“Family Affair” was a #1 single for Sly & The Family Stone in 1971. Yet “musical families” take different forms, as illustrated by two recent concerts. In December, there were the Wainwright/McGarrigle family holiday concerts (one at Town Hall NYC, and one I saw at Brooklyn’s Murmrr; there had been others in Canada). A flow …
Belle Harbor-ites, Rockaway-ites, anyone living in a beach community, take note! Fascinating that it got made at all — a labor of love, no question, for documentary filmmaker Robert Sarnoff — “The Block” on Amazon Prime is an of-the-moment portrait of the block in Belle Harbor, NY he lives on. At the western end of …
If you haven’t seen Harmony, the Barry Manilow/Bruce Sussman musical about the Comedian Harmonists — a Weimar-into-Nazi era comic singing group that was a rage throughout Europe and appeared once at Carnegie Hall — take advantage of wide discount offers (see below). Given this is the slow time of year for Broadway, and Harmony was …
There is no more joyous party to be found in New York City right now than the one that instantly engulfs you at the Atlantic Theater’s Buena Vista Social Club. The show is based, with dramatic license, on the story behind the Ry Cooder-produced album of the same name that was recorded with a band …
Magical realism makes coincidental back-to-back appearances at Lincoln Center, where the Metropolitan Opera presents Florencia en el Amazonas and the Mitzi Newhouse theater next door offers the music theater piece Gardens of Anuncia. I’m sure it’s coincidental — I can’t imagine the Met and Lincoln Center Theater could possibly be so coordinated as to have …
When most music artists produce boxed sets the collections are typically their own greatest hits, deeper-cut retrospectives, re-mastered reissues, alternate takes, unreleased tracks, and so on. The sets are often elaborately packaged, with book or other items. Christine Lavin’s “The Seasons Project” reflects her career not so much as the wonderful songwriter and performer she …
Attending a Bob Dylan concert is essentially placing a $200 bet against yourself. He’s not Ella Fitzgerald, who gave a masterful performance every time she stepped out on a stage. With Dylan you never know if you’re going to get an on night, an off night or simply something totally inscrutable. You’re betting on the …
On a matinee day especially you have to wonder how many physical therapists are backstage at Broadway’s “Some Like It Hot” to tend to all those tap and swing dancers. We saw a Wednesday night performance and left giddy with delight; standing in Shubert Alley as the cast emerged after the show, they were clearly …
Journalist friends: Reading the front page of the NYT this morning I realized that NONE of the news stories had what we were all taught would be a traditional “news lede.” They all kick off like feature stories; the news is often in a third or later paragraph, sometimes merely inferred. I went back to …
Artist Fred Terna is a Holocaust survivor. It is no surprise that much of his work centers on the trauma of that experience, and of surviving multiple concentration and work camps. A new show at Manhattan’s Czech Center Gallery at the Bohemian National Hall consists mostly of 1980s pieces, plus a few more recent ones. …
nightmayer 