Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe’s new CD, Dark Full Rid, is coming out tomorrow on Cantaloupe Music. Anyone who follows Bang on a Can closely will know most, if not all, of these pieces. The title piece is a blistering percussion suite that stands as one of my all-time favorites. It’s high time a recording became available.
To celebrate, Bang on a Can has organized a series of free concerts at four locations in Manhattan. If you are lucky enough to be able to make it to all four locations, you’ll have the honor of hearing the entire contents of the CD live on the day of release.
The shows are all free and open to the public. Here’s the full schedule:
11 am – “LAD” for 9 bagpipes Matthew Welch plays live with eight recorded bagpipes Roulette, 20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)
NOON – “Dark Full Ride” for 4 drumsets Talujon Percussion Quartet (David Cossin, Dominic Donato, Michael Lipsey and Matt Ward). Dauphin Human Design, 138 West 25th Street, 12th Floor (between 6th and 7th Avenues)
1 pm – “Stronghold” for 8 double basses Robert Black and the Hartt Bass Band. Chelsea Art Museum, 556 West 22nd Street (corner of 11th Avenue)
2:30 pm – “my lips from speaking” for 6 pianos Lisa Moore, Lisa Kaplan, Blair McMillen, Timo Andres, Kate Campbell, Isabelle O’Connell on piano. Conducted by Sam Adams. Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues)
WNYC Radio Lab host Jad Abumrad is MC for the In C Remixed show at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Sunday evening.
If you haven’t booked tickets for the In C Remixed show at (Le) Poisson Rouge tomorrow evening, here’s another incentive: the innovative radio host Jad Abumrad will be MC for the evening.,
Jad is host of WNYC’s Radio Lab, a program that Ira Glass of This American Life has called Jad’s program “the best show on radio.”
With Jad as host and an opening set by the Slow Boys (Todd Reynolds and Michael Lowenstern, who also have remixes on the CD), it’s shaping up to be a memorable evening.
But if you really can’t make it, not to worry. The show is being recorded by WNYC/WQXR and will be available for listening on WQXR’s Q2 stream.
In C Remixed, featuring the GVSU New Music Ensemble and the Slow Boys is at (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, Manhattan. (212) 505-3474. Doors at 6:30 pm, show at 7:30. Click here for more info or here for tickets. $15 in advance.
Check out this wonderfully entertaining animated video by one of my absolute favorite young bands, Care Bears on Fire. It’s called “Barbie Eat a Sandwich,” and offers some wry commentary on the pressures young women face in modern Western culture. It’s also just a really cool song and a great video, directed splendidly by Daisy Edwards.
Grace Hilbig, the charming actress who plays Barbie, is also quite a find. She does a lot of improv and also has her own daily video channel, Daily Grace, which you can check out by clicking here.
Stereogum Senior Writer Brandon Stosuy, left, interviews The Long Count creators Aaron Dessner, Bryce Dessner, Matther Ritchie at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)
What did I learn from the artist talk for The Long Count at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last weekend?
For starters, that twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner (of rock band The National) wanted to write a baseball saga when Joe Melillo, BAM’s executive producer, invited them to create a show for this year’s Next Wave Festival. They wanted to work with acclaimed writer and baseball fanatic Michael Chabon, but that didn’t work out. Then the teamed up with British visual artist Matthew Ritchie, who persuaded them to adopt the structure of the Mayan Popol Vuh creation story, which involves a heroic set of ball-playing twins. It was a good move.
The resulting show, which ended its run at BAM on Halloween, was a treat for the eyes, ears and mind.
The Dessners chose to work with a great orchestra, many of whom, like violist Nadia Sirota, are very active in the same contemporary classical-rock crossover circles they are. And their featured collaborators, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Kim and Kelley Deal, twin sisters from The Breeders.
Check out great photos and info about the performance at Brooklyn Vegan.
M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy Theatre. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)
M Shanghai String Band is easily one of the most creative and entertaining old-timey bands in New York City. And there was no shortage of creativity when the big band (counting as many as 12 players at full strength) to the stage of the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighorhood last Friday night.
Dressed in homemade skeleton costumes, the band played to a packed house, opening for the CD release party of Kelli Rae Powell, a ukulele player. Each player has a distinct personality and all are extremely accomplished, but no one of them seems to hog the spotlight or pretends to be is irreplaceable. I’ve seen them play in various configurations, with smaller forces or at full force through the grace of guest performers, and the band personality always shines through. This is a bunch of players who really enjoy what they’re doing. The result is some of the most infectious original music you could hope to hear.(You may recognize its member from other NYC bands. MSSB has links to The Ukuladies, Babe the Blue Ox, Gloria Deluxe and even the Bang on a Can contemporary music organization.)
Guitarist-vocalists Austin Hughes and Matt Schickele (son of Peter “PDQ Bach” Schickele) and fiddle-saw-washboard player Philippa Thompson took many of the leads on Friday night. Philippa’s rendition of the Austin-penned “Bus Called Cemetery” was particularly effective for the beginning of the Halloween weekend.
MSSB has made three albums, all excellent. But the band needs to be seen live to get the full effect.
M Shanghai String Band’s next performance is at 9 pm on Nov.14, for the latest installment in its monthly Saturday-night revel in the basement of a Williamsburg Chinese restaurant from which the band took its name: M Shanghai Den, 129 Havemeyer St. (between Grand & S.1st St.), Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Free admission.
If you’re lucky enough to be in New York City next Sunday, don’t miss out on an amazing opportunity to witness a live performance of one of the 20th Century’s defining pieces of music, Terry Riley’s In C.
The GVSU ensemble obviously can’t reproduce the album — which features the recording of the title piece and 18 remixes by some of today’s best sonic manipulators — in a concert setting. But the show will feature live remixing by composer and sound designer Dennis DeSantis (one of the album’s remixers), videos by album remixer R. Luke DuBois, and an opening set by the Slow Boys (comprising digital violin genius Todd Reynolds and bass clarinetist and composer Michael Lowenstern, who also contributed remixes).
Terry Riley
This is a show that requires homework, albeit very pleasant homework. Here’s your assignment:
Before the show — best to do it now — download In C Remixed from your favorite digital music source. (It’s available now at Amazon.com and on iTunes. If you want a physical CD, you’ll have to wait until Nov. 17.)
Mikel Rouse, the Saint Louis-born composer who lives and works in NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen, probably is best-known for his multi-media operas, particularly his trilogy of Failing Kansas (1995), Dennis Cleveland (1996) and The End of Cinematics (2005). So it was a bit of a surprise to get a first peek at the songs for his latest show Gravity Radio, in a stripped-down concert format at Galapagos Art Space in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn on Oct. 23. (Sorry it took so long to post this!) It was a special CD release party that turned into a well-mannered, deeply affecting chamber-rock concert.
Mikel Rouse
The CD is officially released this Tuesday, while the full-blown Gravity Radio show will go on tour starting in January, hitting New York at a yet-undetermined date.
The songs that make up Gravity Radio are interspersed with dialogue (read at Galapagos and on the CD by TONY nominated/OBIE Award winning actress Veanne Cox) ripped from the news of the day, touching on topics like Afghanistan, the tanking economy and such. (When the full-blown show hits the road, these news dispatches will be altered and updated with the news of the day).
It seems to me that the only thing The New Yorker Festival’s Radical Opera panel settled last Sunday afternoon at City Winery was that nobody’s quite sure exactly what radical opera really is.
The 90 minute discussion featured director Peter Sellars — who’s so deeply involved with John Adams‘ operas that he’s not limited to directing in the most conventional sense. He helped create the libretto for Doctor Atomic — along with performer-composers Nico Muhly, Rufus Wainwright, and Lisa Bielawa. Nico and Lisa are closely associated with Philip Glass, one of the world’s leading composers of opera, while Rufus, who’s primarily a pop musician, has no prior formal connection to the opera world.
I was hoping that The New Yorkers’ brilliant music writer, Alex Ross, would encourage some spirited debate. (Secretly, I was hoping for some bitch-slapping, if not actual fisticuffs.) Alas, that was not to be. It turned into a very un-radical love-fest and discussion of upcoming projects. I had a livelier discussion with the young composer at my table than anything I heard coming from the stage that afternoon. Keep reading →
This giant version of Picasso's "Bust of Sylvette" sits in the midst of three NYU towers in Manhattan's West Village.
Pablo Picasso
If you are a New York University alumnus, you probably know that there’s a huge reworking of a Picasso sculpture in the courtyard of Silver Towers (University Village) on Bleecker Street, just south of Washington Square Village. But if you’re not, you probably haven’t noticed it, even if you’ve walked along the block many times.
It’s an enlargement of Pablo Picasso’s “Bust of Sylvette” (1934), executed on a huge scale by in 1967 Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjär.
It’s not exactly a secret, but unless you live there or spend a lot of time in the neighborhood, you might have missed it. It’s not obvious from the street, as trees have grown over the years to block the view.
But the open courtyard amid the three 32-story towers (mostly used for NYC faculty housing) is a beautiful little space for the rather surprising artwork.
I’ve seen the gigantic work many times, but only recently was moved to stop and investigate it and take a few photos. It provides a moment of surprise and delight in an otherwise rather antiseptic and soulless modernist space.
Be sure to check it out the next time you’re in the neighborhood.
The Bongos at Maxwell's. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)
If you didn’t go see The Bongos at Maxwell’s in Hoboken last night, you missed a magical evening. The band was tight and very much into performing for a (surprisingly light) hometown crowd. You have another chance to see Richard Barone, James Mastro, Rob Norris and Frank Giannini tonight at Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan, where they’re performing a CMJ show.
The Bongos' set list at Maxwell's.
They played two solids sets, performing just about every song in their catalogue — which isn’t huge, since they only recorded two full albums and one EP in their 1980s heyday. But they played every one of them with great joy and energy. Plus, they threw in a couple of covers and a couple of their own songs that were never released.
They were joined by Dennis Kelly, who played synthesizer in the band’s early days, and Nick Celeste, a singer and guitarist who worked with Richard on his first post-Bongos project, Cool Blue Halo, in 1987.
Check out more photos of last night’s show after the jump.
2:30 pm – “my lips from speaking” for 6 pianos
