this week in music

UNRAVELLED

Dr. Bruce Miller (Leo Marks) meets with Anne Adams (Lucy Davenport) and her husband, Robert (Rob Nagle), in Jake Broder’s UnRavelled (photo by Corwin Evans)

UNRAVELLED
The Global Brain Health Institute / Trinity College Dublin
Available on demand through April 30, free
www.gbhi.org/unravelled

One of the most fascinating plays of the Zoom era comes to us from an unlikely source: the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. Jake Broder’s UnRavelled is a deeply affecting ninety-minute play that shares the true story of Canadian scientist Anne Adams, who, in 1994, at the age of fifty-three, became obsessed with Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” and made a remarkable painting based on the 1928 musical work, which Ravel composed for dancer Ida Rubenstein in 1928, when he was fifty-three. As it turns out, both Adams and Ravel had the same serious brain disease that affects memory while lighting a creative fuse.

Directed by Nike Doukas and edited by Corwin Evans in Zoom boxes, UnRavelled stars Lucy Davenport as Anne, a mathematician, chemist, and biologist, and Rob Nagle as her husband, Robert, a traffic architectural engineer. They are trying to hold together following a serious accident involving their son, but when they continue to have trouble communicating and Anne starts spending more time by herself in her studio, listening to “Bolero” and painting, Robert begins to suspect something else is going on, and Dr. Bruce Miller (Leo Marks) ultimately confirms that.

Doukas cuts between the current reality, in color, and Anne’s imaginary conversations with Ravel (Conor Duffy) about art, love, and science, usually in black-and-white. The play not only traces the intricate details of Anne’s illness but the effects it has on Robert, a gentle, caring man whose world has also been turned upside down. Prior to her submersion into “Bolero,” Anne is painting strawberries over and over, which upsets Robert. “You aren’t a painter,” he tells her. Anne responds, “You’re going to tell me what I can and can’t do?” Robert: “You’d be wasting your gifts, your experience in your field. And you will leave the world a poorer place, let alone our family.” Anne: “You don’t get to take a spiritual high ground. . . . I don’t need my choices mansplained to me, thank you. . . . I’m stopping to paint strawberries for a while, but that should be all I have to say.” Robert: “Yes, that’s true if you were some normal person and it didn’t matter, but you’re not and it does.” Later, after Anne considers leaving her chair at the university, Robert says to himself, “Seriously, who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

Anne Adams (Lucy Davenport) and Maurice Ravel (Conor Duffy) have something in common in fascinating new play (photo by Corwin Evans)

Broder includes interstitial scenes in which Dr. Miller, a neurologist who becomes Anne’s physician, is giving an intriguing lecture about modern art, while Ravel also speaks with Rubenstein (Melissa Greenspan), who has commissioned “Bolero,” which Ravel detests and can’t believe he actually wrote. “It just dumped itself into my lap all at once,” Ravel tells Anne. “At the premiere, the crowd roared. And I knew that this would be the first line of my obituary, and there is not a note of music in it.” The merging of the different aspects of science and the artistic process in the two distinct time periods works well as more information comes out about Anne’s condition. Nagle stands out among the cast, representing a kind of everyperson suddenly having to face a difficult, unexpected situation that he can’t control; he’s the character the audience can most identify with. The power of the play, which features the London Symphony Orchestra’s version of “Bolero” as well as French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau, M.30,” lies in how it develops organically, like a work of art or, sadly, an untreatable disease.

Copresented by GBHI and Trinity College Dublin, UnRavelled is streaming for free through April 30. In conjunction with the play, there are several talkbacks and panel discussions available on demand, with Broder (Our American Hamlet, His Royal Hipness Lord Buckley), Doukas UnRavelled (Red Ink, The Hothouse), GBHI codirector and UCSF Memory and Aging Center director Miller, neurologists Bill Seeley and Adit Friedberg, neuroscientist Francesca Farina, theater and dementia specialist Nicky Taylor, GBHI alumni relations manager Camellia Latta, as well as a related dance choreographed by Magda Kaczmarska.

RICHARD THOMPSON: BEESWING VIRTUAL TOUR

RICHARD THOMPSON WITH ELVIS COSTELLO
Montclair Literary Festival
Tuesday, April 6, $20 ($35 with book), 8:00
succeed2gether.org

BEESWING: RICHARD THOMPSON IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID FRICKE
92Y Online
Thursday, April 15, $10, 7:00
www.92y.org
www.richardthompson-music.com

“There is dust, and then there is dust. It’s thickest here, in my memory. This remotest room of my mind has been shut up for years, the windows shuttered, the furniture covered with dust sheets. Light hasn’t penetrated into some of these corners for years; in some cases it never has. If something is uncomfortable, I shove it in here and forget about it. When was the last time I dared look? I don’t want to remember, but now it is time to think back. The arrow is arcing through the air and speeding towards its appointed target.”

So begins British folk-rock legend Richard Thompson’s new memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967–1975 (Workman, April 2021, $27.95), written with Scott Timberg and illustrated with personal photographs. Thompson, who turned seventy-one last week, is one of the world’s finest guitarists and songwriters and a musicologist; he has made classic records with Fairport Convention, French Frith Kaiser Thompson, his then-wife, Linda Thompson, and as a solo artist. His project 1000 Years of Popular Music features tunes that go back to 1068. He peppers his extraordinary live shows with engaging patter with the audience, highlighting a snarky sense of humor and a wry smile. During the pandemic, he put on a series of living room concerts with his partner, Zara Phillips, from their home in Montclair, New Jersey, and released the six-track EP Bloody Noses, which he debuted from their house. So it is fitting that on April 6, he will be launching the book at the virtual Montclair Literary Festival, discussing it with Elvis Costello, who wrote his own memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, in 2015. Tickets are $35 with a copy of the book, $20 without.

Thompson will be back online April 15 for the 92Y presentation “Beeswing: Richard Thompson in Conversation with David Fricke,” speaking with the longtime Rolling Stone journalist about the memoir, named for one of his most popular songs, an autobiographical tune about falling in love as a teenager. “She was a rare thing / Fine as a beeswing / So fine a breath of wind might blow her away / She was a lost child / She was running wild, she said / As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay / And you wouldn’t want me any other way,” he sings. Exploring his formative years, the book features such chapters as “Instead of Bleeding,” “Yankee Hopscotch,” “Tuppenny Bangers and Damp Squibs,” and “Bright Lights.” Thompson will be bringing his guitar with him to play a couple of songs as well.

As he writes in the afterword, “Like Fairport, like so many of my contemporaries, I don’t know when to stop — and hooray for that. There are more mortgages to be paid off and bills piling up, but more motivational than that, there is still an audience. It may be twenty thousand at a festival, a thousand in a theatre or ten in a retirement home, but the desire to communicate from my heart to their heart is the strongest pull, and the sweetest feeling.” If you’re not yet part of that audience, now’s the time. Hooray for that.

HIGH LINE ART: PIANO MAGIC LIVE Q&A

Song-Ming Ang will discuss his High Line Art video installation “Piano Magic” in live, online Q&A on April 6

Who: Song Ming Ang, Melanie Kress
What: Live online artist talk
Where: The High Line Zoom
When: Tuesday, April 6, free with RSVP, 1:00 (exhibition continues through April 28)
Why: In the 2019 interview “A New Understanding of Place” for the High Line blog, associate curator Melanie Kress explained why video was part of the elevated park’s continuing celebration of site-specific public art. “When we think of public art, most of us think of murals and sculptures. But to fully showcase the range of mediums that artists are working in today, video is indispensable,” she said. “Video also has the ability to cross back and forth between many different worlds and forms at the same time — between advertising, social media, film, documentary, documentation, television, music videos, and more. It provides a really interesting place for artists to play with viewers’ expectations. In a public space, visitors aren’t necessarily expecting to encounter art — especially video art — so those lines can be blurred in all the more challenging and creative ways.”

The latest video art installation to screen on the High Line Channel at Fourteenth St. is Singapore-born artist Song-Ming Ang’s “Piano Magic,” which consists of 2014’s Backwards Bach, in which Ang, who is based in Singapore and Berlin, plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s C Major Prelude from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier on the harpsichord both forward and backward, and 2011’s Parts and Labour, in which he fixes a disused piano. On April 6 at 2:00, Ang and Kress will discuss the project, which continues through April 28, in a live Zoom Q&A. Ang is also represented at the Asia Society Triennial with the multimedia site-specific installation True Stories, twelve music stands with text and images that explore the demise of societal norms, which he detailed in the Instagram Live program “Talking Dreams: A Conversation with Artist Song-Ming Ang.”

WOOFSTOCK AT THE WINERY: EMMYLOU HARRIS AND STEVE EARLE

Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle are teaming up for livestreamed benefit concert from City Winery in Nashville

Who: Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle
What: Livestreamed benefit concert
Where: CWTV from City Winery
When: Saturday, April 3, $15, 9:00
Why: City Winery is now hosting live concerts in its new space on Eleventh Ave. at Hudson River Park, including shows by Rhett Miller, Willie Nile, and Rufus Wainwright this month, but it is also still streaming performances on its CWTV platform from its locations in New York City and Nashville. Next up is “Woofstock at the Winery: Emmylou Harris & Steve Earle,” a benefit at City Winery Nashville for Bonaparte’s Retreat, a nonprofit dog rescue organization founded by Harris in 2004 to care for “the neglected and forgotten — senior dogs, large dogs, or dogs in need of imminent medical care or surgery,” and Crossroads Campus, which fosters “the healing power of the human-animal bond.” Earle and Harris are longtime friends and musical colleagues; on his 2019 tribute album to Guy Clark, Earle is joined by Harris (and Rodney Crowell) on “Old Friends,” on which they sing together, “Old friends / They shine like diamonds / Old friends / You can always call / Old friends / Lord, you can’t buy ’em / You know it’s old friends after all.” An early, in-person show at 5:00 Nashville time was added and sold out quickly, at $125 a pop; tickets for the one-time-only livestream at 9:00 New York time are $15.

AFTERWARDSNESS

AFTERWARDSNESS
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
May 19-26, $45 (limited tickets go on sale April 1)
www.armoryonpark.org

I’ve been tentative about the return of live, indoor music, dance, and theater, wondering how comfortable I would feel in an enclosed area with other audience members and onstage performers. Many of my colleagues who cover the arts are steadfastly against going to shows right now as things open up, while others have been having a ball going to the movies and eating inside. But when I received my invitation to see Afterwardsness at the Park Avenue Armory on March 24, I surprised myself with how much immediate glee I felt, how instantly exhilarated I was to finally, at last, see a show, in the same space with actual human beings. But my excitement was broken when it was announced that several members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company had tested positive for Covid-19 and the show, which had sold out quickly, had to be postponed. But now it’s back as part of the Armory’s Social Distance Hall season, running May 19 to 26; original ticket holders will get first dibs, with remaining tickets going on sale to the general public April 1. “Creating new, body-based work at a time when physical proximity is discouraged is no small feat,” Jones said in a statement. “However, as is often the case when artists are forced to push through limitations, this is when things get really good. Having the drill hall, this grand and glorious space to create and dance in, was quite liberating. The armory is a space like no other in New York City—and if it’s like no other in New York City, then it’s pretty unique in the world.”

The sixty-five minute show, named for Freud’s concept of “a mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of sexual or traumatic meaning to earlier events,” will take place in the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, where one hundred audience members will be seated in chairs nine to twelve feet apart in all directions as the action unfolds around them. The hall has been updated with air-refreshing methods that exceed CDC and ASHRAE standards; there will be onsite testing and strict masking and social distancing policies. The work explores the isolation felt during the pandemic as well as the impact of the George Floyd protests and BLM movement. The choreography is by Tony winner Jones, with a new vocal composition by Holland Andrews, whose Museum of Calm recently streamed through the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Musical director Pauline Kim Harris will perform the violin solo “8:46” in tribute to Floyd, and there will also be new compositions by company members Vinson Fraley Jr. and Chanel Howard as well as excerpts from Olivier Messaien’s 1941 chamber piece Quartet for the End of Time, written while he was a POW in a German prison. The lighting is by Brian H. Scott, with sound by Mark Grey. The inaugural program at the armory is now Social! The Social Distance Dance Club, a collaboration between Steven Hoggett, Christine Jones, and David Byrne that runs April 9-22 and gives each audience member their own spotlight in which to move to choreography by Yasmine Lee.

SHOMYO: BUDDHIST RITUAL CHANT MOONLIGHT MANTRA

Who: Shomyo no Kai — Voices of a Thousand Years
What: An evening of shomyo Buddhist ritual chant
Where: Japan Society and University of Chicago
When: Tuesday, March 30, $12-$15, 8:00 (available through April 30)
Why: Japan Society and the University of Chicago have teamed up to present a concert by the vocal group Shomyo no Kai — Voices of a Thousand Years, which specializes in rarely heard early chanting rituals. On March 30 at 8:00, the company’s performance of a new work, Moonlight Mantra (Tsuki no Kogon), by female composer Yu Kuwabara, will premiere, available on demand through April 30. Part of Carnegie Hall’s “Voices of Hope” festival, the concert was held in the eight-hundred-year-old An’yo-in Temple in Tokyo, with the group, founded in 1997 by Rev. Yusho Kojima and Rev. Kojun Arai of the Shingon sect and Rev. Koshin Ebihara and Rev. Jiko Kyoto of the Tendai sect, wearing traditional monastic robes and moving slowly throughout the sacred space. (In March 2014, Shomyo no Ka made its North American debut at St. Bartholomew’s Church as part of a tour organized by Japan Society.) The online premiere will be followed by a live Q&A. In addition, there will be a “Shomyo for Everyday Wellness” online workshop on April 8 ($5, 8:30), in which participants can practice shomyo with the monks. “Voices of Hope” continues through April with such other events as “Ayodele Casel: Chasing Magic,” “Ephrat Asherie Dance: Odeon,” “Different Strokes / Different Folks: Queer Artists of Color Paint the 21st Century,” “Voices of Hope: True Stories of Resilience, Recovery, and Renewal,” and “American Voices: Selected Piano Works by Black and Native American Composers.”

BROADWAY BACKWARDS 2021

Who: Chasten Buttigieg, Ariana DeBose, Debra Messing, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Tony Shalhoub, Ben Vereen, Stephanie J. Block, Deborah Cox, Lea Salonga, Amy Adams, Debbie Allen, Matt Bomer, Brenda Braxton, Len Cariou, Glenn Close, Loretta Devine, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, James Monroe Iglehart, Cheyenne Jackson, Cherry Jones, L Morgan Lee, Raymond J. Lee, Aasif Mandvi, Eric McCormack, Michael McElroy, Debra Messing, Ruthie Ann Miles, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Jessie Mueller, Javier Muñoz, Kelli O’Hara, Karen Olivo, Jim Parsons, Bernadette Peters, Eve Plumb, Roslyn Ruff, Sis, Elizabeth Stanley, Tony Yazbeck, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Robin Roberts, Robert Creighton, Danyel Fulton, Eileen Galindo, Sam Gravitte, Sheldon Henry, Diana Huey, Aaron Libby, Nathan Lucrezio, Melinda Porto, Shelby Ringdahl, Vishal Vaidya, Blake Zolfo
What: Benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
Where: Broadway Cares and YouTube
When: Tuesday, March 30, free, 8:00 (available on demand through April 3)
Why: Mayor DeBlasio has announced that he expects Broadway to reopen in September, but that doesn’t mean the forty-one official theaters will be hosting shows come the fall. In the meantime, we have to keep quenching our thirst with Zoom readings, filmed stagings, and virtual gala celebrations. Next up is “Broadway Backwards,” premiering March 30 at 8:00 and available on demand through April 3. The benefit for Broadway Cares and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City, which honors gender diversity and love, began in 2006, raising $7,325, rising each year until it reached $704,491 in 2019; the 2020 edition, scheduled for March 16, was canceled because of the coronavirus.

It has now returned with a vengeance, featuring clips from previous shows (Tituss Burgess, Len Cariou, Carolee Carmello, Darren Criss, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Debra Monk, Andrew Rannells, Chita Rivera, Lillias White, more), appeals from Chasten Buttigieg, Ariana DeBose, Debra Messing, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Tony Shalhoub, and Ben Vereen, and new performances from such major names as Stephanie J. Block, Amy Adams, Debbie Allen, Glenn Close, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cheyenne Jackson, Cherry Jones, Eric McCormack, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Jessie Mueller, Kelli O’Hara, Karen Olivo, Jim Parsons, and Bernadette Peters. This year’s edition is centered around Jay Armstrong Johnson portraying a lonely New Yorker navigating the Covid-19-riddled city with the help of a late-night TV host played by Jenn Colella. The show is written and directed by event creator Robert Bartley, with Mary-Mitchell Campbell as music supervisor, Ted Arthur as music director, and Eamon Foley as director of photography and video editor. It’s free to watch, but donations will be accepted to help members of the LGBTQ community and others who have been significantly impacted by the health crisis and pandemic lockdown.