this week in music

OLIVIA HARRISON AND MARTIN SCORSESE IN CONVERSATION: CAME THE LIGHTENING: TWENTY POEMS FOR GEORGE

Who: Olivia Harrison, Martin Scorsese
What: New York City book launch
Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. between Ninety-First & Ninety-Second Sts., and online
When: Sunday, November 20, in person $31.50 – $55, livestream $25, 8:00
Why: “Only the past is carved in stone / So that it will not be forgotten. / This sand, once granite, / Covers and clings to my wet feet. / Ancient geology as I walk to the sea / Each grain a memory being set free / To solidify and be carved again / Marking the time once more / So the past will not be forgotten.” In her new book, Came the Lightening: Twenty Poems for George (Genesis, June 2022, $35), Olivia Harrison, the widow of beloved musician George Harrison, remembers her husband through twenty poems, photographs, drawings, and more, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of his death from cancer in 2001 at the age of fifty-eight. (The book includes contributions from Henry Grossman, Sue Flood, Mary McCartney, Marcus Tomlinson, Klaus Voormann, and Brian Roylance.) Among the poems are “End of the Line,” “My Arrival,” “Without Hummingbirds,” “Keepsakes,” and the aforementioned “Carved in Stone.” Olivia, who married George in 1978, writes, “Here on the shore, twenty years later / my message in a bottle has reached / dry land. Words about our life, his death / but mostly love and our journey to the end.”

On November 20 at 8:00, Olivia Harrison will be joined by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese at the 92nd St. Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall for the New York City launch of the book, celebrating the life and career of the Quiet Beatle. (A special-edition signed book-and-print edition will be available December 6 for £125.) If you can’t make it to the event, it will also be livestreamed. As George Harrison sang more than fifty years ago, “Sunrise doesn’t last all morning / A cloudburst doesn’t last all day / Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning / It’s not always gonna be this grey / All things must pass / All things must pass away.”

BAM NEXT WAVE: TROJAN WOMEN

Ong Keng Sen and the National Changgeuk Company of Korea make their BAM debut with Trojan Women (photo courtesy NTOK)

TROJAN WOMEN
Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, November 18, and Saturday, November 19, $44-$125 (use code COURAGE to save 20%), 7:30
www.bam.org
www.ntok.go.kr/en

In 2011, as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival, BAM presented SITI Company’s Trojan Women (After Euripides), Jocelyn Clarke’s adaptation of Euripides’s 415 BCE play, the conclusion of a Trojan War trilogy that began with Alexandros and Palamedes.

In 1991, Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen staged Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1965 adaptation of Trojan Women in a granite quarry. In 2016, Ong revisited the tale, this time with the National Changgeuk Company of Korea, combining classical Greek tragedy with contemporary K-pop and the Korean storytelling form known as pansori, which dates back to the seventeenth century and features each solo singer accompanied by one instrument.

Now Ong brings Hecuba (Kim Kum-mi), Cassandra (Yi So-yeon), Andromache (Kim Mi-jin), Helen (Kim Jun-soo), and the rest of the Trojan men and women (Lee Kwang-bok as Talthybios, Choi Ho-sung as Menelaus, Yu Tae-pyung-yang as Soul of Souls, an eight-woman chorus, and a nine-piece orchestra) to BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House November 18 and 19 as part of the fortieth Next Wave Festival. The production, which has traveled around the world, melds text by playwright Bae Sam-sik, traditional pansori music by South Korean Living National Treasure master singer Ahn Sook-sun, K-pop music by Parasite and Squid Game composer Jung Jae-il, a surreal set by Cho Myung-hee, bold lighting by Scott Zielinski, exciting video design by Austin Switser, and white costumes by Kim Moo-hong.

“My style of distilled yet rich storytelling is often expressed through a strong concept, integrated gesamtkunstwerk, and bold visuality,” Ong explains in a program note. “When I was invited by the National Changgeuk Company of Korea to direct Trojan Women, I yearned to return to the minimalism of pansori, where a solo storyteller sings all the parts with only one drummer. Thus began the task of removing the layers which had been overlaid in time over changgeuk (a musical theater genre formed in the early twentieth century from pansori), like stripping off layers of paints and renovations to get to the base architecture of an old house. . . . From the beginning I felt that Helen, who stands between the Greeks and the Trojans, is a character between binary opposites. In our production, the voice of Helen exists in the space between masculine and feminine — she is an outsider who launched the war between Greece and Troy. With the chorus, I drew inspiration from the music of enslaved peoples transported from Africa to the Americas. Similarly to how African music became the music of spirituals, blues, jazz, rap, it would be wonderful if the chorus of Trojan Women could express the vibrant potential future of pansori. Hence the invitation to Jang Jae-Il to write the music for the chorus in the genre of K-pop, where the emotionalism of pansori infuses contemporary pop elements. ”

This show marks the BAM debut of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea, which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The 110-minute multimedia drama incorporates music, dance, and theater, with a cast of more than dozen singers, actors, and musicians exploring the effects of battle on women, particularly the Korean War. “Trojan Women deals with human dignity and self-respect,” Ong said in an October 2016 interview with the Financial Times. “Most of all, it is focused on women’s strong will to live. I also hope that this work would remind the audience of the pain and sorrow Korean women had suffered after the war.”

ACTION SONGS / PROTEST DANCES

Who: Edisa Weeks, Taína Asili, Spirit McIntyre, Martha Redbone, Noni Byrd-Gibbs, Steven Jeltsch, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Devin Oshiro, Brittany Stewart, Marýa Wethers
What: Action Songs/Protest Dances
Where: Kupferberg Center for the Arts, 153-49 Reeves Ave., Flushing
When: Saturday, November 12, 8:00, and Sunday, November 13, 3:00, $20
Why: Given the state of the nation, particularly following the midterm elections, it is a time for action and protest. On November 12 and 13, Queens College will be hosting the timely program “Action Songs/Protest Dances,” featuring an impressive lineup of musicians and dancers. The event was conceived by director and choreographer Edisa Weeks in honor of civil rights activist James Forman (1928-2005), who wrote such books as The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Self Determination: An Examination of the Question and Its Application to the African American People, and High Tide of Black Resistance and Other Political & Literary Writings.

“I started teaching at Queens College in 2010, which is also when the QC Rosenthal Library Civil Rights Archives acquired James Forman’s personal papers,” Weeks said in a statement. “I was incredibly excited as Forman was the first person I heard criticize capitalism as an exploitive economic system. I was a kid at the time, and remember feeling shocked, as I grew up playing Monopoly and believing that capitalism was good and the ‘American Way.’ Since 2010 I’ve been wondering how I can lift up James Forman’s voice, work, advocacy, and sacrifices during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Then in 2020 the pandemic happened, followed by the murder of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor. I began wondering how as a choreographer I can engage with the protests that were happening across the nation and help address injustices in America. The Kupferberg Center for the Arts Incubator Project provided the opportunity to create ‘Action Songs/Protest Dances,’ which celebrates the life and words of James Forman, and through music and dance advocates for America to be a truly great nation.”

The event features original songs by Taina Asili, Spirit McIntyre, and Martha Redbone, with dancers Noni Byrd-Gibbs, Steven Jeltsch, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Devin Oshiro, Brittany Stewart, and Marýa Wethers. Each show will be followed by a discussion with the composers and performers, moderated by Miles Grier on November 12 and Natanya Duncan on November 13.

INTIMACY OF DETAIL: THE MUSIC OF CHIYOKO SZLAVNICS

Either/Or celebrates the music of Chiyoko Szlavnics at Tenri on November 2 (photo by Matthew Billings)

Who: Either/Or
What: Live concert celebrating the music of Chiyoko Szlavnics
Where: Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A West Thirteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Wednesday, November 2, $10-$20, 9:00
Why: For nearly twenty-five years, Berlin-based composer and visual artist Chiyoko Szlavnics has been expanding her unique music, using self-generated drawings to spur works that incorporate architectural and mathematical philosophies and concepts of psychoacoustic phenomena. Szlavnics, who plays the sax and the flute, has written chamber pieces and works for duos and solo electronics, including “The First Place: At the Entrance,” “For Eva Hesse (with CN),” “Freehand Poitras,” “The Spaces Between Them,” and “Ephemeralities: Listening Being(s).”

“Gradient of Detail,” by Chiyoko Szlavnics, is part of Either/Or program at Tenri Institute

On November 2 at the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, Either/Or, the flexible experimental music ensemble that was founded by Richard Carrick in New York City in 2004, will present “Intimacy of Detail: The Music of Chiyoko Szlavnics,” an evening featuring the composer’s “(a)long lines: we’ll draw our own lines,” for flute, trombone, violin, violoncello, percussion, and sine tones; “Constellations I-III,” for piano and sine tones; and “Gradients of Detail,” for string quartet. The ensemble will consist of EO director Carrick on piano, Jennifer Choi and Pala Garcia on violin, Margaret Lancaster on flute, Hannah Levinson on viola, Alex Lough on electronics & sound, Chris Nappi on percussion, John Popham on cello, and EO curator Chris McIntyre on trombone. Tickets are $10 to $20 for what promises to be an immersive sonic experience.

JILL SOBULE: F*CK7THGRADE

Jill Sobule and her band rock out in F*ck7thGrade at the Wild Project (photo by Eric McNatt)

F*CK7THGRADE
The Wild Project
195 East Third St. between Aves. A & B
Through November 19, $35-$45
thewildproject.com

I remember seventh grade all too well, a turning point in my development. I got bar mitzvahed. I asked a girl out for the first time, a cheerleader, and she said no. I went to my first concert, Paul McCartney and Wings at Madison Square Garden. A friend and I hid in the guidance counselors’ office when two big guys from an extramural basketball team we had beaten the night before — affiliated with a local church — were seeking to rearrange our faces. I watched other kids get bullied and hoped I would not suffer the same consequences. At a party, I kissed a girl.

Beloved singer-songwriter Jill Sobule uses that year of her life as a jumping-off point in her delightful, poignant, and utterly charming queer coming-of-age show, deftly titled F*ck7thGrade. Continuing at the Wild Project through November 8 and fully deserving of a longer run there or elsewhere [ed. note: the show has been extended through November 19], the ninety-minute production consists of Sobule sharing intimate moments from her past, standing front and center with her guitar, joined by her all-woman band, Secrets of the Vatican: Julie Wolf on keyboards, Kristen Ellis-Henderson on drums, and Nini Camps on bass, each of whom also plays various characters from throughout Sobule’s life.

“It fucking sucked being a teenager, didn’t it?” Sobule asks the audience, a mix of Sobule fans and adventurous theatergoers. “Did any of you feel awesome when you were thirteen? Raise your hand if you wanted to die. Well, I had it worse than any of you.”

Wearing an Orange Crush T-shirt, blue jeans, and red high-top Converse All-Stars (the costumes are by David F. Zambrana), Sobule alternates between personal stories and songs from throughout her career, from 1990’s Things Here Are Different to 2018’s Nostalgia Kills. Born in Denver in 1961, Sobule changed schools often while experimenting with drugs, wondering about her sexual orientation, and trying to find her place.

“The freaks got stoned, wore cooler clothes, and listened to better music. That sounded fun. I tried acid. We were thirteen,” she admits. She becomes infatuated with Mary (Camps), the new girl in school. “I loved how she smelled — a mix of Jean Naté and Marlboro Reds. And as I thought that, I suddenly was like: mmmm is this weird? This is weird, isn’t it.” That introduction leads into “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” in which Sobule sings, “Forbidden thoughts of youth — / They will never know — / My forbidden thoughts of you. / You will never know the truth.” That flirtation ends in a pathetically funny, very-seventh-grade way that many of us can identify with.

Jill Sobule shares her intimate story in poignant and funny F*ck7thGrade (photo by Eric McNatt)

Sobule relates how she traveled to Spain, started playing at open-mic nights, went to Nashville, and ultimately scored one of the biggest hits of the 1990s, the fabulously hooky “I Kissed a Girl,” but her instant success was bittersweet, as she was not allowed to actually kiss a girl in the video and the industry typecast her. She later delves into Katy Perry’s appropriation of the title.

As the show (which was delayed because of Covid, resulting in some rehearsals taking place over Zoom) nears its touching conclusion, Sobule comes to terms with various elements of her life — including her career, her feelings toward music, and her seventh-grade nemesis, Cathy Pepper — and Wolf, Ellis-Henderson, and Camps share their own memories as well.

Supplemented by a companion lobby exhibition of paintings by Marykate O’Neil, F*ck7thGrade features a lovely book by Liza Birkenmeier (littleghost, Dr. Ride’s American Beach House) and cogent direction by two-time Obie winner Lisa Peterson (Hamlet in Bed, Shipwrecked) on Rachel Hauck’s (Hadestown, What the Constitution Means to Me) set, basically a band rocking out in front of a row of high school lockers that occasionally are used. Oona Curley’s lighting and Elisabeth Weidner’s sound help further the intimacy between performer and audience. The leather-clad Camps, who is in the group Antigone Rising with Ellis-Henderson, is a standout as Sobule’s right-hand person, taking on multiple roles and singing harmony.

As always, Sobule is absolutely adorable, with her impish smile and short-cut blond hair; she might not be an actress, but you can feel and relate to her every emotion while laughing your head off. She points out that she had to learn all of Birkenmeier’s words and laments that she doesn’t have a monitor like Springsteen did. Her eyes connect with the crowd as she plays such memorable numbers as “Raleigh Blue Chopper,” “I Hate Horses,” “Strawberry Gloss,” ”I Put My Headphones On,” and “Mexican Wrestler,” all of which are likely to send you back to your own past.

Her tunes are an intoxicating mix of folk, pop, country, and blues rock. Early on, she sings, “I could play a bar chord when I was six, / play ‘Hey Joe’ with the Hendrix lick. / Yeah, I was a star, but Mr. Hill said: / ‘Girls fingerpick. It’s the boys who shred,’” so she makes sure to demonstrate that she can indeed shred. By the time she finishes up with two participatory songs, you’ll be a Jill Sobule fan, if you weren’t already. And, if you haven’t already, you’ll think to yourself, “Yeah, fuck seventh grade.”

HOUND DOG

Anneh (Ellena Eshraghi) and Ayse (Olivia AbiAssi) share a rare calm moment in Hound Dog (photo by Ben Arons)

HOUND DOG
Ars Nova @ Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 5, $5-$100
arsnovanyc.com
playco.org/events/hound-dog

A young woman reexamines critical decisions she made about her future and grief over her mother’s death in Melis Aker’s Hound Dog, an entertaining if scattershot mishmash that opened tonight at Ars Nova @ Greenwich House for a limited run through November 5.

Anneh, aka Hound Dog (Ellena Eshraghi), is a Harvard grad and guitarist-singer who returns to her home in Turkey while considering whether she should attend the Royal Academy, which has accepted her after her successful audition. Her father, the rock-and-roll-loving Baba (Laith Nakli), has been suffering since the loss of his wife, lost in a fog of alcohol and television as he dreams of going to Graceland.

Anneh’s best friend, Ayse (Olivia AbiAssi), is thrilled that she’s back, but Anneh seems distracted. She is more interested in talking with Yusuf (Jonathan Raviv), the neighborhood garbage man and flute player, than she is in creating music with Ayse. Anneh also is attracted to Charlie Callahan (Matt Magnusson), an American who was her former piano teacher.

Frank J. Oliva’s set offers a surreal fantasy in Ars Nova / PlayCo world premiere (photo by Ben Arons)

Anneh travels between reality and what appears to be some kind of fantasy world that exists inside her house, the interior of which turns into an aluminum-foil-covered concert and dance hall as music and life merge in a surreal way that seems normal to everyone but her. Amid the phantasmagorical scenes, her confusion mounts when Professor Feliz, her musicology professor at Harvard, tells her that Elvis Presley was “born in the majestically boring city of Ankara, Turkey, in the year 1961” and “was often seen strutting around Seymenler Park, accompanied by his friend, the local garbage collector and traditional Turkish instrument maestro, Yusuf.”

Through it all, a singer-songwriter and her band keep entering scenes, playing such songs as “There She Goes,” “Where It’s All Gone,” “The Groove Is on the Loose,” and “An Emptying Thing,” serving as outside observer and muse. (The songs were written by Aker and brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour.) Channeling Joni Mitchell, Liz Phair, and others, the singer shares such thoughts as “Time is lost / In my room / While you break free / From the gloom / Waking hours / You stay up late / What is life / But the breaking of the days” and “So if we choose to let you go / How will you know / That I remember / How to feel alive / Only in time / Only in time.”

As decision time approaches, Anneh’s mind is flooded with confusion, trying to figure out what to do next and where she belongs in a world where she thinks she doesn’t fit.

Directed by Machel Ross, the ninety-five-minute Hound Dog, a coproduction of Ars Nova and PlayCo, wanders all over the place, the nonlinear narrative often hard to follow. It takes a while to warm up to the characters, although eventually they become familiar and their struggles legitimate. Frank J. Oliva’s set is the star, a facade of a home with three sets of double doors on the ground floor and three sets of windows above, lit in different colors by Tuçe Yasak. Sound designer Avi Amon also serves as music director, with costumes by Qween Jean.

The crack band features Maya Sharpe on guitar, Mel Hsu on bass, Ashley Baier on drums, and Sahar Milani on lead vocals. The cast, several of whom are making their off-Broadway debuts (Eshraghi and Magnusson) and another an Emmy winner (Raviv), is fresh and engaging as they navigate a few too many awkward plot devices.

The story is a deeply personal one to Aker; in the script, she refers to Hound Dog as “me,” the setting as “a version of my hometown . . . through time and space,” and several characters as “alternate versions” of her father, childhood best friend, and teachers. Aker might be a little too close to the material; although she tackles universal issues, they don’t always gel cohesively.

In celebration of its twentieth anniversary season, Ars Nova is introducing “What’s Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price,” with tickets for Hound Dog running $5 to $100, depending on what you can afford.