Gig Alert: Tree of Codes
EVENT: Tree of Codes at Park Ave ArmoryIn one of the fall’s strangest, boldest collaborations, music, dance, and design collide this week at the Park Avenue Armory. British master choreographer Wayne...
View ArticleGig Alert: Brigitte
ARTIST: BrigitteGIG: Tonight at the Standard Hotel, and tomorrow at Le Poisson RougeIn the 1960s and early 70s, Brigitte Bardot was one of the most, ahem, desirable names in film. Her name has become a...
View ArticleGig Alert: Lawrence English
ARTIST: Lawrence EnglishGIG: Monday at the Issue Project Room in TribecaAustralian ambient artist Lawrence English has said that birdwatching was an early education in sound. Not so much the chirping,...
View ArticleGig Alert: John Coltrane Raga Tribute
ARTIST: Brooklyn Raga MassiveGIG: Wednesday night at Pioneer WorksIn 1968, jazz sax icon John Coltrane released a 30 minute recording that contained just this one track: a howling—some say...
View ArticleGig Alert: Mr. Airplane Man
ARTIST: Mr. Airplane ManGIG: Wednesday night at The Bell HouseMargaret Garrett and Tara McManus were just two friends in Boston when they locked themselves in a basement for a year and saturated their...
View ArticleGig Alert: Steve Wynn
ARTIST: Steve WynnGIG: Thursday at Bowery ElectricThe Chicago Tribune has said that Steve Wynn holds “a Ph.D in timeless rock songcraft.” It’s true Wynn has used those doctoral credentials on an...
View ArticleGig Alert: Osso String Quartet
ARTIST: Osso String QuartetGIG: Monday night at Fat CatOsso String Quartet can do your standard classical stuff, but they really turn heads in their many collaborations, from Jay-Z and Kanye to The...
View ArticleGig Alert: Noah Preminger
ARTIST: Noah PremingerGIG: Wednesday night at 55 BarEarly in his career, Mississippi blues singer Bukka White was convicted in a shooting incident and ended up in the Parchman Farm prison, which was...
View ArticleGig Alert: Sister Rosetta Tharpe Documentary at BK Public Library
EVENT: Screening of Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Godmother of Rock n Roll, Wednesday at Brooklyn Public LibraryWhile she’s become obscure today, Sister Rosetta Tharpe is one of the secret heroes of rock and...
View ArticleGig Alert: New Sounds Live - Dither
ARTIST: Dither & FriendsGIG: Thursday night at Brookfield Place Winter GardenThe electric guitar quartet Dither anchors an evening of music that encompasses minimalism, experimentalism, and rock...
View ArticleGig Alert: Maya Beiser
ARTIST: Maya BeiserGIG: Friday and Saturday night at BAMAny musician can do an album of plain old cover songs. But recently Maya Beiser decided to “uncover” her favorite rock classics by breaking them...
View ArticleGig Alert: George Braith
ARTIST: George BraithGIG: Monday night at Fat CatNow we don’t want to generalize, but it would be fair to say that old-school New Yorkers can be full of a bit of hot air. Well New York jazz legend...
View ArticleGig Alert: Badi Assad
ARTIST: Badi AssadGIG: Wednesday night at The IridiumWhen Badi Assad visited Soundcheck early last year, she played songs that were inspired by the birth of her new daughter. Fast forward a couple...
View ArticleGig Alert: Alarm Will Sound
ARTIST: Alarm Will SoundGIG: Thursday at Merkin Concert HallThe piece called “Bounce” by the composer Texu Kim was inspired by the bouncing of basketballs. When you work in radio you get to see what...
View ArticleGig Alert: John Doe & The Sadies
ARTIST: John Doe & The SadiesGIG: Saturday evening at Hill CountryPunk music and authentic country have always shared a disdain for authority, a biting sense of humor, and a fondness for the...
View ArticleGig Alert: The Dears
ARTIST: The DearsGIG: Wednesday night at Rough TradeMontreal, Canada, has been a musical hotbed for the last decade, most notably exporting Arcade Fire to the adoring indie masses. Like that band,...
View ArticleGig Alert: Jimmy Heath
ARTIST: Jimmy Heath QuartetGIG: Thursday through Sunday at Village VanguardEven at 89 years old, sax player Jimmy Heath is nicknamed “Little Bird,” a nod to his artistic debt to the jazz legend...
View ArticleGig Alert: Portland Cello Project
ARTIST: Portland Cello ProjectGIG: Friday at LittlefieldLet's talk about PCP. No, this isn't a public service announcement about drug safety. PCP is the initials of the genre-scrambling indie-classical...
View ArticleGig Alert: The Daedalus Quartet
ARTIST: The Daedalus QuartetPERFORMANCE: "A Legacy of Czech Music," Monday evening at 92YThe energetic young string ensemble known as The Daedalus Quartet has been racking up critical praise over the...
View ArticleGig Alert: Donnie Fritts
ARTIST: Donnie FrittsGIG: Wednesday night at Joe's PubDonnie Fritts has spent a lot of time writing songs that have made other people stars: Dusty Springfield, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson. He's a...
View ArticleGig Alert: Judas Priest
ARTIST: Judas PriestGIG: Thursday & Friday at Paramount Theater (Huntington, NY)The heavy metal that dominated large swathes of commercial radio in the 1980s isn’t everybody’s bag, nor is the...
View ArticleGig Alert: Esmé Patterson
ARTIST: Esmé PattersonGIG: Tonight at Bowery Ballroom (opening for Craig Finn)You’ve heard Elvis Costello croon to Alison, the Beach Boys say "no" to Caroline, and the Beatles sigh over Eleanor Rigby....
View ArticleGig Alert: Eleanor Friedberger
ARTIST: Eleanor FriedbergerGIG: Monday night at PianosEleanor Friedberger made a big impression on the indie rock world throughout the 2000s as half of the rock band Fiery Furnaces. She also made a big...
View ArticleGig Alert: Antibalas
ARTIST: AntibalasGIG: Wednesday night at Brooklyn Bowl The Brooklyn collective Antibalas made such a convincing Afrobeat noise that they were eventually tapped to play as the house band during the...
View ArticleGig Alert: Roswell Rudd
ARTIST: Roswell RuddGIG: Roswell Rudd's 80th Birthday, Sunday at LPR The Wizard of Roz. The Incredible Honk. Whatever you choose to call him, Roswell Rudd is a living legend of jazz trombone. And it’s...
View ArticleGig Alert: Miranda Lee Richards
ARTIST: Miranda Lee RichardsGIG: Monday night at Rockwood Music Hall; Tuesday at Living RoomMiranda Lee Richards had a brief stint in the psychedelic San Francisco rock band The Brian Jonestown...
View ArticleGig Alert: Django Reinhardt All-Stars
ARTIST: Django Reinhardt All-StarsGIG: Weeklong residency at BirdlandDorado Schmitt is a French guitarist from a gypsy community near the German border. He has become a noted practitioner of so-called...
View ArticleGig Alert: Anthony de Mare
ARTIST: Anthony de MareGIG: Tonight at Symphony SpaceStephen Sondheim’s musical “Sunday in the Park with George” is about the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat, who creates art through...
View ArticleGig Alert: Art of Time Ensemble
ARTIST: The Art of Time EnsembleGIG: Saturday at Brooklyn Center for the Performing ArtsThe Art of Time Ensemble is a Canadian collective of classical musicians who fuse high art and the best of pop...
View ArticleGig Alert: Hiya Wal Âalam
ARTIST: Hiya Wal ÂalamGIG: Monday night at Knitting FactoryWhen the Swedish brother-sister electronic duo The Knife finally disbanded last fall, the siblings were set free to unleash their strange...
View ArticleGig Alert: Mobius Trio
ARTIST: The Mobius TrioGIG: Wednesday night at Le Poisson RougeRobert Nance, Mason Fish, and Matthew Holmes-Linder are fairly average young San Francisco dudes: they are avowed fans of home brewing,...
View ArticleGig Alert: Terence Blanchard
ARTIST: Terence BlanchardGIG: Thursday through Sunday night at The Blue NoteToday, we're thankful that the Grammy-winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard hasn’t run out of breath just yet, despite calling...
View ArticleGig Alert: Glen Hansard
ARTIST: Glen HansardGIG: Monday at Kings Theatre, Tuesday at Beacon TheatreGlen Hansard knows a thing or two about "winning streaks": he rocketed to fame when “Once,” the little indie film he starred...
View ArticleGig Alert: Ava Raiin
ARTIST: Ava RaiinGIG: Wednesday night at The Cake ShopThe artist known as Ava Raiin was born in Minnesota, raised in Texas. Those are pretty radical opposites — and tension between opposites shows up...
View ArticleGig Alert: Foxing
ARTIST: FoxingGIG: Thursday night at Music Hall of WilliamsburgThe band Foxing trades in a lot of references: their band name refers to those dark spots that form on aging paper; their first album was...
View ArticleGig Alert: Harsh Crowd
EVENT: Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls 10th Anniversary GalaWillie Mae Thornton – better known to history as “Big Mama” Thornton – was one of the first women to play what became rock n roll. Over the...
View ArticleGig Alert: Deerhunter
ARTIST: DeerhunterGIG: Wednesday night at WarsawDeerhunter has been one of the most mercurial bands in indie rock for the last decade, veering from angry fuzzed-out noise to moments of near-perfect...
View ArticleGig Alert: Zikrayat
ARTIST: ZikrayatGIG: Thursday evening at Meridian 23For much of the 20th century, Cairo, Egypt, was the film and recording capital of the Arab world. And movies from the so-called golden age of...
View ArticleGig Alert: Teenage Jesus & The Jerks
ARTIST: Teenage Jesus and the JerksGIG: Friday night at Trans-PecosThe late-1970's experimental music and art scene known as No Wave combined bits of nihilist philosophy, noise rock, and...
View ArticleGig Alert: Dred Scott Trio
ARTIST: Dred Scott TrioGIG: Monday night at Rockwood Music HallAs you probably know, Dred Scott was an enslaved man in the 1850s who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom. So you can be forgiven for...
View ArticleGig Alert: Sherita
ARTIST: SheritaGIG: Wednesday night at The DelanceyThe Brooklyn-based Balkan music quartet known as Sherita is two female voices surrounded by the rich Eastern European folk sounds of the violin, oud,...
View ArticleGig Alert: PJ Harvey Tribute
EVENT: Tribute to PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea Friday night at LPRBritish singer and songwriter PJ Harvey’s straight-ahead rock album “Stories from the City, Stories from the...
View ArticleGig Alert: The Love Supreme
ARTIST: The Love SupremeGIG: Monday night at Brooklyn BowlMotown. Stax. Daptone. From Memphis and Detroit in the mid-sixties, all the way to Brooklyn in 2015, there’s a sound that music lovers keep...
View ArticleGig Alert: Ronnie Spector
ARTIST: Ronnie SpectorGIG: Wednesday night at City WineryRonnie Spector deserves the title of “living legend.” The Spanish Harlem native became the leader of the hugely successful girl group The...
View ArticleGig Alert: Purely Coincidental Klezmer
EVENT: Sixth Semi-Annual PURELY COINCIDENTAL NIGHT OF KLEZMER tonight at BarbesToday is December 24th. Know what that means? Klezmer music! The Brooklyn bar Barbes happily jumps in to fill the void...
View ArticleGig Alert: Chris Botti
ARTIST: Chris BottiGIG: Holiday residency at The Blue NoteWe're as tired as you are of the 24/7 Christmas music at this point. But it’s worth remembering that music is an essential part of the...
View ArticleCelebrating 50 Years Of Musical Incompetence
This is an encore edition of Soundcheck. Peter Schickele celebrates 50 years of PDQ Bach at The Town Hall tonight and tomorrow.On April 24, 1965, Peter Schickele swung down a rope from the balcony at...
View ArticleGig Alert: Lucky Peterson
ARTIST: Lucky PetersonGIG: Wednesday at The IridiumA few years ago, Lucky Peterson wrote a song called “Blues In My Blood.” That’s no exaggeration. Lucky’s father was also a bluesman, who made ends...
View ArticleGig Alert: DIIV
ARTIST: DIIVGIG: New Year's Eve at Bowery BallroomNo harm in ringing the new year in with a toddy and an early bedtime, but if you are in the mood for something slightly more euphoric you could do a...
View ArticleLive at 8 p.m.: LNZNDRF Rocks The Greene Space
LNZNDRF is a new band composed of Scott and Bryan Devendorf (The National), and Ben Lanz (Beirut, The National, Sufjan Stevens). Recorded in a church in Cincinnati over two-and-a-half days, the eight...
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