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Friday, November 30, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
The Nouveau Classical Project: Fragments
MUSIC
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2018
8:00 PM
Areté Venue & Gallery
67 West Street # 103, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
$20; $15 students / seniors
INFO + TICKETS
A night of New Music dealing with environmental concerns, our relationship with the Earth. Composers include Missy Mazzoli.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Paulie Gee's Slice Shop. For slices.
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Friday, November 30, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Talea Ensemble: Killing Jar
MUSIC
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2018
7:00 PM
Americas Society
680 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Free (by registration)
INFO
A vocal/instrumental piece by inimitable Kate Soper, sung by the invaluable Lucy Dhegrae. Does this get my very highest recommendation? Need you ask? Also, an electroacoustic piece by David Adamcyk, from Canada.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The East Pole had some cred when it used to be owned by the Downtown Fat Radish people. Now it's more like, where else are you supposed to eat in that Godforsaken neighborhood?
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Thursday, November 29, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Composers Concordance: Estonian Connections
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2018
8:00 PM
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 West 37th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$15
INFO + TICKETS
An evening of chamber music by Estonian composers or by non-Estonian composers reflecting Estonian culture. Music often conveys a sense of place -- but Baltic classical music make you feel like you're right there on the shore feeling the cold salt air.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Italian at Legacy Records, faute de mieux.
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Thursday, November 29, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Carlo Costa: Oblio
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2018
8:00 PM
JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
$15 door
INFO + TICKETS
Percussion master Carlo Costa plays the music on his excellent new album, Oblivio, two extended pieces for solo acoustic percussion "inspired by the concept of oblivion".
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: OG Mekelburg's, for great beer and splendid pub grub.
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Thursday, November 29, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Stone Series: Mary Halvorson / Jessica Pavone
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2018
8:00 PM
Russ & Daughters Cafe
127 Orchard Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Free
INFO
Mary Halvorson is the best and most interesting young guitarist in jazz. Her song-based duo with violist/vocalist Jessica Pavone has generated some of her most entrancing music.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You're sitting in the place with the best appetizing in the world (and good cocktails: who'da thunk?). You know what to do.
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Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 8:00 PM – Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 9:00 PM
Composer Spotlight: Wolfgang Mitterer
MUSIC
THURSDAY & FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29 & 30, 2018
8:00 PM
Ensemble Signal
THURSDAY: Austrian Cultural Forum New York
11 East 52 Street, Midtown, Manhattan
FRIDAY: St. Peter's Church
619 Lexington Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
Free (reservation suggested for Thursday show)
THURSDAY:
INFO
FRIDAY:
INFO
Wolfgang Mitterer is one of those once young Austrian composers who began popping up in the '80s or so who like to have a lot of fun with tradition. Mitterer doesn't do deconstructions of past music as much as reconstructions, making them more consonant with contemporary modes of listening (he does the converse with pop when the mood strikes him). These two different shows should show him at his best. Thursday offers a song cycle for baritone, prepared piano, and electronics after Schubert. You will probably enjoy it, whether or not Schubert would. Friday brings mobile beats, a frisky piece that lives up to its title (even if it turns out to have been named after the ensemble for which it was originally written) -- as well as a set by Mitterer on the St. Peter's organ, accompanying himself on electronics.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: For Thursday, is David Tanis still even cooking at the Monkey Bar? Even if he isn't, Edward Sorel's mural remains. For Friday, I'm going to send you to Aquavit, where Chef Emma Bengtsson is doing very good things, even if her Nordic isn't as "New" as some claim (that's not wholly a bad thing).
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Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sat, Dec 1, 2018, 9:00 PM
Sally Silvers & Dancers: ALONG
DANCE
THURSDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29 - DECEMBER 1, 2018
8:00 PM
Roulette
509 Atlantic Avenue (entrance on 3rd Avenue), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
$18 advance; $25 door
INFO + TICKETS
Low-tech dance spectacle, involving super heroes!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Superb Korean at Insa. Sit in the bar/lounge and avoid the karaoke.
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Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Dec 2, 2018, 6:00 PM
Lisa Clair: The Making of King Kong
THEATER
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 - DECEMBER 2, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 15)
7:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
The Doxsee
232 52nd Street, Sunset Park, Brooklyn
$20
INFO + TICKETS
A comic fantasia on the making of the 1933 horror classic (which itself purported to tell the story of the making of a movie). Forget the Broadway musical and see this: you'll thank me.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Taiwanese popcorn chicken specialist Chi Ken (serving other highly craveable Taiwanese snack food as well).
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Thursday, November 29, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Fresh Squeezed Opera: Showcase
OPERA
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2018
7:30 PM
Bloomingdale School of Music
323 West 108th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$15
INFO + TICKETS
One of the several fresh companies presenting new opera in New York City, Fresh Squeezed Opera presents its annual showcase of new vocal chamber works. This stuff is almost always immensely enjoyable.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: It's bound to be something of a war zone since Pete Wells lionized it, but Mama's TOO! is enjoying its stint as New York's most celebrated slice joint.
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Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 7:00 PM – Fri, Nov 30, 2018, 8:00 PM
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Thursday, November 29, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Rzewski Festival: Bobby Mitchell
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2018
7:00 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$15; $10 students/seniors
INFO + TICKETS
Spectrum presents the belated conclusion to its festival devoted to the work of Frederic Rzewski, that highly political composer who has written what must be some of the most accessible avant-garde music ever (nevertheless of the highest quality). Here piano sensation Bobby Mitchell plays about two hours of excerpts from The Road, a pianistic travelogue that would be one of Rzewski's most accessible scores of all -- if it weren't more than 8 hours long.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Hearty Franco-American, just in season, at Gentleman Farmer.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
NOW Ensemble: The Music of Judd Greenstein
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018
8:00 PM
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$15-$20 advance; $20-$25 door
INFO + TICKETS
Ace they-used-to-call-it-"indie" classical band NOW Ensemble plays the music of their fearless leader, Judd Greenstein. Greenstein writes a very winning variety of Post-Minimalist; he always claims his music is influenced by hip-hop, but a featured guest, the great clarinetist David Krakauer, tilts Klezmer.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Yeah, I'm sending you to Existing Conditions again. The best is just the best, you know?
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Julia Santoli: Siren Sore: "Oneiric Receiver (((Night Throat)))"
PERFORMANCE / MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018
8:00 PM
Issue Project Room
22 Boerum Place, Downtown, Brooklyn
$10 suggested donation
INFO
Singer/performance artist Julia Santoli continues her Siren Sore project with extended vocal techniques, architectural visual elements -- and, in this installment, a glockenspiel!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Keep trying for the La Vara team's new seafood restaurant, Saint Julivert Fisherie -- if you can get in!
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Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 8:00 PM – Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 9:00 PM
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Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Dec 2, 2018, 3:00 PM
Peter Brook / Marie-Hélène Estienne: The Prisoner
THEATER
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28 - DECEMBER 2, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 16, 2018)
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Theater for a New Audience
262 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$90-$115
INFO + TICKETS
This parable of punishment and freedom looks distressingly like a "problem play". And it's emphatically set in an "exotic" place, so it raises concerns about cultural appropriation. BUT Peter Brook is certainly one of the great living theater artists anywhere. He is never simplistic, literal, nor formulaic. And over the course of a long career, he's shown remarkable sympathy for and understanding of non-European cultures. So don't forget your misgivings -- but don't let them keep you from this show.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: It somehow seems appropriate to go to Le Caye, where the excellent Haitian food represents a fusion of African and European modes of cooking effectuated in the Caribbean.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM
Mary Halvorson / Joe Morris
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018
7:30 & 9:30 PM
The Jazz Gallery
1160 Broadway, NoMad, Manhattan
$15-$20
INFO + TICKETS
Mary Halvorson is the best and most interesting young guitarist in jazz. Here she performs in a duo with Joe Morris, a good and interesting older jazz guitarist.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: J.J. Johnson is one of the best and most interesting young chefs in New York. His African/Caribbean/Asian fusion might sound contrived on paper, but on the plate it's just poppin'. Johnson now helms the kitchen at Henry at Life Hotel, where his cooking is good (and interesting) enough to overcome the rather lackluster dining room.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Bojan Vuletic: RecomposingArt VIII: Cy Twombly: beautiful in the subversion of beauty
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018
7:30 PM
Nate Wooley / Jon Irabagon / Matt Moran / Mivos Quartet
1 Rivington
1 Rivington Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
$15; $10 students
INFO + TICKETS
I'm all for music that blurs the lines between classical, pop, and jazz. But Bojan Vuletic is one of those composers who do it in a way that's too soft-edged, so the results too frequently end up sounding like the movie music Vuletic makes a living from. Nevertheless, this piece -- the latest in a series inspired by artists in various media and their work -- is scored for the enticing combination of trumpet, sax, vibes, and string quartet. And you couldn't assemble a more imposing bunch of NYC musicians to play it!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: When ace bartender Kenta Goto opened his eponymous Bar Goto a few years ago, every knew that the Japanese-themed cocktails would be exemplary. What was more of a happy surprise was how very very good the home-style Japanese bar snacks were. A great place.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Sara Serpa: Intimate Strangers
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018
7:00 PM
National Sawdust
80 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$25
INFO + TICKETS
Portuguese jazz singer/composer Sara Serpa is a big personal favorite; I can think of no word better to describe her and her work than bewitching. This project appears to be very important to her; although I am the very opposite of a fan of spoken-word contributions to musical performances, it must be said that the participation of the excellent Nigerian writer/critic Emmanuel Iduma is central to this project. I myself am focusing on the participation of modular synthesist Quasim Naqvi (whom you may know as the drummer of Dawn of Midi).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Seems like a good night for the Sardinian-slanting enoteca D.O.C Wine Bar.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
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Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Sylvia Rivera Law Project Benefit: Dreamcrusher / Gavin Rayna Russom
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2018
8:00 PM
Secret Project Robot
1186 Broadway, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
Ticket price unavailable
INFO
A benefit for an admirable organization dedicated to supporting rights to gender identity and expression, featuring queer and gender-fluid electronic/experimental artists including the great Dreamcrusher, and a DJ set by LCD Soundsystem mainstay (and much much more!) Gavin Rayna Russom.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Good basic Jamaican steam-table food at Soldier Jerk Center.
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Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Dec 2, 2018, 3:00 PM
Twyla Tharp Dance: Minimalism and Me
DANCE
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27 - DECEMBER 2, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 9)
7:30 PM TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan
$26-$81
INFO + TICKETS
Once-great choreographer Twyla Tharp showcases work from before she went showbiz, when her stuff was really something special. Tharp might have worked with Minimalists, but her work was richly textured in a way that label might contraindicate. The program culminates in Eight Jelly Rolls, a stone classic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Time to check again how Italian effort Momofuku Nishi is doing in the current Momofuku resurgence.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Joshua Roman
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2018
7:30 PM
Baruch College Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Avenue (entrance on E. 25th St.), Rose Hill, Manhattan
$16-$36
INFO + TICKETS
Amy Williams is a composer I've been kind of crazy for lately. Her work is kinetic, but also pays attention to such trad concerns as harmony and development. So it'll be good to hear one of her pieces played by this highly skilled (and, it must be said, quite cute) cellist. The rest of the program --Beethoven, Pärt, Janáček, and Brahms -- is the very opposite of a turn-off.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Maialino is still chugging along, selling exemplary Roman-style food with one of the better by-the-glass trad wine programs in town.
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Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Dec 2, 2018, 3:00 PM
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2018 - DECEMBER 2, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
7:00 PM TUESDAY - THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
INFO + TICKETS
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Monday, November 26, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Peter Brook / Marie-Hélène Estienne: The Prisoner
THEATER
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2018
7:00 PM
Theater for a New Audience
262 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$90-$115
INFO + TICKETS
This parable of punishment and freedom looks distressingly like a "problem play". And it's emphatically set in an "exotic" place, so it raises concerns about cultural appropriation. BUT Peter Brook is certainly one of the great living theater artists anywhere. He is never simplistic, literal, nor formulaic. And over the course of a long career, he's shown remarkable sympathy for and understanding of non-European cultures. So don't forget your misgivings -- but don't let them keep you from this show.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: It somehow seems appropriate to go to Le Caye, where the excellent Haitian food represents a fusion of African and European modes of cooking effectuated in the Caribbean.
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Mon, Nov 26, 2018, 7:00 PM – Tue, Nov 27, 2018, 10:30 PM
Anthony Roth Costanzo: Glass Handel
MUSIC
MONDAY & TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26 & 27, 2018
7:00 & 9:00 PM
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue, Morningside Heights, Manhattan
$20-$75; $10 student rush standing room
MONDAY 7PM:
INFO + TICKETS
MONDAY 9:30PM:
INFO + TICKETS
TUESDAY 7PM:
INFO + TICKETS
TUESDAY 9:30PM:
INFO + TICKETS
See if you can wrap your head around this: not content with merely trying to demonstrate that the vocal/orchestral music of Handel and Philip Glass have something to do with each other (which I, for one, am perfectly willing to believe) (they both have lots of ostinatos, right?), the very theatrical countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo enlisted VISIONAIRE to design the production; George Condo to create live projected visual art as the music is being performed; David Hallberg, Patricia Delgado, and a winner of So You Think You Can Dance to dance; Justin Peck to choreograph; Calvin Klein 's chief designer, Raf Simons, to dress him, his backup band The Knights, and the other performers (including the people who throughout the show wheel around the chairs in which the holders of the best tickets are sitting!); and a whole galaxy of people you know to create videos (and if you look at any of them on YouTube, I can pretty much guaranty that you won't be able to wait to get to these shows). The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine won't be big enough to hold this! The prime seats -- the ones where you get wheeled around during the show -- are all sold out. But there are some standing room seats (many with limited views, though) still available.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I can't send you to The Cathedral of Saint John without also sending you to the wonderful Hungarian Pastry Shop across the street. I mean, how much are you going to be able to eat in combination with all this? (I should talk: I'm going Downtown to Frenchette afterwards.)
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Sunday, November 25, 2018, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
counter)induction
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2018
4:00 PM
Dweck Center, Central Library
10 Grand Army Plaza, Across the Street from Prospect Heights (I think they used to call it Institution City?), Brooklyn
Free
INFO
A collective of serious musicians -- violinist Miranda Cuckson is one of the best musicians in New York City, period -- and composers combine to find or create, and then present, serious New Music.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You won't do better than Olmsted, where one of the most imaginative things about this highly imaginative food is how reasonably priced it is.
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Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:00 PM
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
THEATER
SATURDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 - 25, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
INFO + TICKETS
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 8:30 PM
Peter Brook / Marie-Hélène Estienne: The Prisoner
MUSIC
SATURDAY & SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 - 25, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 16, 2018)
7:30 PM
Theater for a New Audience
262 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$90-$115
INFO + TICKETS
This parable of punishment and freedom looks distressingly like a "problem play". And it's emphatically set in an "exotic" place, so it raises concerns about cultural appropriation. BUT Peter Brook is certainly one of the great living theater artists anywhere. He is never simplistic, literal, nor formulaic. And over the course of a long career, he's shown remarkable sympathy for and understanding of non-European cultures. So don't forget your misgivings -- but don't let them keep you from this show.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: It somehow seems appropriate to go to Le Caye, where the excellent Haitian food represents a fusion of African and European modes of cooking effectuated in the Caribbean.
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Fri, Nov 23, 2018, 11:00 PM – Sat, Nov 24, 2018, 12:00 AM
Kölsch: IPSO Party
MUSIC
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2018
11:00 PM
Elsewhere
599 Johnson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$20-$25
INFO + TICKETS
Danish electronic dance master Kölsch throws a party featuring himself and other artists on his new IPSO label (a sublabel of Kompakt, a guaranty of quality if there be any). The lighter variety of electronic dance music doesn't get any better than this.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: If you're sick of hearing about Mission Chinese Food Brooklyn -- in the same building as Elsewhere! -- I'll mention that Faro's menu is especially enticing this Fall season.
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Fri, Nov 23, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 8:30 PM
Twyla Tharp Dance: Minimalism and Me
DANCE
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23 - 25, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 9)
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
7:30 PM SUNDAY
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan
$26-$81
INFO + TICKETS
Once-great choreographer Twyla Tharp showcases work from before she went showbiz, when her stuff was really something special. Tharp might have worked with Minimalists, but her work was richly textured in a way that label might contraindicate. The program culminates in Eight Jelly Rolls, a stone classic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Time to check again how Italian effort Momofuku Nishi is doing in the current Momofuku resurgence.
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Fri, Nov 23, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 6:00 PM
La Mama Puppet Festival
PERFORMANCE
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23 - 25, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 25)
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
La Mama
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$26; $21 student/senior; $75 five-show package; $50 three-show package; $35 two-show package
INFO + TICKETS
I don't know about you, but I tend to love puppetry just on general principle. In any event, La Mama does a good job each year of selecting worthwhile genre-stretching work for its Puppet Festival.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant (the one in the Ukrainian National Home) -- an urge I now inflict on you. You can't have a bad time here. Some day I'll tell you about the night I was there and they were having a milonga in the back room, so all these people kept passing through the very Ukrainian dining room in tango gear. I love this City.
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Thursday, November 22, 2018, 12:00 AM – 11:55 PM
HAPPY
THANKSGIVING!
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Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 10:30 PM – 11:30 PM
Baile de Favela Party
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2018
10:30 PM
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$28 advance; $80 door
INFO + TICKETS
For us addicts of Brazilian pop, a massive dose: an all-night dance party, with DJs spinning the latest discs from Rio and elsewhere and live performances of irresistible Bloco de Favela funk percussion music. (If you're going, note the price disparity between advance and door tickets.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: There's really no choice for dinner before this but the homey Brazilian food at Casa, is there?
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Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 11:00 PM – Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 12:00 AM
Tuesday Night Mega Power Concerts: Andie Kozar / Rosie Moore
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018
7:00 & 9:00 PM
Areté Venue & Gallery
67 West Street # 103, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
$15
INFO + TICKETS
The trombonist of the exciting wind/voice New Music quartet Loadbang, Will Lang, curates this ongoing series, each featuring a solo set by a member of the band and one by a guest. Here the featured member is trumpeter Andy Kozar (playing along with electronics). The guest is the highly entertaining harpist/raconteur Rosie Moore, presenting a varied bunch of musical and theatrical skits.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: We're going to Chez Ma Tante. Because we like it. And because, during this Thanksgiving week, its English/Canadian food can make us reflect on roads not taken.
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Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 9:00 PM – Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 10:00 PM
Young Fathers / Algiers
MUSIC
TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 & 21, 2018
9:00 PM
Elsewhere
599 Johnson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$20 advance; $25 door
NOV 20:
INFO + TICKETS
NOV 21:
INFO + TICKETS
What's better than seeing rock-inflected alt-hip-hoppers Young Fathers? Seeing Young Fathers with the searing political gospel/industrial/post-punk/alt-hip-hop band Algiers opening. A lot of people agree: these shows are sold out. See what you can do.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Have I mentioned Mission Chinese Food Brooklyn?
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Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 7:30 PM – Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 8:30 PM
Twyla Tharp Dance: Minimalism and Me
DANCE
TUESDAY - WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 - 21, 2018
7:30 PM
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan
$26-$81
INFO + TICKETS
Once-great choreographer Twyla Tharp showcases work from before she went showbiz, when her stuff was really something special. Tharp might have worked with Minimalists, but her work was richly textured in a way that label might contraindicate. The program culminates in Eight Jelly Rolls, a stone classic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Time to check again how Italian effort Momofuku Nishi is doing in the current Momofuku resurgence.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Mannes Orchestra
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018
7:30 PM
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Free (ticket required)
INFO + TICKETS
An amazingly good free show. The big news is a rarer-than-rare performance (indeed, a world premiere in this edition) of the Second Symphony of the great great Post-Minimalist Julius Eastman, whose rough 'n refined music cannot be heard enough. That by itself ought to be sufficient to get you to the Upper West Side. But the rest of the bill is also pretty enticing: an instrumental piece by they-used-to-call-it "indie" classicist Sarah Kirkland Snider, and something else you don't see everyday, an airing of the Third Symphony of the marvelous Finnish neo-tonalist Einojuhani Rautavaara.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Simple-but-not-simplistic Franco-American food at Oxbow Tavern.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Andrea Lucchesini
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2018
7:30 PM
The Italian Academy, Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Avenue, Morningside Heights, Manhattan
Free
INFO
A splendid pianist plays music by three pretty terrific composers: Berio, Scarlatti, and Schubert.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Not-So-New American Friedmans isn't great. But it's good. And it's there.
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Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 7:00 PM – Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 8:00 PM
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
THEATER
TUESDAY - WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 - 21, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
7:00 PM TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
INFO + TICKETS
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Monday, November 19, 2018, 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Dirty Projectors
MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2018
9:00 PM
Elsewhere
599 Johnson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$35
INFO + TICKETS
Avant-pop band Dirty Projectors split the difference between pop and contemporary classical. Opening is Jana Hunter's excellent guitar-and-keyboard/good songs! indie pop band Lower Dens.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I'll say it again: the hottest new restaurant in Bushwick, the Brooklyn outpost of Mission Chinese Food, is in the same building as Elsewhere.
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Monday, November 19, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
HK Gruber: Aeriel
MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2018
8:00 PM
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
$24.50-$161
INFO + TICKETS
This gets Listed for the madcap Viennese postmodernist HK Gruber's wild trumpet concerto, Aerial -- played by one of the few people in the world capable of doing so, its dedicatee, the spectacular Håken Hardenberger (who, since the 1980s, has somehow morphed from a near-teenage cutiepie into a middle-aged man). But let's not forget the other piece on the program: Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Mahler is arguably the first postmodernist -- which would make him postmodern before there was even modernism, a trick that surely only he and and he alone could have pulled off. Even people who think they don't like Mahler (and they're wrong, wrong, wrong) must feel a tug when they hear this symphony's great Adagietto, an elegy (or not) so moving as to be indelible (OK, maybe that's not so postmodern). Andris Nelsons can be expected to lead his marvelous orchestra marvelously.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Modern Indian at Indian Accent.
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Monday, November 19, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
In Kyung Lee: Vögel
DANCE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2018
7:00 PM
JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
$10 advance; $15 door
INFO + TICKETS
Korean choreographer In Kyung Lee provides choreographic impressions of women: "women looking at women, women loving other women, women moving through life, women's passing of time."
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: OG Mekelburg's, for great beer and splendid pub grub.
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Sunday, November 18, 2018, 4:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Dirty Projectors
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2018 (also NOVEMBER 19)
5:00 & 10:00 PM
Elsewhere
599 Johnson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$35
4PM:
INFO + TICKETS
9PM:
INFO + TICKETS
Avant-pop band Dirty Projectors split the difference between pop and contemporary classical. Opening is Jana Hunter's excellent guitar-and-keyboard/good songs! indie pop band Lower Dens.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I'll say it again: the hottest new restaurant in Bushwick, the Brooklyn outpost of Mission Chinese Food, is in the same building as Elsewhere.
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Saturday, November 17, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Queer Trash: God Is My Co-Pilot / Fire-Toolz
MUSIC
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018
8:00 PM
Issue Project Room
22 Boerum Place, Downtown, Brooklyn
$15
INFO + TICKETS
To call God Is My Co-Pilot "Queer noise pioneers" understates the extent to which they're more than just a noise band. Sometimes you think there's nothing they won't try to play (the key word being "try"). Fire-Toolz tales noise into the realm of expression.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: June: a good natural wine bar.
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Saturday, November 17, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Danish String Quartet
MUSIC
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018
8:00 PM
92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
$30-$63
INFO + TICKETS
There can be little question that the Danish String Quartet is one of the very finest, most exciting string quartets now before the public. And this concert features works by the two incontestably greatest composers of string quartets who ever lived, Haydn and Beethoven. But what's really exciting is a quartet by Hans Abrahamsen, a contemporary composer of ethereal works that stay in your mind for hours, even days.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Nantucket-originated Italian spot Sfloglia may not be what it was when it opened. But it's far from nothing -- and it's right there across the street! And the bread is amazing!
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Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:30 PM
Dance Heginbotham / Amy Trompetter: Fantasque
DANCE
SATURDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17 & 18, 2018
7:30 PM SATURDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Skirball Center, NYU
566 LaGuardia Place, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$15-$25
INFO + TICKETS
Choreographer John Heginbotham isn't a Mark Morris epigone -- but you can tell he came out of Morris's company. He has some of Morris's screwball quality -- but with his own very idiosyncratic sense of form and structure. Here he joins with puppeteer Amy Trompetter to create nothing less than a pageant of the forces of light against darkness. (SPOILER ALERT: light is gonna win.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: A family-friendly show deserves a family-friendly dining spot: Knickerbocker Bar & Grill. Have a caviar pie. And when the family isn't looking, have a Martini with it. I always do!
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Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:30 PM
Kaija Saariaho: Only the Sound Remains
OPERA
SATURDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17 & 18, 2018
7:30 PM SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
White Light Festival
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall
10 Columbus Circle, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$35-$120
INFO + TICKETS
Possible Greatest Living Composer Kaija Saariaho collaborates with lunatic (in a good way) director Peter Sellars on an opera based on Ezra Pound's adaptations of Noh plays. The solo singing cast consists of the stellar countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the soon-to-be-dominant bass-baritone (you heard it here!) Davóne Tines. No way this is anything but Major.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Might as well go to Bluebird, the New York outpost of a London smash. Solid if slightly boring food -- and a bar so nice you want to sit down and start drinking and eating immediately. (The British sure know how to make cocktails, too!)
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Saturday, November 17, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
You. Have. No. Idea.: The Music of Daniel Felsenfeld
MUSIC
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018
7:00 PM
Semiosis Quartet/Alicia de la Guardia
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$15; $10 students/seniors
INFO + TICKETS
Daniel Felsenfeld is a poster boy for why this List exists. Here's a guy who writes witty, accessible contemporary classical music, formally rigorous but quirky as hell, redolent of pop culture and fun -- and as far as the public at large knows, he doesn't exist. In a just world, people would be flocking to this show -- and I say that for the audience's good, not the composer's. I can almost promise you you'll enjoy this immensely.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Speaking of fun, why not top off the night at The Gatehouses at Kings Coutny Distillery?
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Friday, November 16, 2018, 10:30 PM – 11:30 PM
Matthew Dear
MUSIC
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2018
10:30 PM
National Sawdust
80 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$26
INFO + TICKETS
Sometimes Matthew Dear does electronics-laden pop music; sometimes he does poppy electronic dance music. It's always pretty great.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Before the show, wouldn't it be nice to get truly superlative drinks and snacks a the downstairs bar/lounge at Aska? After the show, maybe the excellent cocktails at Fresh Kills Bar?
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Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:00 PM
Monteverdi: Poppea
OPERA
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16 - 18, 2018
7:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SUNDAY
Bare Opera
The Blue Building
222 East 46th Street, Midtown, Manhattan
$35-$65
INFO + TICKETS
Bare Opera presents a reduced version of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea, an opera that has it all: riveting music, sex, great plot, lust, deep irony, sex, Nero! And in this particular production, Nerone (that's Nero to you) is sung by one of the best singers on the local scene, Ariadne Greif.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: After a couple of hours of Italians behaving badly, is it any wonder I'd send you down the block to Sparks Steak House?
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Thursday, November 15, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Composer Portrait: Du Yun
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018
8:00 PM
Miller Theater at Columbia University
2960 Broadway, Morningside Heights, Manhattan
$20-$30
INFO + TICKETS
Whether she's writing searingly powerful opera, or inflecting classical chamber compositions with electronic dance music, or playing twisted blues-postrock, or turning recitals into cabarets, Du Yun has established herself as one of the most consistently interesting, enjoyable, and affecting young composers out there. The peerless International Contemporary Ensemble provides a sampler of Du's current thoughts.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Greek standby Symposium: cheap enough for generations of Columbia students; good enough for you.
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Thursday, November 15, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Dreamcrusher: Record Release Party
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018
8:00 PM
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
$10 advance; $12 door
INFO + TICKETS
Queer/gender-non-conforming noise artist Dreamcrusher celebrates the release of a new album, along with other like-minded artists.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Scarr's Pizza is the newest of those slice joints using elevated ingredients and cooking techniques. We can never have too many.
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Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 9:00 PM
Pioneers Go East Collective: CowBoysCowGirls (sagittarius)
PERFORMANCE
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 - 18, 2018
8:00 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY
JACK
505 1/2 Waverly Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
$18
INFO + TICKETS
An interactive performance piece in which the cowboy myth is used to explore how bravado and chauvinism transpose into Gay culture. You put on a cowboy outfit and sit around a (simulated) campfire while performers, live and on video, share stories of coming out, bullying, etc. (I LOVE dressing as a cowboy myself.) (Well, I did when I was five.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Nice Piemontese food and a very nice wine program at Locanda Vini e Olii. Get something with Piemontese beef in it!
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Thursday, November 15, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Convergence Series II: Ava Mendoza / Philip White
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018
8:00 PM
Areté Gallery & Venue
67 West Street #103, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
$15
INFO+ TICKETS
A determinedly eclectic program pairing Brooklyn guitarist Ava Mendoza with electronic composer Philip White (who writes some of the catchiest and most entertaining electronic music you'd want to hear).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Won't you feel cool when you walk by the masses thronging at Oxomoco to enter the rustic Polish Karczma?
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Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 8:30 PM
Martinu: Violin Concerto No. 1
MUSIC
THURSDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 - 17, 2018
7:30 PM THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$33-$120
INFO + TICKETS
In a way, the rollicking Czech neoclassicist Bohuslav Martinu is partially responsible for his own otherwise unconscionable neglect: he was too prolific, and it just seems like so large a corpus can't maintain consistent quality. But at its frequent best, his music is as directly appealing in its tunes and rhythms as anything out there, the kind of stuff any audience would love if it only had a chance to hear it. You certainly don't often get to hear his long-lost first violin concerto -- and here it's played by no less than Frank Peter Zimmermann! The rest of the program has direct appeal in spades -- but we'll all have to forget now avant-garde we are to enjoy it as we should. The Carnival Overture by Martinu's great countryman Dvorák sparkles with tuneful vivacity. And as for the potpourri of Strauss Family waltzes that closes the program . . . well, the marvelous conductor Manfred Honeck has this wonderful music in his Viennese bones, so just sit back and enjoy it despite yourself.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Friends in the neighborhood recommend Sushi Yasaka. Let's give it a try.
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Thursday, November 15, 2018, 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM
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Thursday, November 15, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Haydn: The Creation
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018
7:30 PM
William Christie / Les Arts Florissants
White Light Festival
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Ticket prices unavailable
INFO + TICKETS
Haydn's oratorio The Creation is so good you won't believe it. Even people who think they don't like choral music, or don't like classical music, are blown away by it: its color, its charm, its towering imaginativeness. The very opening, depicting the primordial chaos, shocked Europe when it premiered in 1799 -- and while it's lost its power to shock, it (and the entirety of the piece that follows) hasn't lost an ounce of its immense appeal and effectiveness. Simply put, Haydn was one of the very best composers ever, and this is quite likely his very best piece. I've personally found William Christie's Haydn unconvincing in the past -- but nobody in his or her right mind would consider missing this major choral musician's presentation of this major major choral piece if they have a chance to go. It's been sold out for months, but hope for the best.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Haydn himself would have loved the hearty, simple-but-not-simplistic food at Oxbow Tavern.
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Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:30 PM
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Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 7:00 PM – Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 8:00 PM
Little Cinema X Meow Wolf: Origin Story
PERFORMANCE
THURSDAY - FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 & 16, 2018
7:00 PM THURSDAY
6:30 PM FRIDAY
House of Yes
2 Wyckoff Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$30
INFO + TICKETS
Meow Wolf is an artists' collective that has attracted attention with an immersive installation/presentation in Santa Fe. Now there's a documentary coming out about them -- and Little Cinema gives that film itself an immersive presentation, with live performers and videos and musicians and whatnot enhancing the film.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: House of Yes itself will throw what it promises will be an "epic after-party" following the show. Or you can cross the street to UpNorth for Montreal-style hot dogs and poutine.
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Thu, Nov 15, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 10:00 PM
La Mama Puppet Festival
PERFORMANCE
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15 - 18, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 25)
7:00 & 8:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 & 3:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
5:30 PM SATURDAY
12:00 PM SUNDAY
La Mama
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$26; $21 student/senior; $75 five-show package; $50 three-show package; $35 two-show package
INFO + TICKETS
I don't know about you, but I tend to love puppetry just on general principle. In any event, La Mama does a good job each year of selecting worthwhile genre-stretching work for its Puppet Festival.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant (the one in the Ukrainian National Home) -- an urge I now inflict on you. You can't have a bad time here. Some day I'll tell you about the night I was there and they were having a milonga in the back room, so all these people kept passing through the very Ukrainian dining room in tango gear. I love this City.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 8:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Machine//Body
MUSIC / PERFORMANCE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018
8:30 PM
Areté Venue & Gallery
67 West Street #103, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
$15; $10 students
INFO + TICKETS
A series that has already appeared in Berlin and Chicago comes to New York. A bunch of local interdisciplinary artists perform pieces that might combine extended vocal techniques, electronics, visuals, and borrowings from and references to various world music cultures.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: OG Paulie Gee's, for Neapolitan-style full-pie pizza.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Theater Wielki / Polish National Opera: Voices of the Mountains
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018
8:00 PM
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
$12.50-$120
INFO + TICKETS
An all-star lineup of mainstream and contemporary Polish musicians perform a program of new and classic (Szymanowski! Górecki!) Polish classical music -- as well as Polish mountain folk music, drum and bass, and who knows what else?
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: One of the takeaways from this year's Raw Wine Festival last week was that the Greek Natural Wine scene is really kicking. Now that Molyvos has upped its natural-wine game, it's in some ways more enticing than ever.
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Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 8:30 PM
ETHEL: Circus: Wandering City
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 - 17, 2018
7:30 PM
Next Wave Festival
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$25-$40
INFO + TICKETS
The excellent ETHEL New Music string quartet pays tribute to the now-shuttered Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus with this multi-media exploration of the circus and the culture that had sustained it. Set to a score of the quartet's own devising, the show features archival footage and first-hand recollections of circus performers.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The spot near the Harvey that most closely approximates the fun of the circus is Miss Ada.
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Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Decoda: Revelers
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018
7:30 PM
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
154 West 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan
$32-$38
INFO + TICKETS
A program of musical revelry. It's always nice to hear Poulenc's high-spirited Sextet and Lutosławski's Dance Preludes. But it will be especially nice to hear a new piece by the usually delightful bassoonist/composer Brad Balliett (half of the best twin-brother act in New York New Music), as well by Paris's Guilaume Connesson, from the French outpost of the new let's-appeal-to-listeners school.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Burger Joint, hidden in the lobby of the Parker New York.
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Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:30 PM
Twyla Tharp Dance: Minimalism and Me
DANCE
WEDNESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14 - 18, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 9)
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY
8:00 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY - SUNDAY
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan
$26-$81
INFO + TICKETS
Once-great choreographer Twyla Tharp showcases work from before she went showbiz, when her stuff was really something special. Tharp might have worked with Minimalists, but her work was richly textured in a way that label might contraindicate. The program culminates in Eight Jelly Rolls, a stone classic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Time to check again how Italian effort Momofuku Nishi is doing in the current Momofuku resurgence.
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Wed, Nov 14, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 9:00 PM
Big Dance Theater: ANTIGONICK
DANCE / THEATER
WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 - 17, 2018
7:00 & 8:30 PM
Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
$20
INFO + TICKETS
Annie-B Parson's Big Dance Theater riffs on Anne Carson's vivid feminist retelling of Sophocles's Antigone. Parson and company's productions are always good for more than a few thoughts and more than a few laughs. The cast includes Sibyl Kempson and Eliza Bent: notable playwrights themselves.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The venue promises a "Dionysian Libation" (whatever that is) with drinks and food between each night's shows. On the assumption that, whatever that may be, it won't be enough, I will be programmatic enough to send you to Greek charmer Kiki's.
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Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 9:00 PM
Kate Tarker: THUNDERBODIES
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13 - 18, 2018
7:30 PM TUESDAY - SUNDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY
Soho Rep.
46 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
$35-$65
INFO + TICKETS
People who've seen Kate Tarker's wicked satire of war and marriage keep name-checking Jarry. That's a very good sign. Turns out, though, that without the shock that must have been felt when Jarry did this kind of thing for the very first time more than a 120 years ago, it comes across as a bit sophomoric. Luckily, I tend to LIKE sophomores. Tarker is certainly a playwright to watch.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Frenchette. Duh.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Argus Quartet
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018
7:30 PM
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
154 West 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan
$25
INFO + TICKETS
Haydn and Janáček aren't chopped liver as composers of string quartets. But I'm recommending this show for the new stuff accompanying those great masters' pieces on this program, all by composers just dripping with audience appeal: Juri Seo, who can write lush music without sounding anachronistic;Christopher Theofanidis, an "Atlanta School" composer who has the knack of creating instantly accessible pieces that nevertheless are full of surprises; and Ted Hearne, mainly known for his vocal music, who composes some of the most communicative work around.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Good, relatively inexpensive Greek at Souvlaki GR.
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Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:00 PM
In the Water Theater Company: Turtle Plays
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13 - 18, 2018
7:00 PM TUESDAY - FRIDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
Brick Theater
579 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$20
INFO + TICKETS
This has the makings of a great double bill. The two short plays each address the inherent human tendency toward violence. Annika Vestel's Turtleyou is a one-woman (plus video, sound, and projections) piece dramatizing an old Norwegian cookbook recipe for turtle soup (one suspects things degenerate pretty precipitously). In The House of Cards, the great theatrical collageist Charles Mee presents a portrayal of a recovering combat veteran sliding into chaos. (In the Wednesday and Saturday shows, the two plays will be presented in the original languages of these productions, Swedish and Spanish, respectively -- without surtitles. All you Swedish/Spanish speakers know what to do.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Just for fun, Brooklyn Red Sauce classic Bamonte's.
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Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 8:00 PM
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13 -18, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
7:00 PM TUESDAY - THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SUNDAY
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
INFO + TICKETS
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Mason Bates: Anthology of Fantastic Zoology
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018
8:00 PM
Philadelphia Orchestra
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
$17-$135
INFO + TICKETS
A weird mixed bag of a program. You get a new piece by Mason Bates, who writes classical music like the EDM DJ he also is. You get Wagner's Lohengrin Prelude, possibly the most beautiful thing in all of Western music. You get Chausson's lovely Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer (which at least is sort of Wagnerian in style and so makes some sense on this program) -- sung by Joyce DiDonato, no less! (This great orchestra and its Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, should make a meal of that piece.) And then you get one of the worst pieces in the standard rep, Respighi's Fountains of Rome (at least it's better than the other two parts of the Roman Triptych).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Modern Indian at Indian Accent.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Latvian Radio Choir: The Distant Light
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018
7:30 PM
White Light Festival
Church of St. Mary the Virgin
145 West 46th Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Ticket prices unavailable
INFO + TICKETS
The incredibly good Latvian Radio Choir presents a compelling program of Mahler, the visionary super-simple-superficially-but-not-conceptually Ukranian composer Valentin Silvestrov, and a bunch of contemporary Latvians. No surprise that it's sold out -- but as I keep insisting, stuff happens.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: There used to be tons of Brazilian restaurants around here. Now there are a few. Emporium Brazil is one, very much worth visiting. The savory pastries are especially good.
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Monday, November 12, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
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Monday, November 12, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Nicolee Kuestar / Leah Asher: "Brief Choral Situations"
MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2018
7:30 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$15; $10 students/seniors
http://www.spectrumnyc.com/site/calendar.php
A questing hornist and violin/violist team up (with friends) to perform brief choral pieces, an Alvin Lucier U.S. instrumental premiere (a big deal, that), more vocal stuff by Frederic Rzewski, a piece for two trumpets playing only pedal tones, and a piece for oranges, electric toothbrushes, packing peanuts, and more. That's the second piece for fruits or vegetables I've seen in the last several weeks: one more and this is due a Times trend piece.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: LaRina Pastificio & Vino: nice pasta, nice people.
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Mon, Nov 12, 2018, 7:30 PM – Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 8:30 PM
Beckett: Waiting for Godot
THEATER
MONDAY & TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 & 13
7:30 PM
Druid
White Light Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College
524 W. 59th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$35-$125
INFO + TICKETS
Have you ever seen a production by the Irish theater company Druid that was less than phenomenal? I sure haven't. Garry Hynes's unerringly incisive direction, the uniformly sensational acting -- and, of course, a seemingly intuitive grasp of the great wealth of Irish dramatic literature (not that they're slouches with Shakespeare). So, if you want to see anybody do Beckett's great great dark absurd comic representation of Life As We Know It, it's Druid.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You just know I'm going to send you to Molyvos sibling Modern Greek Ouisia, right?
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Sunday, November 11, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
ICE: 100 for 100: Musical Decades of Freedom
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
8:00 PM
Roulette
509 Atlantic Avenue (entrance on 3rd Avenue), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
$18 advance; $25 door
http://roulette.org/event/100-for-100-musical-decades-of-freedom/
A concert of contemporary Polish music from the peerless International Contemporary Ensemble. Lots of good stuff. I'll give a special shout-out to Agata Zubel, one of the most interesting musicians now before the public: a ravishing if quirky singer (not here tonight, though), an excellent if quirky composer (very much on the program).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The beer at St. Gambrinus is so great you won't worry about how basic the bar snacks are.
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Sunday, November 11, 2018, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Quartetto di Cremona
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
5:00 PM
Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
$45
https://www.frick.org/calendar?trumbaEmbed=eventid%3D127943846%26view%3Devent%26-childview%3D%26returnUrl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.frick.org%252Fprograms%252Fconcerts
Italian instrumental music sort of fell by the wayside after the Baroque: the world focused its attention on Italian opera -- and so, for the most part, did Italian audiences. But much attractive work was written -- how could it not be attractive, given the melodies that seem to spring from the soil in Italy? -- and in this very appealing concert a distinguished Italian string quartet presents a bunch of the very best. Along with a ringer, Wolf's Italian Serenade, in which that Italian soil inspires a usually rather fraught Austrian to a burst of melodic cheer. (This concert is sold out, as you might expect in such a tiny venue -- but watch for last-minute cancellations.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: There are a lot of expensive, solid Italian spots on the Upper East Side -- and a lot of expensive, terrible ones. Caravaggio is one of the better sort: it's genuinely hard to decide what to order from its attractive menu. Not cheap -- but this is the Upper East Side.
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Sunday, November 11, 2018, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Joan Tower and Friends
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
4:00 PM
National Sawdust
80 North 6th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$29
https://nationalsawdust.org/event/joan_tower/
Name a better currently active American composer than Joan Tower. You can't -- but if you tried, candidates would include Julia Wolfe, Jennifer Higdon, and Tania Leon. And they're all represented on this program celebrating Tower's 80th birthday -- played by a stunning array of New Music specialists.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: If it's Sunday, I must be sending you to the Mid-Atlantic charmer Delaware and Hudson. I'll take the Tavern Room for the best bar snacks you've ever had and à la carte items from the dining room prix fixemenu; you might prefer the dining room for the prix fixe itself: a tremendous value.
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Sunday, November 11, 2018, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Marie Losier feat. Felix Kubin: The Man with the German Haircut
PERFORMANCE/MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
3:00 PM
Sunday Sessions
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
$15
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/4816?locale=en
French filmmaker Marie Losier makes a music video for German electronic musician Felix Kubin live in front of the audience. Then they throw a dance party!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The deeper into Fall we get, the better M. Wells Steakhouse looks.
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Sunday, November 11, 2018, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
WindSync
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018
2:00 PM
Schneider Concerts
The Auditorium, Room A106, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, New School
66 West 12th Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$16-$18
https://events.newschool.edu/event/2018-19_schneider_concerts_season_-_windsync_wind_quintet#.W9zKvCdRdm8
I just love chamber music for winds. Don't you? This appealing program by a vibrant young wind quintet features old stuff, new stuff, classics, obscurities. It should just be pure pleasure.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I feel like kind of a dope for recommending this place, but Ryan Sutton says the new chicken parm hero at Pasta Flyer -- the excellent chef Mark Ladner's betrayal of his talent -- is really good.
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Saturday, November 10, 2018, 10:30 PM – 11:30 PM
Nightcap: Gabriel Kahane
MUSIC
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2018
10:30 PM
New York Philharmonic
Kaplan Penthouse, Rose Building, Juilliard School
165 West 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$25
https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/1819/nightcap-curated-by-gabriel-kahane
A very appealing entry in the Philharmonic's after-show Nightcaps series, in which singer-songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane (himself the son of a distinguished Schubertian) leads a tour through the development of the art song from Schubert on, with the very able assistance of two ace composer/performers, Caroline Shaw and Timo Andres, as well as the Miró Quartet. Sitting in the candle-lit Kaplan Penthouse with a drink, looking out over the Hudson, is its own reward. (It also has to be said that the preceding Philharmonic concert [also on WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY], featuring Beethoven and Schubert conducted by the great great Iván Fischer -- and sung by the enchanting Miah Persson -- is itself very appealing.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Before, why not eat across the street at stylish Italian Lincoln? After, your choices are P.J. Clarke's and Bar Boulud -- not such bad choices, really.
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Saturday, November 10, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
-
Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 8:00 PM – Mon, Nov 12, 2018, 8:00 AM
-
Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 8:30 PM
Sirius Quartet Presents: The 2018 Progressive Chamber Music Festival
MUSIC
SATURDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 & 11, 2018
7:30 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$20 each show; $40 festival pass
http://www.spectrumnyc.com/site/calendar.php
New Music stalwarts Sirius Quartet present a festival of chamber ensembles so diverse in style and approach you can't even call them "similarly inclined". Expect . . . anything (except dour self-seriousness).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: This two-night run includes a Sunday, so I'll continue my obsession with Sunday nights at cozy New American spots: the uber-cozy Vinegar Hill House.
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Saturday, November 10, 2018, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Jan Fabre: Mount Olympus: to glorify the cult of tragedy
THEATER
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2018
5:00 PM
Skirball Center, NYU
566 LaGuardia Place, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$100-$275
https://nyuskirball.org/events/mount-olympus/
You'll have to decide for yourself whether recent #MeToo allegations have put you off the Belgian master of avant-garde theater, Jan Fabre. If not, here's a massive dose of what looks to me like one of his most fascinating worksz yet: a 24-hour-long exploration of the ethos of Greek tragic theater. (The performers apparently get to take naps. The audience?)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Are you joking?
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Saturday, November 10, 2018, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Nico Muhly: Marnie
OPERA
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2018
1:00 PM
Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$30-$300
https://www.metopera.org/season/2018-19-season/marnie/
You never can tell. Missy Mazzoli, whose (excellent) instrumental writing gave no particular indication of any innate dramatic instinct, has turned out to be a born musical dramatist. Nico Muhly, on the basis of three operas now, hasn't. Which is not to say that his new grand opera, his second for the Met, isn't worth seeing. Based on the chiller novel that was made into what might beAlfred Hitchcock's most perverse film, it has a compelling plot (even if that plot could have been better dramatized). The production -- especially the costuming -- is a knockout. And the cast of young (a relative term: this is opera) stars is very strong, with Isabel Leonard (who, with her natural froideur, couldn't be more perfect to play a part played on screen by Tippi Hedren -- and who gives what must, so far, be the performance of her lifetime), Iestyn Davies, Christopher Maltman, and Denyce Graves (now playing the mom role -- yikes!) (well, there are flashbacks). Former Young Conductor Robert Spano makes his long-overdue Met debut -- and absolutely aces it.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: One feels that Marnie and her husband Mark would go to Bar Boulud for a post-show drink and snack. (Actually, now that I think of it, really they'd go to P.J. Clarke's for Martinis, oysters, and burgers. Your choice.)
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Thursday, November 8, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
The Blow: Energetic Strategies Tour
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2018
8:00 PM
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$13 advance; $15 door
https://lpr.com/lpr_events/the-blow-november-8th-2018/
You've got to give The Blow credit: they haven't allowed their catchy electro-pop to stagnate, but rather have made it more and more abstruse as time has passed. The same personnel changes that have affected the music -- through which the band ended up including an installation artist/experimental electronic musician -- have led to an emphasis on creating live visual environments in the band's shows, adding a lot of interest. Not to mention that the two opening acts tonight are well worth seeing in their own right: compelling-with-a-bullet Haitian/Brooklyn electronic musician Val Jeanty; and Karima Walker, who says her electronic music is influenced by folk -- but she must mean the folk music of Mars.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I feel a little guilty about it, but I'm sending you to the insanely good but insanely expensive cocktails and raw/barely cooked sea food at Z.Z.'s Clam Bar.
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Thu, Nov 8, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 4:00 PM
La Mama Puppet Festival
PERFORMANCE
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 - 11, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 25)
7:00 & 8:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
12:00 & 3:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
La Mama
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$26; $21 student/senior; $75 five-show package; $50 three-show package; $35 two-show package
http://lamama.org/puppet_series/
I don't know about you, but I tend to love puppetry just on general principle. In any event, La Mama does a good job each year of selecting worthwhile genre-stretching work for its Puppet Festival. The pretty clear pick this week is the Puppet Slam on Monday at 8:30 PM -- but how wrong can you go with any of them?
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant (the one in the Ukrainian National Home) -- an urge I now inflict on you. You can't have a bad time here. Some day I'll tell you about the night I was there and they were having a milonga in the back room, so all these people kept passing through the very Ukrainian dining room in tango gear. I love this City.
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Ginny Benson: VX Bliss
PERFORMANCE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018
8:00 PM
Roulette
509 Atlantic Avenue (entrance on 3rd Avenue), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
$18 advance; $25 door
http://roulette.org/event/vx-bliss-audiovisual-arrangements-by-ginny-benson/
I'm going to start by quoting the promotional materials: "VX Bliss is the solo project of intermedia artist Ginny Benson. Her live performances use analog synthesis to create densely layered electronic music that drifts between melodic soundscape and atonal noise, integrated with video collages made from VHS tapes, circuit bent mixers, and feedback." I'm then going to comment that the materials make this show seem boring, when in fact it promises to be fascinating -- and leave out Benson's very existent sense of humor.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Treat yourself to delicious Korean food and excellent cocktails at Insa. (Although you lose the chance to have table-grilled barbecue, the very attractive bar/lounge area is a much more congenial dining spot than the noisy dining room. And the blood sausage will make you forget the barbecue.)
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Wed, Nov 7, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 8:30 PM
-
Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Nico Muhly: Marnie
OPERA
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 7, 2018
7:30 PM
Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$30-$300
https://www.metopera.org/season/2018-19-season/marnie/
You never can tell. Missy Mazzoli, whose (excellent) instrumental writing gave no particular indication of any innate dramatic instinct, has turned out to be a born musical dramatist. Nico Muhly, on the basis of three operas now, hasn't. Which is not to say that his new grand opera, his second for the Met, isn't worth seeing. Based on the chiller novel that was made into what might beAlfred Hitchcock's most perverse film, it has a compelling plot (even if that plot could have been better dramatized). The production -- especially the costuming -- is a knockout. And the cast of young (a relative term: this is opera) stars is very strong, with Isabel Leonard (who, with her natural froideur, couldn't be more perfect to play a part played on screen by Tippi Hedren -- and who gives what must, so far, be the performance of her lifetime), Iestyn Davies, Christopher Maltman, and Denyce Graves (now playing the mom role -- yikes!) (well, there are flashbacks). Former Young Conductor Robert Spano makes his long-overdue Met debut -- and absolutely aces it.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: One feels that Marnie and her husband Mark would go to Bar Boulud for a post-show drink and snack. (Actually, now that I think of it, really they'd go to P.J. Clarke's for Martinis, oysters, and burgers. Your choice.)
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Wed, Nov 7, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 8:30 PM
-
Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
-
Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Mivos String Quartet
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018
7:00 PM
Italian Academy, Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Avenue, Morningside Heights, Manhattan
Free
https://italianacademy.columbia.edu/event/mivos-string-quartet
I'm mainly recommending this program of New Music by mostly Italian composers for a piece by a Canadian/New York ringer: Zosha Di Castri, who aptly describes herself as a "composer/sound artist", crafting soundscapes through which enthralled listeners can journey. A transcription of a piece by Gesualdo, one of the most bizarre of the Baroque composers, doesn't hurt. And the concert is presented by a descendant of a program initiated by Lorenzo Da Ponte!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Speaking of things from Italy, you can do a lot worse than the hearty Italian food at Max Soha.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Under Exposed
DANCE
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018
7:30 PM
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
$15 advance; $18 door; $12 students/seniors
http://dixonplace.org/performances/under-exposed-11-6/
New work by a stylistically diverse bunch of emerging choreographers.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The Usual is the New York dinner-time venture of the chef behind LA's breakfast/lunch sensation Eggslut. The menu looks like the same old comfort food you're already sick of -- but everybody says it's delicious.
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Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – Mon, Nov 12, 2018, 4:00 AM
Pay No Attention to the Girl
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 - 11, 2018
7:30 PM TUESDAY - SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
Target Margin Theater
The Doxee
232 52nd Street, Sunset Park, Brooklyn
$30
http://www.targetmargin.org/our-season/show-1/
David Herskovits's wonderful Target Margin Theater revives their acclaimed retelling of tales from The Thousand and One Nights, with an emphasis on gender inequality when it comes to being believed. Theater magic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: As usual with The Doxee, walk up 52nd Street to 8th Avenue and you're in the middle of Brooklyn Chinatown. You can make your own pick, but if you want a recommendation, right near the corner is Yun Nan Flavor Garden, where the Crossing the Bridge Noodles are just as good as everybody says they are. If, however, the women of the Genesis & Isaac Deli are making tacos out on the sidewalk in front when you emerge from the 53rd Street BMT stop, you'll be a better person than me if you can resist a snack.
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Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 6:00 PM
Rodgers & Hammerstein: Oklahoma!
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 -11, 2018
7:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
St. Ann's Warehouse
45 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn
$26-$100
https://stannswarehouse.org/show/oklahoma/
Daniel Fish's stripped-down version of Oklahoma! was rapturously received when it played at Bard a few summers ago. I personally can't imagine not being nauseated by Oscar Hammerstein II's smug mid-century coyness -- but, hey, I came out of punk. If anything can make a case for it, this production should. Try to snag a table seat, so you can get access to chili, cornbread, and lemonade.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Henry's End has started its annual Fall/Winter Game Festival.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Brooklyn Youth Chorus: Silent Voices
MUSIC
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018
7:30 PM
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$25-$30
https://lpr.com/lpr_events/brooklyn-youth-chorus-november-6th-2018/
The Brooklyn Youth Chorus is great, let's get that out of the way. And this project (the release of which in album form is being celebrated tonight) features a formidable list of composers in the contemporary easy-to-listen-to-but-in-no-way-Easy-Listening vein, including such out-and-out faves as Caroline Shaw, Kamala Sankaram, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Nicho Muhly, and DJ Spooky. But to tell you the truth, I found this project -- which includes edifying spoken-word passages (by really good writers, to be fair) along with the music -- a wee bit too earnest in prior performances. I mean, sure, earnestness is an appealing thing in teenagers. But that doesn't mean you want to sit down andlisten to it. OTOH, that music . . . .
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Maybe this is a show you'd actually want to eat before. In that case, Berber Street Food or Llamita or South of the Clouds(Crossing the Bridge Noodles by the son of the Yun Nan Flavor Garden folks!). Afterwards, I'm not going to be cynical enough to send you to Existing Conditions for cocktails. No, I'm going to send you to Bessou, for some of the most delicious Japanese home-style cooking you've ever had in some of the most charming surroundings you've ever experienced (outside of a Japanese home, of course).
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Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 3:00 PM
-
Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 4:00 PM
Kate Tarker: THUNDERBODIES
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 - 11, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 18)*
7:30 PM TUESDAY - SUNDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY
Soho Rep.
46 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
$35-$65 Tuesday-Saturday; $99 Sunday
http://sohorep.org/thunderbodies
People who've seen Kate Tarker's wicked satire of war and marriage keep namechecking Jarry. That's a very good sign.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Frenchette. Duh.
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Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 3:30 AM
Andrew R. Butler: Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future
THEATER
TUESDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6 - 10, 2018
7:00 PM TUESDAY - WEDNESDAY
8:00 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
5:00 PM SATURDAY
Ars Nova
511 West 54th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$37-$67
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/996876
So I'm sitting in this bar talking to this composer/performer I like named Rick Burkhardt. And I'm like, "So what do you have coming up?" And he's like, "I'm in this show that's going to be at Ars Nova." And I'm like, "You're in that? I wasn't going to recommend it: it looks too folkie." And he's like, "It is folkie. But it's great." Well, if Andrew R. Butler's representation of a folk concert 250 years in the future is good enough for Rick, it's good enough for me.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Very good wine, doable food at Ardesia Wine Bar.
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Tue, Nov 6, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 3:00 PM
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 -11, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
7:00 PM TUESDAY - THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SUNDAY
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
http://classicstage.org/shows/2018/11/the-resistible-rise-of-arturo-ui-2/
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Monday, November 5, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Darius Jones: For the People
MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2018
8:00 PM
Roulette
508 Atlantic Avenue (entrance on 3rd Avenue), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
$18 advance; $25 door
http://roulette.org/event/darius-jones-for-the-people/
Darius Jones -- an extraordinary alto saxophonist and an excellent composer -- combines with the Large Ensemble of New York's first-rate vocal/instrumental New Music collective Wet Ink for a "community-based" set of compositions with a sociopolitical slant. "There is no dictator," Jones asserts. Hope he's right.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Building on Bond for good burgers, cocktails, and beer in a neighborhood setting; then sister bar Robert next door for swankier cocktails to finish off the night.
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Monday, November 5, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Sasha Waltz: Kreatur
DANCE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2018
7:30 PM
Next Wave Festival
BAM Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$25-$85
https://www.bam.org/dance/2018/kreatur
Sasha Waltz's work is reminiscent of Pina Bausch-style tanztheater -- but more physical, more dancey. It isn't any less relentless. You go to these things and you feel like you've been put through the wringer -- but in a good way.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Ethiopian at Bati Kitchen.
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Mon, Nov 5, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 11, 2018, 1:00 AM
Beckett: Waiting for Godot
THEATER
MONDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 - 11 (continuing through NOVEMBER 13)
7:30 PM MONDAY - SUNDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Druid
White Light Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College
524 W. 59th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$35-$125
http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival/show/waiting-for-godot
Have you ever seen a production by the Irish theater company Druid that was less than phenomenal? I sure haven't. Garry Hynes's unerringly incisive direction, the uniformly sensational acting -- and, of course, a seemingly intuitive grasp of the great wealth of Irish dramatic literature (not that they're slouches with Shakespeare). So, if you want to see anybody do Beckett's great great dark absurd comic representation of Life As We Know It, it's Druid.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You just know I'm going to send you to Molyvos sibling Modern Greek Ouisia, right?
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Monday, November 5, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Carónica: An Empire of Silver and Gold
MUSIC
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2018
7:00 PM
5 Boroughs Music Festival
St. Ignacius of Antioch Episcopal Church
552 West End Avenue, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$40 VIP preferred seating; $25 general admission; $15 seniors; free students
http://5bmf.org/coronica/
Baroque music from Latin America: it's like Baroque music from Spain -- but even catchier, with even livelier rhythms. It's all because of local influences enriching the style in a highly enjoyable way. This music is another of those great undersung joys -- and here's a whole concert of it, played a consort of experts.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The Uptown Mermaid Inn, for good, very well-priced seafood.
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Mon, Nov 5, 2018, 7:00 PM – Thu, Nov 8, 2018, 8:00 PM
Rzewski Festival
MUSIC
MONDAY - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5 - 8, 2018 (also on NOVEMBER 29)*
7:00 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$20 suggested donation each show; $40 festival pass
http://www.spectrumnyc.com/site/calendar.php
The continuation of a festival exploring and celebrating the work of vieil homme terrible Frederic Rzewski in his 80th birthday year. Rzewski composes engaged, engaging music with direct appeal -- some of the most accessible "avant-garde" music there is. Highlights this week include a rare performance on Monday of Les Moutons de Panurge for indeterminate mixed ensemble -- a really great piece that somehow contrives to be extremely catchy while incorporating chance cacophony; an appearance on Tuesday by Rzewski's great interpreter Ursula Oppens (playing four hands with Jerome Lowenthal!); and a performance on Thursday of Rzewski's riveting Attica piece Coming Together by Festival curator Gabriel Zucker and his excellent band, The Delegation.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Gentleman Farmer for hearty Franco-American food, the kind that shines in the Fall.
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Monday, November 5, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
La Mama Puppet Festival
PERFORMANCE
MONDAY NOVEMBER 5, 2018
7:00 & 8:30 PM MONDAY
La Mama
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$26; $21 student/senior; $75 five-show package; $50 three-show package; $35 two-show package
http://lamama.org/puppet_series/
I don't know about you, but I tend to love puppetry just on general principle. In any event, La Mama does a good job each year of selecting worthwhile genre-stretching work for its Puppet Festival. The pretty clear pick this week is the Puppet Slam on Monday at 8:30 PM -- but how wrong can you go with any of them?
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant (the one in the Ukrainian National Home) -- an urge I now inflict on you. You can't have a bad time here. Some day I'll tell you about the night I was there and they were having a milonga in the back room, so all these people kept passing through the very Ukrainian dining room in tango gear. I love this City.
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Monday, November 5, 2018, 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Kirsten Harvey & Eleanor Robb: Venus in Gemini
THEATER
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2018
7:30 PM
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
$15 ($12 students/seniors) advance; $18 ($15 students/seniors) door
http://dixonplace.org/performances/venus-in-gemini-2/
Two sisters travel to Venus OR two very funny Brooklyn/Queens theater-makers put on a play.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Further test your sense of humor by going a few doors down to Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse, which is sort of like what would happen if you set Jackie Mason loose in a kitchen and front of house.
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Sunday, November 4, 2018, 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Rzewski Festival: Hamm, DeMare, Noble
MUSIC
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2018
5:30 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$20 suggested donation each show; $40 festival pass
http://www.spectrumnyc.com/site/calendar.php
The first evening of a festival, continuing through next THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8 (with an outlying show on NOVEMBER 29), exploring and celebrating the work of vieil homme terrible Frederic Rzewski. Rzewski composes engaged, engaging music with direct appeal -- some of the most accessible "avant-garde" music there is. This show, featuring three formidablepianists (Rzewski being a mightily formidable pianist himself), includes Rzewski's greatest hit, the titanic The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, a set of piano variations worthy to stand with the Goldbergs and the Diabellis.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: If it's Sunday I must be sending you to a cozy New American place. Indeed, perhaps the coziest one of all: Vinegar Hill House.
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Saturday, November 3, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Random Access Music: Modern Americana
MUSIC
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2018
8:00 PM
THURSDAY: Sage Music
44-02 23rd Street #202, Long Island City, Queens
SATURDAY: Cary Hall, DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 West 37th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$20; $15 students; free 12 and under
http://ram-nyc.org/events/modern-americana/
This program celebrates Leonard Bernstein's centennial (which Bernstein didn't make) and Ned Rorem's 95th birthday (which Rorem did) with absolutely delightful chamber pieces by each of them. But just as enticing are pieces by young composers (genuinely young: not just in comparison to Ned Rorem), who include huge List favorites Missy Mazzoli and Kamala Sankaram.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: On Thursday, you can't be that close to M. Wells Steakhouse and not go. It would be criminal. On Saturday, since I sent you to a hyped-up Italian place near here above, now let me mention the much more humble Mercato, where the Pugliese-leaning food is good and without a hint of pretense. Have some Pugliese wine, too: you don't see it everywhere.
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Saturday, November 3, 2018, 3:00 AM – 4:00 AM
TENET: 14th-Century Avant-Garde
MUSIC
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2018
3:00 PM
Fuentidueña Chapel, The Cloisters
99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort George, Manhattan
$55; $1 accompanying children
https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/tenet-19-2?eid=405614&q=tenet&program=MetLiveArts&location=main%7Cbreuer%7Ccloisters&startDate=10/4/2018+10:03:28+AM&page=1
As it happens, I recently spent an afternoon listening hard to ars subtilior ("the subtle art"), an intricate and extremely rhythmically complex style that emerged at the end of the 14th Century, to the utter shock of contemporary listeners then (but of great appeal to contemporary listeners now). This is great stuff. So it's kind of fortuitous that here's a whole concert of it, by excellent exponents of early vocal music, in the most appropriate New York venue you could imagine.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You don't absolutely HAVE to order the fried pork belly at Elsa la Reina del Chicharron. But why in the world wouldn't you?
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Friday, November 2, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
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Friday, November 2, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
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Fri, Nov 2, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 3:00 PM
Beckett: Waiting for Godot
THEATER
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 - 4 (continuing through NOVEMBER 13)
7:30 PM FRIDAY - SUNDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
Druid
White Light Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College
524 W. 59th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$35-$125
http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival/show/waiting-for-godot
Have you ever seen a production by the Irish theater company Druid that was less than phenomenal? I sure haven't. Garry Hynes's unerringly incisive direction, the uniformly sensational acting -- and, of course, a seemingly intuitive grasp of the great wealth of Irish dramatic literature (not that they're slouches with Shakespeare). So, if you want to see anybody do Beckett's great great dark absurd comic representation of Life As We Know It, it's Druid.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: You just know I'm going to send you to Molyvos sibling Modern Greek Ouisia, right?
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Fri, Nov 2, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 8:30 PM
Sasha Waltz: Kreatur
DANCE
FRIDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 - 4 (continuing through NOVEMBER 5)
7:30 PM
Next Wave Festival
BAM Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$25-$85
https://www.bam.org/dance/2018/kreatur
Sasha Waltz's work is reminiscent of Pina Bausch-style tanztheater -- but more physical, more dancey. It isn't any less relentless. You go to these things and you feel like you've been put through the wringer -- but in a good way.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: La Caye -- right across the street from BAM -- is a hidden gem in a borough so overpublicized you'd think it couldn't hide any gems anymore. Beautifully prepared Haitian food.
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Friday, November 2, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Spectral Fridays #12
MUSIC / PERFORMANCE
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2018
7:30 PM
Spectrum
70 Flushing Avenue, Garage A, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$15; $10 student/senior
http://www.spectrumnyc.com/site/calendar.php
The monthly music/performance salon curated by pianist/composer Gabriel Zucker, featuring acts that come from many genres and cross genres within themselves.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: METTĀ for Argentinish fire food.
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Fri, Nov 2, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sat, Nov 3, 2018, 8:00 PM
Experiments in Opera: Modularies
OPERA
FRIDAY - SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 - 3, 2018
7:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY
The Flea Theater
20 Thomas Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
$30; $25 student/senior; $75 benefit tickets available for Friday
INFO + TICKETS
This experimental opera company describes itself as "fun and fearless" -- and that's what I think, too. I've never seen them put something on that wasn't just challenging and thought-provoking, but immensely enjoyable as well. This show features four new chamber operas for voice and modular synthesizer. It sure doesn't hurt that one of the voices (and composer as well) is the redoubtable Joan La Barbara. Or that one of the other composers (and singer as well) is List fave Kamala Sankaram.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: The new Tribeca bricks-and-mortar flagship of Brooklyn barbecue pop-up Holy Ground.
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Friday, November 2, 2018, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Piazzolla: Maria de Buenos Aires
OPERA
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2018
7:00 PM
New York City Opera
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
$10-$50
https://nycopera.com/shows/maria-de-buenos-aires/
Astor Piazzolla's Nuevo Tango chamber opera is really good. I mean, reallygood. (Piazzolla didn't study with Nadia Boulanger for nothing.) You'll have two chances to see it this season: this well-received production, imported from Atlanta (where it was also performed in an alternative venue) by the foundering City Opera; and what should be a funkier, racier production by Bare Opera next Spring (although it shouldn't be ignored that this current production has the benefit of a renowned exponent of the title role and two first-rate tango dancers in the cast). I say, why choose? If you see it now, you'll want to see it again in the Spring.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Before, try everybody's new favorite Berber Street Food, featuring food of North Africa and the African diaspora. Afterward, it may be totally repetitious and unimaginative of me, but there is no way all this tango and sex (is that redundant?) won't put you in the mood for cocktails. Hence, Existing Conditions (the food is good, too).
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Thursday, November 1, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Elliott Sharp: IrRational Music
MUSIC
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2018
8:00 PM
Roulette
508 Atlantic Avenue (entrance on 3rd Avenue), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
$18 advance; $25 door
http://roulette.org/event/elliott-sharp-irrational-music/
Guitar provocateur Elliott Sharp celebrates the upcoming release of his memoir/musical manifesto with a performance of several strands of his music: solo guitar, algorithmic ensemble music, and music with/for a New Music ensemble (that ensemble being the Veni Academy, the student adjunct of the Slovak Republic's venerable Veni Ensemble).
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: This is going to be a long show. But Grand Army Bar will still be serving its plausible food (and excellent cocktails!) after it's done.
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Thursday, November 1, 2018, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Random Access Music: Modern Americana
MUSIC
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1, 2018
8:00 PM
THURSDAY: Sage Music
44-02 23rd Street #202, Long Island City, Queens
SATURDAY: Cary Hall, DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 West 37th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$20; $15 students; free 12 and under
http://ram-nyc.org/events/modern-americana/
This program celebrates Leonard Bernstein's centennial (which Bernstein didn't make) and Ned Rorem's 95th birthday (which Rorem did) with absolutely delightful chamber pieces by each of them. But just as enticing are pieces by young composers (genuinely young: not just in comparison to Ned Rorem), who include huge List favorites Missy Mazzoli and Kamala Sankaram.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: On Thursday, you can't be that close to M. Wells Steakhouse and not go. It would be criminal. On Saturday, since I sent you to a hyped-up Italian place near here above, now let me mention the much more humble Mercato, where the Pugliese-leaning food is good and without a hint of pretense. Have some Pugliese wine, too: you don't see it everywhere.
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Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 8:00 PM – Fri, Nov 2, 2018, 9:00 PM
Morton Feldman: Framing Time
DANCE / MUSIC
THURSDAY - FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1 - 2, 2018
8:00 PM
White Light Festival
Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$25-$30
https://bacnyc.org/performances/performance/framing-time
Here's where we Morton Feldman fanatics go to heaven. Feldman's solo piano masterpiece Triadic Memories -- a phenomenal example of Fedlman's spare, protracted music, in which nothing seems to happen but yet at the end you feel like something big has happened -- is played by one of New York's most elegant pianists, Pedja Muzijevic. And danced to by the great Spanish modern dancer, Cesc Gelabert. With accompanying lighting effects, etc. Expect this to be the very definition of hypnotic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: OK OK I give up. People keep saying nice things about nearby Italian Legacy Records. I'm just not one of them.
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Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 6:00 PM
Pay No Attention to the Girl
THEATER
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 - 4, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 11)
7:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
Target Margin Theater
The Doxee
232 52nd Street, Sunset Park, Brooklyn
$30
http://www.targetmargin.org/our-season/show-1/
David Herskovits's wonderful Target Margin Theater revives their acclaimed retelling of tales from The Thousand and One Nights, with an emphasis on gender inequality when it comes to being believed. Theater magic.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: As usual with The Doxee, walk up 52nd Street to 8th Avenue and you're in the middle of Brooklyn Chinatown. You can make your own pick, but if you want a recommendation, right near the corner is Yun Nan Flavor Garden, where the Crossing the Bridge Noodles are just as good as everybody says they are. If, however, the women of the Genesis & Isaac Deli are making tacos out on the sidewalk in front when you emerge from the 53rd Street BMT stop, you'll be a better person than me if you can resist a snack.
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Thursday, November 1, 2018, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle
János Vajda: Mario and the Musician
OPERA
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2018
7:30 PM
Hungarian State Opera
David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$10-$119
https://davidhkochtheater.com/tickets/reserve.aspx?performanceNumber=5769
You'll have to decide for yourself whether you're willing to support a cultural showpiece of a proto-fascist regime (touring now, in fact, because its beautiful old opera house is closed for renovations lavished upon it by the regime). If you are, this double-header of very fine-to-great Hungarian operas of the last century is the clear pick of the Hungarian State Opera's visit, from this List's perspective (and it's even kind of anti-fascist, as we'll see). Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle you know: one of the peaks of 20th Century opera. It will be good, though, to hear it sung entirely by native speakers of this distinctive and linguistically remote language. János Vajda's piece maybe you don't know. Vajda was one of those late-20th Century composers who started out all dodecaphonic but then reconciled with tonality. His neotonal works -- very much including this one -- are quite appealing. It's based on a good Thomas Mann short story about, of all things, mass suggestibility leading to mass extremism; I'm not going to make any remarks. (Does Orbán know they're doing this?)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Let's keep it Old World and go back to The Leopard at Des Artistes for very good Southern Italian in opulent surroundings -- in a space that was, of course, long occupied by a restaurant run by a great Hungarian restaurateur. As always, I'll tell you to order the paccheri with "Genovese" sauce and to hope they're offering their famous but now off-menu meatloaf as a special.
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Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 4:00 PM
PERFORMANCE
THURSDAY - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1 - 4, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 25)
7:00 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY & SUNDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY
La Mama Puppet Festival
La Mama
66 East 4th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$26; $21 student/senior; $75 five-show package; $50 three-show package; $35 two-show package
http://lamama.org/puppet_series/
I don't know about you, but I tend to love puppetry just on general principle. In any event, La Mama does a good job each year of selecting good genre-stretching work for its Puppet Festival. I'd say my personal pick this week is Wunderkammer from Germany -- but how wrong can you go?
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I don't know why, but I'm suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to go to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant (the one in the Ukrainian National Home) -- an urge I now inflict on you. You can't have a bad time here. Some day I'll tell you about the night I was there and they were having a milonga in the back room, so all these people kept passing through the very Ukrainian dining room in tango gear. I love this City.
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 8:00 PM – Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 9:00 PM
MUSIC
WEDNESDAY - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 1, 2018
8:00 PM
For / With
Issue Project Room
22 Boerum Place, Downtown, Brooklyn
$15 each night
https://issueprojectroom.org/event/works-wadada-leo-smith-annea-lockwood-catherine-lamb
https://issueprojectroom.org/event/works-annea-lockwood-ashley-fure-felipe-lara-wadada-leo-smith
Trumpeter Nate Wooley, whose playing and composing skirt jazz and classical, performs and curates a mini-festival focusing (if I understand this correctly) on new music for trumpet and new music not for trumpet by composers who have otherwise written new music for trumpet. Conceptual complication notwithstanding, these two shows present quite a list of composers, including New Music It Girl Ashley Fure; avant-garde legend Annea Lockwood;Catherine Lamb, whose serene, transporting music is informed by just intonation, Hindustani classical music, and -- she says so herself -- an openness to blandness; lyrical Brazilian Modernist Felipe Lara; and the great avant-jazz trumpeter/composer (he's also playing) Wadada Leo Smith. Aside from Wooley and Smith, a constellation of New York New Music regulars performs.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I'm going to keep suggesting the red-hot seafood restaurant Saint Julivert Fisherie (run by the people behind the great La Vara -- New York's best Spanish restaurant -- next door), even though it's extremely hard to get a table there.
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 8:00 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 4:00 PM
DANCE
WEDNESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018
8:00 PM WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY
Balanchine: The City Center Years
American Ballet Theater / The Joffrey Ballet / The Mariinsky Ballet / Miami City Ballet / New York City Ballet / Paris Opera Ballet / The Royal Ballet / San Francisco Ballet
New York City Center
131 West 55th Street, Midtown, Manhattan
$28-$275
https://www.nycitycenter.org/pdps/2018-2019/Balanchine/
Why do I find this festival paying tribute to the great ballet neoclassicist, in a hall with which he had rich associations, so uninviting? Is it because I live the City with the ballet company with the strongest Balanchine tradition anywhere (it's participating in this festival), and it programs his work all the time? Is it because, rather than viewing the agglomeration of different ballet companies on each bill as providing a fascinating opportunity to compare different approaches to the Balanchine style, I find it somewhat bewildering, even off-putting: an incoherent potpourri? Or is it just that there's so much else going on this week? Anyway, people with more sense than me will flock to these shows.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: (Or a brunch.) Up the block and across the street to Benoit for very good bistro.
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 9:00 PM
Nico Muhly: Marnie
OPERA
WEDNESDAY & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31 & NOVEMBER 3, 2018 (also NOVEMBER 7 & 10)
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY
Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$30-$300
INFO + TICKETS
You never can tell. Missy Mazzoli, whose (excellent) instrumental writing gave no particular indication of any innate dramatic instinct, has turned out to be a born musical dramatist. Nico Muhly, on the basis of three operas now, hasn't. Which is not to say that his new grand opera, his second for the Met, isn't worth seeing. Based on the chiller novel that was made into what might beAlfred Hitchcock's most perverse film, it has a compelling plot (even if that plot could have been better dramatized). The production -- especially the costuming -- is a knockout. And the cast of young (a relative term: this is opera) stars is very strong, with Isabel Leonard (who, with her natural froideur, couldn't be more perfect to play a part played on screen by Tippi Hedren -- and who gives what must, so far, be the performance of her lifetime), Iestyn Davies, Christopher Maltman, and Denyce Graves (now playing the mom role -- yikes!) (well, there are flashbacks). Former Young Conductor Robert Spano makes his long-overdue Met debut -- and absolutely aces it.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: One feels that Marnie and her husband Mark would go to Bar Boulud for a post-show drink and snack. (Actually, now that I think of it, really they'd go to P.J. Clarke's for Martinis, oysters, and burgers. Your choice.)
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sat, Nov 3, 2018, 8:30 PM
DANCE
WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 3, 2018
7:30 PM
Kimberly Bartosik / daela: I hunger for you
Next Wave Festival
BAM Fisher
321 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$25
https://www.bam.org/dance/2018/i-hunger-for-you
Former Cunningham dancer Kimberly Bartosik presents a exploration/representation/reflection of the experience of charismatic spirituality. This is the kind of thing that will probably be either great or terrible. Worth a $25 bet.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Stunning Persian food -- and a really great cocktail program -- at Sofreh.
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 4:00 PM
Philip Glass: Satyagraha
OPERA
WEDNESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY
Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör
Next Wave Festival
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
$35-$100
https://www.bam.org/opera/2018/satyagraha
A major event. Philip Glass's most melodically approachable opera -- the one about Gandhi -- performed by . . . Nouveau Cirque performers? Well, I guess the Met used puppets. (This is sold out -- how could it not be? -- but last-minute cancellations may occur and would be made available stand-by at the box office.)
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Fun Modern Israeli at Miss Ada.
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Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:30 PM – Thu, Nov 1, 2018, 8:30 PM
DANCE
WEDNESDAY - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 1, 2018
7:30 PM
Akram Khan: XENOS
White Light Festival
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center
10 Columbus Circle, Upper West Side, Manhattan
$25-$95
http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival/show/xenos
Akram Khan, the great Bangladeshi/English contemporary dancer/choreographer, is making his farewell performances as a full-length dancer in this solo piece. You can bet he's contrived to go out with a bang.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Frankly, the menu at the new NYC outpost of London smash Bluebird looks boring. BUT: the bar is gorgeous, a great place to be. And the cocktails are quite fine. Have a couple, and you won't care if the food looks boring anymore.
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Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 6:00 PM
Rodgers & Hammerstein: Oklahoma!
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 11)
7:30 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY
5:00 PM SUNDAY
Rodgers & Hammerstein: Oklahoma!
St. Ann's Warehouse
45 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn
$26-$100
https://stannswarehouse.org/show/oklahoma/
Daniel Fish's stripped-down version of Oklahoma! was rapturously received when it played at Bard a few summers ago. I personally can't imagine not being nauseated by Oscar Hammerstein II's smug mid-century coyness -- but, hey, I came out of punk. If anything can make a case for it, this production should. Try to snag a table seat, so you can get access to chili, cornbread, and lemonade.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Henry's End has started its annual Fall/Winter Game Festival.
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Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 8:30 PM
Kate Tarker: THUNDERBODIES
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018
7:30 PM TUESDAY - SUNDAY
3:00 PM SATURDAY
Kate Tarker: THUDERBODIES
Soho Rep.
46 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
$35-$65 Tuesday-Saturday; $99 Sunday
http://sohorep.org/thunderbodies
People who've seen Kate Tarker's wicked satire of war and marriage keep namechecking Jarry. That's a very good sign.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Frenchette. Duh.
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Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 3:00 PM
THEATER
TUESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018 (continuing through DECEMBER 22)
7:00 PM TUESDAY - THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY
2:00 PM SUNDAY
Brecht: The Resistable Rise of Arturo UI
Classic Stage Company
136 East 13th Street, East Village, Manhattan
$53-$127
http://classicstage.org/shows/2018/11/the-resistible-rise-of-arturo-ui-2/
Bertolt Brecht's scathing satire of Adolph Hitler. I'm getting tired of making coy remarks like, "this couldn't have any contemporary relevance, could it?" I'm also beginning to wonder if we shouldn't all be spending our money on passage out instead of theater tickets.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: People tell me that Momofuku Ssäm Bar is back, great once more. I wish you didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get in to find out.
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Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 7:00 PM – Sat, Nov 3, 2018, 6:00 PM
THEATER
TUESDAY - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30 - NOVEMBER 3, 2018 (continuing through NOVEMBER 10)
7:00 PM TUESDAY - WEDNESDAY
8:00 PM THURSDAY - SATURDAY
5:00 PM SATURDAY
Andrew R. Butler: Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future
Ars Nova
511 West 54th Street, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
$37-$67
https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/996876
So I'm sitting in this bar talking to this composer/performer I like named Rick Burkhardt. And I'm like, "So what do you have coming up?" And he's like, "I'm in this show that's going to be at Ars Nova." And I'm like, "You're in that? I wasn't going to recommend it: it looks too folkie." And he's like, "It is folkie. But it's great." Well, if Andrew R. Butler's representation of a folk concert 250 years in the future is good enough for Rick, it's good enough for me.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Very good wine, doable food at Ardesia Wine Bar.
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Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:30 PM – Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 4:00 PM
OPERA
MONDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018
7:30 PM MONDAY - SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY
Matt Marks: Words on the Street
Rose Nagelburg Theater, Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Avenue (entrance on East 25th Street), Rose Hill, Manhattan
$36-$51 (there are also $101 benefit tickets available for October 31 that get you into a reception afterwards)
https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/calendar/(S(xakh2h55n1kwiy55m5zaefmu))/EventList.aspx?fromdate=8/1/2018&todate=8/31/2018&display=Month&type=public&eventidn=58084&view=EventDetails&information_id=750338&print=print
It's an occasion for both cheer and depression to get a new piece by Matt Marks, the wonderful young Brooklyn composer who died this Spring, suddenly and much too soon. And this looks just great: Marks collaborated with Kristin Marting of HERE and video designer Lianne Arnold to fashion a fantastical Bulgakovesque narrative from a book of poetry by Anna Rabinowitz. And the cast includes Paul Pinto, John Kelly, and Lauren Flanigan!
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: As far as I'm concerned, the upstairs bar at the celebrated Modern Korean Atomix, for great cocktails and bar snacks, simply overshadows everything else in the neighborhood (except Atomix's downstairs chef's counter).
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Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 10:00 AM – Sat, Nov 3, 2018, 11:00 AM
THEATER
MONDAY - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 3, 2018
8:00 PM
David Greenspan: The Things that Were There
Bushwick Starr
207 Starr Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn
$25
https://www.thebushwickstarr.org/the-things-that-were-there-program
Actor David Greenspan is one of the treasures of the New York theater scene, doing consistently excellent Off-Off work, occasionally showing up On for laughs and a paycheck, a compelling and elegant presence wherever, whether in challenging work on the edge or the occasional mainstream comedy. He's also, as here, a playwright, this time with a family history play.
MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: I'm going to keep pushing the wonderful Colombian-Italian-Basque fusion restaurant (I can hear you all asking: Colombian-Italian-Basque fusion AGAIN?) Maite until everybody goes there. (Monday, when Maite's closed, go to Santa Salsa for Venezuelan hot dogs and a general great time.)
