this week in music

MARY HALVORSON QUINTET

The Mary Halvorson Quintet will feature new songs at Cornelia Street Café show (photo by Peter Gannushkin)

Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia St.
Friday, July 29, $15, 9:00 & 10:30
212-989-9319
www.maryhalvorson.com
www.corneliastreetcafe.com

Last July, we saw Mary Halvorson at the Whitney, playing one of Christian Marclay’s wind-up guitars as part of the “Festival” exhibition. An experimental avant-garde composer and musician, Halvorson has collaborated with the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Jessica Pavone, Trevor Dunn, Taylor Ho Bynum, Elliott Sharp, and so many others during her fast-paced career. Born in Boston and based in Brooklyn, the barely thirty Halvorson is constantly playing in any number of bands and configurations. Last year she released the debut record of the Mary Halvorson Quintet, Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12, October 2010), consisting of Halvorson on guitar, John Hébert on bass, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Jon Irabagon on alto sax, and Ches Smith on drums. Over the course of seven songs and more than sixty minutes, the group takes listeners on a fascinating journey, with Halvorson heading off into various stratospheres, propelled by unique twists on the horns and an adventurous rhythm section. Gorgeous tracks such as “Moon Traps in Seven Rings (No. 17),” “Sea Seizure (No. 19),” and “Crescent White Singe (No. 13)” venture out into thrilling, unexpected directions filled with myriad surprises, making Saturn Sings one of the freshest, and best, albums of 2010. On July 29, the quintet will be playing a special show at the Cornelia Street Café, concentrating on Halvorson’s compositions for their next disc, which they plan on recording in a two-day frenzy following the performance. Halvorson will also be at University of the Streets on East Seventh St. on Monday, August 1, playing guitar as part of Ches Smith & These Arches, with Smith on drums, Tony Malaby and Tim Berne on saxes, and Andrea Parkins on accordion.

CHELSEA ART WALK 2011

Bernardi Roig will help light up the night at Claire Olive as Chelsea opens its galleries late on Thursday, with many special events (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations in Chelsea
Thursday, July 28, free, 5:00 – 8:00
www.artwalkchelsea.com

Tonight dozens of Chelsea galleries will stay open late, with many featuring artist and curator talks, exhibition walk-throughs, film screenings, live performances, and other special events. Scott Ogden will guide visitors through his “Twisted” show at Ricco Maresca, Faith Ringgold will be signing books at ACA Galleries, Claire Oliver will host an opening reception for “The Devil Can Cite Scripture” (with works by Judith Schaechter and Bernardi Roig), Porter/Contemporary lets visitors get in the picture for “A Polaroid Moment Within a Portrait Apart” with Jeff Ballinger, Horton Gallery will screen Miroslav Tichý: Tarzan Retired, and Mark Wagner will cut up dollar bills and give the pieces away at Pavel Zoubok. You can also play Ping-Pong at Nicholas Robinson, get shaved ice at Jenkins Johnson, and check out concerts by Autodrone at Monya Rowe, Genevieve White at Freight + Volume, and an acoustic show at RARE from a mystery group, among myriad other activities. A two-sided guide to the second annual Chelsea Art Walk can be found here.

MOUNTAIN MAN / BOBBY

Mountain Man will be at the Mercury Lounge tonight with BOBBY

Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston St.
Thursday, July 28, $12, 9:30
www.mercuryloungenyc.com
www.myspace.com/mountainmansquint
www.myspace.com/sickmilk

Mountain Man is not quite what you might expect. Instead of some country blues outfit, Mountain Man is an acoustic folkie trio consisting of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath, who favor quiet, introspective, harmony-based tunes, as evidenced by their debut album, Made the Harbor, which features such lilting songs as “Animal Tracks” and “Soft Skin,” and the new Live at the Wiltern (Partisan, July 2011). They’ll be at the Mercury Lounge on Thursday night with BOBBY, an oddball grindcore group based in Montague, Massachuestts, made up of Tom Greenberg, Martin Zimmerman (Chunk), Paolo Menuez (Pillow), Julian Labat (Crumbles), Roby Moulton (Moldy), and Mountain Man’s Sarle, combining offbeat instrumentation with changing melodies on such tunes as “Sore Spores” and “If It’s Dead Outside” from their eponymous debut (Partisan, June 2011).

LOWDOWN HUDSON BLUES FESTIVAL

Taj Mahal will bring the blues to World Financial Center Plaza as part of three-day free festival

World Financial Center Plaza
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, July 28, and Friday, July 29, 6:00 – 9:30, and Saturday, July 30, 1:00 – 6:30
Admission: free
212-417-7050
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

As temperatures soar skyward, cool, free music is always a mainstay of summertime in New York City. Some legendary acts are on tap at the inaugural Lowdown Hudson Blues Festival, a three-day cavalcade of blues-infused live performance taking place downtown at World Financial Center Plaza, under the stars (and sun) along the river. The festival kicks off at 6:00 on Thursday with an evening featuring former Stevie Ray Vaughan sideman Mike Farris and his Roseland Rhythm Revue, Memphis singer/songwriter/upright bassist Amy LaVere, and culminating with a rare, free New York appearance by the ageless Taj Mahal, a performer for whom the term “legend” might seem almost desultory. Over his forty-plus year career, the Harlem-born Mahal has explored and expanded the boundaries of both acoustic and electric folk, blues, and world music. He’ll be performing here with his trio, consisting of Kester Smith on drums and Bill Rich on bass. Friday night presents another bill that promises to deliver on the “Lowdown” theme, highlighted by a collaboration between legendary genre-shredding guitarist James Blood Ulmer and string-shredding Black Rock Coalition founder Vernon Reid. Ulmer’s experiments in harmolodics and avant-garde jazz and Reid’s background in such bands as Living Colour should combine for an inquisitive spin on the blues they both revere. Ulmer is touring with the reunited Memphis Blood Blues, with whom he recorded The Sun Sessions album ten years ago. Toronto outfit the Beauties and California band the Growlers will open the show. The festival concludes Saturday with an afternoon slate comprising a bevy of blues-and-other acts. The day’s performers include New Orleans piano-legend-in-the-making Henry Butler, Steve Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, local bluegrass-oriented Citigrass, Georgia soul singer Ryan Shaw, Blues Project cofounder Danny Kalb, and polymath minstrels Hazmat Modine. Overall, an amazingly diverse array of blues-oriented acts will be appearing over the three-day extravaganza, which should be one of the season’s musical highlights.

WHATEVER . . . BLOG PRESENTS THE DIAMOND CENTER

Bruar Falls
245 Grand St. between Driggs & Robeling Sts.
Thursday, July 28, $10, 8:00
http://wwwwhatever-amy.blogspot.com
www.bruarfalls.com

For nearly two years, Amy Grimm, creator of the intellectual and rebellious Whatever . . . blog, has been hosting monthly parties in Brooklyn clubs, featuring some of the best up-and-coming bands from across the country. “You know you’re at the right show if indie music princess Amy Grimm is there,” we wrote last year in our introduction to our twi-ny talk with the charming and enthusiastic music lover. Amy has put together another great Whatever . . . Blog Party for July 28 at Bruar Falls, featuring Rumanian Buck (7:00), Libel (8:00), the Nico Blues (9:00), Wojcik (10:00), and the Diamond Center (11:00). The sparkling Diamond Center, which consists of Brandi Price, Kyle Harris, and an ever-changing roster of drummers and other accompanists, blew us away with their 2009 sophomore release, My Only Companion, and have recently put out an awesome limited-edition seven-inch of “Caraway” backed with “20Twin,” fifteen minutes of haunting experimental wanderings; the former would have sounded great over the closing credits of Cowboys & Aliens. The Diamond Center are actual wanderers; they’ve moved from Athens, Georgia, to Lubbock, Texas, and now to Richmond, Virginia, during their four-year history. Brooklyn-based duo Wojcik, featuring Geoff Lewitt on drums and the multitalented Hailey Wojcik on guitar and vocals, mix in elements of 1970s and ’80s girl-group power pop and punk, melding Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” with Kim Gordon from Dirty/Goo–era Sonic Youth filtered through Joan Jett, as evidenced on The [VOY-chek] EP and their recent cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change.” Wojcik is the group’s fearless leader; “But have I got plans when it’s my turn / I’ll be warming my hands on the bridges I burn,” she declares on “Tiny Mussels.” New Jersey’s the Nico Blues go from loud and aggressive (“Unprofessional”) to bouncy (“Exit 6”) to melodic (“Adjust Accordingly”) on its latest album, Blame the Boredom, Blame the Basements. The Brooklyn trio Libel, made up of Julie Rozansky, Jonathan Hanson, and Gavin Dunaway, delve into fear on their most recent disc, No Regrets for Our Youth, with such high points as “TLO” and “A Fatality.” On “Wasp Lane” they proclaim, “Resist, resist / all augmentation / Insist, insist / on assimilation.” And Greenpoint’s Aaron Lazar of the Giraffes is resurrecting his essentially one-man band, Rumanian Buck, responsible for such well-titled tracks as “Tineretze” and “Slippercrumble,” as a trio for this reunion show. Once again Grimm has curated what should be a great night of indie rock from bands you probably haven’t heard of but will be glad you now do.

SUMMERGARDEN: NEW MUSIC FOR NEW YORK

Pianist Geri Allen will lead Timeline in a jazz show July 31 in MoMA’s sculpture garden

Museum of Modern Art
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, July 24 & 31, free, gates open at 7:00, concert begins at 8:00
www.moma.org
sculpture garden slideshow

The final two concerts in MoMA’s free annual Summergarden series take place July 24 & 31 in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, where you can hear classical music and jazz amid some of the finest sculptures from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. On July 24, “Juilliard Concert II: New Music for String Quartet” will feature violinists David Fulmer and Rebekah Durham, violist Jennifer Chang, and cellist Avery Waite from the New Juilliard Ensemble performing the Western Hemisphere premiere of Jiří Kadeřábek’s “Barefoot Boy!” and the New York premieres of Judith Lang Zaimont’s “The Fugue” for string quartet, Carson Cooman’s “Four Aphoristic Inventions,” “Tombeau-Aria,” and “Estampie” for two violins, and Louis Andriessen’s “Facing Death.” On July 31, “Jazz Concert II: Geri Allen and Timeline” will combine music and movement with pianist Geri Allen, saxophonist JD Allen, bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Kassa Overall, and tap-dancer Maurice Chestnut in the premiere of Allen’s “Flower of May,” which honors Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille. Free admission is first come, first served, with gates opening at 7:00 and the concert starting at 8:00. Although the MoMA galleries are closed, you can enjoy the wonderful sculptures in the garden, including Auguste Rodin’s “St. John the Baptist Preaching,” Elie Nadelman’s “Man in the Open Air,” Gaston Lachaise’s “Floating Figure,” Tom Otterness’s “Head,” Henry Moore’s “Family Group,” Renee Sintenis’s “Daphne,” Henri Matisse’s “Back” series, and one of the most colorful works to ever grace the sculpture garden, Katharina Fritsch’s “Figurengruppe (Group of Figures).”

PIG OUT!

3rd Ward
195 Morgan Ave.
Saturday, July 23, free with RSVP, 2:00 – 9:00
www.3rdward.com

Brooklyn art collective 3rd Ward considers itself “an incubator for innovation and possibility” where anyone and everyone is invited “to work, play, learn, grow, and, ultimately, transform.” On July 23, the public is also invited to eat to their heart’s content at 3rd Ward’s fourth annual Pig Out! From 2:00 to 9:00, attendees will be lining up for barbecue from the Lower East Side’s Brindle Room (and you thought all those artistic types were either vegetarian or vegan), local produce from Plovgh, and live music by Union Street Preservation Society, Northern Bells, Alana & the Rough Gems, and DJs the Gorges Boys. There will also be workshops and demonstrations, including “Alginate Casting,” “Chocolate Sculpture,” “The Bicycle Doctor Is In,” and “Ingredient Challenge.”