Dance Studios
55 Bethune St.
December 15-16 at 9:00, December 17 at 8:00, $20
800-838-3006
www.merce.org

As the Merce Cunningham Dance Company prepares for its farewell performances December 29-31 at the Park Avenue Armory, the troupe’s studios on Bethune St. will also be closing up shop. One of the last shows to take place there will be Five Points, in which TAKE Dance and the Pulse music collective pay tribute to Cunningham’s revolutionary synesthetic style by presenting five new works set to original post-classical jazz compositions. Touch and sound, science and art combine in unique ways in pieces by choreographer Takehiro Ueyama and composer Melissa Dunphy (“Summer Collection 2012”), Kile Hotchkiss and Pulse founder Joseph C. Phillips, Jr. (“The Substance of Things Unseen”), Milan Misko and Jamie Begian (“From Over Here”), Jill Echo and JC Sanford (“Views from the Inside”), and Kristen Arnold and Joshua Shneider (“unclearly departed”). The works will be performed by dancers Brynt Beitman, John Eirich, Jillian Hervey, Gina Ianni, Clinton Edward Martin, Sarah Mettin, Nana Tsuda Misko, Lynda Senisi, Kristi Tornga, Marie Zvosec, Misko, Hotchkiss, and Arnold and musicians Hannah Levinson (viola), Jacob Garchik (accordion, laptop, trombone), Ana Milosavljevic (violin/Viper), Chris Reza (woodwinds), Mariel Roberts (cello). Tickets must be reserved in advance; there will be no sales at the door.

GILDING THE LONELY: AN EVENING OF CABARET

Raquel Cion will be gilding the lonely in one-woman cabaret show at Dixon Place this week

The Lounge at Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St. between Rivington & Delancey Sts.
December 14-16, $5
212-219-0736
www.dixonplace.org

Last year sexy chanteuse Raquel Cion performed the one-woman show Pour Vous at Dixon Place in the guise of her alter ego, Cou-Cou Bijoux, who is also a member of the Magnetic Cabaret. Cion is now back at Dixon Place to present Gilding the Lonely, an evening of original cabaret directed by Luke Harlan, with musical direction by Matthew Leonard and percussion by Bill Gerstel. Cion, a powerful, engaging performer who exerts high energy and a burning sexuality, will be wearing what should be daring costumes by David Quinn in what she promises to be “three nights of glitter-ball performance, wry humor, open-hearted pathos, passion, and lots of singing. I’m going to face down that wall of loneliness through song.” Indeed, it’s impossible to be lonely when Cion is around, so if you’re in need of a little extra love this holiday season, you’re sure to find plenty of it at Dixon Place this week.

POPGUN AND NEW AMSTERDAM PRESENT LAUREL HALO, FORMA, CORPS EXQUIS, LORNA DUNE

Glasslands Gallery
289 Kent Ave.
Tuesday, December 13, $10, 8:30
www.newamsterdampresents.com
www.glasslands.blogspot.com

Cosmic avant-pop, chamber music, and cutting-edge electronic soundscapes will take center stage on December 13 at Glasslands as a collection of local composers gather for a night of twenty-first-century orchestrations. Presented by PopGun and New Amsterdam Records, the evening includes performances by Lorna Dune, FORMA (George Bennett, Sophie Lam, and Mark Dwinell), Laurel Halo, and Daniel Wohl, who will be teaming up with TRANSIT for the multimedia Corps Exquis, inspired by the Surrealists’ artistic parlor game Exquisite Corpse.

THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE / DIR EN GREY

The Birthday Massacre will have the audience on pins and needles at Irving Plaza

Irving Plaza
17 Irving Pl. at East 15th St.
Monday, December 12, $41.50 – $63.50 ($29.50 – $51.50 without fees), 7:00
www.thebirthdaymassacre.com
www.irvingplaza.com

Touring behind their first album in three years, Dum Spiro Spero (the End, August 2011), Japanese heavyweights Dir En Grey arrive in New York City on Monday night to headline Irving Plaza, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t get there early to catch the opening act, Toronto goth rockers the Birthday Massacre — and not only to get the biggest bang for your buck, since the relatively high ticket prices reach up to $63.50 for VIP access. On such discs as 2004’s Violet, 2007’s Walking with Strangers, and last year’s Pins and Needles, Chibi, Rainbow, M. Falcore, Rhim, O.E., and Owen play it hard and loud. Their latest EP, Imaginary Monsters (Metropolis, August 2011), features three new tracks, the soaring power ballads “Burn Away,” “Forever,” and “Left Behind,” along with five remixes of older tunes: Tweaker’s “Control,” Kevvy Mental & Dave Ogilvie’s “Pale,” Skold’s “Pins and Needles,” and Combichrist’s and Assemblage 23’s dueling versions of “Shallow Grave.” As we’ve said before, TBM know how to rock out live; just don’t be put off by the gothic metal makeup, black costumes, black hair, tattoos, and demonic signage. At heart, they’re just a bunch of pussycats. Well, maybe.