this week in music

THE RED & WHITE PARTY 2010

Hank & Cupcakes headline the sizzling hot Red & White Party at (le) poisson rouge on Tuesday night (photo by Alan Lugo)

(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker St.
Tuesday, December 14, $15, 8:00
212-228-4854
www.lepoissonrouge.com
www.ps122.org

The sixth annual Red & White Party is ready to blow your mind on December 14, with the festivities spreading across two spaces at (le) poisson rouge on Bleecker St. In the lounge beginning at 8:00, Jomai Etu of the Tribe of Magic will be manning the turntables, joined by various special surprise guests, with Maga Bo taking over at midnight at Joro Boro at 1:00. On the main stage, Caveman gets things going at 9:00, followed by Hank & Cupcakes at 10:00, DJ Roxy Cottontail at 11:00, DJ Michael Magnan at 12:30, and Die J! Mars at 2:00. Promising a cross-section of “subversive and seductive underground sounds,” the party also suggests wearing dancing shoes and drinking helmets.

DRAW BOOK RELEASE PARTY

Karen O’s “So Trashed” is among the many works collected in DRAW

Fuse Gallery
93 2nd Ave between Fifth & Sixth Sts.
Wednesday, December 15, free, 7:00 – 10:00
212-777-7988
www.fusegallerynyc.com

In October 2006, Erik Foss and Curse Mackey curated “Draw,” an exhibition at Fuse Gallery of drawings by illustrators, skateboarders, animators, graphic novelists, musicians, tattoo artists, and others. The show traveled to Austin, London, San Francisco, and, most recently, Mexico City, where El Museo de la Ciudad de México has put together the catalog with curator Miguel Calderon. On December 15, Fuse will host a party for the launch of the book, making one hundred advance copies available for a mere $25, with posters going for $10. The 256-page book features drawings by such artists and musicians as Raymond Pettibon, Tom Sachs, Chris Johanson, Terence Koh, Dan Colen, Swoon, Ozzy Osbourne, DAZE, Karen O, R. Crumb, HR Giger, Clive Barker, Barry McGee, Rick Griffin, Ron English, Neck Face, David Byrne, Hank Williams III, WK Interact, Doze Green, Tara McPherson, Les Claypool, and Shawn Barber. Also on view in the gallery is Benjamin Bertocci’s “Stutter.”

MERRY TUBACHRISTMAS 2010

The thirty-seventh annual MERRY TUBACHRISTMAS concert will take place Sunday at Rockefeller Center

Ice Skating Rink at Rockefeller Center
50th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, December 12, 11:30 am registration
Admission: free
Participation: $5
www.tubachristmas.com
www.rockefellercenter.com/events

In 1835, the brass instrument known as the tuba was patented by Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz. Musical prodigy William J. Bell, who was born on Christmas Day, 1902, began playing the tuba when he was ten years old, later joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (under Arturo Toscanini) as principal tuba, and then taught music at Indiana University beginning in 1961, passing away shortly after his retirement in 1971. In 1974, as a tribute to his mentor, former student Harvey G. Phillips established the annual MERRY TUBACHRISTMAS concert, which celebrates Bell and his dedication to the tuba and the euphonium by playing Christmas carols arranged by Alec Wilder, who passed away in 1980 on Christmas Eve. The Harvey Phillips Foundation, a nonprofit group affiliated with Indiana University, now sponsors TUBACHRISTMAS all around the world, “honoring all great artists/teachers whose legacy has given us high performance standards, well structured pedagogy, professional integrity, personal values, and a camaraderie envied by all other instrumentalists.” And you thought it was just a whole bunch of people playing “Jingle Bells” on tubas at the Rockefeller Center ice rink. Well, on Sunday, December 12, a whole bunch of people will play “Jingle Bells” and other Christmas classics on tubas at the Rockefeller Center ice rink at 3:30, conducted by Chris Wilhjelm and hosted by Phillips himself. If you’d like to participate, just show up to register at 11:30 in “warm, bright, festive colors” with your tuba and a music stand or lyre and be ready to rehearse at 12:30.

AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE

Live music and dance collide and intersect at HERE Arts Center

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
December 9-11, $15-$20
212-352-3101
www.here.org

Two Philadelphia groups will create a unique performance piece in the round December 9-11 at HERE Arts Center, combining indie folk rock with experimental dance in AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE. Music group the Mural and the Mint, consisting of Corey Duncan, Eliza Jones, Michael Kiley, Jebney Lewis, and Joshua Ramey, and the Nichole Canuso Dance Company, featuring Nichole Canuso, Niki Cousineau, Meg Foley, John Luna, Shannon Murphy, and Christina Zani, will collaborate on a stage surrounded by candlelit Mason jars and various odds and ends. The Mural and the Mint released their debut album, PRIVATE POCKETS, in 2008, and have just made the first single from their upcoming disc (also called AS THE EYES OF THE SEAHORSE), a light-hearted song called “Ripe,” available for free online. Canuso’s previous productions include TAKES, WANDERING ALICE, and THE ROYAL WE. The collaboration is part of HERE’s hemispHEREs initiative, which brings together visiting artists and the institution’s resident artists in a series of workshops, open rehearsals, discussions, and performances.

TAKEMITSU: KWAIDAN

Tōru Takemitsu “wanted to create an atmosphere of terror” in Masaki Kobayashi’s quartet of ghost stories

KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, December 10, 1:00, 6:30
Series continues through December 16
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Masaki Kobayashi paints four marvelous ghost stories in this eerie collection that won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. In “The Black Hair,” a samurai (Rentaro Mikuni) regrets his choice of leaving his true love for advancement. Yuki (Keiko Kishi) is a harbinger of doom in “The Woman of the Snow.” Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) must have his entire body covered in prayer in “Hoichi, the Earless.” And Kannai (Kanemon Nakamura) finds a creepy face staring back at him in “In a Cup of Tea.” Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, KWAIDAN is one of the greatest ghost story films ever made, four creepy, atmospheric existential tales that will get under your skin and into your brain. The score was composed by Tōru Takemitsu, who said of the film, “I wanted to create an atmosphere of terror.” He succeeded.

Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu will be celebrated in film and music in New York City this month

KWAIDAN is screening as part of Film Forum’s two-week salute to composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930-96), who scored KWAIDAN and more than one hundred other films, including such diverse works as Teshigahara’s ANTONIO GAUDI, PITFALL, THE FACE OF ANOTHER, and WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Nagisa Oshima’s THE CEREMONY, Masahiro Shinoda’s CHINMOKU and PALE FLOWER, Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s HIMATSURI, Kon Ichikawa’s ALONE ON THE PACIFIC, Masaki Kobayashi’s YOUTH OF JAPAN, HARAKIRI, and SAMURAI REBELLION, and Akira Kurosawa’s RAN and DODES’KA-DEN, all of which are part of the series. The music of Takemitsu will also be celebrated this month at the JapanNYC Festival, with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra in a presentation of Takemitsu’s “November Steps,” with Yukio Tanaka on biwa and Kifu Mitsuhashi on shakuhachi, at Carnegie Hall on December 15 (in addition to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique), a concert featuring traditional hōgaku instruments at the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies at Columbia University on December 16, and a tribute concert at Zankel Hall on December 17 curated by his daughter, Maki Takemitsu, with jazz performances of his film scores performed by guitarists Kazumi Watanabe and Daisuke Suzuki, accordionist coba, and percussionist Tomohiro Yahiro.

LICK ME: HOW I BECAME CHERRY VANILLA

Borders, 2 Penn Plaza
Tuesday, December 7, free, 2 5:00
www.borders.com
www.cherry-vanilla.com

Poet, actress, songwriter, publicist, Mad woman, and all-around good-time girl Cherry Vanilla holds nothing back in her free-wheeling memoir, LICK ME: HOW I BECAME CHERRY VANILLA (Chicago Review Press, November 2010, $24.95). Born Kathleen Anne Dorritie in 1943 and raised in Queens, Vanilla tells of a life filled with lots of sex, lots of drugs, and lots of rock & roll. A chronic bedwetter as a child, she later developed OCD, picking at cuts and blemishes all over her body. She dreamed of being in show business, first working at Madison Ave. advertising firms before getting involved in the burgeoning downtown arts scene, hanging out at the hottest clubs and enjoying a never-ending stream of lovers. She starred in Warhol’s off-Broadway show PORK and went from groupie to music publicist to poet and performer; her stories about working with David Bowie just as he was trying to break through in the States are intimate and revealing — and might come as quite a surprise for longtime Bowie fans. She talks in-depth about her desire to bed such men as Kris Kristofferson, Warren Beatty, Leon Russell, and Bowie — but you’ll have to read the book to find out which attempts were successful. Among the many celebrities she meets in her ever-evolving career, some who became close friends, others just passing through her wild life, are Mick Jagger, Patti Smith, Joel Schumacher, Debbie Harry, Helmut Newton, Joni Mitchell, Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, Sting, Candy Darling, Ringo Starr, Angie Bowie, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mick Ronson, and she shares some very interesting details about many of them. But Vanilla never comes off as needlessly gossipy or self-aggrandizing; instead, LICK ME is an honest portrait of a woman who knew what she wanted and went after it. The book also includes excerpts from her 1970s diaries and a sixteen-page black-and-white insert that features several shots of her in two of her favorite positions, either partially or fully unclothed. Cherry Vanilla will be at the Penn Plaza Borders on December 7, discussing her outrageous life and signing copies of the book, joined by special guest May Pang, who figures in a story in the book about Cherry trying to give John Lennon a special birthday present from Ringo.

SPIN THE DREIDEL TOURNAMENT

Annual tournament takes place December 9 at the Knitting Factory

Knitting Factory
361 Metropolitan Ave.
Thursday, December 9, $10-$15, 7:00
347-529-6696
www.bk.knittingfactory.com

“On the first night of Hanukkah I received a mighty dreidel,” Gods of Fire declare on the song “Eight Days of Victory,” from their unforgettable album HANUKKAH GONE METAL. They go on to receive such other hard-rockin’ gifts as gelt, socks, and a golden yarmulke. Gods of Fire, also responsible for such songs as “No Gelt, No Glory,” “The Quest for the Latke Oil,” and “Spin for the Blood of Our Elders,” will be on hand at the Knitting Factory on December 9 for the annual Spin the Dreidel Tournament, sponsored by Major League Dreidel. The hotly anticipated competition will also include holiday performances by the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus and Category Sixx — World’s Greatest Air Band, which promises, among other things, face melting.