this week in music

PRINCE: WELCOME 2 AMERICA

Prince’s Welcome 2 America tour pulls into the Garden for the fourth and final time on February 7 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Madison Square Garden
31st to 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Monday, February 7, $20.10-$179.50, 7:30
www.thegarden.com
www.3121.com

Prince’s Welcome 2 America tour returns to the Garden on February 7 for its fourth visit, after stops on December 18 and 29 and January 18 (in addition to a pair of shows at the Izod Center in New Jersey). His Most Purple Majesty’s first East Coast jaunt since 2004 has featured tunes from throughout his career, with the setlist changing every night, ranging from “Kiss,” “1999,” and “Take Me with U” to “Controversy,” “Baby I’m a Star,” and “She’s Always in My Hair,” from “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Little Red Corvette,” and “The Beautiful Ones” to “Adore,” “Scandalous,” and “Insatiable,” as well as some strange, offbeat covers (Sly and the Family Stone and the Time, sure, but Sarah MacLachlan?!). Each show also includes various special acts opening up and later joining him and the New Power Generation onstage; past guests have included Sheila E., Larry Graham and Graham Central Station, Esperanza Spalding, Cassandra Wilson, Maceo Parker, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Mint Condition, and Janelle Monae. For the February 7 show, Cee Lo Green of Gnarls Barkley and “Fuck You” fame will get things going before the Purple One ascends the unpronounceable-glyph-shaped stage in the center of the Garden floor. We caught the January 18 show, and it was plenty funkalicious, with Prince wailing away on the guitar, crooning to a woman from the audience, shaking his booty with Jones, and continuing through several lengthy sets of arena-rattling encores. There are tickets still available, so grab them as soon as you can and get ready to go crazy.

WINTER JAM NYC

GreeNYC mascot Birdie will be on hand for annual Winter Jam in Prospect Park

The Nethermead, Prospect Park
Enter at Ocean Ave. & Lincoln Rd.
Saturday, February 5, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
www.nycgovparks.org

It’s been one crazy winter, with record-breaking amounts of snow being dumped on the city. If you haven’t taken advantage of all the fun the white stuff can offer, head over to Prospect Park on Saturday for Winter Jam, the free annual sports festival sponsored by the Parks Dept., the Olympic Regional Development Authority, and the Prospect Park Alliance. Scheduled activities include cross-country skiing, showshoeing, and snow sculpting on the Lake Placid Snow Field, skiing and snowboarding lessons in the “Learn To” Area, the Red Bull Butter Cup snowboard trick contest, and the Pride of New York Winter Market. It’s sort of like Brooklyn’s own mini-version of the Winter X Games. There will also be live performances by the Skyriders, the Nick West Quartet (11:30), Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds (12:30), Dujeous (1:30), InnerParty System (2:30), and BR & Timebomb (3:30), hosted by Craig Baldo.

LUNAR NEW YEAR FESTIVAL

Qi Baishi, “Two Rabbits,” hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, twentieth century (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, in memory of La Ferne Hatfield Ellsworth, 1986)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
February 4-6, most events free with recommended admission of $20 adults (children under twelve free)
212-570-3828
www.metmuseum.org

The celebration of the Year of the Rabbit heads uptown for the Met’s three-day Lunar New Year Festival, beginning tonight at 6:00 with “The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Its Survival and Conservation,” a lecture by Henry Tzu Ng held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City.” At 8:00, David Rakoff hosts “Gilded Ink: Write like an Emperor,” an evening of prizewinning short stories by college students, preceded by a tour of “The Emperor’s Private Paradise” at 6:30. Tomorrow the Year of the Rabbit hops all over the museum, with a Sesame Street puppet show at 11:00, Storytime in Nolen Library at 11:45, a lion dance procession at 12:15, a fan and ribbon dance, calligraphy and face painting, a costume demonstration, and a drawing workshop at 1:00, a youth orchestra concert at 1:30, a tea ceremony at 2:15, and Peking Opera performances of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD at 3:00 (one hour children’s show, $15) and 7:00 (full concert with acrobatics, live music and dance, martial arts, and more, $30). The festivities conclude on Sunday with a special look at “The Emperor’s Private Paradise,” featuring a series of lectures beginning at 2:00, including Maxwell K. Hearn’s “Art, Artifice, and Identity—The World of the Qianlong Emperor,” Nancy Berliner’s “A Chinese Garden in Space and over Time,” and Ben Wang’s “The Musicality of Chinese Poetry and Calligraphy in the World of the Qianlong Emperor.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: FRAMING OUR HISTORY

Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday night (Hank Willis Thomas, “Why wait another day to be adorable? Tell your beautician ‘Relax me,’” chromogenic photograph, 1968/2007)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, February 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its February First Saturdays free program, the Brooklyn Museum is honoring Black History Month with its usual wide-ranging schedule of events. Kicking things off at 5:00 will be the Fat Cat Big Band, with Jade Synstelien leading a group of up to sixteen musicians through jazz and bebop. At 5:30, Denzel Washington’s THE GREAT DEBATERS (2007) will be shown, introduced by author Trey Ells (RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW), who will also participate in a Q&A following the screening. At 6:00, curator and writer Kalia Brooks will discuss the exhibition “Lorna Simpson: Gathered”: Simpson’s photographs will also be the focus of the 6:30 Hands-On Art workshop, and people are encouraged to bring their own photos to add to a collaborative interactive project as well. At 7:00, curator Sharon Matt Atkins will take visitors on a tour of “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” while at 8:00 a student guide will give a Young Voices gallery talk on the installation “American Identities: A New Look.” The always hot dance party gets under way at 8:00, hosted by DJ Stormin’ Norman, who will be playing hip-hop and soul tunes. And at 9:00, Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” while at the same time the Smalls Jazz Club All-Stars will take listeners back to the Golden Age of music.

THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT: 4709

The annual Chinatown Lunar New Year festivities will welcome in the Year of the Rabbit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Sara D. Roosevelt Park (and other venues)
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
February 3-12
Admission: free
www.betterchinatown.com

The Year of the Rabbit is upon us, and the celebration kicks into full swing today, with the Chinese New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival in Sara D. Roosevelt Park beginning at 11:00, with live music and dance, speeches by politicians, drum groups, lion dancers making their way through local businesses, and lots of loud noises to ward off evil spirits and welcome in a prosperous new year. On Sunday, the twelfth annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade & Festival takes place, with cultural booths in the park (11:30 – 4:00) and a parade with floats beginning at 1:00 in Minuscule Italy. The annual march through Flushing, which also features lion dances, drummers, and fireworks, is scheduled for Saturday, February 12. For the next few weeks, Chinatown restaurants will be offering all kinds of special New Year dinners; it’s a tradition to eat a whole fish, with the head on, to bring good luck. Gōng xǐ fā cái!

NEW SOUNDS LIVE SILENT FILM SERIES: SPEEDY

Harold Lloyd has a crazy time in Coney Island in SPEEDY

SPEEDY (Ted Wilde, 1928)
World Financial Center Winter Garden
220 Vesey St.
Thursday, February 3, free, 7:00
212-417-7050
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com

Much like the end of the silent film era itself, the last horse-drawn trolley is doomed in Harold Lloyd’s final silent film. Big business is playing dirty trying to get rid of the trolley and classic old-timer Pop Dillon. Meanwhile, Harold “Speedy” Swift, a dreamer who wanders from menial job to menial job (he makes a great soda-jerk with a unique way of announcing the Yankees score), cares only about the joy and wonder life brings. But he’s in love with Pop’s granddaughter, Jane, so he vows to save the day. Along the way, he gets to meet Babe Ruth. Ted Wilde was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, Comedy, for this thrilling nonstop ride through beautiful Coney Island and the pre-depression streets of New York City. SPEEDY is being screened for free February 2 at 7:00 as part of the New Sounds Live Silent Film Series at the World Financial Center, with a live score played by the Alloy Orchestra. For more on the series, read our twi-ny talk with festival curator John Schaefer here.

COLIN STETSON

Colin Stetson will be performing tracks from his dazzling new album at the Stone and the New Museum this month

Thursday, February 3, the Stone, Ave. C at Second St., 8:00
Thursday, February 17, the New Museum, 235 Bowery, $12, 7:00
www.myspace.com/colinstetsonmusic
www.thestonenyc.com
www.newmuseum.org

Stellar sax sideman Colin Stetson has played with Arcade Fire, the Sway Machinery, Laurie Anderson, the Belle Orchestre, Tom Waits, Antibalas, TV on the Radio, and others, but for his second solo album and tour, he’s front and center, highlighting songs from his dazzling new album, NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES (Constellation, February 22, 2011). The Montreal-based musician brought his alto, tenor, and bass saxophones to Hotel2Tango in his hometown, where producer Shahzad Ismaily and engineer Efrim Menuck set up twenty-four microphones throughout the studio, each one capturing different elements of Stetson’s unique abilities. The recordings were then sent to Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, where master mixer Ben Frost transformed them into fourteen soundscapes that boggle the mind. Although it often feels like Stetson is playing with a full band, it’s just him and his saxes, with the only overdubs French horn on one song and Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden contributing vocals to several tracks. The songs range from the spacey “Awake on Foreign Shores” and “The Stars in His Head (Dark Lights Remix)” to the beautifully cacophonous “From No Part of Me Could I Summon a Voice,” “Clothed in the Skin of the Dead,” and “The Righteous Wrath of an Honourable Man” to the mysterious finale, “In Love and in Justice.” Worden adds whispery vocals to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes,” while Anderson does her trademark talk-singing on “All the Colors Bleached to White (ILAIJ II)” and “Judges,” with both women featured on “Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun.” On “A Dream of Water,” Anderson intones, “There were those who knew the rules.” On NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES, the rules are thrown out, resulting in a hypnotic suite of electrifying songs that incorporate avant-jazz, classical, minimalism, folk, blues, and more into a whole new sonic experience. Stetson will be performing solo February 3 at the Stone, followed by drummer Ryan Sawyer and bassist Ismaily, and February 17 at the New Museum as part of the Get Weird series, with percussionist Jon Mueller.