Upcoming....Incoming....Two Foot Yard + Eisa Davis ( & a 'lil Passing Strange) + Nora York + Catherine Russell

Well, again I need to be about two or three people to catch everything coming up, riding fast and high like delicious sonics waves lapping past wiggling toes and caressing a bare neck and tickling the earlobes. But hey, you gotta name what you want before you can figure out how to get it, just like most of us gotta walk before we can run. So here 'tis:

•Wednesday, February 27th•
Catherine Russell
Sentimental Streak CD release show
Joe's Pub
This is going to be a fabulous show, no doubt
425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th and Astor Place)
New York, NY
7:30pm
$15 in advance, $20 at the door

My write up of Catherine Russell's January 2008 Joe's Pub show can be found here.

•Thursday, February 28th•
Burgeoning legend, Chicago-native, and AACM saxophonist & composer (the latest AACM generation folks--AACM Lives!/Long Live AACM!) Matana Roberts performs her Chicago Project.

Matana Roberts' Chicago Project @ The Jazz Gallery
290 Hudson Street
New York, NY
(212) 242-1063
2 sets: 9pm and 10:30pm
$10 for members/$12 for non-member
Reservations encouraged

"Matana Roberts celebrates the release of her new CD Chicago Project from Central Control with her quartet featuring Matana Roberts - reeds, Jeff Parker - guitar, Josh Abrams - bass, Tyshawn Sorey - drums."
For more Info


• Tuesday, March 4•
Can't tell you how ticked I am to have a prior commitment on this date (especially since it's my Birthday! Consider yourself warned, gentle reader.)
Two Foot Yard
Who is Two Foot Yard?: "Tzadik recording artist Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Book of Knots) on violin and vocals, Marika Hughes (Charming Hostess, Vienna Teng) on cello and vocals, and Shahzad Ismaily (Marc Ribot, Secret Chiefs 3, Laurie Anderson) on percussion and guitar"

They'll be doing their thing with art song, pop song, etc., which rocking chamber music as we know it, or don't want to know it as the case may be. But that's the joy: they're using their chops to reconfigure the blasted thing--weaving punk, and old down home country love songs into the framework.

Kihlstedt is an intriguing composer, and a richly altering experience on violin and voice, and I've heard great things about Hughes (a cellist of African descent--where are they all?!) in her various musical incarnations, and this is the second time I've missed this mainly San Francisco-Bay Area-based trio's jaunt through NYC. Do I sound a little frustrated, gee golly, it's a stumper!
Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th and Astor Place)
New York, NY
7pm
$15.00
More Info here

• Video of Two Foot Yard performing "Hold My Own" here and "Flash Flood" here at the Clarice-Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in 2005.
• Video of Two Foot Yard performing the haunting "Octopus" at The Earl in Atlanta, GA in 2005. Features Kihlstedt giving a lovely speech to the folks who were insisting on having loud drunk conversations in the performance space instead of at the bar. I actually like this the best of the three clips.





•March 9th•
Nora York: new performance work Furtiva Lagrima
Joe's Pub
7pm
$20

Jazz, pop, art song, cabaret vocalist York performed segments of this collaboration with chamber musicians and bass/baritone (and lawyer?) Kevin Burdette at BAMcafé Live last month to a full house that wouldn't let her leave without an encore of an Elvis Presley song. This is currently being developed for the stage with director JoAnne Akalaitis and artist Kiki Smith.


York performing her audience favorite "What I Want," her song about "ceaseless, endless, yearning.





•March 10th•
In the midst of her start turn in Passing Strange's Broadway run no less, you go Ms. Davis!
Eisa Davis
Joe's Pub
9:30pm
$15.00

The multi-talented Eisa Davis, playwright(her Bulrusher was a 2007 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, plus she's a Cave Canem Fellow, of course), composer, singer-songwriter, actor (she brought a sensual and intelligent stillness and vulnerability to Greg Pak's Robot Stories). Oh yeah, and she's Angela Y. Davis' niece, yeah that Angela Y. Davis (Eisa Davis' name is actually Angela Eisa Davis, but everyone calls her Eisa).

Eisa Davis will be bringing it, I'm sure to Joe's Pub--the time is NOW, people.

Passing Strange Broadway Rehearsals & Interviews:




Passing Strange
Belasco Theater
111 W 44th Street (between 6th & 7th Avenues)

A,C,E to 42nd Street & 8th Avenue
B,D,F,Q to 47-50 Streets & 6th Avenue
N,R,S,1,2,3,7,9 to 42nd Street & Times Square