cityArts May 18, 2010

MAY 18, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 10

summer PREVIEW

SummerStage turns 25 Baryshnikov returns to his own stage Jazz is Undead

Plus: A four-month guide to concerts, theater, ďŹ lm, museums, galleries and outdoor events

InthisIssue 6 THE WORLD’S MUSIC IN OUR PARKS Caribbean cultures provide our parks with the summer’s soundtrack, according to HOWARD MANDEL.

6-12 SUMMER PREVIEW

Alan Gilbert Music Director

György Ligeti’s

From Mostly Mozart to Rooftop films, our guide to concerts, theater, film, museums, galleries and outdoor events.

12 SUMMERSTAGE TURNS 25 ERNEST BARTELDES declares the annual festival “unforgettable.”

14 AT THE GALLERIES “The biggest achievement by one of the outstanding composers of our time.”

–The New York Times Alan Gilbert Conductor Doug Fitch Director and Designer Edouard Getaz Producer A fully staged production created by Giants Are Small New York Choral Artists Joseph Flummerfelt Director Catherine Zuber Costume Designer Clifton Taylor Lighting Designer The way director Doug Fitch brings Le Grand Macabre alive is pure magic.

For a behind the scenes look at the production, watch our video at nyphil.org/macabre.

New York Premiere

Reviews: Will Insley at Westwood Gallery; Sarah Lutz at Lohin Geduld Gallery; David Barnett at Denise Bibro Gallery; Antoni Tàpies at Pace Gallery; Patricia Esquivias at Murray Guy; Ghada Amer at Cheim & Read; Josephine Meckseper at Elizabeth Dee Gallery; Claude Monet at Gagosian; Richard Diebenkorn at Leslie Feely Fine Art.

3 NIGHTS ONLY!

17 DANCE

Thurs, May 27 | 7:30pm• Fri, May 28 | 8:00pm Sat, May 29 | 8:00pm

JOEL LOBENTHAL speaks with Mikhail Baryshnikov about his re-dedication to New York City.

It’s the end of the world as they know it, as Gepopo, Prince Go-Go, and their fellow inhabitants of Brueghelland learn the world ends at midnight.

Through puppetry, illustrations, and video projection, director Doug Fitch, conductor Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic bring Ligeti’s surreal “anti-anti-opera” to life in New York for the very first time.

Some material may not be suitable for small children.

18 THEATER Restoration is Claudia Shear’s new play about art but, according to MARK PEIKERT, it lacks heart.

19 ARTS AGENDA Symphony, Chamber Music, Opera, Jazz, Dance and Galleries.

22 PAINT THE TOWN BY AMANDA GORDON Alan Gilbert

Pace Gallery’s Arne Glimcher and others share memories at the Noguchi Museum’s 25th anniversary; David Rubenstein pulls in more money for Lincoln Center at the gala in his honor; Law & Order creator Dick Wolf at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

ON THE COVER: Luke Jerram’s pianos populate city parks June 21-July 5.

Photo by Luke Jerram.

EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com

MANHATTAN MEDIA

PUBLISHER Kate Walsh kwalsh@manhattanmedia.com

PRESIDENT/CEO Tom Allon tallon@manhattanmedia.com

ADVERTISING CONSULTANT

CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Don Burkett

Christine Werthman ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balaschak

dburkett@manhattanmedia.com

Alex Schweitzer

Ceil Ainsworth, Monica Conde

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PRODUCTION PRODUCTION MANAGER

NEWSPAPER GROUP PUBLISHER

Mark Stinson

ggavin@manhattanmedia.com

Jay Nordlinger

ADVERTISING DESIGN

MARKETING DIRECTOR

Heather Mulcahey

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SENIOR DANCE CRITIC

WEB DESIGNER

Wendy Hu SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC

Joel Lobenthal

Lesley Siegel

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves

CONCERTS ARE AT AVERY FISHER HALL.

• The Open Rehearsal for this concert is on May 26, 2010 at 9:45am.

This concert series is sponsored by American Express. Generous support provided by the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.

Additional support provided by the Francis Goelet Fund. Media Partner – WNET.ORG. Programs, artists, dates, and prices subject to change. Sketch by Doug Fitch. Photos: Orchestra and Alan Gilbert by Chris Lee. ©2010 New York Philharmonic

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GROUP PUBLISHER

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR

For tickets call 212-875-5656 or visit nyphil.org/macabre or Avery Fisher Hall Box Office

ADVERTISING

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Gerry Gavin

tkelly@manhattanmedia.com CONTROLLER Shawn Scott ACCOUNTS MANAGER Kathy Pollyea

Send all press releases to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com

CityArts is a division of Manhattan Media, publishers of New York Family magazine, AVENUE magazine, Our Town, West Side Spirit, New York Press, City Hall, Chelsea Clinton News, The Westsider and The Blackboard Awards. © 2010 Manhattan Media, LLC | 79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10016 | t: 212.268.8600, f: 212.268.0577 | www.manhattanmedia.com

InBrief A Peek Into Hell Mike Felber wants to prove that there’s more to Hell’s Kitchen than an abundance of Thai restaurants, dive bars and tourist spillover from Times Square. “The general idea about Midtown is that it’s about commerce and the bottom line,” says Felber. “I wanted to bring attention to its artists. It’s a counter-paradigm; it’s not all about money.”

Felber is the founder and president of the not-for-profit group Artists in the Kitchen.

He splits his time between social work and art, and he plans to reveal the nabe’s artistic treasures during the second Hell’s Kitchen Artists in Studio Tour, running from May 21 through 23.

Over 50 venues—including the Fountain Gallery, Jim Seffens Studio, Mud, Sweat and Tears and apartment studios in the Manhattan Plaza buildings—are participating. The self-guided tour spans from West 34th to 59th Streets, with maps guiding guests from bar to gallery, studio to theater, with some other unusual venues in between. All forms of media will be represented along the way: Paintings, sculptures and photographs will adorn local establishments, exposing many artists to an

entirely new audience. And the closing party will take place at Port 41.

“It’s a great neighborhood, and we’re finding out more and more how many artists are here,” explains participating artist Janet Restino. “We’re telling the world there’s more here than Broadway shows.”

Although opening up one’s home or studio for the general public might give some pause, many artists involved in the event see it as a chance to expand the greater arts discussion.

“We live very solitary lives as artists. You’re locked in your studio for weeks, sometimes months at a time,” explains figurative painter Scott Goodwillie. “I’m a very social person, and I enjoy people coming in. During the recession, any venue that brings in traffic and gets your name out helps.”

Restino admits that she initially had a little apprehension. “But it turned out to be quite pleasant. The people that came were genuinely interested in art; there wasn’t anybody that was casing the joint.”

While its mission is Midtown-centric, not all of the artists involved work full-time in the area west of Eighth Avenue. For example, photographer Maria Moreno works in Long Island City, but her vivid portraits and outdoor scenes will mingle with local artists’ work. “I’m hoping to get exposure for my work and work for an event I believe in,” explains Moreno. “It’s great to bring together not only the artists, but also the public. I hope that tourists come in, exchange ideas and keep creativity alive.” (Bonnie Rosenberg) May 21-23, Sat.-Sun., noon-6 p.m. Full details at www.artistsinthekitchen.org.

Casa Nostra

Alessandro Aronadio’s One Life, Maybe Two

A quick survey of the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s annual Open Roads: New Italian Cinema program reveals a line-up of familiar faces, a few new ones and Bruno Bozzetto. Of the slate of 16 films, directors like Gabriele Muccino, Gabriele Salvatores and Giuseppe Tornatore—respectively responsible for directing The Last Kiss, Respiro and Cinema Paradiso—headline this year’s program with more comedies and dramas set in or around the home front. Of that trio of headliners, Tornatore’s latest looks to be

Work by Giorgio Jorghe Casu (pictured) will be part of the Hell’s Kitchen Artists in Studio Tour.

the most ambitious: Baaria is a familial epic about different generations of Sicilians and the changing times in Italy (think The Best of Youth except two-and-a-half-hours long instead of six).

After that, keep an eye out for One Life, Maybe Two, a film that takes inspiration from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance and explores divergent narrative threads after a man is hit by a car and wonders what might have happened if the accident never occurred. Be sure to keep an eye out for Bozzetto’s lascivious and freakishly fun cartoons. His highly dated and equally bawdy Fantasia spoof, Allegro Non Troppo, is easily the highlight of this year’s program.

(Simon Abrams) June 3-10, Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St., upper level, 212-875-5601; view schedule at www.filmlinc.com, $6-$12. Five-film pass: $30-$50.

Zombie Jazz Considering all of the young talent that has embraced jazz in recent years, one could easily disprove critics who say jazz is dead.

The Undead Jazz Festival, a showcase of over 30 distinct independent artists, promises to do just that.

“I’ve been producing the Winter Jazz Festival for six years, and it has been a unique experience,” says co-organizer Brice Rosenbloom. “This past year, over 4,000 people attended, and it was such an eyeopening experience to have that mass of people come out on cold January nights to hear jazz in New York, that it proved that a similar model could occur other times of the year.”

For this two-day smorgasbord—which takes place at Kenny’s Castaways, Le Poisson Rouge and Sullivan Hall—performers include acid-jazz innovator Cindy Blackman, pianist

May 18, 2010 | City Arts

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InBrief

Steve Coleman

The unusual choice of the venues was also deliberate. “Kenny’s Castaways has had a history of launching artists like Bruce Springsteen, but more recently it hasn’t had much attention,” explains Rosenbloom. “But in the past two years, it has been included as part of the Winter Jazz Festival, and it’s one of the most charming venues of the three that we’re using.” (Ernest Barteldes) June 12-13, Kenny’s Castaways, 157 Bleecker St., 212-979-9762; Sullivan Hall, 214 Sullivan St., 212-634-0427; Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., 212-353-3474; one-day passes: $25; full-festival pass $30, www. undeadjazzfest.com.

Don’t Blame the Architect There’s no Hippocratic Oath for architects, and that, according to playwright Oren Safdie, is part of the problem. “Architecture is a profession, like medicine or law, on one hand, and an art, on the other,” he explains. “The pendulum is swinging now too much toward art, and certain things may get compromised.”

In his play The Bilbao Effect—which runs through June 5 at the New York AIA Center for Architecture—a Staten Island chiropractor charges that a major redevelopment caused his wife to commit suicide, and the world-famous architect behind the project is forced to defend himself to the public and his profession.

Sound farfetched? Safdie says his play verges on the absurdist, but he argues that there’s as much fact as fiction in it. He should know: He’s the son of world-famous architect Moshe Safdie—known for his complex housing built in Montreal for Expo 67—and also holds a master’s in architecture from Columbia University.

Oren feels the rise of the “starchitect,” advances in technology and the demand for the “wow factor” in new buildings has emphasized a need for the unique, the striking and the novel. It’s “architecture that grabs and grovels for attention constantly,” over the functional.

“Buildings are treated as contemporary art, but they’re more in the public view than art is,” Safdie explains. While he agrees that art must play some role in architecture, he points out that “these new buildings are aggressive, but it’s an easy luxury to play off innovations against the older buildings now. But nobody’s taking responsibility for what the cityscape will be 100 years from now.”

Carol Rosegg

Jean-Michel Pilc, contemporary drummer Ari Hoenig, guitarist Mary Halvorson and Burnt Sugar.

The cast of the Bilbao Effect.

His play, the second in a projected trio about architecture today, is more of an exploration of the issues than an answer, but it does take the architecturally uninitiated seriously. “The language of architecture is very dense, a bit of a smoke screen. Through theater, the audience [is] allowed to enter…

[It’s] a way of bringing people into the arguments without feeling intimidated.”

(Jessica Branch) Through June 5. Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Pl., 212-352-3101; Wed.-Sat., 8, $18.

The Man With the Most?

When Beethoven heard that Napoleon intended to assume the title of Emperor of France, he scratched out the dedication he had placed on the cover page of his Third Symphony, the Eroica, so harshly that it ripped right through to the page underneath. Beethoven did this to erase the inscription to Napoleon that he had set on the score. Though the piece was meant to commemorate the “memory of a great man,” Beethoven no longer wanted anyone thinking that man was Napoleon. Even more proof that Beethoven was rarely ever dispassionate or wanting in opinions.

Of course, a person with such determined and specific views doesn’t only make a great composer. He may function even better as an orchestra conductor. New York audiences will get a chance to judge whether music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Most, has the required forcefulness and exactitude on May 21. That’s when he brings the Orchestra to Carnegie Hall for

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a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica in a pairing with the orchestral suite from Alban Berg’s 1935 opera Lulu. In the Berg piece, the orchestra will be joined by 27-year-old American soprano Erin Morley (last seen in the Met’s over-praised recent production of Shostakovich’s The Nose).

Welser-Most has been getting kudos both for his handling of the Cleveland players and for his recordings. Particularly of note was a 2005 recording in which Welser-Most led the Cleveland players in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s long-forgotten but intermittently gorgeous “Symphony in F-Sharp Major.”

Before that Welser-Most had been better known for his prickly personality and his strange personal life. The spiky persona had prompted British orchestra players to run him out of London even as they attached upon him the nickname, Frankly Worse Than Most. His home life is notable for his marriage to the ex-wife of his adoptive father and manager.

In spite of these idiosyncrasies, however, concert audiences and record buyers have taken a shine to Welser-Most, and Cleveland has engaged the Austrian native and onetime violinist for a second five-year term as its music director. One would think that both Beethoven and Berg would be ideal composers for Welser-Most to conduct as he is known as a Beethoven conductor, and the careers and musical traditions of both Berg and Beethoven are connected to WelserMost’s homeland. But remember: If WelserMost and Cleveland fail to live up to our hopes, we can scratch their names right off the program. (Jonathan Leaf) May 21, Carnegie Hall, 154 W. 57th St., 212247-7800; 8, $40-$123.

ArtNews Yancey Richardson Gallery announced that Alex Prager has been selected as one of four artists to be included in New Photography 2010 at MoMA, opening Sept. 29… Through June 13, French artist Christian Boltanksi’s No Man’s Land will be on view at the Park Avenue Armory.

The installation fills the Armory’s 55,000square-foot drill hall with thousands of pieces of discarded clothing and a soundtrack of reverberating heartbeats… Two pieces of work from Prospect, curator Dan Cameron’s New Orleans-based art festival, are being shown in New York City. Skylar Fein’s installation Remember the Upstairs Lounge is on display through May 30 at 447 W. 16th St., and Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children, featuring New Orleans-based artists Bruce Davenport Jr., Dawn Dedeaux and Dan Tague, and a film on the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood by Dawn Logsdon and Lolis Eric Elie, is on view through June 28 at the Lambent Foundation… From May 26 through 29, Dixon Place will host the X-YU Festival, curated and produced by Ivan Talijancic from WaxFactory. The festival will include the American premieres of three inter-disciplinary dance pieces created by choreographers Maja Delak, Matija Ferlin and Dalija Acin… On May 19, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Avenue Of The Americas opens, aiming to create a public showcase that fosters an understanding of and appreciation for the diverse cultural heritage of the Americas through public art. The exhibit features work by Julieta Aranda, Carlos Motta with David Sanin Paz, Judi Werthein and Carla Zaccagnini… On May 21, The Juilliard School will hold its 105th commencement ceremony in Alice Tully Hall, where President Joseph W. Polisi will present honorary degrees to seven outstanding artists and cultural leaders, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tony Bennett, opera director Frank Corsaro, philanthropist Glorya Kaufman, Tony Kushner, Henry-Louis de La Grange and Patti LuPone… Artist and composer Christian Marclay, known for the distinctive fusion of sound and image in his art, will be the subject of a major exhibition this summer at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Starting July 1, the exhibition will feature daily musical performances from the likes of Butch Morris, Okkyung Lee, Bill Frisell, Lee Ranaldo, Mary Halvorson, David Moss, Cyro Baptista, John Zorn and more. It will run through Sept. 26… Iridium Jazz Club has announced “A Celebration of Les Paul,” two intimate evenings with guitarist Jeff Beck on June 8 and 9. These

shows will honor the late guitar great Les Paul, whose 95th birthday would have been June 9… The Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with the Laurenz Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, has acquired the complete archive of Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint series, an ongoing project the artist started 20 years ago while an undergraduate at Yale... From June 3 through 5, Anthology Film Archives will screen Paul Tschinkel’s video series on contemporary art, titled ART/new york. The films, which focus on individuals, exhibi-

tions and movements that have defined and shaped the course of art in the United States, each feature visits to galleries, museums and artists’ studios, and include interviews with the artists as well as with critics, curators and dealers. Over the course of the series, films on Julian Schnabel, Kiki Smith, George McNeil, Lee Krasner and more will be screened... The New York Food Film Festival has announced its 2010 programming, which will run from June 23 through 27. The fest will kick off with an oyster-themed party called “The Great New York City Shuck

‘N Suck” and will, over its course, screen 29 films about food and host events including a night of Southeast Asian street food and a grits cooking contest... On May 24, The Museum of the City of New York will host a discussion amongst Theodore Berger, executive director of Urban Artists’ Initiative, Norma P. Munn, chairperson of New York City Arts Coalition, and Joan K. Davidson, founding chairman of Westbeth Artists Housing, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Westbeth, the West Village artists’ community.

PIC A SSO

IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Skip admission lines. Become a Member! metmuseum.org/member

Extended through August 15 The exhibition is made possible by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.

Pablo Picasso, The Dreamer, 1932, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls Collection, 1997. © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

May 18, 2010 | City Arts

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SummerPREVIEW

The World’s Music in Our Parks Get ready for a Caribbean influence this summer Gospel Queens (July 15) and soulful singer Bilal (July 22), as well as Nigerian drummer Tony Allen (June 17), Haiti’s Tabou Combo (July 1), Trinidad’s Mighty Sparrow (July 8) and Mali’s Vieux Farka Touré (July 29).

Celebrate Brooklyn! is launched by Norah Jones in Prospect Park June 9; hear Graham Haynes play Miles Davis with James Blood Ulmer as John McLaughlin in “Bitches Brew Revisited” on June 19. The River-to-River Festival, a looser coalition of events, starts with Make Music New York’s 100 punk bands sequestered on Governor’s Island June 20.

Lincoln Center Out of Doors begins spotlighting cross-genre delights in late July. As of this writing, summer’s end is, happily, distant, but look forward to the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival at Marcus Garvey and Tompkins Square Park (Aug. 29 and 30).

Now, as to Gotham’s polyglot nature and the globe’s musical languages in our air: There’s a Haitian dance fest in Brooklyn’s Von King Park June 5; singer-songwriter Jose Conde and DJs Bobbito Garcia, Laylo and Sake-1 paying tribute to Fania Records and its Afro-Cuban, Nuyorican and Dominican sources in Central Park June 6. Neo-salsero Frankie Negrón is in Red Hook Park, Brooklyn, June 8.

Don’t confuse Brazil with the Caribbean or “Latin America,” but know that carioca rockers Os Paralamas do Sucesso and guitarist-singersongwriter Maria Gadu are at SummerStage June 12.

Felix Hernandez, whose Rhythm Review record show of salsa, soul, funk and disco is heard on both WBGO and KISS-FM, spins for a June 17

dance party at Betsy Head Park, Brooklyn, and July 6 in Soundview Park (Bronx). Buena Vista Social Club comes to Prospect Park June 24, the same night Conjunto Clásico, with trumpets and a tres (12-string guitar) backing vocalist Tito Nieves, hits at St. Mary’s Park (Bronx). That’s also where the Abakuá Afro-Latin Dance Company and Areytos Performance Works perform (and teach basic AfroLatin-funk moves to early attendees) June 26.

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe has a poetry slam at SummerStage June 30; La Orquesta de la Gente reuniting members of the late, lamented salsero Hector Lavoe’s Orquesta, plus the newly formed 8 y Más, pay tribute to Lavoe at St. Mary’s Park July 1. The 11th annual Latin Alternative Music Conference touches down at SummerStage July 7, and salsa king Hector Tricoche and Latin up ‘n’ comer Chris Alfinez are co-billed at St. Mary’s

Music Events

open-air merriment over Governors Island two weekends this summer. This Jazz-Age Lawn party is designed to bring you back in time to the 1920s for an afternoon of live music and dance, instruction in period dances, picnicking and games for the whole family. Tickets are required and can be purchased on Governors Island for $10. July 17-18 & Aug. 28-29, www.govisland.com; 11a.m.-5 p.m.

Madison Square Music: Oval Lawn Series Ditch the Shake Shack line on Wednesday evenings between July 16 and Aug. 4, and settle for a picnic and a mix of jazz, soul, R&B, folk, bluegrass and pop. The Wailin’ Jennys will take the stage July 28. Check the lineup at madisonsquarepark.org.

N

Concerts in the Parks The best way to explain those grass stains: The New York Philharmonic’s annual event opens with a free joint concert featuring the NY Phil, conducted by Andrey Boreyko, and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its music director, Long Yu, with pianist Lang Lang as one of the soloists July 13 at 8 p.m. on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Additional free concerts to take place in Central Park in Manhattan, Cunningham Park in Queens and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, July 13-16; New York Philharmonic Brass and Percussion Ensemble to perform free indoor concerts in Staten Island and the Bronx, July 17 and 19. Details at nyphil.org.

Jazz Age Dance Party Michael Arenella and His Dreamland Orchestra plan to cast a magical spell of hot jazz and

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Lincoln Center Out Of Doors The 40th season of free outdoor performances takes place July 28 through Aug. 15. It all begins at the Damrosch Park Bandshell at 7:30 p.m. with ETHEL Fair: The Songwriters, featuring post-classical string quartet ETHEL collaborating on world premiere compositions and arrangements with four songwriters: Adam Schlesinger, Dayna Kurtz, Juana Molina and Tom Verlaine with bassist Patrick Derivaz. Event times vary, visit lincolncenter.org for complete listings.

Eric Mullet

BY HOWARD MANDEL o place I know of offers more music for free to its residents and visitors than New York City in the summer.

The quality and diversity of sounds we can hear in our parks should make us—all Big Apple chauvinism aside!—the envy of the world.

But then, the world is sending us its musicians. The Caribbean in particular is providing New York parks with the summer’s soundtrack. Latin jazz by Eddie Palmieri y La Perfecta II (at Soundview Park, Bronx, June 22), neo- and traditional salsa (for dates and places, see below) and its hip-hop/bachata derivations, veteran reggae stars Papa San (Soundview, June 29), Jimmy Cliff (SummerStage, July 11), Burning Spear (Rockefeller Park, July 21), Mykal Rose of Black Uhuru (Brooklyn’s Metrotech Center, Aug. 5) and the hottest bands from several islands are among the biggest of the season’s acts.

The sheer number of outdoor concert series is impressive unto staggering. The onslaught began May 17, when Karrin Allyson sang Brazilian jazz to usher in five successive Monday evenings in Bryant Park; these bookings lean to chamber music, which ain’t bad, with the Orion String Quartet, genre-busting fiddler Mark O’Connor, the Imani Winds and flutist Tara Helen O’Connor. To further highlight U.S.-based music over that from afar, the BAM R&B Festival at Brooklyn’s Metrotech Center on Thursdays, begins June 3 with Jennifer Holliday and includes P-Funk keyboard wiz Bernie Worrell (June 10), Bela Fleck’s bassist Victor Wooten (June 24), Naomi Shelton and the

Tinariwen play SummerStage June 26.

Make Music New York Four years ago no one knew what to expect from this sprawling all-day music explosion. June 21, we now know there will be a cacophony of music styles in all five boroughs. The schedule will be announced May 28. So check out makemusicny.com to see which sax aficionado or folk fanatic to look forward to.

Midsummer Night Swing Aside from swing dancing, the popular event

Park (Bronx) on that same night. In August, Highbridge Park in Manhattan hosts a series of Dominican-linked “bachata” performers.

You prefer African music? West Africa’s Baba Maal sings at SummerStage June 14; Salif Keita June 20; the Tuareg band Tinariwen wails about the southern Sahara June 26; ngoni (lute) traditionalist Bassekou is co-billed with po-mo musikers Burkina Electric July 25. Africa comes to Prospect Park July 11 (OkayAfrica with The Roots) and July 17 (Konono No. 1, Super Diamono and others).

You live in Queens? Then hear Olu Dara, cornetist and bluesy songster, in Queensbridge Park July 28.

There’s so much more. But what, none of it entices? Fine, stay home with the AC, listening to your iPod. You won’t know what you’ve missed. <

at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park also includes salsa, disco and tango. And to change things up, for the first time a night of bhangra will be featured this summer. DJ Rekha will spin the frenetic Bollywood beats with her special guest Red Baraat July 8.

Tue.-Sat., June 29 through July 17 (except July 13, which will be replaced with a night of dancing on Monday, July 12), 212-721-6500, www.midsummernightswing.org; multi-evening passes $90 (six nights), $160 full season, individual tickets, $17.

Mostly Mozart The name says it all. You’ll get plenty of the namesake, but the annual mainstay, which takes place July 27 through Aug. 21, includes more than 35 events—concerts, dance, pre-concert recitals and lectures—and features works by Chopin, Schumann, Bach, Gluck, Saint-Saëns, Barber, Beethoven, Bizet, Mendelssohn and Weber. The Mark Morris Dance Group will also present three

july 8 – august 22, 2010

BARDSUMMERSCAPE Bard SummerScape presents seven weeks of opera, dance, music, drama, film, cabaret, and the 21st annual Bard Music Festival, this year exploring the works and world of composer Alban Berg.

SummerScape takes place in the extraordinary Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s stunning Mid-Hudson River Valley campus.

Opera

Bard Music Festival

THE DISTANT SOUND (Der ferne Klang)

Twenty-First Season

July 30, August 1, 4, 6 Music and Libretto by Franz Schreker American Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Leon Botstein Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger

Schreker’s masterful melding of dramatic devices and cultural forces, along with his remarkable musical creativity, combine to make The Distant Sound one of the seminal works of 20th-century opera.

Theater JUDGMENT DAY July 14 – 25 By Ödön von Horváth Directed by Caitriona McLaughlin Set in a small town in 1930s Nazi Germany, Judgment Day is a riveting drama whose characters are divided by deceit, lust, bloodshed, and injustice. Horváth’s thrilling 1937 play was the runaway hit of London’s fall 2009 season.

For tickets: 845-758-7900 or fishercenter.bard.edu

BERG AND HIS WORLD

August 13–15, 20–22 Two weekends of concerts, panels, and other events bring the musical world of Alban Berg vividly to life.

Operetta

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER

August 5–15 Music by Oscar Straus Conducted by James Bagwell Directed by Will Pomerantz

Film Festival PABST AND AMERICAN NOIR Thursdays and Sundays July 15 – August 19

Spiegeltent CABARET and FAMILY FARE July 8 – August 22

Dance TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY July 8, 9, 10, 11 Twelve Ton Rose (excerpt), Foray Forêt, You can see us, L’Amour au théâtre Choreography by Trisha Brown

Image © Peter Aaron/Esto

Berg and Vienna

weekend one Friday, August 13

program one

Saturday, August 14

program two program three

Sunday, August 15

program four program five program six

twenty-first season

the bard music festival

Berg the European

weekend two Friday, August 20

program seven

Saturday, August 21

program eight

program nine program ten

Sunday, August 22

Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity Chamber works by Berg The Vienna of Berg’s Youth Chamber works by Zemlinsky, Webern, and others Mahler and Beyond American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Mahler, Korngold, and others Eros and Thanatos Chamber works by Berg, Schreker, Mahler, and others Teachers and Apostles Chamber works by Berg, Schoenberg, Wellesz, and others The Orchestra Reimagined Members of the American Symphony Orchestra Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Busoni, Hindemith, and others

program eleven

program twelve

“No Critics Allowed”: The Society for Private Performances Chamber works by Berg, Debussy, Reger, and others You Can’t Be Serious! Viennese Operetta and Popular Music Works by Berg, Sullivan, Lehár, Kálmán, and others Composers Select: New Music in the 1920s Chamber works by Berg, Gershwin, Toch, and others Modernism and Its Discontent American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg and Schmidt Between Accommodation and Inner Emigration: The Composer’s Predicament Works by Berg, Hartmann, Schoeck, and others Crimes and Passions American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Hindemith, and Weill

Alban Berg in the Atelier Madame D’Ora, Wien, 1909. © ÖNB/Wien, 203481-D

BERG

and His World

The Bard Music Festival presents two extraordinary weeks of concerts, panels, and other special events that will explore the musical world of Alban Berg.

Tickets: $20 to $55 845-758-7900 fishercenter.bard.edu Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

SummerPREVIEW performances of Handel’s L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato. Aug. 5 through 7. Ticket information at MostlyMozart.org or 212-721-6500.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s Subway Series If you didn’t already have plenty of Mozart this summer, now add six free, one-hour concerts in the five boroughs June 3 through 8. It all kicks off at WNYC’S Jerome L. Greene Space at 7:30 p.m. Three Mozart pieces will be performed, and all concerts will begin with Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or A Little Night Music.

Visit www.oslmusic.org for complete details.

Roosevelt Live Did you forget about that island in the East River? The “secret” festival has yet to release a lineup, but last year Saturdays included mostly indie rock, as well as some country and even a few improv and dance shows. www.rooseveltlive.com.

OFFER ENDS JUNE 19, 2010

Summergarden Concerts The only thing better than the Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden? Listening to music there this summer. The free series includes concerts by musicians from the Juilliard School on July 11 and 25, and by groups selected by Jazz at Lincoln Center on July 18 and August 1. But not so fast: regular museum admission applies.

Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-708-9400; 5:30 & 7, $20.

Washington Square Music Festival Haven’t seen that shiny new fountain yet? The 52nd season of free chamber music and jazz takes place four Tuesdays in July at 8 p.m., in front of the Holley statue in Washington Square. Featured works are by Karl Amadeus Hartmann. July 27 features the Charles Mingus Orchestra. Complete lineup at www.washingtonsquaremusicfestival.org.

MUSEUM SHOWS The Frick: “From Mansion to Museum: The Frick Collection Celebrates SeventyFive Years.”

Henry Clay Frick’s original mansion was transformed into a public institution, and the resulting building was expanded by architect John Russell Pope. Large-scale illustrations of Pope’s will be on display for the first time. June 22 through Sept. 5, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700.

International Center of Photography: “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights” Explores the historic role of visual culture in shaping, influencing and transforming the fight for racial equality and justice in the United States from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s, and the exhibition includes 230 photographs, objects and clips from TV and film. May 21–Sept. 12, 1133 6th Ave., 212-857-0000.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players:

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Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950–1980” Features 45 photographs that reflect Levinstein’s approach to photography. Best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in NYC, Levinstein’s raw photos are balanced by an unusual compassion for his offbeat subjects from the demimonde. June 8 through Oct. 17. “American Woman: Fashioning A National Identity.” Ends Aug. 15. “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Ends Aug. 1.

“Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Met.” Ends Aug. 29. “Tutankhamun’s Funeral.” Ends Sept. 6, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

El Museo del Barrio: “Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer” Part of the museum’s FOCOS series, highlighting the achievements of mature, under-recognized artists. June 8 through Aug. 22, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

Museum of Arts and Design: “Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle” Displays the designs of six internationally renowned bicycle builders whose work in metal, as well as graphics and artifacts, elucidate this refined, intricate and deeply individual craft. Ends Aug. 2010. “Portable Treasuries: Silver Jewelry From the Nadler Collection.” Ends Aug. 8. “Dead or Alive.”

Ends Oct. 24, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777.

Museum of Modern Art: “Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstraction, 1940s to Now” Presents a dozen international artists whose abstract work features idiosyncratic, organic forms, materials that appear to be malleable and pliable, craft-based techniques and, in many cases, an engagement with gender and sexuality, and includes Louise Bourgeois, Gego, Mona Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama, Anna Maria Maiolino and Zarina. May 5-Aug. 16. “Bruce Nauman: Days” is a “sound sculpture” consisting of a continuous stream of seven voices reciting the days of the week in random order. June 2-Aug. 23. “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography.” Ends Aug. 30. “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century.” Ends June 28. “Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense.” Ends Aug. 30. “Picasso: Themes & Variations.” Ends Sept. 6. “The Modern Myth: Drawing Mythologies in Modern Times.” Ends Sept. 6, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

Rubin Museum of Art “What Is It?” Ends June 14. “In the Shadow of Everest: Photographs by Tom Wool.” Ends July 26. “Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures.” Ends Aug. 9. “Bardo: The Tibetan Art of the Afterlife.” Ends Sept. 6, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

Whitney Museum of American Art “Heat Waves In A Swamp: The Paintings Of Charles Burchfield” features over 100 major watercolors, drawings, oils on canvas, sketches,

May 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; June 27

7 New Ballets 4 Commissioned Scores 1 Renowned Architect

Drawing in pencil and wine by Santiago Calatrava

New Choreography and Music Festival

ARCHITECTURE OF DANCE

SPRING SEASON 2010

Santiago Calatrava Melissa Barak Mauro Bigonzetti Peter Martins Wayne McGregor Benjamin Millepied Alexei Ratmansky Christopher Wheeldon

Thierry Escaich Jay Greenberg

Bruno Moretti Esa-Pekka Salonen

TICKETS START AT $20

nycballet.com CenterCharge 212-721-6500

M. Sutherland Fine Arts, Ltd. Presents a Special Exhibition

MARK STOCK

SummerPREVIEW notebooks, journals and doodles by this visionary American artist. June 24-Oct. 17. “Christian Marclay: Festival.” This groundbreaking exhibition—activated by daily concerts and continually evolving—explores Marclay’s approach to the world around him with a particular focus on his “graphic scores” for performance by musicians and vocalists. Visitors will be encouraged to mark up a wall-sized chalkboard, with musical staff lines, thereby creating a collective musical score which will be performed throughout the run of the show. July 1–Sept. 26, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600.

FILM FESTS & SCREENINGS

OIL PAINTINGS MAY 19TH - JUNE 19TH

SPECIAL EXHIBITION HOURS: TUE-SAT 12-5 PM Otherwise by appointment M. SUTHERLAND FINE ARTS, Ltd. 55 EAST 80TH STREET, SECOND FLOOR NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10075 info@msutherland.com; 212-249-0428

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Alliance Française The French Institute features some rare and exciting film programs on Cinema Tuesdays. In June: films starring Sylvie Testud, including Murderous Maids and a screening of Sagan introduced by the actress. Also in June is a series dedicated to 1940s star Edwige Feuilliere, star of such films as Julie de Carneilhan and Love is My Profession.

22 E. 60th St. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), 212355-6100, www.fiaf.org.

Anthology Film Archives In June: the Bicycle Film Festival and a weeklong retrospective of films by Pierre Clementi, and in July it screens Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl, Manoel de Oliveira’s new film and hosts anti-biopics like Lisztomania and Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s “German Trilogy,” as well as Jonas Mekas’s “Selects: Boring Masterpieces.” August features a week of films programmed by Maniac Cop director William Lustig. 32 2nd Ave. (at E. 2nd St.), 212-505-5181, www.anthologyfilmarchives.org.

BAM Cinema Fest From June 9-20, BAMCinématek hosts its second annual film festival, a low-scale, indie-minded collection of films. Highlights: Cold Weather, Aaron Katz’s follow-up to Quiet City; Cyrus, a new comedy by the Duplass Brothers, starring Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly; and Valhalla Rising, a new Viking epic, starring Mads Mikkelsen and directed

by Nicolas Winding Refn. Director Olivier Assayas selects two films to screen, Maurice Pialat’s We Won’t Grow Old Together and the director’s cut of Zodiac, and will also discuss his films with critic and Film Comment editor Kent Jones. Other retro highlights include screenings of William Lustig’s Maniac, G.W. Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl and Wake in Fright, Ted Kotcheff’s Ozploitation cult classic. June 9 through 20, 30 Lafayette Ave. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, www.bam.org.

Brooklyn International Film Festival This fest focuses primarily on short films, experimental features and documentaries (this year’s line-up of 69 films includes only nine narrative features). Nothing you’re likely to recognize by title but a good chance to brag about having seen

a great film that nobody knows of. June 4 through 13, Brooklyn Heights Cinema, 70 Henry St. (at Orange St.), Brooklyn, 718-596-7070, www.wbff.org.

Celebrate Brooklyn!’s Music & Movies Series On July 22, Carl Davis and the Two Man Gentlemen Band will perform while The Chaplin Mutuals, a collection of short films by and starring Charlie Chaplin, screens. DJ Tiger Style and Falu perform a new score for the seminal Bollywood drama Mother India on July 29. And Aug. 6, organist Marco Benevuto and psychedelic/folk band White Tiger provide a new score to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Roger Corman’s House of Usher. June 8 through Aug. 8, Prospect Park Bandshell, enter park at 9th St. & Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, www.briconline.org.

Cine Fest Petrobas Brazil The Tribeca Cinemas host the eighth annual festival of contemporary Brazilian cinema. Films to be screened range from imported comedies like So Normal 2 and Elvis & Madonna to a swath of docs like Queen of Brazil and Tamboro. The festival will close at Central Park’s SummerStage with a tribute in honor of the 50th anniversary of Brasilia, the nation’s capital. June 5 through Aug. 12, Central Park, Rumsey Playfield, enter park at E. 69th St. & 5th Ave., and the Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St. (at Laight St.), 212-941-2001, www. brazilianfilmfestival.com.

Film Society at Lincoln Center From June 1-3, the Walter Reade Theater will host a complete retrospective of director/playwright Agnes Jaoui’s films both as a director and screenwriter, including Let it Rain, her latest film.

After that comes Open Roads (June 4 through 10), the Society’s perennial survey of new Italian films.

Then comes the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (June 11 through 24), featuring new docs by Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), Raoul Peck (Lumumba) and Geoffrey Smith (The English Surgeon). 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, W. 65th St. near Amsterdam Avenue, www.filmlinc.com.

Light Industry Fans of modern art will find a treasure trove of oddities at Light Industry this summer. On June 3, Tuning a Deaf Ear will feature short films from Pittsburgh, including Nosferatu in WSPD, a short adaptation of F.W. Murnau’s film shot on super 8mm performed by kids from the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Aug. 12, there’s Public Opinion Laboratory Presents, featuring two performance art pieces involving carousel slide and multiple kinds of movie projectors to create elliptical new narrative-less, overlapping images. 220 36th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), Brooklyn, www.lightindustry.org.

Manhattan Film Festival Screening at Symphony Space, this relatively new film fest is dedicated to short film programs.

Shorts are arranged by generic categories like

Weekly upscale markets taking place at and benefiting public schools throughout Manhattan.

June 5th & 6th and every Saturday through the end of the year.

PS 63, 121 E. 3rd St. between Avenue A and First Avenue

Quality Vendors Wanted Visit theMARTE.com or call 212.268.0501 for details & to become a vendor.

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: twitter.com/theMARTEnyc

SummerPREVIEW

SummerStage Turns 25 In celebration of its anniversary, New York’s inclusive outdoor festival expands to the five boroughs

BY ERNEST BARTELDES Since its inception 25 years ago, SummerStage has transformed from a small concert series at Central Park’s Naumberg Bandshell to arguably the city’s premier cultural event of the summer. “It has come a long way in terms of the quality of the artists that we’re booking, even though on the first year we had great people like Bill T. Jones and Sun Ra,” explains David Rivel, the City Parks Foundation executive director. “Since then I think the breadth of the people and the different genres we are presenting is just so much more diverse than the founders could have imagined.”

According to Rivel, the scale of the event is the most obvious change. “When it started, for some shows there were about 100 people, but now we routinely have 5,000 people at Rumsey Playfield next door. But the original spirit of SummerStage has been preserved over the 25 years, in which it is about being a New York City festival that reflected the interests and backgrounds in the various diverse communities that live in here.”

Some of the many unforgettable shows in the past included what turned out to be Celia Cruz’s final live performance in 2002 (with a hailstorm to boot!), Edie Brickell’s 2006 comeback gig with the New Bohemians, the unforgettable Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys’ three-hour combo concert in 2008, New York City Ballet’s 2004 tribute to Ray Charles and 2009’s groundbreaking (and scene-stealing) appearance by bassist Esperanza Spalding, who returns this year as part of McCoy Tyner’s band on June 23.

Also memorable was P. Diddy’s surprise

appearance during Q-Tip’s set last year and RumbaTap’s 2008 emotional nod to South American dance traditions. Drummer Joao Barone of Brazilian pop band Os Paralamas do Sucesso, who makes a return performance this year (June 12) remembers that “our first appearance in Central Park years ago was the best show we ever did in New York, and going back will surely feel like the first time all over again. We’re really thrilled.”

SummerStage is also a great education opportunity for fans, since it’s unusual to get a venue that showcases (sometimes over a single day) artists from Colombia, Brazil, Mali, Iceland, South Africa, Argentina and Mexico alongside folk, Americana, jazz, rock and hip-hop. The only comparable summer event is at Prospect Park’s Celebrate Brooklyn, which also programs an impressive roster year after year.

“I think SummerStage is a fantastic venue for not only established artists and legends, but also it’s a great place to listen to new music that is coming up,” explains Brooklyn-based Jose Conde (who performs at the main stage on June 6 and June 27 in the Bronx). “That is vital for me as a singer-songwriter, and it’s important to have SummerStage support this brand-new music I will be showcasing there.”

The biggest innovation this year is the extension of the brand to the rest of the city— including the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which takes place Aug. 28 and 29 at Marcus Garvey and Tompkins Square parks.

“SummerStage first started in Central Park, and then we started City Parks concert series in the early 1990s,” explains Rivel. “We found

International Short Program and Action Short Program, as well as several dedicated to local filmmakers, like New York Short Program and Brooklyn Short Program. Many of the films are loaded onto the festival’s website via YouTube.

July 21 through 25, 2537 Broadway (betw. W. 94th & W. 95th Sts.), 212-864-5400, www.manhattanfilmfestival.org.

New York Asian Film Festival This year’s festival will feature tributes to Hong Kong stars Sammo Hung and Simon Yam with both stars in attendance, as well as screenings of a bevy of pop and art house films including historical drama-cum-martial arts flick Ip Man 2 and camp sci-fi freak-out Robo-Geisha.

June 25 through July 8, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, W. 65th St. near Amsterdam Avenue, www.subwaycinema.com.

Museum of Modern Art In June the museum screens Neil Diamond’s Reel Injun (June 14-20), a new doc about the representation of Native Americans. In July it hosts a complete retrospective of the films of Sally Potter (July 7-21). Be sure to look out for a retrospective of films starring Ida Lupino in August as well as a comprehensive collection of French comedies distributed by Gaumont Studios in July (July 25-Aug. 26). 11 W. 53rd St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.) 212-948-9400, www.moma.org.

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New York Food Film Festival The June 23 opening night is Oyster Night, when the fest will screen four shorts and feature an oyster-shucking competition. Be sure to check out the Burger ‘N’ Beer Garden, which will screen Beer Wars and include a meet-and-greet with acclaimed microbrewery brewmasters and burgers from established burger joints like Mr. Bartley’s and Louis Lunch. Most of the events are free to the public. Visit www.nycfoodfilmfestival.com.

Mahal Rai Banda.

that we were starting to make connections between these different series: We would book somebody in Central Park and then also in the neighborhood parks, or someone whose career would grow would later be booked in the main stage.”

After noting those clear connections, Rivel and others decided it was the best way to celebrate different artistic traditions that were born and bred in New York. “We’re celebrating things like the Harlem Renaissance and the birth of salsa and hip-hop,” says Rivel. “So then we took the next step and thought that if we’re making all these connections, we should probably be looking at this as one big citywide festival, and that felt right to us.”

Outdoor Events

Highlights from SummerStage, taking place June 1-Sept. 26: The genre-busting Italian singer-songwriter Jovanotti (July 31), with up-and-coming jazz diva Melody Gardot (June 1); a reunited Living Colour (June 5); Malian singer Salif Keita (June 20); The Stanley Clarke band, featuring Hiromi (June 23); Mexico’s rock icons Maldita Vecindad (as part of the LAMC, July 10); reggae legend Jimmy Cliff (July 11); R&B multi-instrumentalist and producer Raphael Saadiq (July 17); jazz fusion veteran Olu Dara (July 28, Queensbridge Park); Rap pioneers Public Enemy (Aug. 15). < For a complete schedule, visit www.summerstage.org.

Key to the City It’s a citywide scavenger hunt. And it’s art.

Creative Time takes to Times Square June 3 through 27 to confer keys that unlock more than 20 sites across New York City’s five boroughs— such as locks within the Brooklyn Museum, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Tortilleria Nixtamal, Conference House Park and Rincon Crillo Cultural Center. Confused? We think this one will only make sense once you participate.

More details at www.creativetime.org.

Play Me, I’m Yours While we don’t have man-made waterfalls or a Christo installation to gawk at, this summer’s public art showstopper may end up being Luke Jerram’s. Sing for Hope is working with the artist to install 60 pianos in city parks and public spaces in all of the five boroughs. If you pass by one from June 21 to July 5, feel free to pound out a tune.

It opens in conjunction with Make Music New York, and everyone is invited to post pictures and comments on the site www.nycstreetpianos.com, which features maps with piano locations.

The Sixth Borough Last year Governors Island entered into our consciousness in a really big way—and that was mainly thanks to the incredible cultural events programmed for the little island. This year, No Longer Empty will feature a series of site-specific installations on the island. Find out more at nolongerempty.org.

Whitney on Site: New Commissions Downtown Three artists—Guyton\Walker, Tauba Auerbach and Barbara Kruger—were invited by the Whitney to create a temporary artwork at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington streets in the Meatpacking District, the site of the museum’s future downtown location. The pieces will remain until June 23. More info at www.whitney.org.

AttheGALLERIES buildings, each 2-and-a-half-miles wide and each containing 100 rooms. This 675-squaremile architectural labyrinth would be buried in the central North American plains and governed by a leaderless democratic process—a mysterious civilization that would exist outside of normal time. He first showed the drawings included in his concept, One City, at the Guggenheim Museum in 1984.

Employing geometric imagery, Insley created an elegant, futuristic environment, always the artist as much as the urban planner; nothing he created is without beauty. In the 33 wall fragments, paintings, drawings and photographs of abstract buildings exhibited here, One City pulses with life, a fantastic dream unlimited by the restrictions of reality. The drawing “Building/ No 41” resembles a delicate elongated cube, vein-like lines making a ragged pattern across its shaded surface, a triangle faintly sketched in the background. In another, “One City Building Room Section, Red Green Elevation,” he drew a series of parallel bars of various heights in pale red, a grid perhaps representing the houses.

As opposed to the ethereal drawings, the wall fragments are vivid, cubist designs on Masonite. Mondrian-like “Wall Fragment No. 65.16” is composed of black, lime green and brown intersecting bars of color. It is designated as the “Entry to the Interior Building.” Other fragments show up in warm, earthy tones. The photomontage “Passage Space Spiral” lets us see what One City might look like if we came across it in the plains. On the surface, it appears similar to a modern Mayan or Aztec compound.

You might not want to live there, but it’s certainly worth a visit. (Valerie Gladstone) Through May 27. Westwood Gallery, 578 Broadway, 212-925-8581.

Antoni Tàpies: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper

“Suelo Marino,” by Sarah Lutz.

Sarah Lutz: Recent Work Gravity plays a significant, if not defining, role in Sarah Lutz’s lush and painterly abstractions, currently on display at Lohin Geduld Gallery.

The majority of Lutz’s compositions are peculiarly weighted, as if the bottom edge of each panel were a solid plane struggling to hold the painting’s contents. Even when her clustered arrays of blobs, blips and fleshy nubbins float and bob, they’re inexorably pulled toward a horizon line that is part stage, part shelf, part landscape and mostly mystery. The effect is disconcerting, particularly given the boundless environments in which Lutz envelops her biomorphic shapes. It’s as if each image threatens to slide from our purview—the catch being that our purview is similarly transient.

Lutz, in other words, places us in no-man’s land, an amalgam of Surrealist dreamscape, microcellular panorama and, given the work’s keening and otherworldly light, Mars as painted

by Odilon Redon or Gustave Moreau. There’s a 19th-century flavor to the attention paid to detail and ornamentation. Notwithstanding traces of 20th-century precedent, everything from Salvador Dalí to Philip Guston to Terry

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Winters to the Spirograph, Lutz’s images are un-placeable in terms of timeline. Imagine a premodernist painter pursuing a modernist idiom with little regard for the niceties of our high tech age, and you’ll get an inkling of Lutz’s slippery accomplishment.

The only absolute thing about Lutz’s vision is that it is inconceivable without oil paint.

Look at “Congeries (Tumble)” or the lumpish pile-up of squiggles in “Suelo Marino” and you’ll know why the medium is treasured; hell, you’ll realize why it was invented. The luster, malleability and chromatic richness afforded by oils are characteristics that Lutz employs with understated bravado and sparkling clarity. A painter in tune with her medium is a rare and welcome thing—and she’s currently seen in abundance at Lohin Geduld. (Mario Naves) Through June 5. Lohin Geduld Gallery, 531 W. 25th St., 212-675-2656.

Will Insley: One City A great and optimistic seer, Will Insley worked out a way to save the entire population of the United States in case of environmental devastation. Carefully thought-out over 40 years, his imaginary city would be able to house 400 million people in 14,000 city square

One of the greatest European painters of his generation, 86-year-old Spaniard Antoni Tàpies continues to produce remarkable works.

In this exhibition, he shows recent mixed media paintings on wood and canvas, including some assemblage, and works on paper created with a combination of graphite, paint and ink.

He developed his distinctive physical and abstract style in the late 1940s, after having immersed himself in Primitivism and Surrealism as a young man. Since then he has developed an elaborate visual language inspired by a wide range of sources and by combining gestures, assorted materials and signs and symbols drawn from Eastern and Western cultures. He might incorporate marble dust, soil from the Catalan countryside, spray paint, synthetic varnish and other commonplace or discarded objects. He is most at home with blacks, ochres, earthy colors, chalky whites and very occasional splashes of red or blue. Invariably, his initials reappear in his works.

“Esgrafiat i espiral” looks like a primitive wall painting, with a curling black shape hovering over wavy lines that could have been made by a wheel or even the sole of a shoe. Within parentheses a number one appears next to an equal sign and number two. A ghostly presence

seems to lurk below the beige surface. The arcane symbols convey a palpable sense of mystery and otherworldliness. In “M sobre mà,” a hand reaches out toward squiggly letters—probably Tàpies’ initials—in what appears to be black water, the letter M cut into the palm. In the hand’s effort and the failure to make contact, one feels a terrible loss. The fluidity that defines all of his works gives “Gran S” its eloquence, one thick black line curving like a river with symbols etched into serpentine form. The two black rectangles in “Partícules i Ones” could be doors, two options in life. Next to one is a plus sign and opposite is an arrow pointing down. Twisting, graffiti-like white lines cover the top of the other door, a question mark partially over its surface. It is his questioning that draws one into his masterly works, and his questioning, one imagines, that keeps him so vital. (VG) Through June 12. Pace Gallery, 32 E. 57th St., 212-421-3292.

Ghada Amer: Color Misbehavior Ghada Amer’s recent pictures at Cheim & Read continue her exploration of the “feminine dialectic” through the appropriation of pornography. You might not initially consider the work political or salacious—unless sinuous runs of color and encompassing fields of patterns float your ideological and prurient boats. But then there are the images not quite obscured

by Amer’s updates of Abstract Expressionism: Women striking poses lifted from the pages of Hustler, or something like it, anyway.

Equating the macho bluster of Jackson Pollock with crass titillation is an appropriately ironic stance for our been-there, done-that post-feminist age. But the thing is: Amer loves Pollock, not as a target of derision, but for his ambition, elegance and dogged pursuit of the ineffable; it’s there to see in the work. This is where Amer rankles—her lyrical abstractions sell themselves short with gimmickry. Aesthetic pleasure is flattened when, say, “Who Killed ‘Les Demoiselles D’Avignon?’” is revealed as the Sapphic equivalent of “Where’s Waldo?”. Porno is the cheapest device in the book. It’s galling, really—Amer is better than that.

“The Egyptian Lover,” by Ghada Amer.

These paintings are only tangentially made with paint. Thread is the chosen medium, and Amer employs it with uncanny sensitivity. Her gift with the stuff is undeniable, not least because it transcends novelty. Like any artist worth her salt, Amer employs materials both as physical substance and as a conduit for metaphor.

How exactly it is that thread and stitching are

transformed into something as organic and unfettered as poured acrylics is a conundrum and, more important, thrilling. Amer delights in the painterly slur, the constancy of pattern and spidery traceries of line.

But then there’s “The Egyptian Lover,” wherein Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty wends her way through a straight guy’s fantasy of woman-on-woman sex. It’s like punctuating a sunset with a Bronx cheer: beauty is stunted by a punch line. Maybe Amer decided to play the porno card in order to curry favor with an elite culture perpetually enamored of the transgressive. After all, how sexy can formalist abstraction be? Given Amer’s renown, she’s succeeded brilliantly. But the life of art is different from careerism—and considerably less forgiving. (MN) Through June 19. Cheim & Read, 547 W. 25th St., 212-242-7727.

Patricia Esquivias It has long been my contention that video is the most challenging contemporary art form.

The reason is that anyone can do it. Look at YouTube—who isn’t making videos? They are easy to make, but here’s the rub: it’s difficult to make them good and meaningful. The exhibition by Patricia Esquivias at Murray Guy is a prime example.

The show consists of two videos that are so amateurish in both concept and execution that it’s hard to know what to say about them. The first, “Natures at the Hand” is a group of three shorts, each about two minutes long. One is a woman throwing a basketball at an unbreakable window as the sun sets. It’s been edited so that the window hits coincide with the sinking sun. OK, I get it. The second is a close-up of a hand lighting matches from a collection of matchbooks. The third is a juxtaposition of images from books of European topiary and local topiary from Guadalajara, Mexico. Cute. Though the gallery press release praises Esquivias as a “storyteller,” there is no evidence of it in this unlinked group of videos. They are neither interesting visually nor compelling intellectually.

The second piece, “Folklore lll,” is more ambitious and indeed, it is more narrative than anything else. A complicated and hesitantly narrated story about two places that remain unnamed, this video seeks to make a story about buildings and “place.” There are references to pyramids, tile and a tourist attraction called Land’s End. However, without reading the gallery explanation of the narrative, it remains impenetrable. There is no beginning, middle or end to this story. I watched it twice, hoping for enlightenment.

Sometimes there’s just nothing on TV. (Melissa Stern) Through June 12. Murray Guy, 453 W. 17th St., 212-463-7372.

David Barnett: Sacred Creatures Viewing the deliciously obsessive art of David Barnett, one is drawn into his world of twisted Victoriana and mechanical madness.

The exhibition at Denise Bibro Gallery is a combination of collage, found objects and extraordinary mechanisms fabricated by the

“Sacred Creatures,” by David Barnett.

artist. It is a complex show, and not everything works, but the pieces that do are knockouts.

Barnett has titled his exhibition Sacred Creatures after pieces early in the series that combine religious iconography with the imagery of flying insects. The exhibition quickly veers into other territory exploring family, history, flying machines and mechanical toys.

Exquisitely crafted, the sculptures are a delight. Tiny gears and minutely crafted mechanical apparatus turn the piece “Alb 09” into a marvel of engineering and design. An elongated mechanical flying machine, a sort of primitive helicopter, is constructed of delicate struts made of copper and brass. The front, like the prow of a ship, is a huge Victorian baby head collaged in old newsprint.

All of the sculptures are robust in design and execution. “Tin Man,” “Sir Oswald” and “Family Tree” are simply marvelous. Some of the pieces actually work via small motors that drive the Ferris wheel of “Family Tree” around in an awkward motion. Others imply the notion of work but are in fact static.

The collage pieces, of which there are many, are a bit problematic. Though elegant and perfectly executed, some of them lack the emotional punch of the three-dimensional works.

The artist is so agile with the collage format that one can see how it is easy to slip into some more obvious visual solutions. Bugs, watch faces and angels, the stock imagery of Victoriana get a little overexposed. Nonetheless, some of the collages transcend the cloak of Victoriana and marry this

nostalgic sensibility with the more contemporary.

“Oscar,” a portrait in collage of the artist’s dog, is both tender and funny. It takes the craft of collage to a new and interesting place. (MS) Through June 5. Denise Bibro Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., Ste. 4W, 212-647-7030.

Josephine Meckseper Josephine Meckseper came of age at a very particular time in German postwar development. She grew up during the “economic miracle,” in which companies like BMW became symbols of the German economy’s rise from the ashes of WWII. Born in the mid-1960s to a family of leftists, Baader Meinhof-style rhetoric of anti-capitalist activism has influenced her work for decades.

Meckseper has built a career exploring and representing the causes and effects of the lavish lifestyle permitted by capitalism. But her work is not a direct attack in the same vein as her activist predecessors. Instead, she refocuses the onus of outrage on the viewer. Her current show at Elizabeth Dee Gallery centers on the over-use of oil, from its origin to its consumption in the American-made Mustang Cobra.

The exhibition is half luxury-car dealership, half discount store. Sculptural and found objects are laid out on mirrored pedestals, car accessories dipped in oil hang from chrome stands, and fluorescent lights set at the baseboard cast a heavy, unhealthy glow. Advertisements for Cartier and engineers’ blueprints of Mustangs hang plainly on the walls. In a side room,

clips from Dynasty and Dallas play on a loop, accompanied by an acid house soundtrack. The gross absurdity of opulence is on display, and the gallery spins as the mirrored walls and ceiling contort the viewer’s image. In a Foucauldian turn, the targets of disgust are not the objects themselves, but rather the power structures and lifestyle that they represent.

These luxury goods are juxtaposed with newspaper images of Iraqi protests and the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. The aesthetic and mode of delivery of these opposing lifestyles thus equalized, we are free to cast aspersions on the motivations and intents of the actors who fuel this laissez-faire economy. The irony, of course, is that this interplay of haves and have-nots is codified as entertainment, comfortably distant in this Chelsea gallery.

(Nicholas Wells) Through June 26. Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 545 W. 20th St., 212-924-7545.

Claude Monet: Late Work When lights are dimmed and walls are painted a dignified gray at Gagosian, you know something is up. In this case, the high-flying gallery—more often associated with such artists as Richard Prince and Damien Hirst—has put on a spectacular exhibit of the traditionally beautiful: more than two dozen late canvases by Claude Monet. On loan from major collections around the world, these paintings of the artist’s famous garden and lily pond not only serve up the usual Impressionist delights—air, weather, May 18, 2010 | City Arts

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AttheGALLERIES

AT AUCTION May 20

Photographic Literature & Important Photographs Specialist: Daile Kaplan, ext 21 dkaplan@swanngalleries.com

June 8 Richard Prince, Untitled (Girlfriend), chromogenic print in BAM portfolio, 2000.

Estimate $18,000 to $22,000.

At auction May 20.

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June 17

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Books including Literature, Art, Illustrated & Plate Books Specialist: Christine von der Linn, ext 20 cvonderlinn@swanngalleries.com

June 24 Walter Gropius, editor, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919-1923, Munich, 1923.

Estimate $3,000 to $4,000.

At auction June 17.

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light—but also uncannily anticipate the expressionistic trends of the mid-20th century.

Claude Monet had the peculiar experience of outlasting his own, first revolution. He outlived not just all the other Impressionists and postImpressionists, but also Fauvism, Suprematism, Dada and Cubism. Until his final year, he continued to paint the sun-drenched landscape, concentrating increasingly on views of his Giverny estate.

The pre-1910 canvases in Gagosian’s first room are impressive, if somewhat conventional in attack. They capture the reliably picturesque with luminous assurance, his brushy, weighted colors vividly evoking the various worlds within a pond: lily pads on the surface, depths of water beneath, trees reflected from beyond. These canvases enchant, but also illuminate Cézanne’s double-edged assessment: “Monet is just an eye—but what an eye!” That is, all sensation and no measure.

But the later work at Gagosian—painted, perhaps significantly, after Cézanne’s death— surprises for its quickening intensity and directness. Monet became increasingly absorbed by the primal and encompassing. His paintings create states of being as much as they describe scenes. In a canvas from 1916-19 (one of many titled “Nymphéas”), raw, matted planes of violet, dark purple and deep blue-green on the water’s surface become as spacious as the sky itself. The authority and explicitness of his means electrifies the colliding zones of another “Nymphéas” from 1914-17; here, blue-green-purples (lily pads) drift across a shimmer of blending green-browns (reflected foliage), to be split by an urgent skitter of blue (gap of sky).

Gagosian’s exhibition makes an excellent case for Monet as kind of proto-AbstractExpressionist. But the conviction of these paintings lies in a formal coherence that transcends categories of brushwork. Indeed, next to these rigorous canvases, de Kooning can sometimes seem an indulgent paint-slinger, and Rothko a compositional underachiever.

Superficially a celebration of the beautiful, these great, late paintings of Monet remind us that we should expect of painting—just as we do of literature and music—more than mere evocations of beauty. We hope for the contradictions of experience, told to us by a generous and brave spirit fluent in an artistic discipline. At this, the 80-year-old Monet shines. (John Goodrich) Through June 26. Gagosian Gallery, 522 W. 21st St., 212-741-1717.

Richard Diebenkorn in Context: 1949-52 The cliché has it that New York is tough, and California mellow. Or is it that New York is hide-bound, and California liberated?

In any event, the two have always trended towards different kinds of art. Leslie Feely’s current exhibition, which mixes 15 early-1950s abstractions by Richard Diebenkorn with a half-dozen works by his Abstract-Expressionist contemporaries, invites us to reconsider the California master within the cross-influences of the East and West Coasts.

Though Diebenkorn lived briefly in New York City, and spent short, productive periods in New Mexico and Illinois, he spent most of his 70 years in California. Nevertheless, he absorbed many of the same influences as the Abstract-

“Untitled,” by Richard Diebenkorn.

Expressionists through first-hand experiences of the work of Picasso, Matisse and Gorky.

Almost all of the paintings and works on paper in this show date from 1949 to 1952, when the artist lived mostly in Albuquerque, N.M. These already reveal the qualities that course through the work of the next 40 years: the handsome, lyrical sense of composition, anchored in raw/refined arabesques of resonant color. Several ink and gouache drawings hum with angular gestures paced by trailing arcs and scattered, massed darks. Their dynamic, slightly rumpled designs seem an instinctive leap to the paintings, which in this installation are dominated by the ochres and muted reds of the Southwest. Though built up from many reworked layers, these oil or gouache paintings have the immediacy of an intense, probing curiosity at work. An untitled gouache-andink piece from 1952 feels much larger than its 14-inch height; within its small frame, a series of climbing, coiling arcs, buoyant in their pure orangeness, rise above a deep, limpid, windowlike green. A sculpture (one of only two such known works) intriguingly transposes the painter’s flings and condensations into three dimensions.

In this context, the six works by his Abstract-Expressionist contemporaries serve as familiar turf-markers. The image of two women becomes the occasion for de Kooning’s taut, furious thrashings in a 1952 pencil drawing.

The elbows-out energy of a small, cubistic Motherwell painting from 1950 communicates on both rhetorical and visual levels. Works by Gottlieb, Guston and David Smith round out the selection, but the spirit of a Gorky drawing in ink, crayon and pencil (1947-48)— fluidly self-possessed in its organic, counterbalanced forms—feels closest to Diebenkorn’s.

So, just how does Diebenkorn connect to the Abstract Expressionists? One scenario—that the California master mellowed where the New York painters toughened—does justice to none of them. I prefer this narrative: the demonstrative, epic gestures of de Kooning (and Pollock and Kline) were inseparable from their compulsion to take on Picasso and his fencing match with history; the lyrical geometries of Diebenkorn (and Elmer Bischoff and David Park) were inspired by Matisse’s luminous study of historical forms. Too pat? Drop by Leslie Feely’s provocative installation to shape your own narrative. (JG) Through June 26. Leslie Feely Fine Art, 33 E. 68th St., 5th Fl., 212-988-0040.

Dance

Baryshnikov IS Back JOEL LOBENTHAL

t age 62, Mikhail Baryshnikov is still the big dog of international dance. Of course, that’s because of his long and vastly influential work as a dancer, but also because of all the things he’s done aside from dancing: acting in movies, television, directing dance companies and opening the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan five years ago.

BAC has just opened a second performance space, the Jerome Robbins Theater, and named The Wooster Theater Group as its resident troupe. This month Baryshnikov is conducting what he calls a “soft opening” of the new theater, with a series of programs that will see him take the stage once again. Being a dancer remains an essential part of his professional and personal identity.

Baryshnikov will perform three solos as part of the May Nights in the Jerome Robbins Theater program. Benjamin Millepied’s Years Later, which has evolved over a number of years, is choreographed to a musical mix, while Valse Fantasie, choreographed last year by Alexei Ratmansky, is set to Glinka’s booming 19th-century composition. Baryshnikov will also dance a new solo by Susan Marshall that is a work in progress. In this program of “Unrelated Solos,” he’s joined by Steve Paxton and David Neumann, both performing their own work.

It’s been two decades since Baryshnikov more or less exited classical ballet, dancing Fokine’s Les Sylphides at American Ballet Theatre for the last time and resigning as its artistic director. His subsequent turn to many modes of contemporary dance has been criticized as an opportunistic move that had the unfortunate side effect of making these idioms seem like a refuge for diminished athletic capacity. But Baryshnikov says that he has come to feel that ballet “is kind of a dead art, a bit, in my view,” and actually his interest in modern dance long

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predates the end of his ballet career. Indeed, since his early stardom with the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, Baryshnikov has sought to define himself via new work and followed his choreographers in whatever path they chose to navigate.

“I never said, ‘Oh, I want to do something like that,’ or ‘I would like to be heroic,’ or ‘I would like to be lyrical, and I am this and that...’” he explained to me in a recent interview. “You cannot talk to choreographers like that. That’s the worst thing you could do to a choreographer.

You have to really totally surrender.”

For Baryshnikov, the Center represents a rapprochement with New York and the United States, despite his awareness of the dramatic changes in national and municipal identity that have occurred since he moved here immediately after defecting from the Soviet Union in 1974. At one point, he “gave up on the city. I went dancing all over the place. New York was not as attractive to me as it was in the ’70s. It has become very conservative. The young people were pushed out because of economic pressures. They couldn’t just rent a little studio and be in Manhattan.” He considered moving to Europe, but it’s New York that has remained his home base. This renewed commitment to the City led him to found BAC. Ballet has not entirely dropped from his radar screen: last month he and his wife, former ABT dancer Lisa Rinehart—who is now writing about dance—watched with great pleasure the graduation performance of the Paris Opera Ballet school. During our talk, he had insightful things to say about ballet technique and about some of the great dancers he’s watched and worked with.

There is also no question that the discipline of ballet has sustained his performing longevity.

He gives himself a ballet class every day, for at least two hours. “Now it takes me an hour to get up from the floor. I have to do a lot of stretches with the rubber balls.” Then he does a barre, then center work and small jumps. On the day I spoke with him at the BAC, he had worked

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with both Marshall and Ratmansky; all told he had spent nearly five hours in the dance studio.

Baryshnikov would be the first to admit that moving on the professional dance stage never gets any easier. But, he says, “It’s still fun.”

For me, one of the most interesting events of Baryshnikov’s mid-life reinvention of his performing persona is the way that one of the most energetic of pyrotechnicians has explored non-movement. Baryshnikov says he learned from Martha Graham, who was sovereign of ruminative, meaningful stillness. She rehearsed him in several of her pieces that he danced in the final years of her life. “That’s the most difficult thing to allow yourself, because especially when you’re a bit younger you think if you do nothing people won’t look at you. A stupid thought.” Age, of course, has made that a necessity as much as a conscious artistic choice. “Hopefully craft gets better with age and experience,” he says. “Then of course you’re losing your body and flexibility and all those things. This means again you have to use your head and figure out how to perform with a sense of economy and purpose and focus.

That’s a whole new life, of course.”

If the shifting capacities of age have led Baryshnikov into an almost Kabuki-like distillation at times, both Millepied’s and Ratmansky’s solos—each of which I saw recently on DVD—are unmistakably kinetic. They’re also

shadowed with issues of age and mortality, as is so much of the work Baryshnikov has done since leaving ballet. A direct link and interface with his youthful balletic incarnation is established in the Millepied, where Baryshnikov’s movement is a dialogue with footage taken in the mid-1960s when he was a student of the great teacher Alexander Pushkin at the state ballet academy in Leningrad. In Valse Fantasie Baryshnikov both delineates some neo-classical ballet stylization as well as stands apart from it, seeming to address spirits seen only by him.

Whenever he’s in New York, Baryshnikov’s schedule revolves around BAC, but he is peripatetic as always. Last year Baryshnikov gave some 50 performances in nine different countries. Next month he dances in Paris and Tel Aviv, and then will participate with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on its farewell tour appearances. At BAC, a response to the Manhattan space crunch has arisen in the form of an ongoing series of artist residencies sponsored by the Center. As his own performance beat goes on, the construction of a new Baryshnikov legacy takes shape. < May Nights in the Jerome Robbins Theater, through May 26. BAC, 450 W. 37th St., 212-868-4444; $25 ($15 for film screening); five-show pass: $85.

Ming Fay on Orchard Street Through June 6, 2010

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Mikhail Baryshnikov in Years Later.

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Julieta Cervantes

The man, his arts center and his re-dedication to the city

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54 Orchard Street NY, NY 10002 212 410 6120 lesleyheller.com

Ming Fay Square Fruits (detail), 2010 Mixed media, Dimensions variable

May 18, 2010 | City Arts

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THEATER

Dirty Art

BY MARK PEIKERT Anyone who has paid attention to British actor Jonathan Cake’s theatrical career knows the appropriateness of his casting in a play about Michelangelo’s David: The man has a beefcake body, which more often than not he flaunts on stage. He remains fully clothed in his performance as an Italian security guard in Restoration, unfortunately, because Claudia Shear’s play could have used a little more sizzle.

Chosen by a committee for her skills at restoration rather than for her abrasive personality, Giulia (Shear) travels to Italy to restore David in time for the statue’s 500th anniversary. For one year, she painstakingly scrubs the statue inch by inch with Q-Tips, while bantering with security guard Max (Cake) and dealing with a gorgeous, officious Italian fundraiser (the always welcome Tina Benko). Along the way, much is made about the power of art and its seductive qualities— Giulia seems more likely to fall in love with cold marble than a potentially messy human being—but Shear has very little that is new to add. David has been an object of lust and envy

and scandal for five centuries; in Restoration, he’s all three, but to diminished effect.

Part of the statue’s diminishment comes from Scott Pask’s scenic design, which is centered around a piecemeal version of David surrounded by scaffolding. As supertitles indicate the passing of months, Giulia moves from David’s foot to his buttocks (which, along with David’s genitalia, leave plenty of room for sophomoric humor from Shear), but we never see the full statue until the play’s final moments.

Judging solely from isolated parts of the statue, it’s difficult to remember what all the fuss everyone makes is about. By the time the full David is finally revealed, it’s too late.

But Shear also shoots her own play in the foot by making Giulia as unlikable as possible.

Lurching across the stage with the 90-degree perma-posture of a confrontational person, Shear never reveals the woman beneath the barbed-wire exterior. Giulia swiftly dismisses elderly museum patrons, Max, her boss (Natalija Nogulich, in one of her three roles) and even her elderly professor (Alan Mandell), preferring to dedicate herself entirely to the

Joan Marcus

Claudia Shear returns to NYC with a new play about art— but not heart

Claudia Shear and Jonathan Cake in Restoration. task at hand. “You smell!” she whispers in a shocked tone during a New Year’s Eve party when she and Max embrace. After months of focusing on Michelangelo’s creation, she’s forgotten what flesh-and-blood people are like.

Sympathizing with a woman who butts heads seemingly for the sheer stubbornness of it is never easy, but Shear’s performance does little to mitigate Giulia’s callousness.

Even Max, though he claims to have

found a friend in Giulia, can’t quite make us see beyond her prickliness. He quotes poetry and Hemingway to her (Max is an unlikely candidate for a security job), but she never really melts under his attention. As charming as Cake is in the role—though he frequently loses his Italian accent—it’s difficult to understand just why Giulia remains so closed off from his friendly attentions.

Director Christopher Ashley keeps the proceedings moving briskly, but he can’t disguise the essential hollowness of the play. Restoration isn’t a play about a woman blossoming in the Italian heat, like Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo; Shear seems more interested in the fine details of cleaning. Giulia’s opening monologue indicates the direction Shear intends to take, detailing the ways she used to clean bolts at the bottom of the toilet as a child, using toothpicks soaked in bleach. This is not a woman one can fall for easily. Shear stakes out her intentions clearly and early on; it’s our own fault if we misinterpret the play’s opening scenes as leading up to something grander and more imaginative than the end result. In a way, Restoration is not dissimilar to Pask’s reduction of David: All the pieces are there, but the overall effect is lacking. < Through June 13, New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. (betw. 2nd Ave. & Bowery), 212-460-5475; $20-$65.

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ArtsAGENDA GALLERY OPENINGS

Gallery listings courtesy of

440 GALLERY: Shanee Epstein: “Ezra: May His

Memory Be a Blessing.” Opens May 20, 440 6th Ave., Brooklyn, 718-499-3844.

A.I.R. GALLERY: Damali Abrams: “Autobiography of a Year.” Opens May 26, 111 Front St. #228, Brooklyn, 212-255-6651.

ANIMAZING GALLERY: Daniel Merriam: “Taking Reality by Surprise.” Opens May 20, 54 Greene St., 212-226-7374.

BETTY CUNINGHAM GALLERY: Rackstraw Downes: “A Selection of Drawings: 1980-2010.” Opens May 27, 541 W. 25th St., 212-242-2772.

CAUSEY CONTEMPORARY: Hyun Ju Park: “Out of Darkness...Light.” Opens May 21. “Consequential Tea.” Opens May 21, 92 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, 718-218-8939.

CERES GALLERY: “Ninth National Juried Exhibition.”

Opens May 25, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 201, 212947-6100.

DANIEL REICH GALLERY: Amy Gartrell. Opens May 22, 537 A W. 23rd St., 212-924-4949.

EFA PROJECT SPACE: “Word-Less.” Opens June 3, 323 W. 39th St., 2nd Fl., 212-563-5855, ext. 151.

FIRST STREET GALLERY: Phyllis Floyd: “Anne, Zoe, Emil & Other Subjects.” Opens May 25, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 915, 646-336-8053.

GALLERY 307: Sally Weiss: “Sculpture & Assemblage.” Opens May 27, 307 7th Ave., Ste. 1401, 646-400-5254.

GELABERT STUDIOS GALLERY: “Sketches of (in)justice.”

Opens May 18, 255 W. 86th St., 212-874-7188.

J CACCIOLA GALLERY: “Go Figure.” Opens May 20, 617 W. 27th St., 212-462-4646.

JADITE GALLERIES: Stephen Cimini: “Secrets in Nature.” Opens June 3, 528 W. 47th St., 212977-6190.

LENTSPACE: “Avenue of the Americas.” Opens May 19, city block at Canal, Grand, Varick & Sixth Avenue, no phone.

LUCKY GALLERY: “Made in Red Hook.” Opens May 22, 176 Richards St., Brooklyn, no phone.

LYONS WIER GALLERY: Amanda Besl: “Riding Lessons.” Opens May 25. Jazz-minh Moore: “Slipping Sideways.” Opens May 25, 175 7th Ave., 212-242-6220.

MF GALLERY: “I Need Your Skull.” Opens May 22, 213 Bond St., Brooklyn, 917-446-8681.

MIGHTY TANAKA: AVOID pi & infinity: “Babel Code <osmotic transmissions>.” Opens May 21, 68 Jay St., Ste. 416, Brooklyn, 718-596-8781.

NOHO GALLERY IN CHELSEA: Stephanie Rauschenbusch: “Blue Studio.” Opens May 25, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063.

OK HARRIS WORKS OF ART: “Summeryview Group Exhibition.” Opens May 22, 383 W. Broadway, 212-431-3600.

REAL FINE ARTS: Alisha Kerlin: “Cat & Mouse.” Opens May 22, 673 Meeker Ave., Brooklyn, no phone.

RICK WESTER FINE ART: “Big Girls: Large Format Photographs by Women Photographers.” Opens May 20, 511 W. 25th St., Ste. 205, 212-2555560.

SALMAGUNDI CLUB: John C. Traynor. Opens May 18, 47 5th Ave., 212-255-7740.

SLAG GALLERY: “Out of Line.” Opens May 20, 531 W. 25th St., Ground 10, 212-967-9818.

STEPHEN HALLER GALLERY: Ron Ehrlich. Opens May 20, 542 W. 26th St., 212-741-7777.

STEVEN KASHER GALLERY: “Autochromes: Early Color Masterpieces from National Geographic.” Opens May 27. “1.3: New Color Images by Joel Grey.”

Opens May 27, 521 W. 23rd St., 212-966-3978.

TEAM GALLERY: “Kratos: About Il(legitimate)d Power.” Opens May 27, 83 Grand St., 212-2799219.

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THOMAS ERBEN GALLERY: Haeri Yoo. Opens May 20,

SVA GALLERY: “Carnival.” Ends May 28, 209 E. 23rd

526 W. 26th St., 4th Fl., 212-645-8701.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: Medrie MacPhee. Opens May 27, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

WORK GALLERY: Patrick Campbell. Opens June 5, 65 Union St., Brooklyn, 646-460-5425.

St., no phone.

TEAM GALLERY: Gardar Eide Einarsson: “Another

GALLERY CLOSINGS ARMAND BARTOS FINE ART: “Collect With Us.” Ends

May 28, 25 E. 73rd St., 4th Fl., 212-288-6705.

BETTY CUNINGHAM GALLERY: Norbert Prangenberg:

“Paintings.” Ends May 22, 541 W. 25th St., 212-242-2772.

BLANK SPACE GALLERY: Elyce Abrams & Bernard Dunaux. Ends June 5, 511 W. 25th St., Ste. 204, 212-924-2025.

BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY: Helene K. Manzo: “Platte Clove: Paintings & Monotypes.” Ends May 22, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-486-4730.

BROOKLYNITE GALLERY: Dolk & M-City: “Eurotrash.”

Ends May 29, 334 Malcolm X Blvd., Brooklyn, 347-405-5976.

BRYCE WOLKOWITZ GALLERY: Jim Campbell: “Exploded View.” Ends May 22, 505 W. 24th St., 212-243-8830.

CERES GALLERY: Marian Osher: “Fearless Flying!”

Ends May 22. Judith Greenwald: “Poem.” Ends May 22, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 201, 212-9476100.

CINDERS GALLERY: Monica Canilao: “We Are Dust.”

Ends May 30, 103 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn, 718-388-2311.

DC MOORE GALLERY: Nathan Oliveira: “Drawings 1960-2010.” Ends May 28. Katherine Bowling: “Moments of Grace.” Ends May 28, 724 5th Ave., 8th Fl., 212-247-2111.

DEITCH PROJECTS: Shepard Fairey: “May Day.” Ends May 29, 18 Wooster St., 212-343-7300.

DENISE BIBRO FINE ART: David Barnett: “Sacred Creatures.” Ends June 5, 529 W. 20th St., 4W, 212-647-7030.

ELI KLEIN FINE ART: Liu Bolin: “On Fire.” Ends June 4, 462 W. Broadway, 212-255-4388.

FARMANI GALLERY: “Select Gender.” Ends May 22, 111 Front St., Ste. 212, Brooklyn, 718-578-4478.

FIRST STREET GALLERY: Rallou Malliarakis: “Illuminations.” Ends May 22, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 915, 646-336-8053.

HEIDI CHO GALLERY: Tad Wiley: “House of Consequence.” Ends May 22, 522 W. 23rd St., no phone.

ICO GALLERY: Federico Cuesta: “Eternal Guests.”

Ends June 2. “Strange Design.” Ends June 2, 606 W. 26th St., 212-966-3897.

KATHLEEN CULLEN FINE ARTS: Frank Brunner: “New Works.” Ends May 20, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 605, 212-463-8500.

LESLEY HELLER WORKSPACE: Ming Fay: “Cognitive Unconscious.” Ends June 6, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120.

LOMBARD-FREID PROJECTS: Nina Yuen: “White Blindness.” Ends May 22, 531 W. 26th St., 212-9678040.

LTMH GALLERY: Shoja Azari: “Icons.” Ends May 27, 39 E. 78th St., 212-249-7695.

MARGARET THATCHER PROJECTS: Jus Juchtmans: “Look Again.” Ends June 3, 511 W. 25th St., Ste. 404, 212-675-0222.

MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY: Michael Rosenfeld: “Unconscious Unbound: Surrealism in America.” Ends May 28, 24 W. 57th St., 212247-0082.

MIYAKO YOSHINAGA ART PROSPECTS: Jonathan Hammer: “KOVNO - KOBE.” Ends May 26, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-268-7132.

NABI GALLERY: Ingeborg ten Haeff. Ends June 5.

Ann Marie Heal. Ends June 5, 137 W. 25th St.,

Work by Mike Mass at MF Gallery.

212-929-6063.

NEW YORK STUDIO GALLERY: Charming Baker: “Stupid

Has a New Hero.” Ends May 30, 154 Stanton St., 212-627-3276.

NEW YORK STUDIO SCHOOL OF DRAWING, PAINTING & SCULPTURE: 2010 MFA Thesis Exhibit. Ends May

26, 8 W. 8th St., 212-673-6466.

NOHO GALLERY IN CHELSEA: Irving Barrett: “Wild

Life.” Ends May 22, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063.

OPEN SOURCE: Patricia Watwood: “Portraits 20/10.”

Ends June 2, 255 17th St., Brooklyn, 646-2793969.

THE PAINTING CENTER: “New Walls/Fresh Paint.” Ends June 5, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 500, 212-343-1060.

PAUL KASMIN GALLERY: Kent Henricksen: “A Venomous Bloom.” Ends June 5, 511 W. 27th St., 212-563-4474.

PAULA COOPER: “Reprise.” Ends May 29, 465 W. 23rd St., 212-255-1105.

PAULABARR CHELSEA: Annie Shaver-Crandell: “The Language of Flowers: A Spring Gift.” Ends May 22, West Chelsea Arts Building, 508/526 W. 26th St., 9G, 212-691-9482.

PEPE GIALLO: Sabra Booth: “Sporadic.” Ends May 30, 253 10th Ave., 212-242-6055.

PHOENIX GALLERY: Busser Howell: “Circle Squared.”

Ends May 22. Harriet Sobie Goldstein: “About a Beach.” Ends May 22, 210 11th Ave., Ste. 902, 212-226-8711.

SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: “Artists In Exile: Forgotten Iraqi Refugees In Syria.” Ends May 29, West 96th Street and Central Park West, no phone.

SMARTSPACES: Lisa Kirk: “Revolution!” Ends June 1, 1133 Broadway, no phone.

SOHO PHOTO GALLERY: “Alistair Orpen Finlay.” Ends May 29. Rebecca Lepkoff: “Urban Life.” Ends May 29, 15 White St., 212-226-8571.

SOHO20 GALLERY: Susan Hockaday: “Plastic Nature.”

Ends May 22. Lannie Hart: “Steel Lace.” Ends May 22, 547 W. 27th St., 212-367-8994.

STUX GALLERY: Alex Guofeng Cao: “Decompose/Recompose: Resurrect.” Ends May 29, 530 W. 25th St., 212-352-1600.

SUSAN ELEY FINE ART: Robert Hite: “Imagined Histories.” Ends May 27, 46 W. 90th St., 917-9527641.

SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY: Greg Smith: “Bearded.”

Ends May 29, 522 W. 24th St., 212-647-9111.

SUSAN TELLER GALLERY: Hugh Mesibov: “Wartime Shipyard.” Ends May 27, 568 Broadway, Rm. 502A, 212-941-7335.

Modern Moment Completed.” Ends May 22, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219.

TRIA GALLERY: Lauren Bergman & Karen Dow: “American Fragment.” Ends May 28, 531 W. 25th St., 212-695-0021.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: Stephen Ellis: “Insects and Flowers.” Ends May 22, 520 W. 23rd St., 212242-0599.

WALTER WICKISER GALLERY: Florence Putterman: “Legendary Fables.” Ends May 19, 210 11th Ave., Ste. 303, 212-941-1817.

WESTBETH GALLERY: Alison Armstrong: “Wood, Water, Stone: Paintings, Drawings & Installations.”

Ends May 30, 57 Bethune St., 212-989-4650.

WESTSIDE GALLERY: “Computer Art, Computer Animation & Visual Effects Senior Thesis Projects.”

Ends May 22, 133/141 W. 21st St., 212-592-2145.

WORK GALLERY: “Drawing Blood.” Ends May 28, 65 Union St., Brooklyn, 646-460-5425.

YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY: Olivo Barbieri: “site specific_New York City 07.” Ends May 28, 535 W. 22nd St., 646-230-9610.

MUSIC & OPERA 92YTRIBECA: Nation Beat brings its fusion of Brazil-

ian drumming and New Orleans second line rhythms to Tribeca. With Mexican pop artist Rana Santacruz. May 21, 200 Hudson St., 212601-1000; 8:30, $12.

92YTRIBECA: Grant Hart was only 17 when he founded Hüsker Dü with Greg Norton and Bob Mould. Hart left the band in 1987 and has since released solo albums with similar punk leanings.

He returns to 92YTribeca to perform. May 28, 200 Hudson St., 212-601-1000; 8, $12.

ALICE TULLY HALL: The International Beethoven Project performs the New York premieres of three rediscovered Beethoven piano trios. May 18, 1941 Broadway, 212-671-4050; 8, 68+.

AVERY FISHER HALL: Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic present the fully-staged New York premiere of György Ligeti’s satirical opera, “Le Grand Macabre.” May 27-29, Lincoln Center, 132 W. 65th St., 212-333-5333; times vary, $31+.

AVERY FISHER HALL: Sir Andrew Davis leads the New York Philharmonic in works by Berlioz, Chausson & Saint-Saëns. June 3-5, Lincoln Center, 132 W. 65th St., 212-333-5333; times vary, $31+.

BAM: BAM presents the 2010 Rhythm & Blues Festival, featuring Jennifer Holliday, Bernie Worrell’s SociaLybrium, Tony Allen, Victor Wooten, Tabou Combo, Mighty Sparrow, Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens, Bilal, Vieux Farka Toure & Mykal Rose of Black Uhuru. Thursdays, June 3-Aug. 5, MetroTech Commons, Brooklyn, 718636-4129; 12pm, free.

BRYANT PARK: Tall Tall Trees brings its non-traditional, banjo-driven, folk-rock sound to New York City. May 26, Bryant Park, Sixth Avenue at West 42nd Street, no phone; 6, free.

CAFÉ CARLYLE: Judy Collins performs. Ends June 12, The Carlyle Hotel, 35 E. 76th St., 212-744-1600; 8:45, $125+.

FEINSTEIN’S: Cabaret singer Sharon Ruben presents her brand-new show, “YES.” May 30, Loews Regency, 540 Park Ave., 212-339-4095; 8:30, $50.

KOSCIUSZKO FOUNDATION: Trio Respiro and special guests perform a program of Purcell, Handel, Brahms, Schumann & Canteloube. May 23, 15 E. 65th St., 212-734-2130; 3, $20+.

LE POISSON ROUGE: The Keys to the Future piano festival celebrates its fifth anniversary. May 25-27, 158 Bleecker St., 212-505-3474; 7:30, $20

gala

IN ASSOCIATION WITH MICHAEL DORF & CITY WINERY

25th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION A

IN CENTRAL PARK

The Music of Simon & Garfunkel WITH 30 GREAT ARTISTS PERFORMING 15 UNIQUE DUETS OF SIMON & GARFUNKEL TIMELESS CLASSICS INCLUDING:

AIMEE MANN t DAR WILLIAMS t RICKY SKAGGS t LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE t SHAWN COLVIN t PAULA COLE t JOAN OSBORNE STEPHEN KELLOGG t DEAN & BRITTA t CORY CHISEL t THE HOLMES BROTHERS JOHN FORTE t VALERIE JUNE WILLIE NILE t ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO JOHN RODERICK t OLLABELLE (HOUSE BAND) AND MANY MORE!

TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2010 6PM RECEPTION t 7PM DINNER t 8PM CONCERT RAINDATE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2010 THE SUMMERSTAGE 25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION raises funds to support City Parks Foundation’s free performing arts programming. The largest festival of its kind, CityParks SummerStage presents free, professionally produced, music, dance and theater in 41 parks across all five boroughs of New York City. Each year we produce over 200 programs featuring emerging and established artists, reaching more than 260,000 New Yorkers.

Go to www.SummerStage.org for complete, up-to-date artist listing For more information contact Jill Rothstein at 212-360-8170 or JRothstein@CityParksFoundation.org.

PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

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Photo by Sara Wasilausky

Cocktails in the garden, a concert by Philip Glass and sharing memories of artist Isamu Noguchi while surrounded by his sculptures of marble and granite: These were some of the ways the Noguchi Museum, designed by the artist himself, celebrated its 25th anniversary on a warm spring evening.

“I saw these works in progress, so it’s nostalgic and very satisfying to be here,” said Pace Gallery’s Arne Glimcher. Hugh Hardy, the architect, recalled the adventure he had with Noguchi on a trip to Japan. “He insisted I see this particular kabuki theater,” Hardy said. “We drove for three to four hours to get there, and he was right.” The building confirmed what Hardy—who is working on three theaters in New York—had in mind for the design of Glimmerglass Opera. Priscilla Morgan told of when she and Noguchi first saw each other at a famous club. Later, he tracked her down in Paris; they were lovers until he died in 1988. The party was held at the museum in Queens, where Bang on a Can will perform in the garden this summer, and an exhibit this fall will explore Noguchi’s relationships with artists. “He was an apprentice to Gutzon Borglum, who did Mount Rushmore,” said Amy Wolf, the curator of the show, giving just a hint of what we can expect.

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GARDEN ARTY

Above: Artist Joel Shapiro and Yale University Art Gallery Director Jock Reynolds; Robin Chandler Duke. At right (clockwise): Malcolm and Jennifer Nolen; guests in the Museum’s Sculpture Garden; architects Toshiko Mori and Hugh Hardy; architect Shoji Sadao and Yukiko Nishimiya; Philip Glass’ performance.

DIVINE ORDER Dick Wolf, the creator of the television series Law & Order, spent a recent evening at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights. He wasn’t filming a story line about cops, prosecutors or criminals—filming in churches isn’t easy. “The problem is, most of the church stories we do, people don’t want to be associated with them—they say, ‘Not in my church,’” Wolf explained. Instead he was picking up a Spirit of the City Award at the Cathedral’s annual fund-raising dinner, supporting the Cathedral’s music, poetry and spiritual programming, and its massive, sacred space.

But Law & Order business wasn’t off the agenda. The other Spirit of the City award recipient, Mayor Bloomberg, noted his cameo on the show in 2004, adding, “I know there are rules about cameos appearing more than once, but I doubt anyone else could play the mayor of New York with such passion and authenticity.” Wolf told the mayor he is welcome back any time. (Though Law & Order has been cancelled, the mayor could still appear on one of its spin offs.)

The president of the Cathedral’s board, Bruce MacLeod, then offered the Cathedral as a shooting location. “You could do it in the crypt, there’s a whole world down there people don’t know about,” MacLeod said.

“Sounds like a Deep Throat scene,” quipped actor Sam Waterston, who plays a district attourney on the show.

Waterston helped secure Wolf as an honoree. “He has gone a long way toward defining what is heroic about this place. He’s made the city’s grit a character,” the actor said.

Up on the Cathedral’s pulpit, Wolf said Law & Order is “the bulliest pulpit of them all, to discuss New York and what goes on in the world.” He noted that about 50 years had passed since his first visit to the Cathedral, during a field trip for his eighth-grade class at St. David’s. “What struck me then is that this is just like Europe—there are no chairs,” he said. “The sunset through the windows down there is amazing.”

Above: Dick Wolf and his daughter Olivia Wolf; At right: Actors Linus Roache and Sam Waterston.

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

THE BENJAMINS AT LINCOLN CENTER Mayor Michael Bloomberg ate popcorn, and literary agent Morton Janklow dug into a pretzel, but David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group, didn’t nibble or drink as he greeted guests at the Lincoln Center gala in his honor.

Raising money for the performing arts is, after all, work. For Lincoln Center’s redevelopment, he helped bring in $600 million; this evening pulled in $3.1 million. “What I’ve learned is that if you build a first class facility and modernize things, people will support the arts,” Rubenstein said.His own $10 million gift got his name on the atrium that serves as a gateway to Lincoln Center’s theaters—a plant- and-music-filled destination in itself. As for how to honor such a person, Rubenstein suggested a performance of “The Money Song” from the musical Cabaret. “‘Money makes the world go round,’” he said, quoting the lyrics.

Jerry Speyer (MoMA chairman), Katherine Farley (Lincoln Center chairman), and David Rubenstein (a Lincoln Center vice chairman, and newly appointed Kennedy Center chairman); Ann Ziff and John Ledecky.

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos

ArtsAGENDA MERKIN CONCERT HALL: Brad Lubman and Signal

perform a Nico Muhly world premiere and a Sir Harrison Birtwhistle U.S. premiere. May 27, Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501-3330; 7:30, $12.50+.

NEW YORK SOCIETY OF ETHICAL CULTURE: The Hudson Valley Singers bring Arthur Honegger’s 1938 oratorio “La Danse des Morts” & Zoltan Kodaly’s 1923 “Psalmus Hungaricus” to Manhattan. May 22, 2 W. 64th St., 914-674-2865; 7, $30+.

PAUL HALL: The Juilliard String Quartet presents its annual seminar, culminating in two Lincoln Center concerts. May 21, Juilliard, 155 W. 65th St., 212-769-7406; 3:30 & 7:30, free.

ROULETTE: Yasunao Tone & Adachi Tomomi perform contemporary music from Japan’s experimental music community. May 25, 20 Greene St., 212219-8242; 8, $10+.

ST. THOMAS CHURCH: The Young People’s Chorus of New York City joins the Saint Thomas Choir of Men & Boys for a program at Saint Thomas Church. May 19, Fifth Avenue at East 53rd Street, 212-664-9360; 7:30, $30+.

STERN AUDITORIUM: Pianist Yundi Li performs an all-Chopin program. May 20, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $34+.

STERN AUDITORIUM: The Cleveland Orchestra and music director Frank Welser-Möst return to Carnegie Hall with music by Beethoven & Berg.

May 21, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-2477800; 8, $40+.

WMP CONCERT HALL: The New York Chamber Virtuosi presents a springtime concert with works

by Ravel, Vivaldi, Beethoven and Broadway favorites. Call to reserve your seat. May 27, 31 E. 28th St., 212-582-7536; 7:30, free.

ZANKEL HALL: The final Carnegie Hall Family Concert of the season. June 5, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 1, $9.

JAZZ 55 BAR: The Sean Smith Quartet performs. May 18,

55 Christopher St., 212-929-9883; 7, 2 drink min.

59E59 THEATERS: Twenty-three-year-old jazz clarinet

and saxophone players Pete and Will Anderson take to the stage with their six-piece band for a centennial celebration of jazz legend Artie Shaw.

May 18-23, 59 E. 59th St., 212-279-4200; times vary, $35.

CAFÉ CARLYLE: The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Bands performs with Woody Allen. Ends May 31, The Carlyle Hotel, 35 E. 76th St., 212-7441600; 8:45, $110+.

DIZZY’S CLUB COCA-COLA: Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon performs with special guests. June 1-6. American Music Abroad presents Chen Lo & The Liberation Family. June 5. American Music Abroad presents the Little Joe McLerran Quartet. June 5. The Marian Petrescu Quartet performs with Stefan Oberg. June 7, 33 W. 60th St., 212-2589595; times vary, free-$10+.

IRIDIUM JAZZ CLUB: The Matt Wilson Quartet performs with strings. May 19 & 20. The Billy Childs Jazz Chamber Orchestra performs with Brian Blade. May 21-23. Tom Harrell, Randy Brecker, Jeremy Pelt, Dave Leibman, George Cables, Lonnie Plaxico & Billy Drummond perform the music of Miles Davis. May 27-30.

Eric Johnson & Anton Fig. June 5 & 6, 1650 Broadway, 212-582-2121; times vary, $30+.

JAZZ STANDARD: The Wallace Roney Quintet performs. May 18 & 19. Paula West sings with the George Mesterhazy Quartet. May 27-30, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232; times vary, $25+.

ROSE THEATER: Mario Adnet performs the music of Moacir Santos. May 28 & 29, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th St., 11th Fl., 212-258-9800; 8, $30+.

DANCE 277DANCEPROJECT: The modern dance company

presents two new works by choreographer Nicole Philippidis and a special guest performance

by Kim Jones, former member of the Martha Graham Company. May 21-23, Howard Gilman Performance Space at Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St., 212-868-4444; times vary, $20.

BALLET ACADEMY EAST: The student company’s spring performance features works choreographed by renowned artists of the dance world. May 21-23, John Jay College, 899 10th Ave., 212-279-4200; times vary, $35+.

COMPANY XIV: The company presents the world premiere of “Le Cirque Feerique (The Fairy Circus).” Ends June 6, 303 Bond St., Brooklyn, no phone; times vary, $25+.

DANCE NEW AMSTERDAM: DNA presents two works by Christopher Williams. June 3-6, 280 Broadway, 2nd Fl., 212-625-8369; times vary, $12+.

DANCE PARTY: 92nd Street Y celebrates the end of its 75th season with a dance party and performance mash-up, featuring Andrea Miller/Gallim Dance, Nicholas Leichter Dance, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence and more. May 25, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212-415-5500; 8, $10+.

DANCEAFRICA: Under the artistic direction of Chuck Davis, the 33rd annual DanceAfrica festival features Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Illstyle & Peace Productions, the Pamodzi Dance Troupe of Zambia & BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. May 28-31, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4100; times vary, $20+.

DONNA UCHIZONO: The Kitchen and Baryshnikov Arts Center present the collaborative work “Longing Two,” a new dance work by choreographer and dancer Donna Uchizono. The piece begins at BAC and ends at The Kitchen. Transportation is provided. June 1-5, BAC, 450 W. 37th St., 212868-4444; 8, $20.

DUSAN TYNEK DANCE THEATRE: The company presents an evening of three new dances, featuring “Middlegame.” June 2-5, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; 7:30, $20+.

FRANCESCA HARPER PROJECT: The company celebrates its fifth anniversary season with two world premieres: “Fearless Mine” by Francesca Harper and “Deliberate Joy,” a duet created and performed by Harper and special guest Ronald K. Brown. June 4-6, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; 8, $15+.

HATTIE MAE WILLIAMS & MARK DRAHOZAL: The choreographers use the idea of a doppelganger to create a montage of schizophrenic love songs in an evening of dance, music, skits, audio stories and video. May 20-22, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; 8, $15.

LAVA: Dixon Place presents “LAVA Loving & Daring,” a choreographic remix of highlights from LAVA’s past productions. June 3-20, Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., 212-219-0736; times vary, $10+.

NEW YORK CITY BALLET: Showcasing New York City Ballet’s commitment to new music, music director Faycal Karoui joins composer Thierry Esciach and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, who will discuss their collaboration and show excerpts of Millepied’s new choreography set to Esciach’s score. May 23 & 24, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3587; 7:30, $10+.

TAKE DANCE: TAKE Dance presents two premieres this season - Takehiro Ueyama’s world premiere “Flight” & Jill Echo’s New York City premiere, “Left There by the Tide.” May 19-22, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212-9240077; 7:30, $15+.

May 18, 2010 | City Arts

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