Today’s Elite 8 NYC Events > WEDNESDAY/ AUGUST 14, 2019

“We search the internet everyday looking for the very best of What’s Happening, primarily on Manhattan’s WestSide, so that you don’t have to.” We make it as easy as 1-2-3.

For future NYC Events, check the tab above:  “August NYC Events”
It’s the most comprehensive list of top events this month that you will find anywhere.
Carefully curated from “Only the Best” NYC event info on the the web, it’s a simply superb resource that will help you plan your NYC visit all over town, all through the month.
OR to make your own after dinner plans TONIGHT, see the tab above;  “LiveMusic.”

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Have time for only one NYC Event today? Do this:

Peter and Will Anderson: Songbook Summit—The Andersons Play Ellington & Armstrong (Aug.13-15; 21-22)
Symphony Space / 5:30PM, +8PM, $35
“Twin-brother saxophone players Peter and Will Anderson, masters of vintage jazz styles ranging from swing to hardbop, flip through four chapters of the Great American Songbook in this Symphony Space residency, devoting a week apiece to Duke Ellington (August 13–15) and Louis Armstrong (August 21–23). They are joined by vocalist Molly Ryan and musicians including bassist Vince Giordano.” (TONY)

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7 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Accordions Around the World
>> Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward
>> Bill Frisell
>> BALLET FESTIVAL
>> LOUIS HAYES QUINTET
>> Uptown Bounce
>> Bad Society Cruise

You may want to look at previous days posts for events that continue through today.

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Music, Dance, Performing Art

Accordions Around the World
Bryant Park / 5:30PM, FREE
“Accordions Around the World is a weekly summer series featuring accordionists as well as bandoneon, bayan, concertina, and harmonium-players of different musical genres. Audiences have an opportunity to hear music from all over the world and to experience the wide range of this often overlooked and little-known instrument in an intimate performance setting. Choose to wander the park to explore different musical stylings or set up a picnic and the artists will rotate around the audience. The finale is Accordion Festival, a five-hour celebration of bands with at least one accordionist.” (nyc-arts.org)

Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward (Aug.14-18)
Irish Repertory Theatre / 3PM, +8PM, $45-$50
“The Noël Coward touch was always a light one. His music scampers like a mouse; his lyrics bounce like balloons. In his plays, even suffering has an upward tendency. But when his work is excerpted and performed by others, that glancing quality can turn coy and saccharine, as it sometimes does in Barry Day’s two-handed cabaret Love, Noël.

Reading from Coward’s letters and covering nearly two dozen songs, cabaret stars Steve Ross and KT Sullivan pay Coward tribute. Sometimes Ross, the longtime king of café cabaret, is his own tuxedoed self, and sometimes he’s pretending to be Coward; an amused-seeming Sullivan takes on all the women. (She does a great, gloomy Marlene Dietrich.)” (TONY)

Bill Frisell (Aug.13-18)
at the Village Vanguard / 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; $35
“The venerable crossover guitarist, famous for his luminous folk-jazz fusions, settles into a two-week residency at the Vanguard. Expect magic: His 2016 performances at the venue resulted in a live album, Small Town, released the following year. At this year’s stay, he’s sure to play from Harmony, his upcoming (and first) release with Blue Note Records. During week one, (Aug 6–11), Frisell will fire up a blazing trio, with Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston on drums; the second week, they’re joined by special guest Greg Tardy on saxophone (Aug 13–18).” (TONY)

BALLET FESTIVAL
at the Joyce Theater (Aug. 13-14, 7:30 p.m.; Aug. 15, 8 p.m.; through Aug. 18); $
“The Joyce Theater Foundation is thrilled to announce the extraordinary line-up for its 2019 Ballet Festival, curated by Kevin O’Hare, director of The Royal Ballet, and other artists associated with the esteemed company. The celebration of classical dance will feature four distinct programs over two weeks starring such world-renowned ballet artists as Lauren Cuthbertson, Robert Fairchild, Joseph Gordon, David Hallberg, Sarah Lamb, Edward Watson, Maria Kowroski and more.” (nyc-arts.org)

Program C – August 13-15
Curated by Jean-Marc Puissant
Featuring:
Artists of The Royal Ballet Sarah Lamb, Romany Pajdak, Calvin Richardson, Marcelino Sambé, Joseph Sissens, and Beatriz Stix-Brunell.
Artists of American Ballet Theatre Zimmi Coker, Thomas Forster, Anabel Katsnelson, Betsy McBride, Courtney Shealy, Cassandra Trenary, and Stephanie Williams.
Special Guests:
Joseph Gordon (New York City Ballet)
David Hallberg (American Ballet Theatre)
Erez Milatin (New York Theatre Ballet)
Then and Again by Gemma Bond
Song of a Wayfarer by Maurice Bejart
Elite Syncopations divertissement by Kenneth MacMillan

LOUIS HAYES QUINTET (Aug. 13-14)
at Dizzy’s Club / 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.; $40
“Hayes’s history at the center of jazz begins in the mid-1950s, when the pianist Horace Silver invited the drummer to join his band in New York. Hayes paid tribute to Silver, who died in 2014, on “Serenade for Horace,” a 2017 album that finds Hayes swinging briskly as he revisits many of the tunes he played in the early years of his career, when he helped define the classic hard-bop sound. He appears here with the vibraphonist Steve Nelson, the tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton, the pianist Anthony Wonsey and the bassist John Webber.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

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Smart Stuff / Other NYC EventS

Uptown Bounce
@ Museum of the City of New York & El Museo del Barrio / 6PM, FREE
“Get your groove on in East Harlem at the the big annual Uptown Bounce block party. MCNY and El Museo del Barrio top the city’s Museum Mile, and for four consecutive Wednesdays, both will be open late with art, music, and entertainment spilling into the street.

An ode to classic summertime activities of baseball, bike riding – and the countless hits from the ‘90s and beyond that have provided the soundtrack.
Throwback to the ‘90s with DJ Misbehaviour
Dance performance by Haus of Sweat
Free Art Activity: Decorate your own baseball pennant for your favorite team
Free Admission: Check out our select exhibitions after hours with guided tours”

Bad Society Cruise
@ Skyport Marina, 2430 FDR Dr./ 7:30PM, $30
“Party “on the fetid waters of the East River” with The Baffler’s first-ever Bad Society Cruise, which promises “bottom-shelf booze, top shelf-rock, and breathtaking views of a city wholly indifferent to your existence.” Performers include the orchestral ensemble of “woodwind shredders” Masters of Fright and the duo Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker, a.k.a. indie-rockers Girlpool.”
(Gothamist)

Continuing Events

NYC Restaurant Week 2019:  Only 3 more days!
“The more than three-week-long promotion featuring two-course lunches ($26) and three-course dinners ($42) at some of the city’s best restaurants is back for its summer edition starting July 22. This time around, the celebration features prix-fixe meals at more than 380 eateries, with deals through Aug. 16.

You can find links to menus and the restaurants involved here, but check out our picks for some of the most enticing deals below.” (amNY)

Battery Dance presents The 38th Annual Battery Dance Festival
Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park (Aug.11-16) / 7-9PM, FREE
Schimmel Center, 3 Spruce St. (Aug.17) / 6-8PM, $10
“Battery Dance, in association with Battery Park City Authority, announces the 38th Annual Battery Dance Festival with free performances from August 11-16, 2019 from 7-9 pm against the backdrop of New York Harbor at Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Park in Battery Park City, culminating in a closing performance on August 17, 2019, from 6pm to 8pm at The Schimmel Center at Pace University. Tickets for the closing performance are $10.00; or $65 including after-reception.”

“This festival, which started in 1982, returns to Lower Manhattan for a week of outdoor shows, as well as one at the Schimmel Center on Aug. 17. As always, the event includes dance companies and artists from around the world; this year, expect performers from Argentina, Austria, Curaçao, France, India, Iraq, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Turkey. And it wouldn’t be the Battery Dance Festival without a celebration, on Thursday, of Indian Independence Day. The focus is on Manipuri dance with Darshana Jhaveri & Drummers and Dancers of Manipur. Audience members have the chance to dance, too: After each outdoor show, artists will lead participants in a movement adventure of their own.” (NYT-Gia Kourlas)

JAZZ IN TIMES SQUARE
Concert Series / Curated by Jazz at Lincoln Center
Thursdays from 5-7pm, from June to September
Broadway Plaza between 43rd and 44th Streets

“Give your Thursday night a new rhythm as you head to the train or wait for a colleague to join you for dinner. Jazz at Lincoln Center brings New York City’s hottest young jazz bands to the plaza, creating the feeling of an intimate club amidst the lights and sounds of Times Square.”

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COMING SOON (WFUV)

♦ Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm ticket availability, plus dates and times, as schedules are subject to change.
♦ NYCity, with a population of  8.6 million, had a record 65 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2019 – the ninth consecutive year. BUT quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just earlier on the 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 exhibitions)

‘T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR’
American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020).
“Everyone’s favorite 18,000-pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye-opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous Period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which could bear down on prey with the force of a U-Haul truck; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid-friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66-million-year-old teeth with the latest 3-D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full-grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with — believe it! — a soft coat of beige or white feathers.” (Farago-NYT)

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‘2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL’
at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Sept. 22).
“Given the political tensions that have sent spasms through the nation over the past two years, you might have expected — hoped — that this year’s biennial would be one big, sharp Occupy-style yawp. It isn’t. Politics are present but, with a few notable exceptions, murmured, coded, stitched into the weave of fastidiously form-conscious, labor-intensive work. As a result, the exhibition, organized by two young Whitney curators, Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, gives the initial impression of being a well-groomed group show rather than a statement of resistance. But once you start looking closely, the impression changes artist by artist, piece by piece — there’s quiet agitation in the air.” (NYT-Cotter)

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‘AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY’
at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Jan. 3).
“Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti-Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, “there is no why.” (NYT-Ralph Blumenthal)

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‘LIFE: SIX WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS’
at the New-York Historical Society (through Oct. 6).
“In the three-decade-plus golden age of Life magazine, only six of its full-time photographers were women. On the face of it, this exhibition at the historical society is half an excuse to air some gorgeous, previously unpublished silver prints, half a broad hint about how much talent we’ve lost to discrimination over the years. But cheery photo essays, produced by professional women, about other women hesitating to join the work force make a subtler point: that the actual mechanics of discrimination tend to be more complicated than they appear from a distance.” (NYT-Will Heinrich)

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Bonus: Nifty 9 – Best Cabarets / Piano Bars NYCity
These are my favorite places for an after dinner night on the town – music and drinks.
Hit the Hot Link and check out what’s happening tonight:

Feinstein’s/54 Below – 254 W 54th St.