this week in music

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: METAMORPHOSIS

Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre returns to the Next Wave Festival with the U.S. premiere of METAMORPHOSIS (photo by Eddi Jonsson)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 30 – December 5, $25-$65 (November 30 performance reviewed)
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In October 2008, Gísli Örn Gardarsson led the Iceland-based Vesturport Theatre in a visually stunning yet ultimately disappointing version of George Büchner’s WOYZECK at BAM, relying too heavily on flashy acrobatics by the former gymnast. Gardarsson has returned to BAM’s Next Wave Festival with a solid, more subdued production, adapting Franz Kafka’s creepy 1915 novella, THE METAMORPHOSIS. This time around, Gardarsson has collaborated with David Farr, former artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith and currently associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The two cowrote and codirected the production, with Farr concentrating primarily on the words and Gardarsson, who stars as Gregor Samsa, focusing on the play’s physicality. Börkur Jónsson’s superb set design features a bilevel stage consisting of the Samsa family’s living area and a staircase leading up to Gregor’s room, which is arranged perpendicular to the lower floor and is centered by a vertical white bed surrounded by a chair, a plant, a lamp, and a series of hand grips, all of which allow Gardarsson to creep and crawl around the space like an imprisoned animal. As the play opens, Lucy (Kelly Hunter) and Herman Samsa (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) are at the breakfast table with their daughter, Greta (Nina Dögg Filippusdóttir, Gardarsson’s real-life wife), a violin prodigy. Their movements are all strictly regimented, a model of Eastern European efficiency, until they realize that Gregor has not yet left for work and doesn’t appear to be in his room. Startled by this disruption in their lives, they panic until they discover that Gregor, a traveling salesman who is the family’s sole source of economic support, has transformed into a hideous insect. However, Gregor does not realize anything is wrong; he speaks normally, but his family hears only awful, unintelligible screeches. While his parents see him as a monster, Greta still considers him to be her brother and decides to take care of him, at least for a while. The family is interrupted twice by Jonathan McGuinness, who plays Fischer, a man from Gregor’s company, and Stietl, a coworker of Greta’s interested in renting a room in the Samsa household, since they now need money because Gregor is no longer working.

Gregor Samsa (Gísli Örn Gardarsson) transforms into an insect in theatrical adaptation of Kafka classic (photo by Eddi Jonsson)

Gardarsson uses no costuming or lighting tricks in turning himself into a giant bug crawling around his room and down the stairs, relying on his agility and not overdoing it. He and Farr have created well-defined characters, so the play includes several powerful, emotional moments as the relationships among the family members change. The production succeeds in capturing the essence of Kafka’s existential story, which deals with individuality, responsibility, and personal identity in a rigid, totalitarian state. Nick Cave and longtime Bad Seed Warren Ellis, who also composed the music for WOYZECK, contribute a bittersweet, spare, melancholy score rooted in acoustic instrumentation. Gardarsson and other members of the cast and crew will participate in an artist talk following the December 2 performance.

LATKE FESTIVAL: A TASTE OF THE WORLD

City Winery
155 Varick St. at Vandam St.
Sunday, December 5, $32.50, 4:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com

City Winery, home of the Sunday Klezmer Brunch, will be celebrating Hanukkah on December 5 with its second annual International Latke Festival, a potato-pancake cook-off featuring local chefs from Great Performances, which supplies food to many of the city’s finest cultural institutions, seeking to become the Latke Champion. This year’s contestants are Tim Sullivan, executive chef of BAMcafe and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, who will be making an American latke; Jack Kiggens, executive chef at the Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom, going for the Cuban version; Liz Neumark, the CEO of Great Performances, attempting the Israeli edition; Marc Spooner, executive chef of Great Performances, preparing the Russian kind; and Matthew Riznyk, sous chef of Great Performances, frying up the Chinese latke. The battle will also feature live music from the Seattle-based Jewish ensemble Sasson. And yes, you’ll get to sample all of the dishes and argue that Grandma Blanche’s Yonkers latkes are still the best.

ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will honor Judith Jamison’s long service with special programs at annual City Center season (photo by Jack Mitchell)

New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 1 – January 2
Tickets: $25-$150
212-581-1212
www.alvinailey.org
www.nycitycenter.org

Philly-born dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison performed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1965 to 1980, returning in December 1989 to become the artistic director of the company. After twenty-one years in that role, Jamison is stepping down, and Ailey’s annual winter season at City Center will be honoring her throughout its run, beginning with an opening night gala December 1 featuring the company premiere of Robert Battle’s “The Hunt,” Ailey’s “Cry,” and Sweet Honey in the Rock singing live to “Revelations,” and culminating in a special farewell tribute on January 2 that will include excerpts from many of the works most closely associated with her, from “Cry” (performed by three different dancers) and “Pas de Duke” to “Reminiscin’” and “Firebird.” (Battle will take over as artistic director in July 2011.) The season will also feature specially priced family matinees that will include “Revelations” performed by a cast of fifty; All Ailey programs, with such pieces as “Night Creature,” “Memoria,” “Mary Lou’s Mass,” and “Revelations”; All New programs, introducing world or company premieres and/or new productions of Christopher Huggins’s “Anointed,” Geoffrey Holder’s “The Prodigal Prince,” Camille A. Brown’s “The Evolution of a Secured Feminine,” Jamison’s “Forgotten Time,” and other works; and performances accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Ailey’s “Three Black Kings,” Hans Van Manen’s “Solo,” Ulysses Dove’s “Vespers” and “Episodes,” Battle’s “In/Side,” Billy Wilson’s “The Winter in Lisbon”) and other groups.

METAMORPHOSIS

Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre returns to the Next Wave Festival with the U.S. premiere of METAMORPHOSIS (photo by Eddi Jonsson)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 30 – December 5, $25-$65
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In 2008, Iceland’s Vesterport Theatre, under the leadership of director and star Gísli Örn Gardarsson, made its U.S. debut with their visually arresting production of WOYZECK, and they are returning to BAM’s Next Wave Festival this week for a multimedia interpretation of Franz Kafka’s creepy short story METAMORPHOSIS. Billed as “a six-legged nightmare,” the show, directed and adapted by Gardarsson and David Farr, will once again feature a score composed by Australian madman Nick Cave and his longtime Bad Seed Warren Ellis, with set design by Börkur Jónsson, lighting design by Björn Helgason, costumes by Brenda Murphy, and sound design by Nick Manning. Gardarsson and some of his collaborators will participate in an artist talk following the December 2 performance.

JOE DIEBES: CHRONOLOGY

Joe Diebes’s “Scherzo” is centerpiece of frenetic multimedia installation at Paul Rodgers/9W

Paul Rodgers / 9W
529 West 20th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 2, free
212-414-9810
www.paulrodgers9w.com

At the beginning of this year, No Longer Empty held a music-related exhibition, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” in the old Tower Records at Fourth St. & Broadway. The star of the show was Joe Diebes’s “Scherzo,” a frenetic video installation of cellist Rubin Kodheli playing a score by Diebes as fast as he possibly can while being filmed from eight different angles by Andrew Federman. Kodheli’s virtuosic playing had been fed through a computer algorithm that resequenced the various segments into a brand-new, thrilling yet impossible sound piece that questions time and space as well as the reality of seeing and hearing. “Scherzo,” which comes off as a sort of punk-classical amalgamation, is located in one of the small rooms behind what looks like a white closet in the middle of the Paul Rodgers/9W gallery, surrounded by four other audiovisual pieces that line the walls. “One to One,” “Anachronism I,” “Anachronism 2,” and “Steeplechase” involve Diebes tracing and/or erasing scores by Bach, Beethoven, and Charlie Parker, using and/or reusing translucent vellum sheets, while the compositions can be heard through headphones. “I’m receiving and transmitting, or recording and playing, at the same time,” Diebes explains in the exhibition catalog. “My hand is the authority of the composer, but I’m not the composer. My hand is being driven by the recorded performance, so I’m really just a mass of nerves and muscle processing real time information. I’m trying to do it the best I can, but it’s all error.” Diebes might call it error, but the result is an intoxicating multimedia presentation that boggles the senses.

BOB DYLAN AND THE BAND: WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS THIS?

The photos of William G. Scheele of Bob Dylan and the Band are the centerpiece of a multimedia celebration of the seminal American musicians

Friday, December 3, “Bob Dylan and the Band, Woodstock to California 1973-1975,” gallery exhibit opening night, 14th St. Y, LABA Theatre, symposium, $45, 7:00
Sunday, December 5, All Star Concert, (le) poisson rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $35, 8:30
www.14streety.org

The 14th St. Y will be paying tribute to the legacy of Bob Dylan and the Band with a series of special events, including a photography show, a symposium, and an all-star concert. Benefiting the renovation of the Y’s LABA Theatre, “Bob Dylan and the Band: What Kind of Love Is This?” kicks off Friday, December 3, with the opening of the gallery exhibit “Bob Dylan and the Band, Woodstock to California 1973-1975,” a collection of photos taken by William G. Scheele, who served as the Band’s equipment and stage manager from 1969 to 1976. The opening will feature a ticketed symposium ($35) discussing the enormously influential collaboration between Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson, which resulted in such seminal albums as PLANET WAVES, THE BASEMENT TAPES, and BEFORE THE FLOOD; the extremely impressive panel will include Greil Marcus, Christopher Ricks, John Niven, Dana Spiotta, Matt Friedberger, D. A. Pennebaker, Stephen Hazan Arnoff, John Wesley Harding, and Scheele. Then, on Friday night, December 5, (le) poisson rouge will host an all-star tribute ($45) to Dylan and the Band, with performances by Steven Bernstein, John Medeski, Rob Burger, Tony Scherr, Jolie Holland, Laura Cantrell, Nicole Atkins, John Wesley Harding, and Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. This multimedia celebration honors some of the finest American music of the twentieth century while also helping out a great local organization.

MATISYAHU: FESTIVAL OF LIGHT

Matisyahu will once again ight the night at special Hanukkah shows (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues in Brooklyn and New Jersey
November 29 – December 5, $38
www.matisyahuworld.com

Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae rapper formerly known as Matthew Paul Miller, will be celebrating Hanukkah again with his Festival of Light tour, which will burn bright for five nights November 29 – December 5. The man behind such praiseworthy songs as “King Without a Crown,” “Jerusalem (Out of the Darkness Comes Light),” “Late Night in Zion,” “Aish Tamid,” and “Tzama L’Choi Nafshi (Psalm 63:2-3)” — and who is also known to throw in a prayer or two during his live shows — will be at Brooklyn Bowl November 29 with Dub Trio, the Music Hall of Williamsburg November 30 with Tally Hall, Northern Lights in Clifton Park on December 1 with Dub Trio, then back at the Music Hall December 4 with DJ Rehka and December 5 with Moon Taxi. We’ve celebrated Hanukkah with Matisyahu in the past, and it’s a blast, a night of fun music and lots of dancing that you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy. But just in care you are, Matisyahu has just released a special Hanukkah song, “Miracle,” that is currently streaming for free on his website. “There are so many Christmas songs out there,” he explains. “I wanted to give the Jewish kids something to be proud of.”