this week in music

JCC OPEN HOUSE: THE LOTTERY AND MORE

Screening of THE LOTTERY is part of all-day open house at the JCC



THE LOTTERY (Madeleine Sackler, 2010)
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Sunday, September 19, free, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (film screens at 3:30)
646-505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org
www.thelotteryfilm.com

After celebrating the Jewish New Year, the JCC in Manhattan is holding its annual open house, a free day to get to know the very busy Upper West Side institution. The myriad activities include a Kidzapalooza concert, a children’s sports expo, a postnatal Pilates boot camp, a video contest, skin cancer screenings, and workouts, demonstrations, and lessons in yoga, meditation, self-defense, Gypsy dance, indoor cycling, life coaching, Hebrew, low-flying trapeze, sand art, time management, cooking, dating, salsa, and much more, with special classes for kids, new mothers, and seniors, along with prizes and membership discounts. The afternoon ends with a screening of the eye-opening film THE LOTTERY.

The debate over charter schools reaches a fever pitch in Madeleine Sackler’s heart-wrenching documentary, THE LOTTERY. Sackler follows the hopes and dreams of four families who have entered their children in the annual lottery for placement in Harlem Success Academy, a free public elementary school founded by former city councilmember Eva Moskowitz. Some three thousand kids are vying for 475 coveted spots at the institution, which has an outstanding track record while doing things its own way, including not playing by the complex rules of the powerful teachers union. Sackler speaks with Moskowitz, Newark mayor Cory Booker, Harlem Children’s Zone president and CEO Geoffrey Canada, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, and several Harlem Success Academy parents, principals, and teachers, who have only glowing things to say about the charter school, especially as it fights to open another location inside PS 194, leading to an angry battle with the community that is simply mind-blowing. Also mind-blowing are many of the statistics Sackler shares about the sorry state of public education in New York City and across the country, specifically in regard to blacks and Latinos. The final scene, in which the families sit inside the Fort Washington Armory, praying that their child’s name will be called as if their entire future is dependent upon it, is not only heartbreaking but also beyond frustrating, revealing how difficult it can be for parents to find quality schooling in certain parts of the city and offer their children opportunities that they never had.

SUPERCHUNK

Superchunk is back in town for a pair of sold-out shows (photo by Christian Lantry)

Saturday, September 18, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., $22, 9:00
Sunday, September 19, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth St., $22, 9:00
www.myspace.com/superchunkmusic

We don’t know what we were thinking when we opted not to check out Superchunk’s free concert this past July at the South Street Seaport, but we were majorly bummed when we heard afterward that they put on a great show, bouncing around onstage like a bunch of kids and blowing the crowd away. Well, we’re happy to say that the Chapel Hill band is back for two area gigs this weekend, and although they’re not free, it’s hard to pass up another chance to see one of the most legendary alternative bands still out on the road. (The shows are sold out, but maybe you can search online or beg friends with tickets to let you go with them.) Singer-guitarist Mac McCaughan, bassist Laura Ballance, guitarist Jim Wilbur, and drummer Jon Wurster are touring behind MAJESTY SHREDDING, their first new LP since 2001’s HERE’S TO SHUTTING UP. While the quartet breaks no new ground on the album, which came out Tuesday on Merge Records, the label cofounded by McCaughan and Ballance back in 1989, it’s great to hear McCaughan’s lilting vocals and Wilbur’s alternately searing and crunching guitar sounds pounding out such fresh-sounding new tunes as “Digging for Something,” “My Gap Feels Weird,” and “Crossed Wires.” Superchunk, who has been featuring such older songs as “Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama),” “Driveway to Driveway,” “Slack Motherfucker,” and “Hyper Enough” at recent shows, will be at the Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night with Let’s Wrestle and at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday night with Wild Nothing and Todd Barry.

OF MONTREAL

Of Montreal isn’t afraid to get a little goofy on record or at their live shows

Terminal 5
610 West 56th St.
Friday, September 17, and Saturday, September 18, $27.50-$30, 8:00
www.myspace.com/ofmontreal
www.terminal5nyc.com

Don’t let the funky grooves flying all over Of Montreal’s tenth album, FALSE PRIEST (Polyvinyl, September 14), fool you; band founder and Apollinaire Rave artistic director Kevin Barnes is still delving deep into suicide, shattered hearts, self-brutality, death anxiety, and loneliness — as well as particle wave duality, auto-da-fés, fetishized archetypes, uncalibrated skulls, frontal lobe regression, and Chinese urine. The Athens, Georgia, group, which has been shuffled and reshuffled over its thirteen-year career, with more former members than current members (and some albums recorded primarily by Barnes alone), has a ball on the new disc, mixing in falsetto funk, rollicking R&B, heavenly dance pop, and Euro-disco that has the sonic glee of Gnarls Barkley — perhaps it is no coincidence that OM has covered GB’s “Crazy.” On FALSE PRIEST, Of Montreal channels a little Beatles here (“You Do Mutilate?”), a whole lot of Prince there (“Like a Tourist,” “Sex Karma”), and even a bit of Bowie to boot (“Godly Intersex”). Janelle Monáe of the Wondaland Arts Society adds groovy raps to “Our Riotous Defects” and “Enemy Gene,” while Solange Knowles gets hot and heavy with Barnes on “Sex Karma,” which features the killer rhyme “You took me centuries to master / In the next life I will have to learn you faster.” Barnes and company — Bryan Poole, Davey Pierce, Dottie Alexander, Clayton Rychlik, Thayer Sarrano, Nicolas Dobbratz, and K Ishibashi — will be headlining Terminal 5 this Friday and Saturday with Kansas native Monáe, who recently released her debut album, THE ARCHANDROID (SUITES II AND III) (Bad Boy, May 18, 2010).

PETER YARROW BENEFIT CONCERT

Peter Yarrow will perform a benefit concert for the Museum at Eldridge Street on September 20

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Monday, September 20, $36, 7:00
RSVP: 212-219-0888 ext205, hgriff@eldridgestreet.org
www.eldridgestreet.org
www.peterpaulandmary.com

As one-third of the folksinging trio Peter, Paul & Mary, Peter Yarrow sang such seminal songs as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “All My Trials,” “500 Miles,” and, of course, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” a mix of traditional and original tunes that played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Sadly, Mary Travers passed away in September 2009 from complications arising from her chemotherapy treatment for leukemia, but Yarrow is still keeping the flame burning, founding the nonprofit group Operation Respect, which works “to assure each child and youth a respectful, safe and compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence”; displaying public outrage when Chip Saltsman sent “Barack the Magic Negro,” an insensitive reworking of Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” to members of the RNC; and participating in the fight against colon cancer through his 2010 tune “The Colonoscopy Song.” He has also written or been part of a number of children’s books, including THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, set for release November 15 and featuring the final performance ever by Travers, singing to a new score of the title track by Yarrow. The Christmas book serves as the perfect lead-in to Yarrow’s latest project, a September 20 benefit concert raising funds for the Museum at Eldridge Street, site of a historic Lower East Side synagogue that is being lovingly restored. Tickets are only $36, with all proceeds going to the museum’s extensive cultural and educational programs.

BRYANT PARK FALL FESTIVAL

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s is one of the companies giving free performances as part of this week’s Bryant Park Fall Festival

Bryant Park Fountain Terrace and lawn
40th to 42nd Sts. at Sixth Ave.
Setpember 13-20, free
www.bryantpark.org

Fashion Week festivities might have moved from Bryant Park to Lincoln Center, but that doesn’t mean that the former is just going to hide its head in the sand. Beginning today at lunchtime, Bryant Park will be hosting its own Fall Festival, eight days of live music and dance featuring performances by the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Parsons Dance, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Black Rock Coalition, Ricky Ian Gordon, and, ironically enough, Jazz at Lincoln Center. Shows take place daily at 12:30 and 6:00, and everything is free.

SHERLOCK’S DAUGHTER

Australia’s Sherlock’s Daughter comes to the Bowery Ballroom and the Music Hall of Williamsburg this week (photo by Kyle Dean Reinford)

Monday, September 13, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St., $25, 8:00
Tuesday, September 14, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 North Sixth St., $25, 8:00
www.myspace.com/sherlocksdaughter

Based in Sydney, five-piece band Sherlock’s Daughter, led by New Zealand vocalist Tanya Horo, is touring behind its self-titled five-song EP, which features beautiful harmonies, soothing melodies, and alluring rhythms. Guitarist Tim Maybury, bassist Liam Flanagan, electronics specialist Jonti Animal, and drummer William Russell create mysterious sounds that wrap around you with just the right amount of uneasiness to keep you slightly off balance but always wanting more on such welcoming tunes as “Sons and Daughters,” “Song for Old People,” and “Kids.” And they also have a way of making relatively mundane lyrics float wonderfully in the ether; on “In the End,” Horo sings, “In the end we will hold on to all that’s in our hearts / Don’t be sad or be frightened / We don’t need to part / Love can’t hurt us now,” and you believe every word of it. They’ll be playing the Bowery Ballroom on September 13 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 14, opening up for this small little British band known as Charlatans UK.

TWO TEARS / GRINGO STAR

Kerry Davis will lead the Two Tears into Cameo Gallery on September 13

Cameo Gallery
93 North Sixth St.
Monday, September 13, 8:00
www.myspace.com/thetwotears
www.myspace.com/cameogallery

After stints in Paris and Dubai, former “one lady band” Kerry Davis is now based in New York City, where she’ll be playing a hometown gig September 13 with her group the Two Tears. Davis, on guitar and vocals, will be joined by Des Roar bassist Ryan Spoto, and Mutilation Rites drummer Justin Ennis as they blast short bursts of experimental bluesy garage punk that is not nearly as cannibalistic as you might think from such titles as “Eat People” and “I Like Your Face” nor as depressing as indicated by such titles as “Die Tonight,” “OOooo I’m Blue,” and “Shit Fucking Job.” In “Senso Unico,” Davis declares, “I hate my life,” but you won’t hate hers when she and Two Tears perform at Brooklyn’s Cameo Gallery on September 13 with Atlanta’s Gringo Star, one of the standouts at the 2008 CMJ Music Marathon. Gringo Star, which plays punk-injected southern garage rock with a twist, is about to go back into the studio to record their follow-up to their debut disc, 2008’s ALL YALL, with producer Ben Allen. Opening up are two Brooklyn bands, the whispery, lo-fi Caveman and the minimalist Soft Black.