NYC Events,”Only the Best” (03/05) + Today’s Featured Pub (Greenwich Village)

Posted on 03/05/2018 by GregD

Today’s Sweet 6 NYC Events > MONDAY/ MARCH 05, 2018

“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, better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

Eva Noblezada: Girl No More
The Green Room 42 / 7PM, $35
“The Tony-nominated star of Broadway’s Miss Saigon shows off her range in a concert that includes favorites made famous by Amy Winehouse and Frank Sinatra.” (TONY)

=========================================================

5 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Elektra
>> It Shoulda Been You
>> Women in Pizza
>>Skye & Massimo’s Philosophy Cafe
>>The Last Wild Men of Borneo:
=========================================================

Elektra (Mar.1-23; next performance Mar.09, 8PM)
Metropolitan Opera House / 7:30PM, $27+
“Christine Goerke sings her first Elektra at the Met in Patrice Chéreau’s landmark production, a sensation at its Met premiere last spring, which the Wall Street Journal called “revolutionary … a triumph on all fronts.” Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Strauss’s shattering score, a tour de force for the singers and the orchestra alike.”

It Shoulda Been You
92nd Street Y / 8PM, $40
“Most of the original cast of Brian Hargrove and Barbara Anselmi’s 2015 Broadway musical It Shoulda Been You, a zany wedding farce, reunites at a concert hosted by the shows’s director, the ultracharming David Hyde Pierce. Tyne Daly, Farrah Alvin, Sierra Boggess, Josh Grisetti, Montego Glover, Adam Heller, Edward Hibbert and Chip Zien are among the assemblants.” (TONY)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Women in Pizza
Scott Wiener with Giorgia Caporuscio of Kesté Pizzeria
92nd Street Y / 7PM, $35
“The pizza industry has long been dominated by men, but its history is full of female influence. This lecture will cover 200 years of pizza history with a focus on the women whose contributions took the dish from obscurity to ubiquity. Topics range from 18th century Neapolitan street vendors to Depression-era tomato importing and beyond.
Samples from Kesté pizzeria will be served.”

Skye & Massimo’s Philosophy Cafe: Should We Engage Politically?
New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 W. 64th St./ 6PM, $5
“As Plato put it, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” But then modern lives are busy. The next session of Skye & Massimo’s Philosophy Cafe debates political engagement, with guidance from Simone de Beauvoir and her advocacy against the state of “absurd vegetation” that awaits those who wash their hands of their public fates.” (ThoughtGallery.org)

The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Tale of Death and Treasure
The Explorers Club, 46 E. 70th St./ 7PM, $25
“To understand Michael Rockefeller’s disappearance in 1961 for his book Savage Harvest, Carl Hoffman went deeper than he’d ever gone before, making two journeys of several months, each to one of the remotest places on earth – the swamps of southwest New Guinea, home to the Asmat people. The experience culminated in his living with former headhunters in a two room wooden house without electricity or plumbing, in a village without a single store, and only reachable by boat.”

===================================================================
♦ 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  8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017 – awesome! 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.
===================================================================

Continuing Events

This is not Manhattan’s WestSide, but it is Brooklyn’s WestSide. If you have never seen these crazy, fearless performers, they are well worth the detour:

STREB EXTREME ACTION (March 2-25 at various times)
at SLAM, 51 N 1st St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
“Elizabeth Streb’s cavernous Brooklyn space is known as SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), which is also a frequent move that occurs at one of her shows. For the month of March, her fearless team of action heroes, as they’re called, will navigate intimidating industrial contraptions and fling themselves from unnatural heights, seemingly defying physics with the pep of cheerleaders. The hourlong show, “S.E.A.” (“Singular Extreme Actions”), encapsulates all the thrill, humor and energizing fun that makes this company so singular.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================

Bonus NYC Events – Music Venues:
So much fine live music every night in this town. These are my favorite non jazz 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
Beacon Theatre – 2124 Broadway @ 74th St., beacontheatre.com, 212-465-6500
Town Hall – 123 W43rd St., thetownhall.org, 212-997-6661
B.B. King’s Blues Bar – 237W42nd St., bbkingblues.com, 212-997-2144
Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleecker St., lepoissonrouge.com, 212-505-3474
and one more, not exactly WestSide
Bowery Ballroom – 6 Delancey St. boweryballroom.com,

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 discovery and enjoyment.
See Below.

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NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):
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A PremierPub and 3 Good Eating Places – Greenwich Village

Caffe Vivaldi / 32 Jones Street (btw. Bleecker St./W4th St.)

Café Vivaldi is a classic, intimate club located in Greenwich Village on Jones Street, the street featured on the cover of Bob Dylan’s second album, “Freewheelin’. ”

maxresdefaultEach night Ishrat, the long time proprietor and impresario, carefully curates and schedules an eclectic series of musicians. You can often see him at his table in the corner, hard at work reviewing music videos and listening to cd demos on his laptop, scouting out future bookings. Musicians come from all over to play and sing in a club in Greenwich Village. Some are local New Yorkers, others are just passing through, in town for a few days.

There is a small bar, seating maybe 10. It’s close to the stage and I find it’s a perfect spot to sip a glass of red wine while listening to the music. The room itself has the performance area at one end and a cozy fireplace at the other. The performance area here is small, dominated by a large black Yamaha Grand piano. Tables are bunched together and most people at the tables are eating lite meals or sampling the wonderful desserts.

There is also a good selection of fairly priced wines,  but you are here because of the music. You can never be quite sure what you’re going to find, and that’s half the charm of this place. It’s not a home run every night, but many nights it’s pretty special.

I remember the night I saw the most talented bossa nova group, just in from San Paulo. As I listened, I wondered if there was any better music playing anywhere else in New York City that night. And at Caffé Vivaldi there is never a cover charge. Their recently redesigned web site does give you a better idea of the type of music playing each night.

At one time Greenwich Village was filled with clubs just like this, but times change. Real estate interests have impacted the village, and not for the better. Even Caffé Vivaldi had a rough time recently, when a new landlord raised the rent exorbitantly. Fortunately, Ishrat has built a loyal following over the years, and a fund raiser and slightly more reasonable rent has kept Café Vivaldi in business.

When Woody Allen and Al Pacino wanted to make movies featuring the timeless quality of Greenwich Village they came to Vivaldi. It’s important that we keep this special place alive, for if we lose Cafe Vivaldi, NYCity will have lost a piece of it’s soul.

Website: http://caffevivaldi.com/
Phone #: (212) 691-7538
Hours: Music generally 7:30PM – 11PM, but varies
Lunch/Dinner 11AM-on
Subway: #1 to Christopher St.
Walk 1 blk S. on 7th ave S. to Bleecker St., 1 blk left on Bleecker to Jones St., 50 yards left on Jones St. to Caffe V.
==============================================================
“Pub” is used in it’s broadest sense – bars, bar/restaurants, jazz clubs, wine bars, tapas bars, craft beer bars, dive bars, cocktail lounges, and of course, pubs – just about anyplace you can get a drink without a cover charge.

If you have a fave premier pub or good eating place on Manhattan’s WestSide let us all know about it – leave a comment.
========================================================

3 Good Eating places

It’s not difficult to find a place to eat in Manhattan.
Finding a good, inexpensive place to eat is a bit harder.
Here are a few of my faves in this neighborhood:

Fish – 280 Bleecker St. (just a bit S. of 7th ave South)
This was an easy pick – the best raw bar special in town. $9 gets you 6 of the freshest oysters or clams + a glass of wine or beer. Don’t know how they can do it, but I tell everyone I know about this place. And it’s located right in the heart of some of the best no cover music in town.

Bleecker Street Pizza – 69 7th ave S. (corner of Bleecker St.)
The place is tiny and not much to look at, but this is one good slice. They like to brag that they have been voted “Best pizza in NY” 3 years in a row by the Food Network. I believe them. I would have voted for them.

Num Pang – 21 E 12th St. (btw. University Place/5th ave.)
This is a Cambodian banh mi sandwich shop that kept me well fed while I was in class nearby recently. It’s cramped, even for NYCity, but usually there is room up the spiral staircase to sit down and eat. In good weather carry your sandwich a few blocks to Union Square park. You may have to wait a few minutes, because everything is freshly made, but it’s worth it. Can you believe – an unheard of 26 food rating by Zagat.

========================================================
“3 Good Eating places” focuses on a quick bite, what I call “Fine Fast Food – NYCity Style”
No reservations needed.
========================================================
NYCity is the most diverse and interesting place to find a meal anywhere in the world. With more than 24,000 eating establishments you might welcome some advice.

◊ For all my picks of 54 Good Eating places, and essays on my favorite 18 PremierPubs in 9 Neighborhoods on Manhattan’s WestSide, order a copy of my e-book:
“Eating and Drinking on NYCity’s WestSide” ($4.99, available Spring 2018).
◊ Order before May 31 28, 2018 and receive a bonus – 27 of my favorite casual dining places with free Wi-Fi.

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NYC Events,”Only the Best” (03/04) + Museum Special Exhibitions: Manhattan’s WestSide

Posted on 03/04/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > SUNDAY/ MARCH 04, 2018

“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, better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

In the News with Jeff Greenfield: Maggie Haberman and Alex Burns
Kaufmann Concert Hall / 7:30PM, $35
“Can’t turn away from the news? Here’s your chance to go behind the headlines — for an unprecedented third straight year with the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Alex Burns.

Haberman is the prominent New York Times White House correspondent and CNN political analyst whom the New Yorker’s David Remnick calls “tireless, keen-eyed … has repeatedly added to the sum total of what we know about this President” (and who has received threats because of her reporting). Alex Burns is a first-rank political reporter with a broader national focus. They’ll discuss the Trump administration, the role of the media in politics and the freedom and future of the press.”

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> STRAVINSKY & BALANCHINE,
>> MACEO PARKER
>> Charles McPherson
>> BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
>>Entertaining Science: You Are Experienced?
>> World Politics With Ralph Buultjens | Russia: Putin’s World

=========================================================

STRAVINSKY & BALANCHINE, New York City Ballet
at the NYS Theater, Lincoln Center / 3PM, $30+
“Throughout his prolific career, Balanchine’s affinity for Stravinsky’s compositions remained constant, making him one of the choreographer’s favorite collaborators. This program opens with an abstraction of a Russian fairytale set to sprightly harmonies, followed by three stunning Black & White ballets known for their striking power.”

MACEO PARKER (Feb. 27-March 4)
at the Blue Note / 8 and 10:30PM, $35-$45
“More than any saxophonist, Mr. Parker has helped define the sound of funk music. He threw splashes of grease into James Brown’s music as a prominent soloist in that band for most of the 1960s, then moved on to the subversive, psychedelic funk of Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton’s ensembles. Since the 1990s, Mr. Parker has been stomping across the globe with his own groups, delivering a satisfying, hip-swiveling mélange of funk and soul classics and his own repertoire.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

Charles McPherson (March 1-4)
Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St./ 7:30PM, +9:30PM, $40
“Finding a saxophonist versed in the language of bebop may not provide much in the way of revelatory thrills, but witnessing an authentic master of the art, like the altoist McPherson, can still elicit a genuine spinal chill. McPherson came of age in Charles Mingus’s ensembles of the early sixties; these days, he fronts a rough-and-ready quintet with the guitarist Yotam Silberstein and the pianist Jeb Patton.” (NewYorker)

BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
at New York City Center / 7 p.m., $
“The flamboyant Ballet Nacional de España returns to Midtown for the first time in nearly two decades to open this year’s Flamenco Festival at New York City Center. The large troupe showcases a variety of Spanish dance styles, from bolero to samplings of regional dances to, of course, flamenco. In “Suite Sevilla,” the company director Antonio Najarro also sprinkles in some ballet and contemporary dance, along with the expected fans, castanets and ruffled skirts. The festival continues the following week with Compañía Eva Yerbabuena and Ballet Flamenco Jesús Carmona.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Entertaining Science: You Are Experienced?
Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia St./ 6PM, $10
André Fenton, NYU
Dario Acosta Teich, musician
“Look at brain science and Jimi Hendrix. The Cornelia Street Cafe hosts an “Entertaining Science” evening that mashes up Professor of Neural Science André Fenton with solo guitar virtuoso Dario Acosta Teich. The evening will include the latest science of how experiences change brains (and futures), and how diverse musical influences are creating new directions and techniques for the guitar.” (ThoughtGallery.org)

World Politics With Ralph Buultjens | Russia: Putin’s World
92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave./ 5PM, $35
“It’s been almost 19 years since Vladimir Putin assumed his first Russian premiership. Along the way he’s accumulated an estimated $200 billion dollars. Has Russia had enough? International affairs expert Ralph Buultjens looks at that nation’s prospects, and the future of Russo-American relations.” (ThoughtGallery.org)

===================================================================
♦ 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  8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017 – awesome! 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.
===================================================================

Continuing Events

This is not Manhattan’s WestSide, but it is Brooklyn’s WestSide. If you have never seen these crazy, fearless performers, they are well worth the detour:

STREB EXTREME ACTION (March 2-25 at various times)
at SLAM, 51 N 1st St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
“Elizabeth Streb’s cavernous Brooklyn space is known as SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), which is also a frequent move that occurs at one of her shows. For the month of March, her fearless team of action heroes, as they’re called, will navigate intimidating industrial contraptions and fling themselves from unnatural heights, seemingly defying physics with the pep of cheerleaders. The hourlong show, “S.E.A.” (“Singular Extreme Actions”), encapsulates all the thrill, humor and energizing fun that makes this company so singular.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

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

Feinstein’s/54 Below – 254 W 54th St.

The Green Room 42 – 570 Tenth Ave.

Don’t Tell Mama – 343 W 46th St.

Marie’s Crisis – 59 Grove St.

The Rum House, in the Hotel Edison – 228 W. 47th St.

Laurie Beechman Theatre – 407 W 42nd St.

The Duplex – 61 Christopher St.

Sid Gold’s Request Room – 165 W 26th St.

Cafe Carlyle, in the Carlyle Hotel – 35 E. 76th St.
This is the only one not located on Manhattan’s WestSide, and it ain’t cheap, but it has some of the finest singers.

=========================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

===============================================================================

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)

Museum of Modern Art:

A special pat on the back to MOMA, who is now displaying art from the seven countries affected by Trump’s travel ban.

“Trump’s ban against refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations has sparked acts of defiance in NYC, from demonstrations across town, to striking taxicab drivers at JFK to Middle Eastern bodega owners closing their shops in protest. Recently, the Museum Of Modern added its two cents by bringing out artworks it owns from the affected countries, and hanging them prominently within the galleries usually reserved for 19th- and 20th-century artworks from Europe and the United States. Paintings by Picasso and Matisse, for example, were removed to make way for pieces by Tala Madani (from Iran), Ibrahim El-Salahi (from Sudan) and architect Zaha Hadid (from Iraq). The rehanging, which was unannounced, aims to create a symbolic welcome that repudiates Trump by creating a visual dialog between the newly added works and the more familiar objects from MoMA’s permanent collection.” (TONY)

Stephen Shore (thru May 28)

“This immersive and staggeringly charming retrospective is devoted to one of the best American photographers of the past half century. Shore has peers—Joel Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld, Richard Misrach, and, especially, William Eggleston—in a generation that, in the nineteen-seventies, stormed to eminence with color film, which art photographers had long disdained. His best-known series, “American Surfaces” and “Uncommon Places,” are both from the seventies and were mostly made in rugged Western states. The pictures in these series share a quality of surprise: appearances surely unappreciated if even really noticed by anyone before—in rural Arizona, a phone booth next to a tall cactus, on which a crude sign (“GARAGE”) is mounted, and, on a small-city street in Wisconsin, a movie marquee’s neon wanly aglow, at twilight. A search for fresh astonishments has kept Shore peripatetic, on productive sojourns in Mexico, Scotland, Italy, Ukraine, and Israel. He has remained a vestigial Romantic, stopping in space and 
time to frame views that exert a peculiar tug on him. This framing is resolutely formalist: subjects composed laterally, from edge to edge, and in depth. There’s never a “background.” The most distant element is as considered as the nearest. But only when looking for it are you conscious of Shore’s formal discipline, because it is as fluent as a language learned from birth. His best pictures at once arouse feelings and leave us alone to make what we will of them. He delivers truths, whether hard or easy, with something very like mercy.” (NewYorker)

Tarsila do Amaral (thru June 3)

Introducing New York to the First Brazilian Modernist
“Forty-five years after Tarsila do Amaral’s death, MOMA presents her first-ever museum exhibition in the U.S. Some artists are so iconic, they’re known by only one name: Brancusi, Léger, Tarsila. Wait, who? The painter Tarsila do Amaral is so famous in her native Brazil that forty-three years after her death she helped close out the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, when a projected pattern of red-orange-yellow arcs graced the stadium floor, an homage to her 1929 painting “Setting Sun.” That chimerical landscape—stylized sunset above tubular cacti and a herd of capybaras that shape-shift into boulders—hangs now at MOMA, in the artist’s first-ever museum exhibition in the U.S., “Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil.” (NewYorker)

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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 03/02 and 02/28.
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NYC Events,”Only the Best” (03/03) + Today’s Featured Pub (WestVillage)

Posted on 03/03/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > SATURDAY/ MARCH 03, 2018

“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, better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

Africa Now!
Apollo Theater / 8PM, $25+
“South African DJ and house producer Black Coffee, the most popular noise in African electronic music, headlines the Apollo’s sixth annual “Africa Now!” festival, coproduced with the World Music Institute. Born Nkosinathi Maphumulo, Coffee wraps suave Afropolitan rhythms and smooth keyboards around sensuous vocals. His music sounds nostalgic compared to that of the Congolese-Canadian Pierre Kwenders, who threw down an Afrofuturist gauntlet last year with his dazzlingly inventive MAKANDA at the End of Space, the Beginning of Time, an intoxicating clafoutis of angelic voices, time-warp percussion, and sinuously sly Congolese guitar. It will be man against machine when Nigerian drum legend and Afrobeat co-creator Tony Allen sets his flowing Afrobeat polyrhythms against Detroit producer Jeff Mills’s Roland TR-909 drum machine for their first American face-off. The Nigerian-Romani singer Ayo brings her eclectic acoustic articulations as well.” (Richard Gehr, Village Voice)

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Madama Butterfly
>> Ben Wendel Seasons Band
>> Charles McPherson
>> Company Wayne McGregor 
>>DESMOND CHILD
>> BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA

=========================================================

Madama Butterfly
The Metropolitan Opera House / 7:30PM, $25+
“Anthony Minghella’s stunning production of Puccini’s heartbreaking opera, an instant Met classic since its 2006 premiere, returns with Hui He and Ermonela Jaho in the tragic title role of the trusting geisha. Roberto Aronica and Luis Chapa alternate as her callous American lover, Pinkerton, and Jader Bignamini and Marco Armiliato conduct.”

Ben Wendel Seasons Band (Feb. 27-March 4)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St./ 8:30, 10:30PM
“Programmatic yet inspired, Wendel’s Seasons outfit originally began as a series of online video duets that sprang from piano pieces by Tchaikovsky. Here, the saxophonist-bassoonist leader (and member of the popular band Kneebody) brings together three duet partners to give ample voice to the music: the pianist Aaron Parks, the bassist Matt Brewer, and the drummer Eric Harland.” (NewYorker)

Company Wayne McGregor (Feb.27-Mar.3)
Joyce Theater / 7:30PM, $46-$71
“Algorithm meets rhythm in Autobiography, the latest smash hit from Brit Wayne McGregor, resident choreographer at London’s Royal Ballet. He’s treating his body as an archive, developing choreographic portraits based on the sequencing of his own genome; every performance is different, but they all feature ten dancers, sets and projections by Ben Cullen Williams, and an original electronic score by Jlin. Lucy Carder designs the lights, Aitor Throup the costumes, and Uzma Hameed puzzles out the dramaturgy; the piece is “an abstract meditation on aspects of self, life, and writing.” The Saturday matinee performance is “Pay What You Decide”: Make a reservation for a dollar, and then figure out what it’s worth to you after you see it.” (Elizabeth Zimmer, VillageVoice)

Charles McPherson (March 1-4)
Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St./ 7:30PM, +9:30PM, $40
“Finding a saxophonist versed in the language of bebop may not provide much in the way of revelatory thrills, but witnessing an authentic master of the art, like the altoist McPherson, can still elicit a genuine spinal chill. McPherson came of age in Charles Mingus’s ensembles of the early sixties; these days, he fronts a rough-and-ready quintet with the guitarist Yotam Silberstein and the pianist Jeb Patton.” (NewYorker)

DESMOND CHILD (March 1-3)
at Feinstein’s/54 Below / 7PM, $75+
“Whether you view Desmond Child as a genius or something less kind depends on your subjective opinion of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” all of which he co-wrote. What’s indisputable is that Mr. Child is one of the most successful songwriters of the past 30 years. These are his first concerts in many years, and they should be a treat for pop scholars and karaoke fans alike.” (NYT-SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON)

BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
at New York City Center (March 2-3, 8 p.m.; March 4, 7 p.m.).
“The flamboyant Ballet Nacional de España returns to Midtown for the first time in nearly two decades to open this year’s Flamenco Festival at New York City Center. The large troupe showcases a variety of Spanish dance styles, from bolero to samplings of regional dances to, of course, flamenco. In “Suite Sevilla,” the company director Antonio Najarro also sprinkles in some ballet and contemporary dance, along with the expected fans, castanets and ruffled skirts. The festival continues the following week with Compañía Eva Yerbabuena and Ballet Flamenco Jesús Carmona.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

More smart stuff coming tomorrow.

===================================================================
♦ 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  8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017 – awesome! 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.
===================================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week – LAST DAY
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24, NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

This is not Manhattan’s WestSide, but it is Brooklyn’s WestSide. If you have never seen these crazy, fearless performers, they are well worth the detour:

STREB EXTREME ACTION (March 2-25 at various times)
at SLAM, 51 N 1st St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
“Elizabeth Streb’s cavernous Brooklyn space is known as SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), which is also a frequent move that occurs at one of her shows. For the month of March, her fearless team of action heroes, as they’re called, will navigate intimidating industrial contraptions and fling themselves from unnatural heights, seemingly defying physics with the pep of cheerleaders. The hourlong show, “S.E.A.” (“Singular Extreme Actions”), encapsulates all the thrill, humor and energizing fun that makes this company so singular.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

===========================================================
Bonus NYC events– Jazz Clubs:
Many consider NYCity the Jazz capital of the world. Here are my favorite Jazz clubs, all on Manhattan’s WestSide. Check out who is playing tonight:

Greenwich Village:
(5 are underground, classic jazz joints. all 6 are within walking distance of each other):
Village Vanguard – UG, 178 7th Ave. So., villagevanguard.com, 212-255-4037 (1st 8:30)
Blue Note – 131 W3rd St. nr 6th ave. bluenotejazz.com, 212-475-8592 (1st set 8pm)
55 Bar – basement @55 Christopher St. nr 7th ave.S. 55bar.com, 212-929-9883 (1st 7pm)
Mezzrow – basement @ 163 W10th St. nr 7th Ave. mezzrow.com,646-476-4346 (1st 8)
Smalls – basement @ 183 W10th St. smallslive.com, 646-476-4346 (1st set 7:30pm)
Cornelia Street Cafe – UG, 29 Cornelia St. corneliastreetcafe.com, 212-989-9319 (6pm)

Outside Greenwich Village:
Dizzy’s Club – Broadway @ 60th St. — jazz.org/dizzys / 212-258-9595 (1st set 7:30pm)
Birdland – 315 W44th St.(btw 8/9ave) — birdlandjazz.com / 212-581-3080 (1st 8:30pm)
Smoke Jazz Club – 2751 Broadway nr.106th St. — smokejazz.com/ 212-864-6662 (7pm)

Special Mention:
Caffe Vivaldi – 32 Jones St. nr Bleecker St. — caffevivaldi.com / 212-691-7538 (1st 7pm)
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.

========================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

================================================================================
================================================================================

A PremierPub / West Village

Corner Bistro / 331 W. 4th St.

Sometimes you just need a beer and a burger. If so, Corner Bistro is the place you want. Located just outside the hip Meatpacking district, this corner bar and grill is decidedly unhip, but it’s not uncrowded, especially at night. Seems that everyone knows this place has one of the better burgers in town.

kac_120405_phude_corner_bistro_bar_1000-600x450In the maze of streets known as the West Village, where West 4th intersects with West 12th (and West 11th, and West 10th, go figure), you will eventually find Corner Bistro on the corner of West 4th and Jane Street. An unassuming neighborhood tavern, it looks just like dozens of other taverns around town.

The bartender tells me that the Corner Bistro celebrated it’s 50th anniversary last year. The well worn interior tells me that the place itself is much older.

Corner Bistro has outlasted many of those other taverns around town because they know how to keep it simple — just good burgers and beer, fairly priced. The classic bistro Burger is only $6.75, and should be ordered medium rare, which will be plenty rare for most folks. Actually, it will be a juicy, messy delight – make sure you have extra napkins. I like to pull up a stool and sit by the large front window in the afternoon, where I can rest my burger and beer on the shelf, and watch the Villagers walk by.

Corner Bistro seems to attract very different groups of patrons depending on time of day. While it’s crowded with locals in the evening, in the afternoon you hear different foreign languages, and watch groups of euro tourists wander in, led by their guidebooks and smartphones.

For the classic Bistro experience, order your burger with a McSorley’s draft, the dark preferably. This is the same beer that you can get over at the original McSorley’s in the East Village, the pub that claims to be the oldest continually operating bar in NYCity. The only difference is that this McSorley’s ale is served with a smile by the bartenders here. Or you can get a Sierra Nevada, Stella, or Hoegaarden on tap if you want to go upscale a bit. Either way this is a simple, but quality burger and beer experience that is just too rare these days (sorry for the pun).
=========================================================
Website: cornerbistrony.com
Phone #: 212-242-9502
Hours: 11:30am-4am Mon-Sat; 12pm-4am Sun
Happy Hour: NO
Music: Juke Box
Subway: #1/2/3 to 14th St. (S end of platform)
Walk 2 blk W. on 13th St. to 8th Ave.; 1 blk S. on 8th Ave. to Jane St.
Update:
==============================================================
“Pub” is used in it’s broadest sense – bars, bar/restaurants, jazz clubs, wine bars, tapas bars, craft beer bars, dive bars, cocktail lounges, and of course, pubs – just about anyplace you can get a drink without a cover charge (except for certain jazz clubs).

If you have a fave premier pub or good eating place on Manhattan’s WestSide let us all know about it – leave a comment.
===========================================================================
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

NYC Events,”Only the Best” (03/02) + GallerySpecialExhibits: Chelsea

Posted on 03/02/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > FRIDAY/ MARCH 02, 2018

“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, better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

The 11th Annual Panorama Challenge
Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park / 7PM, $20
SEEKING KNOW‐IT‐ALL NEW YORKERS AND LOVERS OF NYC!
“Once again, The City Reliquary, Queens Museum, & The Levys’ Unique New York! have partnered for an exciting evening of trivia with the whole city at your feet. Meet us at the world’s largest architectural scale model – The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum – for a most unusual evening of trivia.

Panorama Challenge quizzes players on all things NYC. MC Matt Apter reads questions while our judges highlight clues on the Panorama using lasers (well, laser pointers). Players in teams of 10 (or so) use those clues (and musical hints!) to determine the correct answer.”

This is a lot of fun, a stiff challenge to see if you are a real New Yorker. My team of rookies finished first last year in the Challenger competition.

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
>> Charles McPherson
>>DESMOND CHILD
>> La Bohème
>>Kelela
>> MACEO PARKER

——————————————————————
Continuing Events
>>STREB EXTREME ACTION
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

BALLET NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
at New York City Center (March 2-3, 8 p.m.; March 4, 7 p.m.).
“The flamboyant Ballet Nacional de España returns to Midtown for the first time in nearly two decades to open this year’s Flamenco Festival at New York City Center. The large troupe showcases a variety of Spanish dance styles, from bolero to samplings of regional dances to, of course, flamenco. In “Suite Sevilla,” the company director Antonio Najarro also sprinkles in some ballet and contemporary dance, along with the expected fans, castanets and ruffled skirts. The festival continues the following week with Compañía Eva Yerbabuena and Ballet Flamenco Jesús Carmona.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

La Bohème (Oct 2-Mar 10) next performance Mar.7- 7:30PM
Metropolitan Opera House / 8PM, $
“The world’s most popular opera returns in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production, with a series of exciting casts. Angel Blue, Anita Hartig, and Sonya Yoncheva share the role of the fragile Mimì, with Dmytro Popov, Russell Thomas, and Michael Fabiano alternating as the poet Rodolfo. Alexander Soddy and Marco Armiliato share conducting duties.”

Charles McPherson (March 1-4)
Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St./ 7:30PM, +9:30PM, $40
“Finding a saxophonist versed in the language of bebop may not provide much in the way of revelatory thrills, but witnessing an authentic master of the art, like the altoist McPherson, can still elicit a genuine spinal chill. McPherson came of age in Charles Mingus’s ensembles of the early sixties; these days, he fronts a rough-and-ready quintet with the guitarist Yotam Silberstein and the pianist Jeb Patton.” (NewYorker)

DESMOND CHILD (March 1-3)
at Feinstein’s/54 Below / 7PM, $75+
“Whether you view Desmond Child as a genius or something less kind depends on your subjective opinion of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” all of which he co-wrote. What’s indisputable is that Mr. Child is one of the most successful songwriters of the past 30 years. These are his first concerts in many years, and they should be a treat for pop scholars and karaoke fans alike.” (NYT-SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON)

Kelela
Irving Plaza / 8pm; $33
“This innovative R&B singer’s 2013 mixtape, Cut 4 Me, carved a distinctive niche via the interplay between her soulful vocals and the album’s eclectic production, which pulled from underground club sounds. On her debut album, Take Me Apart, she expands upon that project, refining her songwriting skills with meticulous detail and a cinematic narration of her triumph of self.” (TONY)

MACEO PARKER (Feb. 27-March 4)
at the Blue Note / 8 and 10:30PM, $35-$45
“More than any saxophonist, Mr. Parker has helped define the sound of funk music. He threw splashes of grease into James Brown’s music as a prominent soloist in that band for most of the 1960s, then moved on to the subversive, psychedelic funk of Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton’s ensembles. Since the 1990s, Mr. Parker has been stomping across the globe with his own groups, delivering a satisfying, hip-swiveling mélange of funk and soul classics and his own repertoire.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

More smart stuff coming tomorrow.

===================================================================
♦ 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  8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017 – awesome! 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.
===================================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24 (thru Mar.3), NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

This is not Manhattan’s WestSide, but it is Brooklyn’s WestSide. If you have never seen these crazy, fearless performers, they are well worth the detour:

STREB EXTREME ACTION (March 2-25 at various times)
at SLAM, 51 N 1st St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
“Elizabeth Streb’s cavernous Brooklyn space is known as SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), which is also a frequent move that occurs at one of her shows. For the month of March, her fearless team of action heroes, as they’re called, will navigate intimidating industrial contraptions and fling themselves from unnatural heights, seemingly defying physics with the pep of cheerleaders. The hourlong show, “S.E.A.” (“Singular Extreme Actions”), encapsulates all the thrill, humor and energizing fun that makes this company so singular.” (NYT-BRIAN SCHAEFER)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================

Bonus NYC Events – Music Venues:
So much fine live music every night in this town. These are my favorite non jazz 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
Beacon Theatre – 2124 Broadway @ 74th St., beacontheatre.com, 212-465-6500
Town Hall – 123 W43rd St., thetownhall.org, 212-997-6661
B.B. King’s Blues Bar – 237W42nd St., bbkingblues.com, 212-997-2144
Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleecker St., lepoissonrouge.com, 212-505-3474
and one more, not exactly WestSide
Bowery Ballroom – 6 Delancey St. boweryballroom.com,

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 discovery and enjoyment.
===========================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

================================================================================

Chelsea Art Gallery District*

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.

Here is an exhibition the New Yorker likes:

“The Shadow Archive: An Investigation Into Vernacular Portrait Photography”

Walther Collection, 526 W. 26th St. (thru Mar.31)

“The first in a multiyear series of shows about photographs made for commercial or practical purposes, curated by Brian Wallis, considers the portrait. Most of the images date to the nineteenth century; all of them fit into typologies. Fifteen tintypes of “workers with tools of their trade” include a barber, a piano tuner, and a sword swallower; several mug shots attributed to the California sheriff Thomas Cunningham are so picturesque that they could be mistaken for stills from a Hollywood period piece. Passport photographers across Africa take full-length portraits and cut out the heads, leaving behind accidental studies of fashion. A mesmerizing series of such discards, shown here, were taken against a red background in Gulu, Uganda, and collected by the Italian-born journalist Martina Bacigalupo. A found group of forty-eight color snapshots of migrant farmworkers, each holding up a paper number—their source is unknown—takes the idea of identifying documents in a more chilling direction.”

==========================================================

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, but better to plan your visits for Tuesday through Saturday; most galleries are closed Sunday and Monday.

TIP: After your gallery tour, stop in Ovest at 513W27th St. for Aperitivo Italiano (Happy Hour on steroids). Discuss all the great art you have viewed over a drink and a very tasty selection of FREE appetizers (M-F, 5-8pm). OR try the NYT recommendation: “When you’re done, adjourn to the newly renovated Bottino , the Chelsea art world’s unofficial canteen on 10th Avenue (btw 24/25 St.) “

=======================================================
For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see recent posts in right sidebar dated 02/28 and 02/26.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYC Events,”Only the Best” (03/01) + Today’s Featured Pub (Midtown West)

Posted on 03/01/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > THURSDAY/ MARCH 01, 2018

“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, better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

Joe McGinty & The Loser’s Lounge present:
Donna Summer, A Night at the Disco!
Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center / 7:30 pm FREE, but for this one better get there early for a seat, because the folks from Losers Lounge are really good.
“Dress up like you’re going back in time to your favorite New York City night club, then dance your way to the future with New York City’s most entertaining house band. Tonight, Joe McGinty and The Loser’s Lounge turn their gaze to the ultimate disco diva, Donna Summer. Platforms and polyester optional, but highly recommended if you want to win the evening’s Best Dressed Contest.”

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Elektra
>> Charles McPherson
>>DESMOND CHILD
>> NEW YORK CITY BALLET
>>Daniel Mendelsohn: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic
>> Ghosts of the Tsunami: Seven Years After 3/11
——————————————————————-
Continuing Events
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

Elektra (Mar.1-23; next performance Mar.05 8PM)
Metropolitan Opera House / 8PM, $
“Christine Goerke sings her first Elektra at the Met in Patrice Chéreau’s landmark production, a sensation at its Met premiere last spring, which the Wall Street Journal called “revolutionary … a triumph on all fronts.” Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Strauss’s shattering score, a tour de force for the singers and the orchestra alike.”

Charles McPherson (March 1-4)
Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St./ 7:30PM, +9:30PM, $40
“Finding a saxophonist versed in the language of bebop may not provide much in the way of revelatory thrills, but witnessing an authentic master of the art, like the altoist McPherson, can still elicit a genuine spinal chill. McPherson came of age in Charles Mingus’s ensembles of the early sixties; these days, he fronts a rough-and-ready quintet with the guitarist Yotam Silberstein and the pianist Jeb Patton.” (NewYorker)

DESMOND CHILD (March 1-3)
at Feinstein’s/54 Below / 7PM, $75+
“Whether you view Desmond Child as a genius or something less kind depends on your subjective opinion of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” all of which he co-wrote. What’s indisputable is that Mr. Child is one of the most successful songwriters of the past 30 years. These are his first concerts in many years, and they should be a treat for pop scholars and karaoke fans alike.” (NYT-SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON)

NEW YORK CITY BALLET (through March 4).
at the NYS Theater, Lincoln Center / 7:30PM, $30+
“The company wraps up its winter season with a week of repertory, including “Stravinsky and Balanchine,” a splendid showcase of ballets choreographed by George Balanchine and set to music by Igor Stravinsky, including “Agon” and Symphony in Three Movements. As part of that program, on Feb. 27, Erica Pereira and Joseph Gordon make their debuts in Balanchine’s 1972 “Divertimento From ‘Le Baiser de la Fée.’” And the “Here/Now” program, which opens on Feb. 24, is topped by Alexei Ratmansky’s “Namouna, a Grand Divertissement.” It’s a delight.” (NYT-GIA KOURLAS)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Daniel Mendelsohn: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic
Baruch Performing Arts Center / 6PM, $21
One Bernard Baruch Way (25th Street btw. Lexington & Third Aves)
“The award-winning essayist, classicist, translator, and cultural critic speaks about his latest book with BPAC Director, Ted Altschuler. Mendelsohn recounts his travels around the Mediterranean with his late father, a scientist, while reading Homer’s Odyssey, making for a book that is, according to New York Times critic Dwight Garner, classroom drama, travel writing, biographical memoir, and literary criticism. “…this is a rich introduction or reintroduction. Mendelsohn makes Homer’s epic shine in your mind. I was impressed by how lightly yet superbly he wears his learning in An Odyssey,” wrote Garner, “What catches you off guard about this memoir is how moving it is.”

Elsewhere, but this looks worth the detour:
Ghosts of the Tsunami: Seven Years After 3/11
Japan Society, 333 E. 47th St./ 6:30PM, $14
“The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 was one of the country’s most catastrophic natural disasters, and the impact of the disaster is still being felt even seven years later. Best-selling author and Asia Editor for The Times of London, Richard Lloyd Parry, reported from the disaster zone for six years following the devastation. Lloyd Parry joins us to discuss his latest work, Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone, a revealing investigation into the hauntings and mysteries of a town hit especially hard by the tragedy. Followed by a book signing reception.”

===================================================================
♦ 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  8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017 – awesome!
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.
===================================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24 (thru Mar.3), NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================
Bonus: Nifty 9 – Best Cabarets / Piano Bars NYCity
These are my favorite places for an after dinner night on the town – music and drinks.
Check out who is playing tonight:

Feinstein’s/54 Below – 254 W 54th St.

The Green Room 42 – 570 Tenth Ave.

Don’t Tell Mama – 343 W 46th St.

Marie’s Crisis – 59 Grove St.

The Rum House, in the Hotel Edison – 228 W. 47th St.

Laurie Beechman Theatre – 407 W 42nd St.

The Duplex – 61 Christopher St.

Sid Gold’s Request Room – 165 W 26th St.

Cafe Carlyle, in the Carlyle Hotel – 35 E. 76th St.
This is the only one not located on Manhattan’s WestSide, and it ain’t cheap, but it has some of the finest singers.

======================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

=============================================================================

A PremierPub / Midtown West

Russian Vodka Room / 265 W 52nd St (btw 7th/8th ave)

Sure, you could travel to Minsk or even Brighton Beach, for an authentic Russian experience, but why bother. On those days when you feel you must wash down your dish of kasha with a few glasses of icy, cold vodka, the Russian Vodka Room will definitely satisfy your urge.

From the outside this place looks a bit drab, and with no windows, a bit mysterious. Midtown tourists walk right by on their way to see “Jersey Boys,” just down the block.
(Alas, no more. After 10 years, “Jersey Boys” closed Jan.15)

lThose in the know enter a secret hideaway, a dimly lit front room with soft jazz playing – a perfect spot for an illicit late-night rendezvous, or maybe a meet-up with your Russian spy handler, but that’s later in the evening. Early in the evening the large U-shaped bar fills with the after work happy hour crowd, a group made very happy by the much reduced prices.

Their website says: “Welcome Comrades”. Of course, this welcome focuses on dozens of different vodkas, including their own special infusions, which marinate in giant, clear glass jugs visible around the room. The large vodka martinis ensure that you won’t confuse this place with your mother’s Russian Tea Room.

But man does not live by vodka alone. Eat some food, especially the tapa like appetizers. Be decadent and try the cheese blintzes with chocolate, or try a main dish like beef stroganoff with kasha.

Your best bet is to go on a night when the piano man is playing. This guy, who looks like he has eaten a lot of those cheese blintzes, plays five nights a week from 7 to 12 (no Mondays and Thursdays). When the piano man is playing American pop tunes, and you are at the crowded, dimly lit bar testing the horseradish infused vodka, that’s when the RVR shines.

It’s the kind of place where the noise gets louder and the crowd gets happier as the happy hour goes on. I’m generally a beer guy, but I like to come here with a group of friends. We find a table in the back room near the piano man; we eat, and we drink vodka ‘till it hurts (and it will hurt).
=====================================================
Website: http://www.russianvodkaroom.com/
Phone #: 212-307-5835
Hours: 4pm-2am; Fri-Sun closes 4am (that could be trouble)
Happy Hour: 4-7pm every day
$4 shots infused vodka (2oz), $5 cosmos; $4 czech draft beer
Music: FR-SU; TU-WE / 7pm-12am
Subway: #1 to 50th St.
Walk 2 blk N. on B’way to 52nd St.; 1 blk W. to RVR
Confusingly, the Russian Samovar is right across the street, on the S. side of 52nd St.
The RVR, your destination, is on the N. side of 52nd St.
Update: music now includes a younger, trimmer piano man. “Tiny” we miss you.
Update#2: Rumor that “Tiny” is back playing only on Friday nights – need to check it out.

==============================================================================
“Pub” is used in it’s broadest sense – bars, bar/restaurants, jazz clubs, wine bars, tapas bars, craft beer bars, dive bars, cocktail lounges, and of course, pubs – just about anyplace you can get a drink without a cover charge (except for certain jazz clubs).
If you have a fave premier pub or good eating place on Manhattan’s WestSide let us all know about it – leave a comment.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYC Events,”Only the Best” (02/28) + Museum Special Exhibitions: Manhattan’s 5th Avenue

Posted on 02/28/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > WEDNESDAY/ FEBRUARY 28, 2018

“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 better check the tab above: “NYC Events-March”
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.

===========================================================

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

Semiramide (next performance Mar.03, 8PM)
Metropolitan Opera House / 7:30PM, $
“This masterpiece of dazzling vocal fireworks makes a rare Met appearance—its first in nearly 25 years—with Maurizio Benini on the podium. The all-star bel canto cast features Angela Meade in the title role of the murderous Queen of Babylon, who squares off in breathtaking duets with Arsace, a trouser role sung by Elizabeth DeShong. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green complete the stellar cast.”

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> XYLOURIS WHITE
>> Company Wayne McGregor
>>Ben Wendel Seasons Band
>> MACEO PARKER
>>Enrico Fermi: The Last Man Who Knew Everything
>> Whisky Nite!
——————————————————————-
Continuing Events
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

Elsewhere, but sometimes you just have to make the detour:
XYLOURIS WHITE
at Murmrr Ballroom / 8PM, $15
“The Cretan lute player Giorgos Xylouris and the Australian drummer Jim White are the twin engines of this duo, whose music ranges through traditional Greek folk, free jazz and any number of other improvised modes. Xylouris White’s third album, “Mother,” has a more tender touch than their first two (listen to the lovely album closer, “Lullaby”), a quality that should lend itself well to this Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, venue.” (NYT-SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON)

Company Wayne McGregor (Feb.27-Mar.3)
Joyce Theater / 7:30PM, $46-$71
“Algorithm meets rhythm in Autobiography, the latest smash hit from Brit Wayne McGregor, resident choreographer at London’s Royal Ballet. He’s treating his body as an archive, developing choreographic portraits based on the sequencing of his own genome; every performance is different, but they all feature ten dancers, sets and projections by Ben Cullen Williams, and an original electronic score by Jlin. Lucy Carder designs the lights, Aitor Throup the costumes, and Uzma Hameed puzzles out the dramaturgy; the piece is “an abstract meditation on aspects of self, life, and writing.” The Saturday matinee performance is “Pay What You Decide”: Make a reservation for a dollar, and then figure out what it’s worth to you after you see it.” (Elizabeth Zimmer, VillageVoice)

Ben Wendel Seasons Band (Feb. 27-March 4)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St./ 8:30, 10:30PM
“Programmatic yet inspired, Wendel’s Seasons outfit originally began as a series of online video duets that sprang from piano pieces by Tchaikovsky. Here, the saxophonist-bassoonist leader (and member of the popular band Kneebody) brings together three duet partners to give ample voice to the music: the pianist Aaron Parks, the bassist Matt Brewer, and the drummer Eric Harland.” (NewYorker)

MACEO PARKER (Feb. 27-March 4)
at the Blue Note / 8 and 10:30PM, $35-$45
“More than any saxophonist, Mr. Parker has helped define the sound of funk music. He threw splashes of grease into James Brown’s music as a prominent soloist in that band for most of the 1960s, then moved on to the subversive, psychedelic funk of Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton’s ensembles. Since the 1990s, Mr. Parker has been stomping across the globe with his own groups, delivering a satisfying, hip-swiveling mélange of funk and soul classics and his own repertoire.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Enrico Fermi: The Last Man Who Knew Everything
Book Culture on Columbus, 450 Columbus Ave./ 7PM< FREE
“Enrico Fermi lived at the hinge of classical physics and quantum mechanics, and helped usher in the Atomic Age. David N. Schwartz, author of a new Fermi biography, will reveal the very human side of a genius.” (ThoughtGallery.org)

Whisky Nite!
Presented by Whisky LIVE and Modern Trader –
Metropolitan Pavilion / 6-9:30PM, $139
“To honor its 14th edition, the producers of the annual and internationally renowned whisky tasting event — Whisky LIVE, are excited to present Whisky Nite! to New York on February 28th, 2018. The night will showcase spirits educators, specialty cocktails, book signings and over 250 whisky expressions, some of which making its U.S. debut! The special Whisky Nite! event builds the exclusive experience of tasting more than 250 of the world’s best whiskies along with dinner provided by New York’s most acclaimed restaurateur, Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events, and specialty drinks from the city’s top cocktail bars including Flatiron Room, Copper & Oak, Brandy Library, Fine & Rare, American Whiskey, Porchlight and more!”

==============================================================
♦ 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 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017.  Quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on the day of performance.
============================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24 (thru Mar.3), NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

===========================================================
Bonus NYC events– Jazz Clubs:
Many consider NYCity the Jazz capital of the world. Here are my favorite Jazz clubs, all on Manhattan’s WestSide. Check out who is playing tonight:

Greenwich Village:
(5 are underground, classic jazz joints. all 6 are within walking distance of each other):
Village Vanguard – UG, 178 7th Ave. So., villagevanguard.com, 212-255-4037 (1st 8:30)
Blue Note – 131 W3rd St. nr 6th ave. bluenotejazz.com, 212-475-8592 (1st set 8pm)
55 Bar – basement @55 Christopher St. nr 7th ave.S. 55bar.com, 212-929-9883 (1st 7pm)
Mezzrow – basement @ 163 W10th St. nr 7th Ave. mezzrow.com,646-476-4346 (1st 8)
Smalls – basement @ 183 W10th St. smallslive.com, 646-476-4346 (1st set 7:30pm)
Cornelia Street Cafe – UG, 29 Cornelia St. corneliastreetcafe.com, 212-989-9319 (6pm)

Outside Greenwich Village:
Dizzy’s Club – Broadway @ 60th St. — jazz.org/dizzys / 212-258-9595 (1st set 7:30pm)
Birdland – 315 W44th St.(btw 8/9ave) — birdlandjazz.com / 212-581-3080 (1st 8:30pm)
Smoke Jazz Club – 2751 Broadway nr.106th St. — smokejazz.com/ 212-864-6662 (7pm)

Special Mention:
Caffe Vivaldi – 32 Jones St. nr Bleecker St. — caffevivaldi.com / 212-691-7538 (1st 7pm)
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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NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

================================================================================

WHAT’S ON VIEW
These are 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)

Museum of the City of New York

NY AT ITS CORE (ongoing)
“Ten years in the making, New York at Its Core tells the compelling story of New York’s rise from a striving Dutch village to today’s “Capital of the World.” The exhibition captures the human energy that drove New York to become a city like no other and a subject of fascination the world over. Entertaining, inspiring, important, and at times bemusing, New York City “big personalities,” including Alexander Hamilton, Walt Whitman, Boss Tweed, Emma Goldman, JP Morgan, Fiorello La Guardia, Jane Jacobs, Jay-Z, and dozens more, parade through the exhibition. Visitors will also learn the stories of lesser-known New York personalities, like Lenape chieftain Penhawitz and Italian immigrant Susie Rocco. Even animals like the horse, the pig, the beaver, and the oyster, which played pivotal roles in the economy and daily life of New York, get their moment in the historical spotlight. Occupying the entire first floor in three interactive galleries (Port City, 1609-1898, World City, 1898-2012, and Future City Lab) New York at Its Core is shaped by four themes: money, density, diversity, and creativity. Together, they provide a lens for examining the character of the city, and underlie the modern global metropolis we know today. mcny.org” (NYCity Guide)

Frick Collection

Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored (thru Mar.25)

“In between jobs for doges and popes, the sixteenth-century Italian painter, who was born Paolo Caliari in Verona, completed two large paintings for a chapel in a convent graveyard on the Venetian island of Murano. One portrayed St. Jerome during his stint as a hermit in the Syrian desert; the other showed St. Agatha, imprisoned by a Roman consul for resisting his advances. Recently restored and leaving Italy for the first time, the canvases are remarkable for the subtlety of their color. Under matte and powdery surfaces, Jerome’s cardinal-red loincloth shimmers like real silk, the dark-green leaves of an overhead laurel branch look waxy, and a line of clouds at the bottom of the sky are simultaneously pink and orange. Agatha, sharing her cell with an apparition of St. Peter and a small blond angel, is perfectly distinct in every detail while still chromatically at home in a dim prison. Equally remarkable is Veronese’s understated insight into the ambivalent humanity of his saintly characters. Jerome has stopped mortifying his flesh with a rock to gaze up at a crucifix, but the way he holds his arm suggests that he might suddenly toss the stone at his distant Saviour instead. Agatha turns her head only halfway, as if unwilling to withdraw full attention from her own suffering merely on the strength of St. Peter’s promises.” (NewYorker)

Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Paintings from Auckland Castle (thru April 22)

Francisco de Zurbarán was the second-best painter in seventeenth-century Spain—no disgrace when the champion, his Seville-born near-exact contemporary, happened to be Diego Velázquez, who arguably remains better than anybody, ever. In this room-filling show, thirteen life-size imagined portraits, painted by Zurbarán circa 1640-45, constitute a terrific feat of Baroque storytelling: the movies of their day. Each character has a distinct personality, uniquely posed, costumed, and accessorized, and towering against a bright, clouded sky. All appear in the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, in which the dying Jacob prophesies the fates of the founders-to-be of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. After nearly four centuries, the canvases sorely need cleaning. The brilliance of their colors has dimmed, notably in passages of brocade and other sumptuous fabrics—a forte of Zurbarán, whose father was a haberdasher. But most of the pictures retain power aplenty. Spend time with them, half an hour minimum. Their glories bloom slowly, as you register the formal decisions that practically spring the figures from their surfaces into the room with you, and as you ponder, if you will, the stories that they plumb. (NewYorker)

Jewish Museum

‘SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION’  “After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third-floor galleries with a rethought and refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles modern and contemporary art, by Jews and gentiles alike — Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze — with 4,000 years of Judaica. The works are shown in a nimble, non-chronological suite of galleries, and some of its century-spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilletantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations.” (Farago) 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org

and you should be sure to check out these special exhibitions at that little museum on Fifth Ave., The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(open 7 days /week, AND always Pay What You Wish)

‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER: JOSEPH CORNELL’S HOMAGE TO JUAN GRIS’ (through April 15). “This small, hyper-specialized, stunning exhibition brings together a grand total of only 13 works — a dozen shadow boxes by Joseph Cornell, the Queens-based assemblage artist, and a Cubist masterwork that he cited as their direct inspiration. Gris’s “Man at the Café” (1914) might seem like a surprising obsession for Cornell, who was not a painter nor a Frenchman. He and Gris never met. But Cornell was deeply moved by Gris, the overlooked, tagalong third in the Cubist movement that also included Picasso and Braque, and the show succeeds in tracking the fluttery ways of artistic inspiration.”
(Deborah Solomon)
212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘THE FACE OF DYNASTY: ROYAL CRESTS FROM WESTERN CAMEROON’ (through Sept. 3). “Upstairs, the Michelangelos continue to knock ‘em dead; downstairs, in the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster of its own. These massive wooden crests — in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows — served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Met’s recent acquisition of an 18th-century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths, and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a “sculpture” divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own.” (Farago)

===========================================================
Museum Mile is a section of Fifth Avenue which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world. Eight museums can be found along this section of Fifth Avenue:
• 105th Street – El Museo del Barrio (closed Sun-Mon)*
• 103rd Street – Museum of the City of New York (open 7 days /week)
•  92nd Street – The Jewish Museum (closed Wed) (Sat FREE) (Thu 5-8 PWYW)
•  91st Street  –  Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (open 7 days /week)
•  89th Street –  National Academy Museum (closed Mon-Tue)
•  88th Street –  Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (closed Thu) (Sat 6-8 PWYW)
•  86th Street –  Neue Galerie New York (closed Tue-Wed) (Fri 6-8 FREE)
Last, but certainly not least, America’s premier museum
•  82nd Street – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (open 7 days /week)*
*always Pay What You Wish (PWYW)

Although technically not part of the Museum Mile, the Frick Collection (closed Mon) (Wed 2-6pm PWYW; First Friday each month (exc Jan+Sep) 6-9pm FREE) on the corner of 70th St. and Fifth Avenue and the The Morgan Library & Museum (closed Mon) (Fri 7-9 FREE) on Madison Ave and 37th St are also located near Fifth Ave.
Now plan your own museum crawl (info on hours & admission updated June 2, 2015).
==============================================================
For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 02/26 and 02/24.
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NYC Events,”Only the Best” (02/27) + Today’s Featured Pub (Greenwich Village)

Posted on 02/27/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > TUESDAY/ FEBRUARY 27, 2018

“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 better check the tab above: “NYC Events-February”
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.

===========================================================

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

MACEO PARKER (Feb. 27-March 4)
at the Blue Note / 8 and 10:30PM, $35-$45
“More than any saxophonist, Mr. Parker has helped define the sound of funk music. He threw splashes of grease into James Brown’s music as a prominent soloist in that band for most of the 1960s, then moved on to the subversive, psychedelic funk of Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton’s ensembles. Since the 1990s, Mr. Parker has been stomping across the globe with his own groups, delivering a satisfying, hip-swiveling mélange of funk and soul classics and his own repertoire.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Company Wayne McGregor
>> NEW YORK CITY BALLET
>> Jon Batiste
>>‘PARSIFAL’
>>Ben Wendel Seasons Band
>>Patton Oswalt Presents Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”
——————————————————————-
Continuing Events
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

Company Wayne McGregor (Feb.27-Mar.3)
Joyce Theater / 7:30PM, $46-$71
“Algorithm meets rhythm in Autobiography, the latest smash hit from Brit Wayne McGregor, resident choreographer at London’s Royal Ballet. He’s treating his body as an archive, developing choreographic portraits based on the sequencing of his own genome; every performance is different, but they all feature ten dancers, sets and projections by Ben Cullen Williams, and an original electronic score by Jlin. Lucy Carder designs the lights, Aitor Throup the costumes, and Uzma Hameed puzzles out the dramaturgy; the piece is “an abstract meditation on aspects of self, life, and writing.” The Saturday matinee performance is “Pay What You Decide”: Make a reservation for a dollar, and then figure out what it’s worth to you after you see it.” (Elizabeth Zimmer, VillageVoice)

Ben Wendel Seasons Band (Feb. 27-March 4)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St./ 8:30, 10:30PM
“Programmatic yet inspired, Wendel’s Seasons outfit originally began as a series of online video duets that sprang from piano pieces by Tchaikovsky. Here, the saxophonist-bassoonist leader (and member of the popular band Kneebody) brings together three duet partners to give ample voice to the music: the pianist Aaron Parks, the bassist Matt Brewer, and the drummer Eric Harland.” (NewYorker)

NEW YORK CITY BALLET (through March 4).
at the NYS Theater, Lincoln Center / 7:30PM, $30+
“The company wraps up its winter season with a week of repertory, including “Stravinsky and Balanchine,” a splendid showcase of ballets choreographed by George Balanchine and set to music by Igor Stravinsky, including “Agon” and Symphony in Three Movements. As part of that program, on Feb. 27, Erica Pereira and Joseph Gordon make their debuts in Balanchine’s 1972 “Divertimento From ‘Le Baiser de la Fée.’” And the “Here/Now” program, which opens on Feb. 24, is topped by Alexei Ratmansky’s “Namouna, a Grand Divertissement.” It’s a delight.” (NYT-GIA KOURLAS)

Jon Batiste
Bowery Ballroom / 8pm; $25
“This Louisiana pianist-singer has an extensive resume: a master’s degree from Julliard, he’s served as artistic director at Harlem’s National Jazz Museum and even acted in HBO’s Emmy-nominated Treme. Add to that list, “Late Night” stardom, as he recently started a new role as the bandleader for Late Night With Stephen Colbert. Here, he steps away from leading his acclaimed band Stay Human, to run through a solo set of his catchy, easygoing blend of NOLA jazz, modern funk and retro soul.”

‘PARSIFAL’
at the Metropolitan Opera House / 6PM, $
“François Girard’s take — part mysterious, part mystifying — on Wagner’s last opera is one of the Met’s most interesting productions of the last decade or so, and returns for the first time since its premiere in 2013. There is no Jonas Kaufmann this time, but Klaus Florian Vogt is a veteran replacement in the title role, and Evelyn Herlitzius may well make for a fine Kundry. Three standouts from the earlier run return: René Pape as Gurnemanz, Peter Mattei as Amfortas and Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, future music director of the house, conducts.” (NYT)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Patton Oswalt Presents Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”
at the New York Public Library—Stephen A. Schwarzman Building /
“Despite having his DNA on file, police have never caught the “Golden State Killer,” responsible for a decade of rape and murder in California. Journalist Michelle McNamara’s book on the subject, published posthumously, covers the dual obsessions of predator and investigator. Her husband Patton Oswalt launches the book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, in conversation with Paul Holdengräber. (There’s another appearance on Wednesday, at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn.)”

==============================================================
♦ 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 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017.  Quality shows draw crowds.
Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on the day of performance.
============================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24, NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================

Bonus NYC Events – Music Venues:
So much fine live music every night in this town. These are my favorite non jazz 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
Beacon Theatre – 2124 Broadway @ 74th St., beacontheatre.com, 212-465-6500
Town Hall – 123 W43rd St., thetownhall.org, 212-997-6661
B.B. King’s Blues Bar – 237W42nd St., bbkingblues.com, 212-997-2144
Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleecker St., lepoissonrouge.com, 212-505-3474
and one more, not exactly WestSide
Bowery Ballroom – 6 Delancey St. boweryballroom.com,

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 discovery and enjoyment.
See Below.

———————————————————————————————————-

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):
=================================================================================

A PremierPub and 3 Good Eating Places – Greenwich Village

Caffe Vivaldi / 32 Jones Street (btw. Bleecker St./W4th St.)

Café Vivaldi is a classic, intimate club located in Greenwich Village on Jones Street, the street featured on the cover of Bob Dylan’s second album, “Freewheelin’. ”

maxresdefaultEach night Ishrat, the long time proprietor and impresario, carefully curates and schedules an eclectic series of musicians. You can often see him at his table in the corner, hard at work reviewing music videos and listening to cd demos on his laptop, scouting out future bookings. Musicians come from all over to play and sing in a club in Greenwich Village. Some are local New Yorkers, others are just passing through, in town for a few days.

There is a small bar, seating maybe 10. It’s close to the stage and I find it’s a perfect spot to sip a glass of red wine while listening to the music. The room itself has the performance area at one end and a cozy fireplace at the other. The performance area here is small, dominated by a large black Yamaha Grand piano. Tables are bunched together and most people at the tables are eating lite meals or sampling the wonderful desserts.

There is also a good selection of fairly priced wines,  but you are here because of the music. You can never be quite sure what you’re going to find, and that’s half the charm of this place. It’s not a home run every night, but many nights it’s pretty special.

I remember the night I saw the most talented bossa nova group, just in from San Paulo. As I listened, I wondered if there was any better music playing anywhere else in New York City that night. And at Caffé Vivaldi there is never a cover charge. Their recently redesigned web site does give you a better idea of the type of music playing each night.

At one time Greenwich Village was filled with clubs just like this, but times change. Real estate interests have impacted the village, and not for the better. Even Caffé Vivaldi had a rough time recently, when a new landlord raised the rent exorbitantly. Fortunately, Ishrat has built a loyal following over the years, and a fund raiser and slightly more reasonable rent has kept Café Vivaldi in business.

When Woody Allen and Al Pacino wanted to make movies featuring the timeless quality of Greenwich Village they came to Vivaldi. It’s important that we keep this special place alive, for if we lose Cafe Vivaldi, NYCity will have lost a piece of it’s soul.

Website: http://caffevivaldi.com/
Phone #: (212) 691-7538
Hours: Music generally 7:30PM – 11PM, but varies
Lunch/Dinner 11AM-on
Subway: #1 to Christopher St.
Walk 1 blk S. on 7th ave S. to Bleecker St., 1 blk left on Bleecker to Jones St., 50 yards left on Jones St. to Caffe V.
==============================================================
“Pub” is used in it’s broadest sense – bars, bar/restaurants, jazz clubs, wine bars, tapas bars, craft beer bars, dive bars, cocktail lounges, and of course, pubs – just about anyplace you can get a drink without a cover charge.

If you have a fave premier pub or good eating place on Manhattan’s WestSide let us all know about it – leave a comment.
========================================================

3 Good Eating places

It’s not difficult to find a place to eat in Manhattan.
Finding a good, inexpensive place to eat is a bit harder.
Here are a few of my faves in this neighborhood:

Fish – 280 Bleecker St. (just a bit S. of 7th ave South)
This was an easy pick – the best raw bar special in town. $9 gets you 6 of the freshest oysters or clams + a glass of wine or beer. Don’t know how they can do it, but I tell everyone I know about this place. And it’s located right in the heart of some of the best no cover music in town.

Bleecker Street Pizza – 69 7th ave S. (corner of Bleecker St.)
The place is tiny and not much to look at, but this is one good slice. They like to brag that they have been voted “Best pizza in NY” 3 years in a row by the Food Network. I believe them. I would have voted for them.

Num Pang – 21 E 12th St. (btw. University Place/5th ave.)
This is a Cambodian banh mi sandwich shop that kept me well fed while I was in class nearby recently. It’s cramped, even for NYCity, but usually there is room up the spiral staircase to sit down and eat. In good weather carry your sandwich a few blocks to Union Square park. You may have to wait a few minutes, because everything is freshly made, but it’s worth it. Can you believe – an unheard of 26 food rating by Zagat.

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“3 Good Eating places” focuses on a quick bite, what I call “Fine Fast Food – NYCity Style”
No reservations needed.
========================================================
NYCity is the most diverse and interesting place to find a meal anywhere in the world. With more than 24,000 eating establishments you might welcome some advice.

◊ For all my picks of 54 Good Eating places, and essays on my favorite 18 PremierPubs in 9 Neighborhoods on Manhattan’s WestSide, order a copy of my e-book:
“Eating and Drinking on NYCity’s WestSide” ($4.99, available Spring 2018).
◊ Order before May 31 28, 2018 and receive a bonus – 27 of my favorite casual dining places with free Wi-Fi.

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NYC Events,”Only the Best” (02/26) + Museum Special Exhibitions: Manhattan’s WestSide

Posted on 02/26/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > MONDAY/ FEBRUARY 26, 2018

“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 better check the tab above: “NYC Events-February”
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.

===========================================================

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

Broadway by the Year
The Town Hall / 8PM, $57-$67
“Scott Siegel’s valuable concert series opens time capsules to some of the Great White Way’s most memorable seasons. The February edition devotes its first act to shows from 1930 (e.g. Strike Up the Band, Nina Rosa, Girl Crazy and The New Yorkers) and its second act to shows from 1964 (e.g. Fiddler on the Roof, Funny Girl, Golden Boy, Hello Dolly!). The cast includes Chuck Cooper, Tonya Pinkins, Emily Skinner, Danny Gardner, Kerry O’Malley Scott Coulter and Pedro Coppeti.” (TONY)

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Madama Butterfly
>> Eva Noblezada: Girl No More
>> Lyrics & Lyricists: Lenny’s Lyricists
>> Facebook’s Chris Hughes in Conversation with Dorian T. Warren: Luck, Fortune and Combatting Income Inequality
>> Ariella Azoulay | Plunder: The Origins of Modern Art
>>Alabama v. Hamilton and the Fight for Racial Equality
——————————————————————-
Continuing Events
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

Madama Butterfly
The Metropolitan Opera House / 7:30PM, $25+
“Anthony Minghella’s stunning production of Puccini’s heartbreaking opera, an instant Met classic since its 2006 premiere, returns with Hui He and Ermonela Jaho in the tragic title role of the trusting geisha. Roberto Aronica and Luis Chapa alternate as her callous American lover, Pinkerton, and Jader Bignamini and Marco Armiliato conduct.”

Eva Noblezada: Girl No More
The Green Room 42 / 7PM, $35
“The Tony-nominated star of Broadway’s Miss Saigon shows off her range in a concert that includes favorites made famous by Amy Winehouse and Frank Sinatra.” (TONY)

Lyrics & Lyricists: Lenny’s Lyricists (Feb.24-26)
92nd Street Y / 2PM, +7PM, $70+
“Amanda Green hosts the latest edition of the 92nd Street Y’s estimable Lyrics & Lyricists series. This episode is devoted to the wordsmiths (include Green’s parents, Betty Comden and Adoph Green) who worked with Leonard Bernstein on such shows as On the Town, Wonderful Town, West Side Story and Candide. The singers are Mikaela Bennett, Andréa Burns, Darius de Haas, Howard McGillin and Tony Yazbeck.” (TONY)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)

Facebook’s Chris Hughes in Conversation with Dorian T. Warren: Luck, Fortune and Combatting Income Inequality
92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave./7:30PM, $29
“The first half of Chris Hughes’ life played like a movie reel right out of the “American Dream.”

He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents were people of modest means, but he was accepted into an elite boarding school and then Harvard, both on scholarship. There, he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and became one of the co-founders of Facebook. Through the rocket ship rise of Facebook, Hughes came to understand how a select few can become ultra-wealthy nearly overnight, making it hard for the average person to make ends meet. To remedy the situation, Chris believes that a no strings attached, guaranteed income for working people, paid for by the 1%, will help combat poverty and stabilize the middle class. Join him to hear about his newest book, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, and his bold take on how we earn in modern America, how we can combat income inequality, and ultimately, how we can give everyone a fair shot.”

Ariella Azoulay | Plunder: The Origins of Modern Art
The Cooper Union, 7 E. 7th St./ 7PM, FREE
“Ponder plunder as the prerequisite underlying modern art with “potential history” expert Ariella Azoulay (Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography) as part of Cooper Union’s Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (IDS) Public Lecture Series.

From the beginning, art has been imperialism’s preferred terrain. Much has been written about the impoverishment of different cultures whose artistic treasures were expropriated to enrich Western aristocracies and embellish Western museums. What will be the meaning of modern art if we consider this plunder its origin?”

Alabama v. Hamilton and the Fight for Racial Equality
New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West/ 6:30PM, $38
“Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy speaks on an overlooked but telling 1963 case (Alabama v. Hamilton), which pushed back against the court practice of addressing white witnesses by their honorifics and black witnesses by their first names.

In 1963, courts often addressed white witnesses by their honorifics but used black witnesses’ first names. When Mary Hamilton refused to answer questions until addressed by her surname, she was jailed for contempt of court. A year later, the Supreme Court vacated her conviction. Explore the story behind Alabama v. Hamilton and its broader significance within the struggle for racial equality.” (ThoughtGallery.org)

==================================================================================
♦ 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 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017.  Quality shows draw crowds.
Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on day of performance.

============================================================

Continuing Events

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24, NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

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

Feinstein’s/54 Below – 254 W 54th St.

The Green Room 42 – 570 Tenth Ave.

Don’t Tell Mama – 343 W 46th St.

Marie’s Crisis – 59 Grove St.

The Rum House, in the Hotel Edison – 228 W. 47th St.

Laurie Beechman Theatre – 407 W 42nd St.

The Duplex – 61 Christopher St.

Sid Gold’s Request Room – 165 W 26th St.

Cafe Carlyle, in the Carlyle Hotel – 35 E. 76th St.
This is the only one not located on Manhattan’s WestSide, and it ain’t cheap, but it has some of the finest singers.

=========================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

===============================================================================

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)

Museum of Modern Art:

A special pat on the back to MOMA, who is now displaying art from the seven countries affected by Trump’s travel ban.

“Trump’s ban against refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations has sparked acts of defiance in NYC, from demonstrations across town, to striking taxicab drivers at JFK to Middle Eastern bodega owners closing their shops in protest. Recently, the Museum Of Modern added its two cents by bringing out artworks it owns from the affected countries, and hanging them prominently within the galleries usually reserved for 19th- and 20th-century artworks from Europe and the United States. Paintings by Picasso and Matisse, for example, were removed to make way for pieces by Tala Madani (from Iran), Ibrahim El-Salahi (from Sudan) and architect Zaha Hadid (from Iraq). The rehanging, which was unannounced, aims to create a symbolic welcome that repudiates Trump by creating a visual dialog between the newly added works and the more familiar objects from MoMA’s permanent collection.” (TONY)

Stephen Shore (thru May 28)

“This immersive and staggeringly charming retrospective is devoted to one of the best American photographers of the past half century. Shore has peers—Joel Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld, Richard Misrach, and, especially, William Eggleston—in a generation that, in the nineteen-seventies, stormed to eminence with color film, which art photographers had long disdained. His best-known series, “American Surfaces” and “Uncommon Places,” are both from the seventies and were mostly made in rugged Western states. The pictures in these series share a quality of surprise: appearances surely unappreciated if even really noticed by anyone before—in rural Arizona, a phone booth next to a tall cactus, on which a crude sign (“GARAGE”) is mounted, and, on a small-city street in Wisconsin, a movie marquee’s neon wanly aglow, at twilight. A search for fresh astonishments has kept Shore peripatetic, on productive sojourns in Mexico, Scotland, Italy, Ukraine, and Israel. He has remained a vestigial Romantic, stopping in space and 
time to frame views that exert a peculiar tug on him. This framing is resolutely formalist: subjects composed laterally, from edge to edge, and in depth. There’s never a “background.” The most distant element is as considered as the nearest. But only when looking for it are you conscious of Shore’s formal discipline, because it is as fluent as a language learned from birth. His best pictures at once arouse feelings and leave us alone to make what we will of them. He delivers truths, whether hard or easy, with something very like mercy.” (NewYorker)

Tarsila do Amaral (thru June 3)

Introducing New York to the First Brazilian Modernist
“Forty-five years after Tarsila do Amaral’s death, MOMA presents her first-ever museum exhibition in the U.S. Some artists are so iconic, they’re known by only one name: Brancusi, Léger, Tarsila. Wait, who? The painter Tarsila do Amaral is so famous in her native Brazil that forty-three years after her death she helped close out the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, when a projected pattern of red-orange-yellow arcs graced the stadium floor, an homage to her 1929 painting “Setting Sun.” That chimerical landscape—stylized sunset above tubular cacti and a herd of capybaras that shape-shift into boulders—hangs now at MOMA, in the artist’s first-ever museum exhibition in the U.S., “Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil.” (NewYorker)

==============================================================
For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 02/24 and 02/22.
============================================================

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYC Events,”Only the Best” (02/25) + Today’s Featured Pub (Times Square / Theater District)

Posted on 02/25/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > SUNDAY/ FEBRUARY 25, 2018

“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 better check the tab above: “NYC Events-February”
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.

===========================================================

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

Chinese Lunar New Year. 2018 is the Year of the Dog!
Were you born during the Year of the Dog? That would include 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006 and 2018, as of Friday.

“Chinatown is NYC’s epicenter for the annual event, which will include a colorful parade and a street party. The parade route goes from Mott and Canal to Chatham Square to East Broadway towards the Manhattan Bridge, completing on Eldridge and Forsyth Streets towards Grand Street next to Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Starts at 1pm.” (CityGuide)

=========================================================

6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Bernstein’s Mahler Marathon: The Sony Recordings
>> Carmen Lundy
>> Lyrics & Lyricists: Lenny’s Lyricists
>> Black Light
>> Noche Flamenca
>>Peter Bernstein
——————————————————————-
Continuing Events
>>New York City Beer Week
=======================================

Bernstein’s Mahler Marathon: The Sony Recordings
Philharmonic Insights at the Atrium
Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center /10:00AM–11:00PM,FREE
“In an immense celebration befitting the centennial of Philharmonic Laureate Conductor Leonard Bernstein and his affinity for the music of former Philharmonic Music Director Gustav Mahler, the Philharmonic presents a 13-hour expedition through Bernstein’s recordings of Mahler’s complete symphonies. Bernstein’s marked scores from the New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives will be projected in real-time. Between each symphony, special guests will read excerpts from Bernstein’s own writings on Mahler, and video clips of Bernstein talking about Mahler will be projected. The recordings were released on the Sony/Columbia label and recorded between 1960 and 1967 with the New York Philharmonic (Symphonies Nos. 1–7 and 9) and the London Symphony Orchestra (Symphony No. 8). Come for one symphony, or show your dedication and stay for them all!”

Carmen Lundy
at Jazz Standard / 7:30 and 9:30PM, $30
“Ms. Lundy, a widely respected vocalist, is possessed of an enthusiastic delivery and a thick vibrato. Last year she released “Code Noir,” an album of 12 simmering originals that address subjects of romantic commitment, political resistance and solidarity. This weekend she appears with a stellar band of accompanists: the pianist Patrice Rushen, the guitarist Andrew Renfroe, the bassist Kenny Davis and the drummer Kendrick Scott.” (NYT-GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO)

Lyrics & Lyricists: Lenny’s Lyricists (Feb.24-26)
92nd Street Y / 2PM, +7PM, $70+
“Amanda Green hosts the latest edition of the 92nd Street Y’s estimable Lyrics & Lyricists series. This episode is devoted to the wordsmiths (include Green’s parents, Betty Comden and Adoph Green) who worked with Leonard Bernstein on such shows as On the Town, Wonderful Town, West Side Story and Candide. The singers are Mikaela Bennett, Andréa Burns, Darius de Haas, Howard McGillin and Tony Yazbeck.” (TONY)

Noche Flamenca
Joyce Theater / 2PM, $61+
“One of the pleasures of living in New York City is knowing that Madrid-born Soledad Barrio, flamenco artist extraordinaire, lives here too; one Sunday I found myself sitting next to her on the subway! Even better to sit in front of her at the Joyce during this two-week season, called Intimo, as she performs the series of duets that make up La Ronde, a variation on the carousel plot of intimate human interactions based on Schnitzler, Bergman, Chekhov, and the 1950 Max Ophüls film, and here choreographed by her husband, Martin Santangelo. Also see solos by her frequent partner, Juan Ogalla, and by Barrio herself, accompanied by a clutch of passionate musicians and singers. (She’s sitting out Saturday matinees, so be careful as you book.)” (Elizabeth Zimmer, Village Voice)

Black Light (also Feb.28)
Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater / 7PM, $45
“Decked out in sequined splendor, Jones is a paradigm of R&B-diva grandeur circa 1982, with impeccable posture and elocution that bespeak an old-school black-star dignity. Created and performed by Daniel Alexander Jones, Jomama has starred in a series of shows, most recently the fascinating Duat; now she joins forces with young pianist Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes for a night of original “Afromystical” songs.” (TONY)

Peter Bernstein (last day)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St./ 8:30PM, +10:30PM, $35
“There are plenty of jazz guitarists currently pushing the envelope of the art form, but sometimes expertly performed mainstream picking is the only thing that will do the trick, and Bernstein is the man for the job. A smooth-toned bebopper with an outsized technique (one that the position demands), Bernstein leads a quartet that includes the pianist Sullivan Fortner, the bassist Doug Weiss, and the drummer Leon Parker.” (NewYorker)

==================================================================================
♦ 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 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017.  Quality shows draw crowds.
Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on day of performance.

============================================================

Continuing Events

Lincoln Center Balloons – LastDay
Birthday parties. The circus. Performances by classically-trained ballet dancers in one of the world’s preeminent companies. Everything is made a little bit better with balloons.

Encounter thousands of the aforementioned inflatable objects and enjoy instigators at the New York City Ballet’s home at Lincoln Center. The balloons are an installation by visual artist Jihan Zencirli and will range in size from 10 inches to 10 feet.

You can stop by the NYS / DHK Theater and check out the extra festive atmosphere for yourself during free, public viewing hours from February 17 through February 25 at the following times:
Mon–Fri 10am–6pm
Sat-Sun 10am–12pm
The happy helium habitat will also be on view during NYC Ballet performances on Feb 2 and Feb 24, with tickets going for $30+. (TONY)

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24, NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================
Bonus NYC events– Jazz Clubs:
Many consider NYCity the Jazz capital of the world. Here are my favorite Jazz clubs, all on Manhattan’s WestSide. Check out who is playing tonight:

Greenwich Village:
(5 are underground, classic jazz joints. all 6 are within walking distance of each other):
Village Vanguard – UG, 178 7th Ave. So., villagevanguard.com, 212-255-4037 (1st 8:30)
Blue Note – 131 W3rd St. nr 6th ave. bluenotejazz.com, 212-475-8592 (1st set 8pm)
55 Bar – basement @55 Christopher St. nr 7th ave.S. 55bar.com, 212-929-9883 (1st 7pm)
Mezzrow – basement @ 163 W10th St. nr 7th Ave. mezzrow.com,646-476-4346 (1st 8)
Smalls – basement @ 183 W10th St. smallslive.com, 646-476-4346 (1st set 7:30pm)
Cornelia Street Cafe – UG, 29 Cornelia St. corneliastreetcafe.com, 212-989-9319 (6pm)

Outside Greenwich Village:
Dizzy’s Club – Broadway @ 60th St. — jazz.org/dizzys / 212-258-9595 (1st set 7:30pm)
Birdland – 315 W44th St.(btw 8/9ave) — birdlandjazz.com / 212-581-3080 (1st 8:30pm)
Smoke Jazz Club – 2751 Broadway nr.106th St. — smokejazz.com/ 212-864-6662 (7pm)

Special Mention:
Caffe Vivaldi – 32 Jones St. nr Bleecker St. — caffevivaldi.com / 212-691-7538 (1st 7pm)
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.

=====================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

=================================================================================

A PremierPub

Jimmy’s Corner / 140 W 44th St (btw B’way & 7th ave)

IMG_2083Jimmy’s Corner is right in the heart of Times Square, but you won’t find it on the corner, it’s mid-block. Enter this long narrow bar and you are struck by the walls covered with mostly black-and-white boxing photographs, and memorabilia. Soon enough you learn that “Corner” refers to proprietor Jimmy Glenn’s long career as a corner man for some of boxing greats – Liston, Tyson, even “the greatest,” Ali.

Jimmy’s is a sort of time machine, taking you back to a time and place that no longer exists. All around you Times Square has cleaned up, grown up, assumed a new identity. Jimmy’s probably hasn’t changed a bit since it first opened in 1971. Certainly the bar itself looks original and the prices haven’t changed much either. When I brought a friend, who owns her own bar, she was surprised when she got the small tab for a round of drinks. Figured there must be a mistake, that maybe they forgot to charge for all the drinks.

Times Square today is filled with neon glitz and wandering tourists from Dubuque, but not Jimmy’s. You’ll likely find some old timer’s at the bar nursing their drinks, some younger locals at tables in the back, and maybe a few adventuresome tourists clutching their trusty guidebooks. There’s no food served here because this is just a bar, and sometimes that’s all you need.

On nights when no local team is playing, it’s a fine place to sip some drafts and listen to a great old time jukebox, with a great selection of  40s& 50s R&B and soul. On sports nights this very narrow bar can get a bit claustrophobic, filled with excited fans watching their team on the TVs. Either way, Jimmy’s is the place to be if you are looking for an old time bar in the new Times Square.
————————————————————————————————————————
Website: are you kidding !
(although there is a facebook page with lots of photos –
facebook.com/jimmyscornernyc)
Phone #: 212-221-9510
Hours: 11am – 4 am, except Sunday they open 12 noon
Happy Hour: not necessary, low prices all day, every day
Subway: #1,2,3 to TimesSquare 42nd st
walk 2 blks N on 7th ave to 44th st; ½ blk E to Jimmy’s

==================================================================================
“Pub” is used in it’s broadest sense – bars, bar/restaurants, jazz clubs, wine bars, tapas bars, craft beer bars, dive bars, cocktail lounges, and of course, pubs – just about anyplace you can get a drink without a cover charge (except for certain jazz clubs).
If you have a fave premier pub or good eating place on Manhattan’s WestSide let us all know about it – leave a comment.
================================================================================
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYC Events,”Only the Best” (02/24) + GallerySpecialExhibits: Chelsea

Posted on 02/24/2018 by GregD

Today’s Super 7 NYC Events > SATURDAY/ FEBRUARY 24, 2018

“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 better check the tab above: “NYC Events-February”
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.

===========================================================

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

Semiramide (next performance Feb.28, 7:30PM)
Metropolitan Opera House / 8PM, $
“This masterpiece of dazzling vocal fireworks makes a rare Met appearance—its first in nearly 25 years—with Maurizio Benini on the podium. The all-star bel canto cast features Angela Meade in the title role of the murderous Queen of Babylon, who squares off in breathtaking duets with Arsace, a trouser role sung by Elizabeth DeShong. Javier Camarena, Ildar Abdrazakov, and Ryan Speedo Green complete the stellar cast.”

=========================================================

5 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>> Black Light
>> SOUNDTRACK ’63
>> Tierney Sutton
>> DAVE DOUGLAS
>>Peter Bernstein
>>New York City Beer Week

=======================================

Black Light (Feb.24,25,28)
Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater / 7PM, $45
“Decked out in sequined splendor, Jones is a paradigm of R&B-diva grandeur circa 1982, with impeccable posture and elocution that bespeak an old-school black-star dignity. Created and performed by Daniel Alexander Jones, Jomama has starred in a series of shows, most recently the fascinating Duat; now she joins forces with young pianist Samora Abayomi Pinderhughes for a night of original “Afromystical” songs.” (TONY)

SOUNDTRACK ’63
A Soul Science Lab Production
Special Appearances by Leon Bridges, Rhiannon Giddens, Rapsody & Abiodun Oyewole
The Apollo Theater / 8PM, $54
“A Live Musical Documentary with spirituals, protest songs, and current popular music performed by an 18-piece orchestra, created by Brooklyn’s Soul Science Lab.

From the painful conditions that ignited the 1963 Civil Rights Movement to today’s Black Lives Matter Movement, and much triumphant progress in between, music has always strengthened outcries for justice. This concert event under the direction of creative director Chen Lo and Musical Director Asante Amin, includes a host of dynamic performance artists whose work breathes new life into the sights and sounds that shaped the music of an era. This new interpretation of the music of ‘63 includes jazz, hip-hop, soul, and poetry with a captivating video installation of archival footage and animation.”

Tierney Sutton (last day)
Birdland, 315 W. 44th St./ 8:30PM, +11PM, $40
“A stylish and canny singer determined to usher the pop and rock auteurs of past decades into the jazz-vocal repertoire, Sutton has delved into the Joni Mitchell songbook, and on her 2016 album, “The Sting Variations,” she put her own spin on the work of Gordon Sumner. “Roxanne” didn’t make the cut, but such soundtrack-of-a-generation fodder as “Message in a Bottle” and “Fields of Gold” were given new life.” (NewYorker)

DAVE DOUGLAS
at Jazz at Lincoln Center / 7 and 9:30PM, $60+
“An eclectic trumpet virtuoso who’s been a leading voice on his instrument since the 1990s, Mr. Douglas presents “Dizzy Atmosphere,” a program of improvisations and extrapolations based on Dizzy Gillespie’s compositions. He’s joined onstage by a cast of prodigious comrades: the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, the pianist Gerald Clayton, the guitarist Bill Frisell, the bassist Linda May Han Oh and the drummer Joey Baron.” (NewYorker)

Peter Bernstein (Feb. 20-25.)
Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St./ 8:30PM, +10:30PM, $35
“There are plenty of jazz guitarists currently pushing the envelope of the art form, but sometimes expertly performed mainstream picking is the only thing that will do the trick, and Bernstein is the man for the job. A smooth-toned bebopper with an outsized technique (one that the position demands), Bernstein leads a quartet that includes the pianist Sullivan Fortner, the bassist Doug Weiss, and the drummer Leon Parker.” (NewYorker)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures/Discussions, Book Talks, Film, Classes, Food & Drink, Other

New York City Beer Week
“For eight crazy nights starting February 24, NYC Beer Week taps into the city with hundreds of events: parties, tastings, plenty of grub, the first-ever Fermentation Festival (gotta get those probiotics) and a closing awards gala that’ll honor the best suds in town. If last year’s fest was any indication of what’s to come—400 events took place over 10 days, and acclaimed composers George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein performed live—you’re in for quite the boozy treat.” (TONY)

==================================================================================
♦ 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 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017.  Quality shows draw crowds.
Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on day of performance.

============================================================

Continuing Events

Lincoln Center Balloons
Birthday parties. The circus. Performances by classically-trained ballet dancers in one of the world’s preeminent companies. Everything is made a little bit better with balloons.

Encounter thousands of the aforementioned inflatable objects and enjoy instigators at the New York City Ballet’s home at Lincoln Center. The balloons are an installation by visual artist Jihan Zencirli and will range in size from 10 inches to 10 feet.

You can stop by the NYS / DHK Theater and check out the extra festive atmosphere for yourself during free, public viewing hours from February 17 through February 25 at the following times:
Mon–Fri 10am–6pm
Sat-Sun 10am–12pm
The happy helium habitat will also be on view during NYC Ballet performances on Feb 2 and Feb 24, with tickets going for $30+. (TONY)

Let there be light!
Erwin Redl’s Whiteout, a newly commissioned public art project, will light up in Madison Square Park. It consists of hundreds of transparent white spheres, each embedded with a white LED light, and suspended from a square grid of steel poles. The swaying sequence of light will be on display until April 2018.

=====================================================

Bonus NYC Events – Music Venues:
So much fine live music every night in this town. These are my favorite non jazz 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
Beacon Theatre – 2124 Broadway @ 74th St., beacontheatre.com, 212-465-6500
Town Hall – 123 W43rd St., thetownhall.org, 212-997-6661
B.B. King’s Blues Bar – 237W42nd St., bbkingblues.com, 212-997-2144
Le Poisson Rouge – 158 Bleecker St., lepoissonrouge.com, 212-505-3474
and one more, not exactly WestSide
Bowery Ballroom – 6 Delancey St. boweryballroom.com,

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 discovery and enjoyment.
===========================================================

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

================================================================================

Chelsea Art Gallery District*

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.

Here is an exhibition the New Yorker likes:

“The Shadow Archive: An Investigation Into Vernacular Portrait Photography”

Walther Collection, 526 W. 26th St. (thru Mar.31)

“The first in a multiyear series of shows about photographs made for commercial or practical purposes, curated by Brian Wallis, considers the portrait. Most of the images date to the nineteenth century; all of them fit into typologies. Fifteen tintypes of “workers with tools of their trade” include a barber, a piano tuner, and a sword swallower; several mug shots attributed to the California sheriff Thomas Cunningham are so picturesque that they could be mistaken for stills from a Hollywood period piece. Passport photographers across Africa take full-length portraits and cut out the heads, leaving behind accidental studies of fashion. A mesmerizing series of such discards, shown here, were taken against a red background in Gulu, Uganda, and collected by the Italian-born journalist Martina Bacigalupo. A found group of forty-eight color snapshots of migrant farmworkers, each holding up a paper number—their source is unknown—takes the idea of identifying documents in a more chilling direction.”

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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, but better to plan your visits for Tuesday through Saturday; most galleries are closed Sunday and Monday.

TIP: After your gallery tour, stop in Ovest at 513W27th St. for Aperitivo Italiano (Happy Hour on steroids). Discuss all the great art you have viewed over a drink and a very tasty selection of FREE appetizers (M-F, 5-8pm). OR try the NYT recommendation: “When you’re done, adjourn to the newly renovated Bottino , the Chelsea art world’s unofficial canteen on 10th Avenue (btw 24/25 St.) “

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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see recent posts in right sidebar dated 02/22 and 02/20.

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