this week in music

RIGHT NOW! (A WeDaPeoples Cabaret)

Nona Hendryx, Nelson George, and Citizen Reno team up for a night of music, comedy, poetry, and social commentary at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Ave. at West 136th St,
Saturday, September 17, $45, 7:30
212-281-9240
www.harlemstage.org

Writer, director, and cultural critic Carl Hancock Rux has brought together three uniquely talented individuals for Right Now!, a WeDaPeoples Cabaret taking place September 17 at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse. Funk/rock/soul/R&B legend Nona Hendryx, comedian Citizen Reno, and award-winning writer and filmmaker Nelson George will come together to examine social and individual identity in our highly politicized and increasingly fragmented world. Trenton’s Hendryx will feature songs from her brand-new, politically charged Mutadis, Mutandis album (her first full-length record in nearly twenty years), Brooklyn’s George will honor the life and career of poet-activist Gil Scott-Heron (including introducing a short film by Rux about the recently deceased Heron), and New York City native Reno will look at the events of 9/11 and their aftermath as only she can.

EMIL & FRIENDS

Fans can say hello as they behold Emil & Friends celebrate new album at Piano’s on Thursday night

Piano’s
158 Ludlow St.
Thursday, September 15, $8, 9:00
212-505-3733
wwwww.myspace.com/emilandfriends
www.pianosnyc.com

Celebrating the upcoming release of Lo & Behold (Cantora, October 11, 2011), the follow-up to last year’s Downed Economy, Boston native Emil Hewitt, now a Williamsburgian who fronts Emil & Friends, will lead the band in the final night of its September residency at Piano’s on Thursday night at 9:00. The new record ranges from fresh, bright pop to funky R&B to fashionable indie rock on such tracks as “Crystal Ball,” “Prescriptions,” and “Lo & Behold.” On “Endless Waves,” the band says “hello,” and you can do the same at this show that says goodbye to summer and their residency. Also on the bill are Fort Lean (8:00), Echo-Friendly (10:00), and Thunder and Lightning (11:00).

CARLITO CARVALHOSA: SUM OF DAYS

Carlito Carvalhosa’s “Sum of Days” is a palimpsestual participatory treat for the eyes and ears (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday, $22.50 ($12 can be applied to the purchase of a film ticket within thirty days)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
sum of days slideshow

For his “Sum of Days,” Brazilian artist Carlito Carvalhosa has created a palimpsestual participatory passageway in MoMA’s Marron Atrium that is more than initially meets the eyes — and ears. Sheets of white translucent fabric hang down from the high ceiling, forming a mazelike twisting walkway lined with a series of dangling speakers and microphones at different heights, recording current ambient sound while playing back the sounds of the installation’s previous days, melding everything together into a symphonic cacophony of the piece’s past and present, with the older sounds fading away in the background. Just as it’s hard to differentiate among the various noises and make out actual words, people’s vision is also impacted by the long sheets, which turn other visitors into shadowy figures walking by like ghosts. Many people go through the installation very quickly, but you should take your time, letting the sights and sounds envelop you for an energizing, ethereal experience. Once a week through November 10, a special sixty-to-ninety-minute musical performance will take place within the exhibition, but while MoMA has announced the lineup — Lisa Bielawa, David Crowell, Jon Gibson, Philip Glass, Carla Kihlstedt, Michael Riesman, Mick Rossi, and Andrew Sterman — the concerts will be announced on the actual day of the event via MoMA’s Twitter feed (@MuseumModernArt), although we can tell you that the first one is scheduled for September 15.

MOVIES ON THE SQUARE: ALL SINGING! ALL DANCING! ALL NEW YORK!

Milos Forman’s HAIR, set in Central Park, will kick off free musical film series in Washington Square Park

Washington Square Park
September 15, 19, 22, free, half hour after sunset
www.ifccenter.com
www.nycgovparks.org

NYU and the IFC Center are celebrating the renovations in Washington Square Park with three nights of film screenings that also say goodbye to summer. “Movies on the Square: All Singing! All Dancing! All New York!” begins on September 15 with Milos Forman’s 1979 cinematic version of the revolutionary Broadway musical Hair, starring John Savage, Treat Williams, and Beverly D’Angelo as part of a group of hippies and a straitlaced draftee hanging out in Central Park, pontificating about life, love, and the Vietnam War. On September 19, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin (who?) are three sailors going out on the town in Kelly and Stanley Donen’s decidedly Hollywood-ized version of the Leonard Bernstein/Comden & Green musical On the Town, featuring the classic “New York, New York.” The series closes on September 22 with Charlie Ahearn’s pivotal 1983 graffiti party, Wild Style, which includes appearances by street-art legends in addition to a seminal hip-hop soundtrack.

MORTON SUBOTNICK: 1963-1973

Electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick will kick off the North River Music series at Greenwich House Music School on September 15

Discussion and Short Performance of Silver Apples of the Moon
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow St. at Bedford St.
Thursday, September 15, $15, 8:00
www.greenwichhouse.org
www.mortonsubotnick.com

Earlier this year, American electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick revisited his seminal 1967 record, Silver Apples of the Moon, at the David Rubenstein Atrium as part of the annual Unsound Festival, followed by a lecture at the Greenwich House Music School. The seventy-eight-year-old L.A.-born maestro will be back at the school on Thursday night, discussing the convergence of technology and music in the 1960s and playing selections from Silver Apples. The lecture-performance will be followed by a reception with the public. The event kicks off the twenty-sixth season of North River Music, the experimental music series founded by Frank Wigglesworth. On May 3, Subotnick will be back to look at the state of electronic music and his career from 1973 to the present; other events include Deviant Septet on December 15, Ne(x)tworks: Music Without Dance on February 25-26, loadbang on March 8, Zentripetal on May 10, and Taka Kigawa on June 7.

BRIAN HUGH O’NEILL: RISE

On September 11, 2001, Brian Hugh O’Neill was at home with his wife in their Hell’s Kitchen apartment, getting ready to begin another regular Tuesday morning, when he first heard the news. “My mother-in-law called to inform us that she had just seen on the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center,” O’Neill recalls. “I ran up on the roof to see if I could see anything, then went back to my apartment, never thinking for a moment that we might be under attack. When I saw, live on TV, the second plane hit, I knew then what was under way.” The actor (Law & Order, The Good Wife) and singer-songwriter (Free World) reacted the best way he knew how: He picked up his guitar and tried to deal with the tragedy through his music. “I wrote the song ‘Rise’ in the small hours of the morning of September 12,” he said. “After the horror of that day, as an artist and composer, I knew I needed to create something to express my confusion, heartbreak, and rage.” The beautiful track features a haunting synthesizer behind O’Neill on acoustic guitar, singing such lines as “It’s calm tonight / on Twelfth Avenue the sirens / and the red, red lights / have surrendered to the silence” and “Because these days / (I can’t explain it to myself) / I used to face it with my usual grace / That is before the sky fell / the sky fell.” The song is a family affair, featuring a closing aria sung by his wife, actress Tracy Sallows, and both Sallows and their daughter appear in the video, which was directed by Skipp Sudduth and timed to honor the tenth anniversary of the attacks. “The song was literally triggered by the smell of smoke from the burning towers finally making its way uptown that evening when the winds shifted, and it came very, very quickly after that,” O’Neill remembers. “Rise” can be downloaded for free here.

BARN OWL: LOST IN THE GLARE

Barn Owl should soar to transcendent heights at Glasslands and Shea Stadium this month

Sunday, September 11, Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Ave., $10, 8:30
Saturday, September 17, Shea Stadium, 20 Meadow St.
www.myspace.com/barnowlband

San Francisco psychedelic trance duo Barn Owl’s new album might be called Lost in the Glare (Thrill Jockey, September 13, 2011), but there’s nothing blinding about it. Instead, it’s a forty-two-minute journey through gorgeous, ambient dronescapes. Influenced by everything from Neil Young and Popul Vuh to black metal, Middle Eastern ragas, and experimental jazz — as well as the Bay Area’s ocean and fog — Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti guide listeners across a subtly mesmerizing cloudscape on a succession of guitars and synthesizers (and Farfisa organ), with Jacob Felix Heule on drums, Steve Dye on bass clarinet, and Michael Elrod adding tanpura, Roland Juno-60, and gong. The follow-up to last November’s full-length Ancestral Star and this June’s three-track EP, Shadowland, the new record features such slow-paced, layered mini-epics as “Turiya,” “Temple of the Winds,” and “Devotion II” that both soar into the transcendent and delve into the ominous. The centerpiece is “The Darkest Night Since 1683,” a seven-and-a-half-minute minimalist masterpiece that nearly explodes in the middle before heading off into more calming windswept terrain. Barn Owl, who never play a song the same way twice, will be at the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg on September 11 with Helado Negro and Jonti and at Shea Stadium in Bushwick on September 17 with Gunn-Truscinski Duo and Noveller.