BROOKLYN, NY; OCTOBER 5, 2016—In the late 1960s/early ’70s I took a course on New York City Street Songs with Oscar Brand and Theodore Bikel at the New School for Social Research (as the full name was known then). Learning to think of jump rope songs as “folk music” changed the way I thought of …
Marie & Rosetta is a stirring and often rousing musical biography of the life of gospel popularizer (and rock and roll predecessor) Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The work focuses on Tharpe’s relationship with her protégé Marie Knight, who Tharpe pulled from Mahalia Jackson’s backup choir and with whom she performed for three years. Kecia Lewis and …
BROOKLYN, NY; August 18, 2016—I was 18 in 1970 when I started writing about music for the Village Voice, often covering what is now referred to as “Americana,” but was then just known as “folk music.” Much of what I wrote about was pretty rarefied: Blind Alfred Reed, Aunt Molly Jackson, Michael Cooney but also …
If anyone wondered just how Patti Smith would close the Saturday concert at the Newport Folk Festival, where the guiding principle is “speaking truth to power,” it was with one lightening jolt after another. And I don’t mean the kind that lit the sky shortly after her sun-drenched set ended. Who else would even dream …
Except for the history/continuity implied in the existing name, the Newport Folk Festival might more accurately be called the Newport Roots Music Festival, what with The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Jason Isbell, and a host of other not-very-folkie acts on the roster. The irony was lost on no one at this year’s 56th edition of …
Yoko Ono’s work from 1960-1971 on view at the Museum of Modern Art in NY through September 7th is as avant garde today as it was then. What has changed is that her explanations of why the works were created and what they mean are no longer laughable but the reflections of a quite serious …
Through June 7, 2015 Athol Fugard’s “The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek” at the Signature Theater is, as most of Fugard’s plays are, about apartheid in South Africa. It is also, as most of his plays are, about the struggle between any two sides — when it comes to divisions over race, class, and economic …
Dying For It Atlantic Theater Company – Linda Gross Theater Through January 18, 2015 Every Brilliant Thing Barrow Street Theater Through March 29, 2015 The common thread here is suicide, with both pieces evidence humor and great empathy. “Dying For It” is a more conventional play, and a true ensemble-driven farce about suicide, at that. …
Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2 Through February 15, 2015 Great writing, excellent acting, and highly unpleasant to sit through (intentionally so, which I suppose makes that a compliment). Famous playwright father David (Reed Birney) and aspiring actress daughter Ella (Betty Gilpin) tear each other apart while drinking, snorting, and waiting for the reviews of Ella’s …
At 84, David Amram is ever the musical polymath, playing French horn, piano, percussion, flutes of all manner from around the globe — all with four additional musicians (bass player and three percussionists) on the postage stamp-sized stage of what he lovingly refers to as the Cornelia Street Stadium. (For those who haven’t been to …
nightmayer 