Today’s “Fab 5″ / Selected NYCity Events – WEDNESDAY, FEB. 04, 2015
“We search the internet everyday looking for the very best of What’s Happening on Manhattan’s WestSide, so that you don’t have to. We make it as easy as 1-2-3.”

Wayne Escoffery Quartet  —  Jazz   (8:30pm)  (10:30pm)

David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band —  Jazz   (5:30pm) 

Selected Shorts: Letters of Note  —  SmartStuff/ Readings   (8pm)   

Bettye LaVette   —  Rhythm and Blues   (7:30pm)   

Alternative Guitar Summit  — Pop/Rock+    (7:30pm)   

For other useful and curated NYCity event info for Manhattan’s WestSide:

♦ “9 Notable Events-Feb.”, and “Top10 Free” in the header above.
♦ For NYCity trip planning see links in “Resources” and “Smart Stuff” in the header above.
♦ For NYCity Sights, Sounds and Stories visit out our sister site: nyc123blog.wordpress.com
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Wayne Escoffery Quartet (through Feb. 8)
“Wayne Escoffery, a tenor saxophonist with an engaging and assertive style, brings an appealingly bullish rhythm section with him to this weeklong Village Vanguard engagement: David Kikoski on piano, Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Ralph Peterson on drums.” (Chinen-NYT)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village,
At 8:30 and 10:30 p.m., / $35
212-255-4037, villagevanguard.com.

David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band
Inspired by the noble jazz pioneers Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and their colleagues, David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band breathes life and passion into America’s own great art form.

Legendary record producer George Avakian describes the band in this way:
“There has never been a band quite like this one. Most groups, past and present, stick to one style. Some current groups attempt to recreate early recordings in their entirety. These guys do neither. Inspired by divergent bands of the 1920s and 30s, you’ll hear them swing a variety of styles in music by a wide range of composers, always true to the joy and heart of the music.”

Now in its 14th year of residency at Birdland, the weekly post-workday engagement is the city’s best musical bargain! Tuba player David Ostwald leads a rotating lineup that features talents such as clarinetist Anat Cohen, trombonist/vocalist Wycliffe Gordon, pianist Ehud Asherie, drummer Marion Felder and more!
Birdland, 315 W 44th St., (btw 8/9 ave.)
At 5:30PM / $25
birdlandjazz.com

Selected Shorts: Letters of Note
“Readings from a new book drawn from the popular blog “Letters of Note”: a repository of fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos that tell compelling stories from an array of historical time periods and walks of life. The night will feature letters from such literary figures as Eudora Welty, Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Chandler and pop culture icons including Mick Jagger, Jack the Ripper and Queen Elizabeth.
Hosted by Matthew Love.” (BookForum)
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th St.
7:30pm

Bettye LaVette (through Feb. 7)
“She is one of the major interpreters of our time, and like her approximate British equivalent, Barb Jungr, she illustrates that the superior rock and soul songs of the contemporary era can be interpreted no less than Cole Porter or Richard Rodgers. Her current show features too many completely new numbers (most from her new album “Worthy”), and could also benefit from a greater diversity of moods and tempos (her opener, Dylan’s “Unbelievable,” is the most cheerful song in the set). Still, what’s here is powerful and moving: “Nights in White Satin” is now a lacerating saloon song and even Paul McCartney ’s “Wait” becomes a harrowing experience.” (WSJ)
Café Carlyle, 35 E. 76th St.,
7:30pm / $85
(212) 744-1600

Elsewhere, but this looks worth the detour:
Alternative Guitar Summit
w/ Anders Nilsson & Aaron Dugan; Marco Capelli & James Ilgenfritz; Ava Mendoza

“Wandering through previous editions of the Alternative Guitar Summit could make your head whirl. Diversity is expected in experimental music, but the wealth of action coming from the various configs of string players at this event is marvelous in its range. This year’s fifth annual gathering, taking place at both Shapeshifter Lab and Rockwood Music Hall, expands further, taking founder/curator Joel Harrison’s vision to a place where four nights of creative music focused on a single instrument will sound distinct at every turn.

Its breadth might be summarized by a bill that finds Lee Ranaldo, of Sonic Youth fame, performing an opening solo set for Adam Rudolph’s Go, a nine-member guitar orchestra. Textural contrast and compositional rigor will be present and accounted for, as will thrust — this stuff has a tendency to be explosive. Don’t miss the series of duets that kick off the program, and there’s even reason to believe that the master classes that dot the landscape might tickle non-players, too.” (Jim Macnie, VillageVoice)
Wednesday–Sunday, 7:30 p.m. / $15
Feb. 4, at Shapeshifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Pl., Brooklyn,
subway: R to Union St.; walk – 2 blk S to Carroll; 2 blk W to Whitwell
Feb. 6-8, at Rockwood Music Hall, 196 Allen St.
joelharrison.com.

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♦ Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm ticket availability, dates and times, as schedules are subject to change.
♦ NYCity (pop. 8.4 million) had a record 56 million visitors last year and quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats in advance, even if just on day of performance.
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Chelsea is the heart of the NYCity contemporary art scene. Home to more than 300 art galleries, the Rubin Museum, the Joyce Theater and The Kitchen performance spaces, there is no place like it anywhere in the world. Come here to browse free exhibitions by world-renowned artists and those unknowns waiting to be discovered in an art district that is concentrated between West 18th and West 27th Streets, and 10th and 11th Avenues. Afterwards stop in the Chelsea Market, stroll on the High Line, or rest up at one of the many cafes and bars and discuss the fine art – my fave is Ovest on W 27th St., where the aperitivo is like Happy Hour on steroids.

Here are a few current exhibition that TONY recommends:

Claudia Comte, No Melon No Lemon (until March 21, 2015)
This Swiss artist installs her elegant neomodernist sculptures within equally elegant environments consisting of neomodern paintings and wallpaper patterns. Her work visually name-checks the greats—Brancusi, Noguchi, Moore, Stella, Noland—unapologetically while bringing an added dose of rich, optically buzzy formalism to the proceedings.
Gladstone Gallery, 530 W 21st St.

Katy Moran (until February 28, 2015)
This British artist has made a specialty of using modestly scaled canvases to recapture the muscular expressionism of midcentury abstraction.
Andrea Rosen Gallery,

“Vis-à-vis” (until February 28, 2015)
Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center—which “serves adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities”—has become something like Yale’s MFA program for outsider artists, grooming talents whose works are art-world–ready (the most famous example being Judith Scott, currently the subject of a Brooklyn Museum retrospective). This group show mixes CGAC contributors with insider artists, putting them on an equal footing with the likes of Huma Bhabha and Willem de Kooning (!). The results are as inside-out as they are outside-in.
Andrew Edlin Gallery,

For a listing of 25 essential galleries in the Chelsea Art Gallery District, organized by street, which enables you to create your own Chelsea Art Gallery crawl, see the Chelsea Gallery Guide (nycgo.com) Or check out TONY magazine’s list of the “Best Chelsea Galleries” and click through to see what’s on view. Now plan your own gallery crawl.

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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 02/02 and 01/31.