Today’s TOP 10 – SATURDAY, MAY 09, 2015
“We search the internet everyday looking for the very best of What’s Happening,
primarily Manhattan’s WestSide, so that you don’t have to. We make it as easy as 1-2-3.
(click on links for complete event info)
Music, Dance, Performing Arts
> “The SINATRATHON:
The World’s Longest and Best Centennial Celebration of Frank Sinatra”.
The Cutting Room / 10AM+, $40 Daytime Ticket, $50 Evening Ticket, $80 All Day Ticket
> Jennifer Sheehan – Stardust: A Night in the Cosmos
54 Below, 254 West 54th St. (btw 8th Ave./Broadway) / 9:30PM, $40
> Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival (through May 9)
Tonight’s Highlight: Jason Moran: Harlem Nights / U Street Lights
Apollo Theater, / 8PM, $35-$45
> Global Beat Festival With Guayo Cedeño and Aurelio Martinez
Winter Garden, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St. / 8PM, FREE
> The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra, Guest Vocalist Carmen Bradford
Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. / 8:30PM + 11PM, $45
Smart Stuff / Other
(Lectures, Discussions, Book Talks, Literary Readings, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)
> PEN World Voices Festival (through May 10)
Today’s Highlight: Print Renaissance
Crosby Street Hotel Screening Room, 79 Crosby St. / 11:30AM, $12
> NYC Spring Wine Festival
Broad Street Ballroom / 3pm. $99–$199.
> Graphic Design Talk & Workshop: How Posters Work
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2 East 91st St. / 5PM, $15-$25
Elsewhere, but “Da Bronx” is always worth the the detour:
>Bronx Week (through May 17)
Various times and locations.
Today: Gun Hill Brewing Company’s “Spring Into Summer” party / 3PM
> RadioLoveFest (through May 10)
Tonight: Selected Shorts: Uncharted Territories, 30th Anniversary Event
Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave / 7:30PM, $30
Have time for only one event? Do this:
“The SINATRATHON: The World’s Longest and Best Centennial Celebration of Frank Sinatra”.
Frank Sinatra, born a century ago in 1915, was not only the greatest singer in all of American culture, he was also the most prolific. Over a career that spanned nearly 60 years, he recorded over 1,600 songs, starred in over 50 movies, and made innumerable concert, radio, and TV appearances. No single tribute is big enough to do justice to the full length and breadth of Sinatra’s contribution to music, so the Cutting Room is announcing the SINATRA-THON. On Saturday, May 9th , New York’s newest and hippest music venue will present a day-long celebration of the greatest of all musical icons, the legendary Frank Sinatra, in honor of the centennial of this celebrated singer and actor.
The event will involve the talents of more than 50 of New York’s finest singers and musicians (including a full big band) and will continue for over 14 hours.
The show will take place on the day before Mother’s Day, 2015, in honor of the singer’s legendary devotion to his mother, Dolly Sinatra. The Sinatra-Thon will begin at ten in the morning on that day, and will continue at least until midnight – or quite possibly even later, into Sunday morning. The event will be curated and produced by Cary Hoffman (singer, composer, and producer, whose one-man show My Sinatra has been played in long runs in New York and at Performing Arts Centers and other venues in and around New York City and the United States) and Will Friedwald (columnist for the Wall Street Journal and the author of the well-received book on the singer, Sinatra! The Song is You.
Checkout a sample of the many performers at: thecuttingroomnyc.com/
The Cutting Room, 44 E. 32nd St.
10AM+ / $40 Daytime Ticket – $50 Evening Ticket – $80 All Day Ticket
Bonus – Music Venues:
So much fine live music every night in this town. These are a few of my favorite music venues on Manhattan’s WestSide. Check out who’s playing tonight:
City Winery – 155 Varick St., citywinery.com, 212-608-0555
Joe’s Pub @ Public Theater – 425 Lafayette St. joespub.com, 212-967-7555
Metropolitan Room – 34W22ndSt., metropolitan room.com, 212-206-0440
Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleecker St. lepoissonrouge.com, 212-505-3474
Beacon Theatre – 2124 Broadway @ 74th St., beacontheatre.com, 212-465-6500
B.B. King’s Blues Bar – 237W42nd dSt. bbkingblues.com, 212-997-2144
Special Mention:
Caffe Vivaldi – 32 Jones St. nr Bleecker St. caffevivaldi.com, 212-691-7538
a classic, old jazz club in the Village, Caffe V often surprises with a wonderfully eclectic lineup. It’s my favorite spot for an evening of listening enjoyment and discovery.
====================================================================================
♦ Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm ticket availability, dates and times, as schedules are subject to change.
♦ NYCity, with a population of 8.5 million, had a record 56 million visitors last year and is TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2015. Quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats in advance, even if just on day of performance.
====================================================================================
WHAT’S ON VIEW
My Fave Special Exhibitions – MUSEUMS / Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue
(See the New York Times Arts Section for listings of all museum exhibitions,
and also see the expanded reviews of these exhibitions)
Metropolitan Museum of Art:
‘Reimagining Modernism: 1900-1950’ (continuing)
One of the greatest encyclopedic museums in the world fulfills its mission a little more with an ambitious reinstallation of works of early European modernism with their American counterparts for the first time in nearly 30 years. Objects of design and paintings by a few self-taught artists further the integration. It is quite a sight, with interesting rotations and fine-tunings to come. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.” (Smith)
‘The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky’ (LAST 2 DAYS)
Some of the earliest surviving art by native North Americans left America long ago. Soldiers, traders and priests, with magpie eyes for brilliant things, bundled it up and shipped it across the sea to Europe. Painted robes, embroidered slippers and feathered headdresses tinkling with chimes found their way into cupboards in 18th-century London and Paris, and lay there half-forgotten. Now, with the arrival at the Met of this traveling show, some of those wondrous things — truly world masterpieces — have come home in an exhibition context that carries the Native American story from 100 B.C. into the 21st century. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Cotter)
‘Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklanski Selects From The Met Collection’ (through June 14) Complementing the survey of his photographs, the artist has orchestrated 80 works from the museum’s holdings — along with a few of his own — into a mesmerizing display meditating on sex and death. Consisting mostly of photographs, it is bolstered by paintings by Dali and Cranach sculptures from several cultures and several surprises. Scratch any artist of note, even a post-modern one, and you often find a connoisseur. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)
‘Fatal Attraction: Piotr Uklanski Photographs’ (through Aug. 16)
A small but succinct survey of the multimedia bad-boy artist’s polymorphous relationship to photography shows him constantly changing scale, film and printing methods while exploring the medium’s ability to startle, seduce and become generic. He appropriates, imitates and pays homage as he goes, regularly invoking his Polish roots. Don’t miss the large photo-banners in the museum’s Great Hall or the massive fiber-sculpture monument to the eye and to insatiable looking. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)
Neue Galerie:
‘Egon Schiele: Portraits’ (through Sept. 07)
“Of the approximately 125 items in this terrific show, there are only 11 oil paintings, which is a good thing. Except for a large picture of his wife, Edith, in a colorful striped dress, Schiele’s works on canvas are dark and turgid. But his drawings are nimble and nuanced. Working on paper with pencil, charcoal, ink, gouache, watercolor and crayons, he portrayed himself and others with infectious avidity. There’s hardly a single sheet here that doesn’t warrant close looking for its virtuoso draftsmanship and psychological acuity. 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street, 212-628-6200, neuegalerie.org. “(Johnson)
Guggenheim Museum:
Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 (through spring 2015)
Early in his career Vasily Kandinsky experimented with printmaking, produced brightly-colored landscapes of the German countryside, and explored recognizable and recurrent motifs. This intimate exhibition drawn from the Guggenheim collection explores the artist’s representational origins.
El Museo del Barrio:
‘Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa, Art and Film’ (through June 27)
Painting with light is one way to define the cinematographer’s task, and it describes the art of Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997), who worked with some of the leading international film directors of his time and was a national hero in his native Mexico, the supreme painter-in-light of Mexicanidad. How do you put this particular kind of art across in a museum — art that is as much about time as it is about material, as much about flux as it is about fixity? This show, which mixes Figueroa film clips with paintings and prints by some of Mexico’s greatest artists and in the process utterly transforms El Museo’s interior spaces, gives an enthralling answer. 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, East Harlem, 212-831-7272, elmuseo.org. (Cotter)
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (continuing):
The stately doors of the 1902 Andrew Carnegie mansion, home to the Cooper Hewitt, are open again after an overhaul and expansion of the premises. Historic house and modern museum have always made an awkward fit, a standoff between preservation and innovation, and the problem remains, but the renovation has brought a wide-open new gallery space, a cafe and a raft of be-your-own-designer digital enhancements. Best of all, more of the museum’s vast permanent collection is now on view, including an Op Art weaving, miniature spiral staircases, ballistic face masks and a dainty enameled 18th-century version of a Swiss knife. Like design itself, this institution is built on tumult and friction, and you feel it. 2 East 91st Street, at Fifth Avenue, 212-849-8400, cooperhewitt.org. (Cotter)
==================================================
Museum Mile is a section of Fifth Avenue which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world. Nine museums can be found along this section of Fifth Avenue:
• 110th Street – Museum for African Art
• 105th Street – El Museo del Barrio
• 103rd Street – Museum of the City of New York
• 92nd Street – The Jewish Museum
• 91st Street – Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
• 89th Street – National Academy Museum
• 88th Street – Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• 86th Street – Neue Galerie New York
Last, but certainly not least, America’s premier museum
• 82nd Street – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Although technically not part of the Museum Mile, the Frick Collection on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 70th St. and the The Morgan Library & Museum on Madison Ave and 37th St are also located near Fifth Ave.
Now plan your own museum crawl. ========================================================
NYCity 1-2-3 : What's Happening / Manhattan's WestSide 