this week in music

CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND

(photo by Joan Marcus)

The actors double as a music group in Lauren Yee’sCambodian Rock Band at the Signature (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center, the Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through March 15, $55-$65
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Back when pop music was released on actual records, artists in the 1970s would often put their best songs on side one of their albums, knowing that many people would rarely get off the couch, go to the turntable, and flip the disc to hear the other side. In Cambodian Rock Band, Lauren Yee’s play with music about the second-generation immigrant experience and the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79, it’s side two that is much better, but not quite enough to save the overall proceedings at the Signature Theatre.

Cambodian Rock Band was inspired both by Dengue Fever, a 2000s California band that resurrected the lost Cambodian psychedelic sounds of the 1970s, and the true story of Kang Kek Iew, aka Duch (Francis Jue), a math teacher whom the Khmer Rouge turned into the coldblooded head of Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21. The end of pop music in Cambodia and the rise of war criminals like Duch are, of course, related, and Duch serves as a kind of host/narrator in the show, jovially introducing several scenes, watching from the wings, and joining the band before becoming a key figure in the story’s second half. Yee focuses on the relationship between Neary (Courtney Reed), a young American of Cambodian descent who works for the International Center for Transitional Justice in Phnom Penh, and her father, Chum (Joe Ngo), a Cambodian immigrant who has returned to his homeland for the first time in decades in order to bring his daughter back to the United States. But Neary is on a big case, attempting to take down Duch as she searches for the eighth survivor of S-21, an eyewitness who can help put Duch away for life, to make him pay for his vicious crimes. Neary is working and living with Ted (Moses Villarama), a Canadian of Thai and Cambodian background; he is surprised when her father’s unexpected appearance on Cambodian New Year’s Eve causes her to doubt herself. “You’re working to convict the first Khmer Rouge official to be tried for crimes against humanity. You are a rock star, Near,” he assures her. But it all starts making sense when she figures out who the eighth survivor is and the action flashes back to S-21, highlighting both the torture and the bravery under Brother Number One Pol Pot’s brutal policies.

(photo by Joan Marcus)

Chum (Joe Ngo) is forced to admit secrets to his daughter (Courtney Reed) in play set in Cambodia (photo by Joan Marcus)

The show moves between 1975, 1978, and 2008; in 1975, Chum is the guitarist in a Cambodian rock band known as the Cyclos that specializes in psychedelic surf garage rock, with Villarama as bassist Leng, Reed as lead vocalist Sothea, Abraham Kim as drummer Rom, and Jane Lui as keyboardist Pou. (Kim and Lui also portray minor characters.) The music they play are Cambodian rock songs that were discovered in the 1990s, mostly from bands from the 1960s and ’70s that did not survive the genocide; one of the first things the Khmer Rouge did upon taking over was to kill artists. The Cyclos, named for the three-wheeled bicycle that is pervasive in Cambodia, perform numbers by Yol Aularong, Ros Serey Sothea, Sinn Sisamouth, and Voy Ho, who were all murdered, as well as originals by LA-based Dengue Fever. Most of the songs are sung in Cambodian without translation, about love and heartbreak, but some have more relevant lyrics, so it’s too bad there are no surtitles. “The windy season makes me think of my village / I think of the old people, young people, aunts and uncles / We used to run and play, hide and seek / But now we are far apart far apart,” they sing in one.

(photo by Joan Marcus)

Francis Jue portrays a math teacher turned vicious prison head in Cambodian Rock Band (photo by Joan Marcus)

Takeshi Kata’s effective sets range from a hotel bedroom with a view of the street (the sign about the piranha is purposefully misspelled, yes?) to one of the cells in S-21; Linda Cho’s costumes for the band are downright groovy, while Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design immerses you in the action. The music is excellent, but there’s too much of it; unfortunately, it makes you feel like you’re at a concert, which takes you out of the play. Yee (The Great Leap, King of the Yees) and director Chay Yew (Mojada, Low) have trouble establishing a rhythm; the setlist/narrative is a bumpy road that never quite comes together. Jue (Soft Power Kung Fu) has fun as the villainous Jue, and Reed shuttles smoothly between Neary and Sothea, but Ngo, whose parents are survivors and who helped develop the show with Yee, overplays Chum, who is often too goofy and too loud. A finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Cambodian Rock Band has an important story to tell, but it ends up like one of those albums in your collection that has some great songs on it that you rarely listen to all the way through.

ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON & THE BAND

Documentary explores the history and legacy of the Band from a singular point of view

Documentary explores the history and legacy of the Band from a singular point of view

ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON & THE BAND (Daniel Roher, 2019)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, February 21
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

The opening night selection of the tenth annual DOC NYC festival, Daniel Roher’s Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson & the Band is an intimate, if completely one-sided, look inside one of the greatest, most influential music groups in North American history. The film was inspired by Band cofounder Robbie Robertson’s 2016 memoir, Testimony, offering his take on the Band’s ups and downs, famous battles, and ultimate breakup. “I don’t know of any other group of musicians with a story equivalent to the story of the Band, and it was a beautiful thing. It was so beautiful it went up in flames,” Robertson, sitting in a chair in a vast, empty room, guitars hanging on the wall far behind him, says. The setup puts the focus on Robertson’s individuality, his alone-ness, in what others trumpet as a collection of extraordinary musicians. “There is no band that emphasizes coming together and becoming greater than the sum of their parts, than the Band. Simply their name: The Band. That was it,” fan Bruce Springsteen says. “I was in great awe of their brotherhood. It was the soul of the Band,” notes Eric Clapton, who says he wanted to join the group made up of singer-songwriter and guitarist Robertson, singer and bassist Rick Danko, singer and keyboardist Richard Manuel, singer and drummer Levon Helm, and keyboardist and accordionist Garth Hudson.

When Robertson, who was born in Toronto in 1943, talks about his childhood — his mother was born on the Six Nations of the Grand River Indian reserve, which had a profound effect on him musically, and his biological father was a Jewish gangster, although he was raised by an abusive stepfather — the film is revelatory, with archival photographs and live footage of Robertson’s early bands and his time with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. Robertson shares mesmerizing anecdotes about going electric with Bob Dylan, recording the Basement Tapes in a house called Big Pink, and discussing his craft. “I don’t have much of a process of like I’m thinking about this, and now I’m going to write a song and it’s gonna be about that,” he explains. “A lot of times, the creative process is trying to catch yourself off guard. And you sit down and you’ve got a blank canvas and you don’t know what you’re gonna do and you just see what happens.”

Hawkins speaks glowingly of his protégé Robertson, who wrote his first songs for Hawkins when he was only fifteen. Roher also talks to executive producer Martin Scorsese, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, record producer John Simon, road manager Jonathan Taplin, equipment manager Bill Scheele, photographer John Scheele, Asylum Records creator David Geffen, and musicians Dylan, Taj Mahal, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, and Jimmy Vivino, who all rave about Robertson and the Band. “They were totally in love with their music, and they were in love with each other,” photographer Elliott Landy says. “I never saw any jealousy, I never saw any arguments, I never saw them disagree. They were always supporting each other. They were five brothers, very clearly five brothers who loved each other, and I never saw anything but that.”

Of course, Roher cannot talk to Manuel, Danko, and Helm, who are all dead, and Hudson did not participate in the documentary. Robertson and his wife, Dominique, paint a harrowing picture of the Band’s severe strife as drugs and alcohol tear them apart. There’s really no one, aside from a brief point made by guitarist Larry Campbell, to offer an opposing view to Robertson’s tale, which puts him on a golden throne despite some very public disagreements, particularly with Helm over songwriting credit and royalties. Robertson speaks enthusiastically and intelligently throughout the film, but it’s clear from the get-go that these are his carefully constructed, perhaps selective memories about what happened. But Roher doesn’t disguise that conceit; the film is named after one of Robertson’s solo songs, and the second half of the title is, after all, Robbie Robertson & the Band, as if Robertson is separate from the rest.

One of the main surprises is Robertson’s claim that the Last Waltz concert at Winterland in 1976 was not meant as a farewell but just a pause; Roher and Robertson fail to point out that the group continued to tour and record without Robertson. On his sixth solo album, Sinematic, which was released last September, Robertson has a song about the Band, the aforementioned “Once Were Brothers,” that can be heard at the start of the film. “Oh, once were brothers / Brothers no more / We lost a connection / After the war / There’ll be no revival / There’ll be no one cold / Once were brothers / Brothers no more,” Robertson sings. “When that curtain comes down / We’ll let go of the past / Tomorrow’s another day / Some things weren’t meant to last.” It’s a sad testament to a storied legacy, packed with amazing photos and live clips that make it a must-see for fans of the group. Once Were Brothers opens at IFC on February 21, with music photographer Elliott Landy, who appears in the film, participating in a Q&A at the 7:45 show Friday night.

MARC COHN VALENTINE’S DAY SHOW

Marc Cohn will perform annual Valentine’s Day concert this year at the Society for Ethical Culture

Marc Cohn will perform annual Valentine’s Day concert this year at the Society for Ethical Culture

The Concert Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 West 64th St. at Central Park West
Friday, February 14, $35-$75, 7:30
www.metropolitanpresents.com
www.marccohnmusic.com

“Down by the boathouse at Shaker Lake / When there wasn’t nothing but love to make / They were two young lovers wishing on the stars above / Well, they carved their initials in an old birch tree / With a heart and an arrow and a ’sixty-three / You had to be blind not to see / It was a perfect love,” Ohio-born singer-songwriter Marc Cohn sings on “Perfect Love,” a track from his 1991 self-titled debut album. Cohn is likely to perform that song, and many other favorites about love, hope, faith, and heartbreak, when he comes to New York City for his annual Valentine’s Day show, February 14 at the Concert Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture. An honorary member of the Blind Boys of Alabama, with whom he recorded the 2019 album Work to Do, Cohn survived a shooting in 2005, after which he released several live and studio albums and has toured relentlessly. He can be seen often at City Winery, which is presenting the Valentine’s Day shindig with Metropolitan Entertainment. Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Mark Erelli, whose new album, Blindsided, comes out next month, will open the show. Continuing the romantic theme, Cohn will also be at the Beacon Theatre on March 12 as part of the Love Rocks NYC benefit for God’s Love We Deliver! with Dave Matthews, Chris & Rich Robinson, Jackson Browne, Cyndi Lauper, Warren Haynes, Joss Stone, Macy Gray, and others, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, Paul Shaffer, Jeff Garlin, and Ellie Kemper.

ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER: MITTEN WIR IM LEBEN SIND / BACH6CELLOSUITEN

(photo by Anne Van Aerschot)

The North American premiere of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas’ Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind/Bach6Cellosuiten takes place at the Skirball Center this week (photo by Anne Van Aerschot)

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl.
February 13-15, $50-$60, 7:30
212-998-4941
nyuskirball.org
www.rosas.be/en

If you haven’t seen Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas perform in New York City, you haven’t been paying attention. She and her company have presented A Love Supreme at New York Live Arts in 2017, Six Brandenburg Concertos at Park Avenue Armory in 2018, and Transfigured Night at Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2019. This week de Keersmaeker and Rosas are performing the North America premiere of Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind / Bach6Cellosuiten (In the Midst of Life / Bach’s Cello Suites) at NYU’s Skirball Center, a series of solos accompanied by master French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, who plays a 1696 cello by Gioffredo Cappa, with de Keersmaeker joining each dancer for a duet.

The two-hour piece, which debuted at the 2017 Ruhrtriennale in Germany in 2017, consists of six Bach sections written between 1717 and 1723 (BWV 1007-1012) — the allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets, and gigue — created with and danced by Boštjan Antončič, Marie Goudot, Julien Monty, Michaël Pomero, and De Keersmaeker. The stark staging, in which the dancers move across a black space around a seated Queyras, with swirling white chalk marks and green and red tape placed on the light-colored floor, features costumes by An D’Huys, sound by Alban Moraud, and lighting by Luc Schaltin. The title comes from Martin Luther’s version of the Latin antiphon “Media vita in morte sumus”; the Lutheran hymn reads, in part: “In the midst of life / We are in death / Who shall help us in the strife / Lest the Foe confound us? / Thou only, Lord, Thou only!” In addition, Bach wrote a freestanding chorale (BWV 383) based on Luther’s three-stanza liturgy; de Keersmaeker has also discussed how she saw the Luther quote on the tombstone of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch. The February 14 show will be followed by a talk with de Keersmaeker and Queyras, moderated by Center for Ballet and the Arts founder and director Jennifer Homans.

FIRST SATURDAYS: FUTURA NOIR

Common will sit down for a fireside chat as part of Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program this week

Common will sit down for a fireside chat as part of Brooklyn Museum First Saturday program this week

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 1, free (some events require advance tickets), 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum has a wide-ranging program with several surprises for its annual Black History Month edition of its free First Saturday gathering. There will be live performances by Topaz Jones, Niles Luther, NVR Sleep (Rodney Hazard, Mikey, Fab Roc, and ClassicNewWave), and Bri Blvck; an Ancestral Healing sound bath from HealHaus, with intention-setting by Omar Davis and a sound bath facilitated by Phyllicia Bonanno; a screening of Billy Gerard Frank’s 2019 short film Second Eulogy: Mind the Gap, followed by a talkback with artist and activist Renee Cox, artist Christopher Udemezue, and Frank, moderated by writer and curator Ebony L. Haynes; a Scholar Talk with Niama Safia Sandy on race, power, nationalism, and imperialism; a curator tour of “Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley” led by Lisa Small and Eugenie Tsai; teen apprentice pop-up gallery talks focusing on works by Black artists in the American Art galleries; a hands-on art workshop where participants can make an urban garden, inspired by Kehinde Wiley; a poetry reading with Osyris Antham, Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, and Cyrée Jarelle Johnson; and “Real People: A Fireside Chat with Common,” a conversation with artist, actor, and activist Common (Lonnie Rashid Lynn), moderated by Peloton cycling instructor Tunde Oyeneyin. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley,” “Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” “One: Xu Bing,” “JR: Chronicles,” and more.

BLACK WOMEN — TRAILBLAZING AFRICAN AMERICAN ACTRESSES & IMAGES, 1920 – 2001: WITHIN OUR GATES

Within Our Gates

Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) seeks to raise money to expand education for black children in Within Our Gates

WITHIN OUR GATES (Oscar Micheaux, 1920) / ST. LOUIS BLUES (Dudley Murphy, 1929)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, January 28, 6:35
Series continues through February 13
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

#OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoMale have you disappointed and mad? Film Forum is offering just the medicine with its four-week, sixty-film festival “Black Women: Trailblazing African American Actresses & Images, 1920 – 2001.” Running through February 13, the wide-ranging series consists of movies starring Hattie McDaniel, Dorothy Dandridge, Cicely Tyson, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Diana Ross, Angela Bassett, Diahann Carroll, Oprah Winfrey, Juanita Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Abbey Lincoln, Gloria Foster, Ella Fitzgerald, Vonetta McGee, Alfre Woodard, Lonette McKee, Lynn Whitfield, Janet Jackson, Queen Latifah, Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson, Whitney Houston, Halle Berry, and many others, made by black, white, male, and female directors. The oldest film being presented is the oldest surviving film made by an African American director, Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, on January 28 at 6:35. A response to D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Micheaux’s film, released in 1920 after trouble with the censor board, packs a whole lot into its seventy-nine minutes, giving the film an epic feel as it deals with violent crime, rape, slavery, poverty, education, love quadrangles, Jim Crow, subservient blacks, mixed-race romance, the Great Migration, and other incendiary topics.

within our gates

“I have always tried to make my photoplays present the truth, to lay before the Race a cross-section of its own life, to view the Colored heart from close range,” Micheaux explained on January 24, 1925. “It is only by presenting those portions of the Race portrayed in my pictures, in the light and background of their true state, that we can raise our people to greater heights. . . . The recognition of our true situation will react in itself as a stimulus for self-advancement.” He does just that with Within Our Gates, in which Evelyn Preer plays Sylvia Landry, a young woman in love with Conrad Drebert (James D. Ruffin). However, Sylvia’s supposed friend, the manipulative Alma Prichard (Floy Clements), is also in love with Conrad and determined to steal him from her. Meanwhile, Alma’s stepbrother, gangster Larry Prichard (Jack Chenault), wants Sylvia, who is not interested in him. Larry is being closely watched by a detective, Philip Gentry (William Smith), who was tipped off by the FBI as to his whereabouts.

A car accident leads Sylvia to meet Dr. V. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas) and philanthropist Elena Warwick (Mrs. Evelyn), who wants to help Sylvia, but Elena’s friend, the racist Geraldine Stratton (Bernice Ladd), would rather see no women gain the right to vote if a new amendment would include black women as well. The story shifts gears when Alma tells Dr. Vivian about Sylvia’s past, involving Sylvia’s adopted family, a robbery and shooting, a white landlord (Ralph Johnson) and his brother (Grant Gorman), and a tattletale Uncle Tom (E. G. Tatum) seeking to gain favors, all shown in flashback. It’s a complex tale filled with surprising twists, and it’s a critically important film in the history of black cinema.

Micheaux’s first work was The Homesteader, which is lost; he would go on to make such pictures as Body and Soul, Veiled Aristocrats, and Underworld. The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center restored Within Our Gates in 1993 from a lone Spanish print, so most intertitles were rewritten in English, and a section in the middle was lost. In 2016, DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller) added a guitar-and-piano-based soundtrack, but the Film Forum screening of a 35mm print will be accompanied by a live score played by Steve Sterner. In addition, it will be preceded by Dudley Murphy’s sixteen-minute 1929 short St. Louis Blues, highlighted by Bessie Smith in her only film appearance. The series continues with such films as both Foxy Brown and Jackie Brown, The Color Purple, Set It Off, Lady Sings the Blues, Monster’s Ball, and Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4718: YEAR OF THE RAT

year of the rat

Multiple venues
January 25 – February 20
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Rat with special events all over town. People born in the Year of the Rat, the first zodiac sign, are clever and resourceful and have the potential to be wealthy and prosperous. Below are some of the highlights happening here in the five boroughs during the next several weeks of Chinese New Year.

Saturday, January 25
New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Grand Street at Chrystie St., free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Lunar New Year Celebration, with family-friendly arts and crafts, mask-making workshop, lantern making, zodiac animal origami, compost activities, face painting ($5), winter tree tour, plant sale, zodiac-themed storytelling, lion dance performance, and more, Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St., free, 12 noon – 4:00

Sunday, January 26
Sunday, February 16 & 23

Shadow Theater Workshops: The Art of Chinese New Year, with artists from Chinese Theatre Works, China Institute, 40 Rector St., $20, 2:00 pm

Saturday, February 1
Lunar New Year Family Festival, with “Sounds of the New Year” featuring the pipa and the erhu, “Whirling, Twirling Ribbons” workshop, lion dance performance, food, storytelling, face painting, zodiac arts and crafts, a gallery hunt, more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $12, 10:00 – 1:00 and 2:00 – 5:00

Lunar New Year Chinese Temple Bazaar, with food, live performances, activities, and more, Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., $5, 11:00 & 2:00

Lunar New Year Festival: Year of the Rat, Lunar New Year Parade, Sesame Street Puppeteers Featuring Alan Muraoka, Integrating Identity with Vincent Chong, Festive Feast with Emily Mock, Luminous Lanterns with China Institute, Wu-Wo Tea Ceremony & Bubble Tea Gatherings, Hand-Pulled Noodle Demonstration, Creative Calligraphy with Zhou Bin, Metal Mouse Masterpieces with the Rubin Museum of Art, Hero Rats with Lydia DesRoche, Fierce Dragon Creations, Luminous Lanterns with China Institute, more, Met Fifth Ave., free with museum admission (some events require advance tickets), 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Family Day: Moon over Manhattan, with Bo Law Kung Fu: Lion Dance and Kung Fu demonstration, Rabbit Days and Dumplings, arts & crafts, and more, Asia Society, 725 Park Ave., $5-$12, 1:00 – 5:00

Lunar New Year, with music and dance, martial arts, theater, a lion parade, and more, presented with the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St., free, 2:00 – 3:15

year of the rat 2

Sunday, February 2
Chinese New Year Family Festival, with lion dances, dumpling and paper-lantern workshops, storytelling, a puppet show, live music, more, China Institute, 40 Rector St., general admission free, some programs $20 in advance, 12:00 – 4:00 pm

Wednesday, February 5
Classic Films for the New Year: Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994), China Institute, 40 Rector St., $5, 6:30 pm

Friday, February 7
Lunar New Year Night Market, with food and drinks, live performances, art and culture, lion dance, vendors, and more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $99 (includes one-year MoCA membership), 6:00 – 10:00

Saturday, February 8
Super Saturday Lion Dances, throughout Chinatown, free

Sunday, February 9
Twenty-first annual New York City Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations, Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park, free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Peking Opera in Lunar New Year Presented by Qi Shufang Peking Opera Company, Queens Public Library, 41-17 Main Street, Flushing, free, 2:00

Thursday, February 13 & 20
MOCAKIDS Storytime! New Year’s Traditions, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $5, 4:00