this week in music

VOX 2010

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN OPERA LAB
Skirball Center
566 La Guardia Pl. at Washington Sq. South
Friday, April 30, 6:00 – 11:00
Saturday, May 1, 12 noon – 5:30 pm
Limited free tickets given out day of show
212-870-5570
www.nycopera.com

New York City Opera is hosting two days of special programming at NYU’s Skirball Center, promising a preview of the future of opera with panel discussions and presentations from emerging and established composers and librettists, including Daniel Crozier and Peter M. Krask’s WITH BLOOD, WITH INK, Du Yun’s ZOLLE, Missy Mazzoli’s SONG FROM THE UPROAR, Julian Wachner and Alexis Nouss’s EVANGELINE REVISITED, and Michael Gordon and Deborah Artman’s ACQUANETTA. Now in its eleventh year, the festival has introduced many works that went on to have full productions around the world. Although online reservations are closed, a limited number of free tickets will be given out shortly before each opera.

SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS

Sharon Jones moves from city parks to the Apollo this weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Apollo Theater
253 West 125th St.
Friday, April 30, and Saturday, May 1, $37.50, 8:00
212-531-5300
www.apollotheater.com
www.myspace.com/sharonjonesandthedapkings

We’ve been singing the praises of spitfire soul singer Sharon Jones since we first caught her explosive act in Madison Square Park back in 2005; three years later she was headlining a massive show at SummerStage in Central Park. Well, this weekend she moves from free shows in the park to the legendary Apollo Theater, where she’ll take the stage for two highly anticipated shows in support of her fourth and most widely reviewed album, I LEARNED THE HARD WAY (Daptone, April 6, 2010). A onetime Rikers Island prison guard born in Georgia and raised in Brooklyn, Jones always gives it her all; having cut her chops in churches and mimicking James Brown, she just knows no other way. The new record opens with a blast of horns from the Dap-Kings, kicking off a dozen trips into the sensational sound of ’70s soul, twelve funky forays into love and heartbreak that will get your booty shaking and your mojo working overtime. “If I give you my love, are you going to give it back,” she asks on “Give It Back.”; onstage, Jones always gives her love, and audiences give it back in droves (especially a lucky fellow or two who might get pulled onstage to dance with her).

SAKURA MATSURI

Brooklyn Botanic Garden
900 Washington Ave. at Eastern Parkway
Saturday, May 1, and Sunday, May 2, $10-$15
718-623-7200
www.bbg.org/sakura2010

There is nothing quite like hanami in Brooklyn, the annual cherry blossom viewing at the botanic garden. More than two hundred flowering Japanese cherry trees are expected to be in bloom this weekend for the Sakura Matsuri, a two-day festival of dance, music, art, workshops, food, workshops, and nature that always attracts large crowds excited to experience the pure beauty of it all. Among this year’s participants are Soh Daiko, Nihon Buyo Classical & Ryukyu Buyo Okinawan Dance, the Spring Street Haiku Group, happyfunsmile, Samurai Sword Soul, poet Enta Kusakabe, Dean Street FOO Dance, Kagero Japanese Gypsy rock, Pokémon voice artist Veronica Taylor, DJ Saiko Mikan, stand-up comic Uncle Yo, woodblock artist April Vollmer, children’s Taiko drummers Genki Daiko Team, Masayo Ishigure and the Miyabi Koto Shamisen Ensemble, and the Japanese Folk Dance Institute of NY. Special events and activities include a Mataro Ningyo dollmaking demonstration, a Sohenry-style tea ceremony, the Manga & Anime Artist Alley, a cosplay fashion show, origami paper folding, ikebana flower arranging, a children’s tattoo parlor, a high tea with the Parasol Society, Japanese hot-pot cooking, bonsai advice for home gardeners, and so much more. It’s really one of the best weekends of the year, a must-see for every New Yorker that will become an annual ritual once you experience its charm.

TWI-NY TALK: GRAHAM PARKER

Graham Parker creates his own kind of very different television on his website and new album

GRAHAM PARKER AND THE FIGGS
City Winery
155 Varick St.
Friday, April 30
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.grahamparker.net

It’s hard to believe that it’s been thirty-four years since British rocker Graham Parker first made a name for himself with the 1976 double shot of HOWLIN’ WIND and HEAT TREATMENT, two seminal albums that laid the groundwork for a complex, vaunted career that has also included such highly praised records as SQUEEZING OUT SPARKS (1979), THE MONA LISA’S SISTER (1988), and DON’T TELL COLUMBUS (2007). Over the years, Parker has written such pop gems as “Hey Lord, Don’t Ask Me Questions,” “Protection,” “Local Girls,” “Discovering Japan,” “Passion Is No Ordinary Word,” and “You Can’t Be Too Strong” as he toured the world solo as well as with a series of backup bands ranging from the legendary Rumour and the Small Clubs to the Shot and his current group, the Figgs.

Parker is out on the road these days supporting his latest release, IMAGINARY TELEVISION (Bloodshot, March 2010), a genius concept album containing eleven tunes that slide comfortably into the impressive Parker songbook, featuring inciteful and insightful, biting, ironic, and genuinely funny lyrics. Last year Parker was asked to write two theme songs on spec for a pair of television pilots; after both songs were rejected, Parker decided to create his own television network, consisting of eleven invented programs and movies for which he would write the theme songs. The result is the fabulously creative and entertaining IMAGINARY TELEVISION, which comes with a synopsis of each show instead of a lyric sheet: “Weather Report” is about an agoraphobic man obsessed with the Weather Channel, “Bring Me a Heart Again” follows the “potential cataclysmic depression” of private eye Nate Rimshot, and “Not Where You Think You Are” details the dramatic story of David “Dibby” Hrdlicka, who is participating in a government experiment testing “a substance that apparently occurs naturally inside the inner linings of lost golf balls left outside in the rough for over ten years.” The shows might sound ridiculous, but the songs are anything but, told in the classic Parker style.

Parker and the Figgs will be at City Winery on April 30; we recently caught up with him for a brief e-mail chat about his new album, his talented generation (Parker will turn sixty later this year), and life in general.

A Graham Parker show always promises a good time for all (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: Prior to being asked to write the two TV theme songs that eventually got rejected, what was your relationship, if any, with television? Were you a lover or a hater?

Graham Parker: I was about eleven years old when we finally got TV, just in time for THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW and 77 SUNSET STRIP and all those Westerns like GUNSMOKE. This is what we grew up with in England. They were probably the first shows I watched. TV is the greatest medium there is in my view.

twi-ny: City Winery seems to attract a certain brand of British-born wise-guy guitarist/songwriter with wry, cynical senses of humor; recent shows have featured Richard Thompson and Robyn Hitchcock, and Ian Hunter will be there shortly after you are. What keeps that generation of musicians still so vibrant, making exciting new records and playing terrific shows long after musicians half their age have petered out and faded away?

GP: It’s funny, my agent recently said to me that ’80s and ’90s acts can’t get arrested but ’70s acts are flying out the door. Hopefully, it’s the strength of the songwriting and the rich understanding of multiple musical styles. We were able to mine the ’60s musical explosion more adeptly because we were so much nearer to that period than people born in the ’70s.

twi-ny: Among the songs on the new album is “Always Greener.” A visit to your website, which includes a video of you and your son playing in the snow, makes it look like you’re pretty darn happy, not worrying about the color of anyone else’s grass. How’s life these days?

GP: I’m affected by the world around me, of course, and it brings me down like everyone else, but as I get older I find myself living in an imaginary landscape like the one you see in “Sunglass(es) The Graham Parker Show.” I think I’m losing my mind, but it’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

SHOTGUN LOVER

Nashville foursome will shoot it out on Ludlow St. on April 25

Piano’s
158 Ludlow St. at Stanton St.
Sunday, April 25, $8, 9:00
212-505-3733
www.myspace.com/shotgunlovermusic
www.pianosnyc.com

Barely together for a year, Nashville’s Shotgun Lover is introducing themselves via their hot five-track EP, AU REVOIR (which is currently streaming for free here). The debut disc, which comes out April 27, features killer guitar riffs, and we mean that literally; the guitars feel like they are about to cut right through your heart and soul. “I got a woman / She ain’t no good for me / She loves to watch me fall / She hates to watch me bleed,” they sing on the album opener, “Oh No, Yeah, Yeah,” which instantly announces that they are the real deal, playing loud, no-holds-barred southern rock with big choruses. The band borrows liberally from the Red Hot Chili Peppers on “Try and Try” before exploding with “Dying Man Blues” and then incorporating techno-indie sounds on “I’ll Be Around,” which we hope is true, and not just for this one gig at Piano’s on April 25. Singer-guitarist Andrew Nelson, background vocalist and guitarist Blount Floyd, bass player Nathan Roland, and drummer Chris Johnston are scheduled to go on at 9:00, followed by Forest Fires at 10:00 and Organs at 11:00. Get ready for some serious guitar-slinging.

bobrauschenbergamerica

bobrauschenbergamerica returns to New York City for an extended run at DTW (photo by Richard Termine)

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
April 23 – May 16, $25
212-924-0077
www.dtw.org
www.siti.org

In October 2003, New York City-based SITI Company presented bobrauschenbergamerica at BAM’s Harvey Theater. The production is now back for an extended run at Dance Theater Workshop as part of the Guest Artist Series, with cast and crew Talk Backs following the April 27, May 4, and May 11 performances. Here’s our original review; please note that we have not seen the current show, so some aspects, of course, might have changed: Playwright Charles L. Mee and director Anne Bogart’s Americana romp is set on a perpendicular American flag with openings a la LAUGH-IN, wherein characters will suddenly appear, sometimes in the midst of showering. The multitalented cast features a biker, a homeless man, a bikini babe, a prom queen, a roller-skating cheerleader, a gay man, a white professional man, a black man in love, and artist Bob Rauschenberg’s mother. Making art out of everyday objects, the show is an avant-garde collage of American apple pie, featuring such songs as “Love Will Keep Us Together,” a picnic with fried chicken, a human martini, Ping-Pong balls, a swinging tire, and text from Rauschenberg, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Walt Whitman and Merce Cunningham. “Art was not a part of our lives,” Bob’s mother says to the audience several times. But it is surely a part of her son’s vision of America, making for a wacky, wild, and fun night.

TRIBECA FILM: sex & drugs & rock & roll

Andy Serkis gives many reasons to be cheerful channeling Ian Dury in biopic

sex & drugs & rock & roll (Mat Whitecross, 2010)
Saturday, April 24, Village East, 9:00
Monday, April 26, SVA Theater, 3:00
Wednesday, April 28, SVA Theater, 11:00 pm
Thursday, April 29, Village East, 11:30 pm
May 5-11, Tribeca Cinemas
www.tribecafilm.com

British actor Andy Serkis, who has appeared in such diverse roles as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Rigaud in the widely hailed 2008 LITTLE DORRIT miniseries, transforms himself into punk rocker Ian Dury in the biopic sex & drugs & rock & roll. Directed by documentarian Mat Whitecross (THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE), the film follows Dury as an adult desperate to make it in the music biz, putting his career ahead of his family. The first half is awkward to watch, as there is not much to like about the character, a nasty, self-centered brute with a huge chip on his shoulder who leaves his caring wife (Olivia Williams) for a young fan (Naomie Harris). But as Whitecross and actor-turned-writer Paul Viragh reveal more of Dury’s past, centering on his relationship with his father (Ray Winstone) and being confined to a poorly run hospital after he contracted polio, Dury becomes a more compelling figure, especially as success approaches. Serkis does all his own singing in the film, set to newly recorded versions of such Ian Dury and the Blockheads classics as “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick,” “What a Waste,” “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3,” and the title song. The soundtrack was composed by Dury’s longtime collaborator, Blockhead Chaz Jankel (played by a bland Tom Hughes), who also served as a consultant on the film. It takes a while to get going, but once it does, sex & drugs & rock & roll grabs you, anchored by Serkis’s remarkable performance. Following the film’s four screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival, it will be shown May 5-11 at Tribeca Cinemas as part of the Tribeca Film in Theaters program.