Have time for only one event today? Do this:
Dick Hyman (also Tuesday)
Dizzy’s Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th St/Broadway, / 7:30 + 9:30PM, $
“Mr. Hyman, 88, has earned a rare stature as a solo pianist, in performance and on releases like “Dick Hyman’s Century of Jazz Piano,” which is about as sprawling and erudite as it sounds. This two-night run will feature him alone with a core premise: jazz standards and stride piano, offered with flair.” (NYT-Chinen)

Klea Blackhurst, Jim Caruso and Billy Stritch: A Swingin’ Birdland Christmas (thru Dec.25)
Birdland, 315W44th St./ 7PM, $30
“Three Birdland mainstays—the clarion-voiced Klea Blackhurst, the waggish host Jim Caruso and the velvety pianist-crooner Billy Stritch—get into the swing of the holiday season with a jazzy set of Christmas classics.” (TONY)

Make Music Winter
“If the warm weather streak continues you won’t have to bundle up too much for the cold-weather version of the annual summer festival. This year’s lineup on the winter solstice features an eclectic array of experimental, audience participatory parades in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan.

Highlights include the vocalist Joan La Barbara leading a call-and-response piece in Washington Heights; a piece for bicycle bells performed by cyclists in Prospect Park; a High Line Soundwalk in which footsteps are rendered into sounds ranging from electric guitar to water splashes via a smartphone app; Parranda caroling in the Bronx and Brooklyn; drumming in the West Village; lantern-illuminated medieval melodies through Central Park en route to Cathedral of St. John the Divine; a kalimba parade in Bushwick and sruti boxes in Astoria.
From noon to 6:30 p.m. at various locations.
a schedule and more details are at makemusicny.org/winter. (Schweitzer-NYT)

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Bonus – Music Picks:
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.

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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, 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.
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WHAT’S ON VIEW
My Fave Special Exhibitions – MUSEUMS / Manhattan’s WestSide
(See the New York Times Arts Section for listings of all museums,
and also to see their expanded reviews of these exhibitions)

Museum of Modern Art:
‘Picasso Sculpture’ (through Feb. 7)
“Nearly a work of art in its own right, this magnificent show redefines Picasso’s achievement with the first full view here in 50 years of his astoundingly varied forays into sculpture. His materials, not his female loves, become the muses, and are different each time out. The basic plotline: After introducing sculptural abstraction and space, he spent about 50 years counting the ways that the figure was far from finished. 212-708-9400, moma.org.” (Smith-NYT)

‘Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980’ (through Jan. 3) “Visiting this big, spirited group show is like walking into a party of intriguing strangers. For every person you recognize, there are 10 you don’t know. One topic everyone’s talking about, at different intensities, is the anti-institutional politics that swept Europe and the Americas in the 1960s, and almost everyone speaks the language of Conceptualism. A product of an in-house research initiative called Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives, or C-MAP, intended to expand MoMA’s narrow Paris-New York view of modernism, the show is very much the beginning rather than the end of a learning curve. But with curators exploring material new to them — just steps ahead of their audience — the show has a refreshing buzz of surprise as it takes the museum in a realistic new directions. 212-708-9400, moma.org.” (Cotter-NYT)

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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 12/19 and 12/17.