Tag Archives: NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts

JOSHUA LIGHT SHOW: FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY SHOWS

The Joshua Light Show celebrates half a century of psychedelic grooviness with a pair of shows at the Skirball Center

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 La Guardia Pl. between Third & Fourth Sts.
September 8-9, $40 (use code JLS1 for 50% discount), 7:30
212-992-8484
nyuskirball.org
www.joshualightshow.com

Formed in 1967 by Joshua White and others, the Joshua Light Show is celebrating fifty years of adding psychedelic visuals to live music with a pair of shows at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. On September 8, the onetime Fillmore resident artists will be working their image-making magic with punk-blues purveyors Boss Hog and the experimental, progressive Dave Harrington Group, while they will join John Colpitts’s Man Forever and electronic music composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith on September 9. Over the years, JLS has stuck to its analog beginnings, using liquid and light, while incorporating digital elements. The current lineup features Alyson Denny, Curtis Godino, Nick Hallett, Seth Kirby, Ana Matronic, Brock Monroe, Gary Panter, Doug Pope, Nica Ross, Briged Smith, Bec Stupak, Jeff Cook, George Stadnik, and White. We caught them in 2012 at Skirball with John Zorn, Lou Reed, Bill Laswell, and Milford Graves and in 2011 at the Hayden Planetarium and were instantly sucked into their groovy world. Tickets are $40 for each show or $60 for both; use code JLS1 to get them for half price.

TICKET ALERT: JOHN CLEESE AT THE SKIRBALL CENTER

Who: John Cleese
What: Reading and talk in conjunction with paperback release of So, Anyway . . . (Three Rivers Press, September 2015, $16)
Where: NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Pl., 212-992-8484
When: Saturday, November 14, $65.75 – $125, 6:30
Why: “I made my first public appearance on the stairs up to the school nurse’s room, at St. Peter’s Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, on September 13, 1948. I was eight and five-sixths. My audience was a pack of nine-year-olds, who were jeering at me and baying, ‘Chee-eese! Chee-eese!’ I kept climbing the steps, despite the feelings of humiliation and fear. But above all, I was bewildered. How had I managed to attract so much attention? What had I done to provoke this aggression? And . . . how on earth did they know my family surname had once been Cheese?” So begins So, Anyway . . ., the memoir of one of the funniest men in the history of the world, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers legend John Cleese. On November 14, the star and writer of A Fish Called Wanda and cinematic portrayer of the Black Knight, Tim the Enchanter, Deadly Dirk, Nearly Headless Nick, King Harold, Q, and many other roles, will be climbing the steps of NYU’s Skirball Center on November 14, to talk about his wild and wacky life and career and all that attention and aggression. The four-time-married, self-described “writer, actor & tall person,” who is also a bit of a silly walker, is visiting Boston, Chicago, and New York celebrating the release of the paperback edition of the book. VIP tickets ($125) come with a signed copy of So, Anyway . . . and a photo opp with Mr. Cleese. Be sure to join in the chants of “Chee-eese! Chee-eese!”

THE JOSHUA LIGHT SHOW

The Joshua Light Show will team up with a diverse series of experimental musicians for six groovy shows at the Skirball Center

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
60 Washington Sq. South
September 13-16, $20-$68
212-998-4941
www.nyuskirball.org
www.joshualightshow.com

A key figure in the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s, the Joshua Light Show created dizzying, kaleidoscopic, all-too-groovy projections at the Fillmore East, Woodstock, Carnegie Hall, and other venues, where their liquid lights exploded in a vast array of colors behind Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and other legendary musicians. Over the last several years, JLS has returned with a vengeance, performing at Lincoln Center, the Hayden Planetarium, the Hirshorn Museum, Art Basel in Miami, and the recent Transmediale festival in Berlin. This week founder Joshua White and his talented crew, which still primarily uses analog techniques to mix their creations live, will be at the NYU Skirball Center for six performances over four nights, beginning Thursday, when they are joined by Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie and master harpist Zeena Parkins. Friday night features the minimalist father-and-son duo of Terry Riley and Gyan Riley at 7:30, followed by the inspired quartet of John Zorn, Lou Reed, Bill Laswell, and Milford Graves at 10:00. On Saturday night, MGMT cofounders Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden will play two shows, with GlobalFest closing things out on Sunday with the Boston-based Ethiopian-American Debo Band and the New York-based Brazilian-American Forro in the Dark. Each performance will last approximately one hour, with JLS onstage improvising alongside the musicians; the JLS team includes White, photographer and installation artist Alyson Denny, experimental composer and vocalist Nick Hallett, filmmaker and musician Seth Kirby, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters, live cinema artist and designer Brock Monroe, painter and comic-book artist Gary Panter, production manager Doug Pope, performance artist and director Bec Stupak, and sound designer Jeff Cook.