Music listings – 3/19 through 3/25

1. Japan Nite

Date: Monday, March 19, 2012
Time: 8:30pm
Venue: Public Assembly (70 North 6th St.,Brooklyn, NY)
Ticket: $15
Genre: Japanese indie rock

Line up:
1. ZZZ’s All-girl trio from Hyogo, featuring members of Hystoic Vein (who played Japan NIte’s US tour in 2011). http://zzzs-jpn.com/
2. NOKIES! Young Kyoto college students whose loose guitar style (think The Strokes) and off-kilter beats (a la Vampire Weekend) will make you smile, jump and dance. sites.google.com/site/nokiesweb
3. Kao=S Performance trio with Jack playing tsugaru-shamisen (kind of a Japanese banjo), Shuji on guitar, and “sword-dancing” singer Kaori.

2. Bill McHenry Quartet

Date: Tuesday through Sunday, March 20 til March 25, 2012
Time: 9pm & 11pm
Venue: The Village Vanguard (178 7th Avenue South, NY)
Ticket: $25
Genre: Jazz

Bill McHenry is a saxophonist, composer and bandleader living in Brooklyn New York. He is known for his melodic/free form composing and improvising, demostrated most recently on his newest CD “ROSES”.
Line up: Bill McHenry-sax, Orrin Evans-p, Eric Revis-b, Andrew Cyrille-dr

3. The Bill Frisell and Sam Amidon Duo

Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Time: 10pm
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012, ph: 212- 505-3474)
Ticket: $35
Genre: blus, folk, Americana

A new collaboration from guitar pioneer Frisell and “slightly cracked folksinger extraordinaire” (Village Voice) Amidon, two artists who have created their own musical worlds from various corners of American folk musics.

4. Spoek Mathambo

Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012
Time: 9pm
Venue: S.O.B.’s (204 Varick St., New York, NY 10014)
Ticket: $15
Genre: rap/electronics

Read more in DooBeeDoo about a previous performance last year.

Part of a new breed of African artists, 24 year-old Spoek Mathambo (rapper/DJ and graphic designer/illustrator) is hitting the world hard with his take on Afro-futurism. His goal of making music is to be progressive without forgetting his roots. As the front-man of the electro rap outfits SWEAT.X and PLAYDOE. Spoek Mathambo has become an increasingly prominent figure in the international music scene over the last couple of years.

5. ATTWENGER

Date: Thursday, March 22, 2012
Time:  9:30pm
Venue: Drom (85 Avenue A, NY, NY 10009, 212- 777-1157)
Ticket: $10
Genre: nu Austrian folk music

The Austrian duo Attwenger turn Upper Austrian folk music and wry local wisdom into madcap backbeats and funky, flaring accordion. It’s The Cramps parachuting into a mountain village street fest for a punk spree, or The Pogues punning in Alpine slang to dancefloor-friendly samples. It’s folk trip-hop, psychedelic and feral polka.

6. Famoro Diabate’s KAKANDE followed by dance party w. DJ JAMIE REGISTER

Date: Friday, March 23, 2012
Time: 10:30pm
Venue: Zebulon (258 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211)
Ticket: donation
Genre: Guniean (traditional) music

Famoro Diabate (Guinea) is well kown playing the Balafon. He and his band are performing traditional music from Guinea.

7. HAZMAT MODINE

Date: Saturday, March 24, 2012
Time: 7pm & 10pm
Venue: TERRA BLUES (149 Bleecker Street, NY, 212-777-777)
Ticket: t.b.a.
Genre: nu blues/ New Orleans brass

One of New York’s original bands, HAZMAT MODINE delivers a rustic, deliriously Dionysian blend of whorehouse Blues, Reggae, Klezmer, Country and Gypsy-tinged music.

8. NASS GNAWA

Date: Saturday, March 24, 2012
Time: 10:30pm
Venue: Zebulon (258 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211)
Ticket: donation
Genre: Gnawa music fromMorocco

Nass Gnawa is the Moroccan trio Brahim Fribgane, Hassan Ben Jafar and Said Damir. They play music of the Gnawa people who are Afro-Moroccan descendants of slaves from the south. Their mystical brotherhoods and their music combine North and Black African elements.

9. FIFTH WORLD

Date: Saturday, March 24, 2012
Time: 8pm – 9pm
Venue: The Shrine (2271 Adam Clayton Power JR Blvd.)
Ticket: donation 
Genre: soul/rock/club

Fifth Nation is the white-hot soul-rock creation of lovers King Julia and Musik Read. After meeting on a Texan stage in the Spring of 2009, they released their first record FLIGHT and spent six months touring the United States. After releasing IT’S ON the following Spring, they abandoned their nomadic mission to settle in Brooklyn, NYC, where they recorded two singles (I’M IN LOVE, FIGHT A WAR), an EP: TV IS DEAD, a full-length self-produced record NATHANIEL, and released three official videos with director Edwin Escobar. They toured twice to California to fuel the cultivation of their NYC home studio, where they now incessantly record between performances for their booming fanbases around the Northeast. They are focused on releasing and licensing self-produced music and preparing for expansive American and Global tours. They are dedicated to the mission of promoting Love through sexy-badass Rock ‘n Soul.

10. ROBERT ASHLEY’S VIDAS PERFECTAS

Date: Sunday, March 25, 2012
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012, ph: 212- 505-3474)
Ticket: $20
Genre: modern opera

ROBERT ASHLEY’S VIDAS PERFECTAS
A Spanish-language version of the television opera “Perfect Lives” (1983). Please read the review of a previous performance of VIDAS PERFECTAS

Starring Ned Sublette as “R” or “Raoul de Noget”
Produced and Directed by Alex Waterman
Music Produced by Peter Gordon

Co-starring Elio Villafranca as “Buddy, The World’s Greatest Piano Player”
Introducing Elisa Santiago and Abraham Gomez-Delgado

VIDAS PERFECTAS, the all-new Spanish-language production of Robert Ashley’s opera “Perfect Lives”, returns to New York on March 25th at Le Poisson Rouge. This one night only performance features the first and final episodes of the opera, El Parque (The Park) and El Patio De Atras (The Backyard), in partial staging. For all who missed the December 2011 premiere, this is a show not to be missed.

The great singer and writer Ned Sublette stars as the narrator Raoul De Noget, “an incredible creature, a lounge lizard dressed in black…casting a large shadow with his physical presence and his voice” (Augusta Palmer). Playing with him is “Buddy, The World’s Greatest Piano Player,” a unique all-piano role for Cuban virtuoso Elio Villafranca. Composer Peter Gordon, Ashley’s collaborator on the original incarnation of “Perfect Lives”, returns as music producer, playing live electronics and mixing. Elisa Santiago and Abraham Gomez-Delgado join in chorus roles.

This powerful reinterpretation of Ashley’s now-classic text, “embraces conversation, improvisation and process to tint and colour the production in new ways,” writes Frieze magazine; “Waterman and his collaborators delicately transform Ashley’s music; it remains unmistakably Ashley, but Latin influences are teased out and foregrounded, by both Villafranca’s piano and by new shifts of rhythmic emphasis in the pre-recorded drum patterns.”

“Perfect Lives” was originally commissioned for television by The Kitchen (NY) in 1979 and was completed in 1983, co-produced by The Kitchen and Channel Four in Great Britain. It was aired on Channel Four in 1983 and in 1984, and subsequently on German, Austrian and Spanish television. “Perfect Lives’” innovative combination of chanting, storytelling, meditation and ecstatic revelation, challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship between language and music. It has almost singlehandedly changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.