Calendar of Events in New York

Wednesday, May 22
• 
  of Montreal+Wild Moccasins
  Music Hall of Williamsburg

  Once upon a time of Montreal was a psychedelic twee pop band with Beatles-inspired melodies. Over the years, however, frontman Kevin Barnes has repeatedly flipped the script both on the band’s sound—from whimsical vaudeville to coquettish glam funk—and his own identity—Skeletal Lamping saw Barnes as a black she-male named Georgie Fruit. Now pushing their 12th studio... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Lucien Smith
  Suzanne Geiss Company

  When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994, artist Lucien Smith was just five years old. In his latest exhibition, “A Clean Sweep,” the now 24-year-old multimedia innovator and Cooper Union graduate goes in search of remnants of the gritty New York that were lost during the gentrification of the Giuliani era. The show is broken up into three parts: a group of free-standing... Read more about this event >>

• 
  The Big Knife
  American Airlines Theatre

  Charlie Castle in Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife would seem to have it all—a successful Hollywood acting career, a big house, and a beautiful wife. But all is not well. His wife (Marin Ireland) is threatening to leave him, the almighty studio bosses own him, and a starlet is poised to reveal his most damning secret to the world. Tony nominee Bobby Cannavale (The Mother- f**ker... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Matilda: The Musical
  Shubert Theatre

  Take a celebrated novel about a tiny tot with telekinesis. Add a cult songwriter and a famously dark playwright. And what do you get? Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, one of the most spiky, tender, and delightful children’s entertainments to come along in years—and it should appeal plenty to adults, too. Read more about this event >>

• 
  Noah Preminger
  Jazz Standard

  The young tenor titan gigged a lot before hitting the studio to cut the new Haymaker, and that preparation shows: There's an easy balance between Preminger's horn and guitarist Ben Monder's unusually fluid attack strategies, and it gives everything else extra poise and additional punch. On stage, they always lean forward. Read more about this event >>

• More Wednesday Events >>

Thursday, May 23
• 
  Rock 'n' Roll High School
  Videology

  Are you a punk-rocking, forward thinking student with a fascist principal on your back? Well, you can sulk your way through detention, eventually acclimating to the oppressive society of which your school is a microcosm, or you can call the Ramones and blow stuff up. In Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979), P.J. Soles takes the second route, and it definitely makes for a better movie.... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Afrika Bambaataa+Egyptian Lover+DJ Magic Mike+DJ Assault+DJ Funk+Scottie B+DJ Rashad+DJ Spinn+Big Freedia+Salva+Drop the Lime+ Branko+Krampfhaft
  Santos Party House

  Is it possible for a lineup to be too good? Actually, yes. Crowd a night with too many DJs, no matter how good they might be, and they’ll often have trouble connecting with the crowd, playing hits rather than developing a rhythm. But that’s a risk you’re going to have to take when Red Bull Music Academy stuffs Santos Party House with club G.O.A.T.’s from around the... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Friend Roulette+EULA+Matty Fasano
  The Mercury Lounge

  This Brooklyn six-piece make orchestral, sweeping compositions sound as simple as lullabies. Chamber pop riddled with baroque elements and unlikely rhythms, their sonics swing from ghostly croons straight into robotic bleeps. Throughout it all—strings, brass, two drummers and two vocalists—Friend Roulette gamble they can pull off the juxtapositions, and believe it or not, they manage it. Read more about this event >>

• 
  Medeski, Mali, Mercurio, & Moore
  Le Poisson Rouge

  Medeski Martin & Wood's sci-fi keyboard traditionalist John Medeski, 7 Walkers' gris-gris growler Papa Mali, and Galactic's rhythm section—Robert Mercurio (bass) and Stanton Moore (drums)—are the M&Ms. The promising New Orleans-oriented supergroup is heralding its debut gigs with the slogan "Melts in your mind, not in your hand," so expect the funk to get rather seriously outside. Read more about this event >>

• 
  El Anatsui
  Brooklyn Museum

  For years, the Nigerian artist El Anatsui was highly regarded for his abstract wood sculptures. But he didn’t really receive the acclaim he deserved in the mainstream until he showed his elegant metal tapestries made from flattened aluminum bottle tops at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Stitched together with copper wire, the impressive works from far away almost look like they're made of... Read more about this event >>

• 
  The Nance
  Lyceum Theatre

  Nathan Lane may number among the most talented of our stage entertainers, but not perhaps the most masculine. This makes him an ideal star for Douglas Carter Beane’s new play, about the world of 1930s burlesque and the men and women called upon to play gay in service of comedy. Jack O’Brien directs the vaudeville frolics. Read more about this event >>

• 
  Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance)
  Public Theater

  No one really believed Richard Foreman when he said in 2009 that Idiot Savant would be his last play, did they? The 75-year-old avant-garde auteur is now back at the Public Theater with Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance). As with any Foreman piece, don’t expect a straightforward story. His latest is described as an “enigmatic fairy tale” involving a mysterious... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Wayne Horvitz
  The Stone

  The wise keyboardist is also an inviting composer—the variety of groups he's led in the past three decades have all arrived with hip charts in front of them. This East Coast residency finds him grooming a throng of improvisers from his Seattle stomping ground, the Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, and their YouTube calling cards suggest that they're able to make moments of melody and... Read more about this event >>

• More Thursday Events >>

Friday, May 24
• 
  Mariah Carey
  Central Park, Rumsey Playfield

  Is it that Mariah Carey's abnormally lucky, or that she's got a career mojo that just won't quit? Neither, I'd argue: Her career longevity is directly connected to her collaborative savvy, ability to nimbly surf pop trends, and the best cosmologists and stylists Daydream royalties can buy. Even with her trademark melisma succumbing to something huskier, Mimi's still capable of convincingly... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Rooftop Films
  Open Road Rooftop

  Fed up with love? Take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone when Rooftop Films presents Love Hurts, an evening of 10 short films on the trials and tribulations of romance. Highlights include Kerri Lendon’s Sounds Good, about a couple having “that talk no one wants to have,” Timothy Reckert’s Head Over Heels, which concerns an out-of-love husband and wife and... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Skream+Mala+Plastician+Hatcha
  SRB Brooklyn

  Before Skrillex, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift, before HARD Fest in L.A., Electric Zoo in New York, and Electric Daisy in Las Vegas, there were artists like Skream, Mala, Plastician, and Hatcha midwifing the genre that would be called dubstep in small clubs in South London’s Croydon neighborhood. Tonight, those four artists unite for No Sleep Till Croydon, an event meant to showcase... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Labapalooza!
  St. Ann's Warehouse

  For the past nine months, a select group of artists have been hard at work inside the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse to bring their creations to life. Now you can see the results of their experiments at Labapalooza!, the 15th annual mini festival of new puppet theater. Presented in two programs of three works each, the lineup includes Daniel Patrick Fay and Andrew Livingston’s... Read more about this event >>

• More Friday Events >>

Saturday, May 25
• 
  Manchester City vs. Chelsea
  Yankee Stadium

  Soccer fans will think they’ve died and gone to heaven with this blockbuster. First, a live screening of Fox Sports’ telecast of the UEFA Champions League final from London (kick-off time 2:45), shown on the stadium’s 59-by-110-foot high-definition centerfield video screen. Then, at 5:30, the Premier League archrivals Manchester City and Chelsea football clubs play live.... Read more about this event >>

• 
  B.A.L.L.+The Upper Crust+Lord Classic+New York Junk
  Bowery Electric

  As surreal and potentially volatile a reunion as you'll stumble upon this year, B.A.L.L. was the troubled and troubling late '80s slop-rock assemblage of the Velvet Monkey's Don Fleming and Jay Spiegal, Shimmy Disc proprietor-bassist Kramer, and Bongwater drummer David Licht. Original Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert fills in for the quartet's first show in 25 years. Read more about this event >>

• 
  PUNK: Chaos to Couture
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  When Richard Hell started spiking his hair and holding his shredded T-shirts together with safety pins, later influencing the Sex Pistols, he certainly could never have guessed that one day his rebellious fashion statement would be on display in the stuffy Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it’s at PUNK: Chaos to Couture, the latest Costume Institute exhibition, where you’ll find him... Read more about this event >>

• More Saturday Events >>

Sunday, May 26
• 
  Robert Fripp and the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists
  St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery

  And you thought Amanda Palmer was ambitious. Guitarists versed in meditation and the Fripp's Guitar Craft technique will pay $1000 for the privilege of training with and performing alongside the King Crimson leader during a few East Coast gigs. The fee includes room, board, transportation, and Alexander technique sessions. Fripp says the shows will reflect "a specialized study in the... Read more about this event >>

• 
  The Shins+Man Man
  Williamsburg Park

  "This song will change your life,” said Natalie Portman's Sam to Zach Braff's Andrew as she played “New Slang” for him in 2004's quintessential indie classic Garden State. A more accurate statement would've been that Sam and Andrew would change the Shins' lives, as a spot on the Grammy-award winning soundtrack helped catapult the dreamy indie group into mainstream success... Read more about this event >>

• 
  So So Glos|Crystal Stilts
  Knitting Factory Brooklyn

  Punk rockers, Shea Stadium-proprietors, and men about town the So So Glos have made Bay Ridge proud. Tonight, the band that toured with post-hardcore heroes 
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead in Europe and like-minded New 
Jersey natives Titus Andronicus in the U.S. comes across town to Williamsburg’s Knitting Factory to open for Brooklyn transplants Crystal... Read more about this event >>

• 
  'Oh! You Pretty Things' w/ Alison Clancy+Hypernova+Michael T. and the Vanities+This Ambitious Orchestra
  Le Poisson Rouge

  Now in its third year, the New Romantic Ball is one of the best excuses in town to get glammed up. Tonight’s party, hosted by Chi Chi Valenti, features live performances by the 22-piece ensemble This Ambitious Orchestra, downtown hip boy Michael T and the Vanities, live sets by Hypernova and Alison Clancy, and burlesque by Delysia Lachatte and Scooter Pie. Dress code is strictly... Read more about this event >>

• More Sunday Events >>

Monday, May 27
• 
  Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series
  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

  On May 31, the great American abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly, who is still hard at work in his studio, turns 90. To celebrate, several museums around the country are putting together exhibitions, and, for its part, MOMA hosts “Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series.” Chatham is the name of the small town in upstate New York where Kelly retreated to in 1970 after living and working in... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Bunty Berman Presents...
  Acorn Theatre

  The New Group has been enjoying a rather lackluster season, but what better show to shake a company out of its doldrums than a musical that borrows Bollywood’s razzle dazzle. The first-rate Ayub Khan Din’s new work tells of a flailing film studio and the producer struggling to keep the cameras running. Read more about this event >>

• 
  I'll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers
  Booth Theatre

  Bette Midler has a fine set of teeth, and she’ll use them to play hardheaded “superagent” Sue Mengers. As scripted by celebrated stage and screenwriter John Logan, this one-woman show demonstrates Mengers’s ruthless rise—from childhood poverty to Hollywood power-broking. Read more about this event >>

• More Monday Events >>

Tuesday, May 28
• 
  Eat the City: Farming the Five Boroughs
  Tenement Museum

  The lingo is particular in New York City. We have “foodies,” who differ slightly from “locavores” and often stray from the academic realm of “sustainability experts” and “urban agricultural advocates.” While disparate in their definitions, these terms all encompass a similar ethos: New York needs more green, and Robert Shulman attempts to... Read more about this event >>

• 
  Laura Marling
  Roulette Brooklyn

  Laura Marling rose to fame in her teenage years, and after working with indie darlings Noah and the Whale, her debut solo full-length garnered a nomination for England's coveted Mercury Prize. Now, embarking on tour in support of her fourth, Marling is barely 23 but feels like a scion in the current female folk-singer canon. Expect passionately sung, lilted lyrics with plenty of traditional... Read more about this event >>

• 
  The Comedy of Errors
  Delacorte Theater

  Though June 21 is officially the first day of summer, for New Yorkers it’s the opening of The Public’s Shakespeare in the Park that marks the changing of the seasons. This year, the free outdoor series kicks off with The Comedy of Errors, which brings together Hamish Linklater and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as the twins Antipholus and Dromio, respectively. Daniel Sullivan will direct... Read more about this event >>

• More Tuesday Events >>