this week in music

MUSEUM OF CALM — IN CONVERSATION: HOLLAND ANDREWS WITH MORGAN BASSICHIS

Vocalist, composer, and performance artist Holland Andrews will discuss Museum of Calm on March 24 (photo by Maria Baranova)

Who: Holland Andrews, Morgan Bassichis
What: Live discussion about streaming performance film
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center Zoom
When: Wednesday, March 24, free with RSVP, 8:00 (film available through March 29)
Why: Baryshnikov Arts Center’s free digital spring season continues with Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm, a sixteen-minute performance filmed by Tatyana Tenenbaum at BAC’s John Cage & Merce Cunningham Studio on West Thirty-Seventh St. “For me, a lot of what I had been focusing on was channeling all of my focus on my interior world,” Andrews, who previously recorded albums under the name Like a Villain, says in a video introduction. “And meditation, thinking a lot about tending to what was going on inside of my emotional world because, with everything from the external being cut off, this was all I had,” they add, bringing their hands to their chest. “So the idea of Museum of Calm is your own self being your Museum of Calm, whether or not you like it because, you know, what we were attached to in finding peace, in finding calm, had been taken away.”

In the piece, a barefoot Andrews (Wordless, There You Are), whose recent Onè at Issue Project Room dealt with ancestral loss, family tragedy, and healing, incorporates a yellow ball — the kind generally used in physical therapy, but here it is more involved with psychological therapy as Andrews roams the empty studio, beautifully vocalizes words and melodies into a microphone (“I spent so much time feeling I was no good”; “How do I feel better?”), plays the clarinet, layers the different sounds into an audio palimpsest using foot pedals, and watches the sun set over the Hudson River. On March 24 at 8:00 — the day Afterwardsness, their collaboration with Bill T. Jones, was scheduled to premiere at the Park Avenue Armory but had to be postponed indefinitely because some members of the company contracted Covid even in their bubble — Andrews will take part in a live Zoom discussion and Q&A with performer and author Morgan Bassichis (The Odd Years, Nibbling the Hand That Feeds Me) about the BAC commission. The lovely and moving recording of Museum of Calm will be available on YouTube through March 29 at 5:00.

THE ACTING COMPANY: IN PROCESS

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT SERIES
The Acting Company
March 23 – May 19, free (donations accepted)
theactingcompany.org
www.youtube.com

Founded in 1972 by John Houseman and Margot Harley, the Tony-winning Acting Company has served as a training ground for hundreds of performers over the years. During the pandemic, they are looking inside artistic creation with “In Process,” a series of online presentations written by and starring alumni. From March 23 to 26, you can stream Luis Quintero’s Hip Hop Therapy, a preview of a concept album in which Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a therapist for out-of-work actors. That is followed March 26-29 with an untitled piece by Joshua David Robinson and Susanna Stahlmann consisting of poems written in response to the protests of the summer of 2020. And March 29 to April 1 sees Jimonn Cole’s Chickens, in which Megan Bartle, Zo Tipp, and Rich Topol portray fowl creatures living on Michael Potts’s farm. Each short play will also include a Q&A with Tatiana Wechsler. After a break, “In Process” returns April 21-25 with Muse, a new play written and directed by Tom Alan Robbins, starring Dakin Matthews as a painter and Helen Cespedes as an aspiring artist and his inspiration, followed May 24 with a virtual adaptation of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer-winning Anna in the Tropics, directed by Alejandro Rodriguez. All events can be watched for free on YouTube, although donations will be accepted, to be split between the Acting Company and Jeffrey Wright’s Brooklyn for Life!, a nonprofit that supports Brooklyn health-care workers and small businesses, primarily restaurants.

VISION RESIDENCY: RAJA FEATHER KELLY

Tuçe Yasak’s Light Journals kicks off raja feather kelly’s Ars Nova Vision Residency

VISION RESIDENCY
Ars Nova
March 20 – April 9, $10 per show
arsnovanyc.com/SUPRA
thefeath3rtheory.com

It’s time to face facts: This is raja feather kelly’s world; we’re only living in it. Kelly is an Obie-winning choreographer, director, artistic director of the feath3r theory, and creative associate at Juilliard who has been involved with such productions as Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die at Second Stage, Electric Lucifer at the Kitchen, A Strange Loop and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka at Playwrights Horizons, Fireflies at the Atlantic, and Fairview at Soho Rep and TFANA. In December he premiered his solo performance installation Hysteria in the glassed-in lobby at New York Live Arts, for which he is also making the film Wednesday, a queer-fantasia reimagining of Dog Day Afternoon that he offered a sneak peek of at a wild watch party also in December. He will be bringing back Hysteria for encore performances April 8-10.

Kelly is now curating Ars Nova’s Vision Residency program, featuring presentations by four creators: Tuçe Yasak, Tislarm Bouie, L Morgan Lee, and Emily Wells, running March 20 to April 9. “There is no separation between who these people are as artists and who they are as people. Their work is indelible and one of a kind,” kelly said in a statement. The Ars Nova Supra events begin March 20 with Yasak’s virtual installation Light Journals, inspired by poetry by Rumi, followed March 25 by Bouie’s dance film on Black masculinity, THUG; a reading on April 8 of The Women, the working title of a play in progress, led by L Morgan Lee and kelly as Kirsten Childs, Dane Figueroa Edidi, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Christine Toy Johnson, Bianca Leigh, Carmen LoBue, and Nia Witherspoon explore what it means to be a woman in today’s society; and, on April 9, kelly & Wells’s Artifact, a listening and viewing party previewing their work-in-progress Album and Opera. Tickets to each show are $10; a monthly subscription to Ars Nova’s Supra digital platform is $15. Kelly is one of seven 2020–21 Vision Residents; the others are Starr Busby, nicHi douglas, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jenny Koons, David Mendizábal, and Rona Siddiqui.

VIRTUAL ST. PATRICK’S DAY 2021

On March 14, 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio stated, “I am not ready today at this hour to say, let’s have a city with no bars, no restaurants, no rec centers, no libraries. I’m not there.” But he was there the next day, shutting down the city while allowing St. Patrick’s Day revelers one last chance to become superspreaders, letting them have one final party night on March 16. A year later, Gotham has suffered 775,000 cases and more than 30,000 deaths, so for 2021, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be virtual, but restaurants are back open. For those who are not planning on cramming into any pubs quite yet, there are several online gatherings to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland.

The parade, a New York City institution since 1762, will be virtual in 2021, honoring first responders and essential workers. There will be events all day long, from a livestreamed mass and a composite of previous parades to live entertainment and interviews.

The Gingold Theatrical Group, which is dedicated to the work of George Bernard Shaw, is hosting a livestreamed Irish Poetry Slam with Robert Cuccioli, Tyne Daly, Melissa Errico, Jessica Hecht, Daniel Jenkins, Andrea Marcovicci, Tonya Pinkins, Thom Sesma, Renee Taylor, Sally Wilfert, Karen Ziemba, and others taking part in an open mic night beginning at 6:00 (admission is free with advance RSVP), with people contributing poetry, songs, toasts, jokes, monologues, sayings, and more, preferably by or inspired by Irish writers. “Ordinarily, we’d be having our annual Golden Shamrock Gala on the seventeenth, but . . . nope!” Gingold artistic director David Staller said in a statement. “This shindig will take place over Zoom! Not Irish? Not a problem. On St. Pat’s, we’re ALL a little Irish. This is just a party. Not a performance. Not a fundraiser. Just a chance for us all to raise a glass and be ‘together.’”

Meanwhile, Knowledge Workings Theater Company, started in 2018 by Joe Queenan, T. J. Elliott, and Marjorie Phillips Elliott, is holding its Second Annual Virtual (Not Necessarily Virtuous) St. Patrick’s Day Celebration. Anyone can participate by making their own video, following specific instructions on YouTube here and seeing what contributors posted last year. It’s free, but it you want to donate, Knowledge suggests you do so to the Irish Rep, which is presenting JM Synge’s The Aran Islands, starring Brendan Conroy, March 16-28, including 3:00 and 8:00 screenings March 17.

On Wednesday night at 8:00 GMT, Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival concludes with Barróg Lá Fhéile Phádraig, featuring performances by Lisa O’Neill, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Caoimhe Ní Fhlatharta, Seamus and Ronan Ó Flatharta, Diarmuid and Brian Mac Gloin, Cormac Begley, Ronan O’Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly, Doireann, and Siún Glackin and Mohammad Syfkhan, sharing a big virtual hug extending across the Atlantic.

A LOVE LETTER TO LIZA MINNELLI

Who: Lorna Luft, Joel Grey, Lily Tomlin, Michael York, Joan Collins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ben Vereen, Ute Lemper, Michael Feinstein, Billy Stritch, Kathie Lee Gifford, Lea Delaria, Chita Rivera, Jonathan Groff, Charles Busch, Kathy Najimy, Sandra Bernhard, Andrew Rannells, Julie Halston, John Waters, John Kander, Nathan Lane, Mario Cantone, Tony Hale, Coco Peru, John Cameron Mitchell, Andrea Martin, Michele Lee, Nicolas King, Parker Posey, Craig Ferguson, Hoda Kotb, Jason Alexander, Jim Caruso, Kathy Griffin, Neil Meron, Haley Swindal, Seth Sikes, Verdon Fosse legacy dancers
What: Seventy-fifth birthday tribute to Liza Minnelli
Where: The Town Hall via Stellar
When: Friday, March 12, $30, 8:00 (also available March 13 at 8:00 and March 14 at 7:00)
Why: On March 12, 1946, Liza May Minnelli was born to beloved actress and singer Judy Garland and Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli in Los Angeles, ultimately a family of Academy Award winners. On March 12, 2021, several dozen of Liza’s friends and admirers will gather virtually to wish the Tony-, Oscar-, and Emmy-winning star of stage and screen — Cabaret, The Sterile Cuckoo, Arthur, Liza with a Z, The Act — a very happy seventy-fifth birthday. Presented by the Town Hall, “A Love Letter to Liza Minnelli: 75th Birthday All-Star Tribute” will feature performances and appearances by a wide-ranging group of celebrities, including Joel Grey, Lily Tomlin, Joan Collins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ben Vereen, Michael Feinstein, Kathie Lee Gifford, Chita Rivera, Jonathan Groff, Charles Busch, Sandra Bernhard, Andrew Rannells, John Waters, John Kander, Nathan Lane, Mario Cantone, Andrea Martin, Michele Lee, and Kathy Griffin, along with surprise guests and never-before-seen footage of Liza.

“Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad / But the world goes ’round / Sometimes you lose every nickel you had / But the world goes ’round,” Minnelli sings in New York, New York, offering words to live by, especially during the current crises. “Somebody loses and somebody wins / And one day it’s kicks, then it’s kicks in the shins / But the planet spins, and the world goes ’round.” Of course, this is Liza’s world; we’re only living in it. Tickets to the birthday tribute are $30, with twenty percent of the proceeds benefiting the Actors Fund.

NOWHERE FEST

Nowhere Fest takes place in three-dimensional fantastical wonderlands

NOWHERE FEST
March 11-13, $5-$100
www.urnowhere.com/fest

One of the most innovative online platforms to emerge during the pandemic is Nowhere, a three-dimensional fantastical world where users’ images appear on the front of seedlike pods that can move around the location and interact with one another face-to-face. I’ve experienced it three times so far, twice for multimedia presentations from EdgeCut and New York Live Arts (NYLA), allowing participants to navigate through different virtual spaces to watch live and prerecorded dance, music, and high-tech art, and once when NYLA rolled out its upcoming season, previewing works and giving people the opportunity to speak with the artists. What feels unique is the agency each pod has, able to meet others and interact, settle in front of a virtual screen or proscenium within the virtual area, or wander off with magical flourishes. The platform, which can be pronounced “No Where” or “Now Here,” will be hosting a virtual festival March 11-13, featuring performances, panel discussions, and more in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration that Covid-19 was a global pandemic. Admission is $5 to $100, based on what you can afford, with proceeds benefiting Helping Hearts NYC, which “was created to provide aid to those affected the most during this time, and to those on the front line saving lives.”

Nowhere digital platform offers new way to experience live events with other people (screenshot by twi-ny/mdr)

Nowhere Fest celebrates the technological advances made over the last twelve months to connect people when they couldn’t physically be together in the same space. Jen Lyon, Liz Tallent, Patrick Wilson, Stephen Chilton, and Becca Higgins of the National Independent Venue Association will talk about their industry and the Save Our Stages Act. Columbia University Rabbi Irwin Kula, the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, will meet with Kristina Libby, the CEO and founder of SoCu and the Social Works Co., and chair professor Robert Wolcott, cofounder of the World Innovation Network. Athena Demos, Michael “Danger Ranger” Mikel, and Damian Madray will look at the future of Burning Man. Tony winner Christine Jones, director Tamilla Woodard, and actor-writer Shyla Lefner will discuss the success of the Theatre for One program “Here We Are,” in which one actor at a time performed for one audience member, with microphones and cameras on for both. Heidi Boisvert and Kat Mustatea of EdgeCut will lead a conversation with artists about the development of hybrid live performances. Group.BR will delve into its use of the Gather.town digital platform in its reimagining of its immersive, site-specific Inside the Wild Heart. EMBC Studio goes behind the scenes of its recharge rooms.

People can meet face-to-face and watch live performances and talks at Nowhere Fest

There will also be appearances, performances, demonstrations, and talks by comedian Chris Gethard, mentalist and mind reader Vinny Deponto, Shasta Geaux Pop, world champion whistler Lauren Elder, singer-songwriter Andrew McMahon, QuarMega, House of Yes & Elsewhere, Macy Schmidt of Broadway Sinfonietta, Deep End NYC, the Feast + Art Plus People, wellness innovator Leah Siegel, Hoovie cofounder Vallejo Gantner, Pete Vigeant of Completely Surrounded Games, poet Mason Granger, filmmaker Storm Saulter, MICRO DIY MUSEUMS founder Charles Philipp, Robert Siegel and Scott Simon of NPR, magician Greg Dubin, DJ Passionfruit, DJ MSG, Globally Curated founder Megs Rutigliano, photographer Will O’Hare, and strategy and design consultant and musician Alain Sylvain. Attending Nowhere Fest might just be the best five-dollar entertainment purchase you make during the pandemic (of course, give more if you can), introducing you to the future of live, online performance once we’re on the other side of this crisis.

USE YOUR HEAD FOR MORE: DIGITAL PREMIERE AND LIVE CONVERSATION

Who: Justin Hicks, Meshell Ndegeocello
What: Live conversation about Hicks’s Use Your Head for More
Where: Baryshnikov Arts Center Zoom
When: Wednesday, February 24, free with RSVP, 8:00 (Use Your Head for More available on demand through March 1 at 5:00)
Why: On February 24 at 8:00, multidisciplinary artist and performer Justin Hicks, who was born in Cincinnati and is based in the Bronx, will be joined by DC-born singer-songwriter, musician, and ten-time Grammy nominee Meshell Ndegeocello to talk about Hicks’s world premiere commission from the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Use Your Head for More, which is streaming for free through March 1 at 5:00. The half-hour piece is an experimental audiovisual poem with spoken text based on a 2004 conversation Hicks had with his mother, found sound and background vocal samples from members of his family, and rich, dreamlike imagery, from empty corners and doors to a wrinkled hand repeatedly rubbing a wall, all bathed in a golden glow and filmed in his home. “The saying ‘Use your head for more than a hatrack’ became a song my mom wrote as a reminder to her children that mining your imagination offers a way to create lushness with little at hand,” Hicks said in a statement. “She would also use it in moments to let us know that your brain is much more valuable than anything you could acquire. She used songs to remind us of things that kept us safe.”

Use Your Head for More, which features editing by Breck Omar Brunson, lighting by Tuce Yasak, cinematography and styling by Kenita Miller-Hicks, and vocals by Jade Hicks and Jasmine Hicks, is part of the BAC Artist Commissions initiative, which was started in September 2020 to support new online works made during the COVID-19 pandemic; Mariana Valencia’s brownout premieres March 1, followed by Holland Andrews’s Museum of Calm March 15-29, Stefanie Batten Band’s Kolonial May 3-17, Tei Blow’s The Sprezzaturameron May 17-31, and Kyle Marshall’s STELLAR June 7-21.