Listings

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WEDNESDAY

OCTOBER 29

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Photo

JOSEPH JACHNA

Jachna, a Chicago native, studied at that city’s legendary Institute of Design, where he learned the basics of post-Bauhaus eloquence and restraint from Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Their influence is evident in this savvy group of black-and-white images from the ’60s and ’70s, many of abstracted landscapes rendered with maximum graphic punch. At his most confident and idiosyncratic, Jachna reaches into his pictures, often as a spectral hand, flashing the sun in a shard of glass. ALETTI

Through November 1, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 504 West 22nd Street, 212.627.3930

Music

THE STROKES

Born Rich? Rich Girls? The Socialites? Who’s Your Dandy? As expected, our privileged punk Strokes’ new Room on Fire is hotter than Pernod sex on an L.E.S. roof with a U.E.S. slut who digs A.R.E. Weapons. Julian croons his ennui à nuit over revealingly tight new wave parts that mess with distortion and disco. We are young, darlin’—and bliss is just a bathroom scrog away. With Kings of Leon and Regina Spektor. SINAGRA

Today and Thursday at 8, Theater at Madison Square Garden, Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street, 212.465.MSG1

Theater

THE VIOLET HOUR

Sex and society go one-on-one in Richard Greenberg’s hit play Take Me Out, and will probably be doing the same in this new work about a financially strapped young publisher forced to choose between his mistress’s lurid memoirs and his best friend’s unwieldy novel. Evan Yionoulis directs a cast headed by Robert Sean Leonard, inaugurating Manhattan Theatre Club’s reign at the newly restored Biltmore. FEINGOLD

In previews, opens November 6, Biltmore Theatre, Broadway and 47th Street, 212.239.6200

 

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THURSDAY

OCTOBER 30

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Books

‘INTIMACY & GEOGRAPHY: THE NATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY FESTIVAL’

What better salve from, and defiant response to, the Bush-whacked world than a three-day celebration of poems and their creators? The first ever in the city, “Intimacy” allows you a sustained peek into the alchemy by which various bards—from all over the country—summon up their muses and deal with wide-ranging concerns, in readings, panels, performances, and one-on-one interviews. Among the poets in attendance will be Meena Alexander, Eugene Gloria, Kimiko Hahn, Lawson Inada, Li-Young Lee, Arthur Sze, Patrick Rosal, and Tina Chang. FRANCIA

Through Saturday, Asian American Writers Workshop, 16 West 32nd Street, CUNY Graduate Center, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, 212.494.0061

Dance

NOCHE FLAMENCA

Has it really been 10 years since this scrappy, fine flamenco troupe first transfixed Manhattan? Martin Santangelo—Brooklyn-born, now living in Spain—and his Spanish wife, Soledad Barrio, install their troupe of nine, including dancers, singers, and guitarists, in an intimate space for a five-week season, including a New York premiere. Bring the kids; the show sometimes includes one of theirs. ZIMMER

At 8 (preview) and Saturday at 3 and 8, Sunday at 3, Tuesday at 8, and other dates through November 30, Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, 212.239.6200

Film

‘THE NEXT DIRECTOR: HONG SANG-SOO’

This frequently festivalized South Korean filmmaker’s four features have established him as a soulful, often funny formalist who typically focuses on unhappy love affairs. Last year’s Turning Gate and The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) are bittersweet; The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1997) and Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2001) are more purposefully alienated. HOBERMAN

Today through Sunday, BAM Rose Cinema, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718.777.FILM

Theater

KAREN FINLEY

Sat for your psychic portrait lately? “Madame Karen” may be better known for reading out your social-political-sexual aberrations than for probing your inner life, but for two weeks you can watch, free of charge, while affluent art buyers sit for half an hour (by appointment only) and Karen gouaches their insides. Those less concerned with portraiture can attend her one-night-only Séance: Unsolved Mysteries of the Art World the night before Halloween. FEINGOLD

At 8 (séance); Friday, through November 18 (psychic portraits), the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 212.255.5793

 

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FRIDAY

OCTOBER 31

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Books

JOSHUA BECKMAN+MATTHEW ROHRER

Who will parse the erotics of collaboration? Maybe you. Last year’s read-in-one-sitting Nice Hat. Thanks. collected the joint improvisations of poets Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer’s two-line koans (“Once while spying on my neighbor/I solved for x.”), deadpan tercets (“Birds/follow/ mommy.”), and longer adventures in the realm of the non sequitur (e.g., “Black Sabbath’s Paranoid Girlfriend”). They tour behind their new CD, Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. PARK

At 7, Barbès, 376 9th Street, Brooklyn, 718.965.9177; Sunday at 3, Sunny’s, 253 Conover Street, Brooklyn, 718.625.8211

Film

‘EYES WITHOUT A FACE’

Georges Franju’s nocturnal masterpiece of poetic horror has a premise that’s beyond lurid. A plastic surgeon attempts to restore his mutilated daughter by transplanting the faces of kidnapped women on her. On one hand, it’s a superbly shot surreal fairy tale in the tradition of Cocteau’s Orpheus; on the other, it ranks with its slasher-shocker contemporaries, Psycho and Peeping Tom. The print is new. HOBERMAN

Opens Friday, Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, 212.727.8110

Music

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

Somewhat to my surprise despite the wonderful Decoration Day, they were a great band at the Bowery in June: rhythm section sharp, new young fat guy clarion, and Patterson Hood as charismatic telling his stories as singing his songs. These songs are as acutely observed as any being written in the neorealist mode. Learn to love them before you go—you’ll be glad you did. With Satanicide. CHRISTGAU

At 10, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, 212.533.2111

‘HANK MOBLEY FESTIVAL’

Half a dozen tenor saxophonists are convening for this tribute to a major cult figure from the golden age of hard-bop, who made the Blakey-to-Miles journey before Shorter and had a sound impossible to shake: Houston Person, Joe Lovano, Frank Wess, Eric Alexander, Seamus Blake, and Don Braden. Trumpeter Don Sickler serves as the music director, and makes sure you’ll hear Mobley tunes as well. GIDDINS

Through Sunday at 7:30 and 9:30, Friday and Saturday also at 11:30, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, 212.576.2232

ROBYN HITCHCOCK

The Soft Boys have re-disbanded, and he’s once again touring solo: half acid-drenched unplugged garage-pop wit, half stand-up disembodied prophet’s free-associating head, for whom absurdity and despair are closely linked, with a bonus 20 percent of world-class guitarist in there somewhere. Note that the less he tries to be wacky the funnier he is. With Vienna Teng. WOLK

At 7:30 and 10:30, Bottom Line Cabaret, 15 West 4th Street, 212.502.3471

LENE LOVICH

Uhh-oooh-UHHHHH-oooh! One of new wave’s most original voices and visual talents does a rare live show for Halloween. Scary!?! A send-up of her half-Yugoslavian heritage, Lovich’s image has aged impeccably along with her singular dance-pop, and so should the woman herself. Since a sizable chunk of Manhattan is dying to be Lovich circa ’81, it’s only fair that the original can go on living. WALTERS

At 9:30, Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 212.539.8770

DIANNE REEVES

Everyone knows she can sing with a range, imagination, and wit that places her in the great tradition, and with the release of A Little Moonlight (Blue Note), even she seems to believe it. As on the CD, she will appear here with her trio—Peter Martin, Reuben Rogers, and the excellent drummer Greg Hutchinson; she needs no more. GIDDINS

At 8:30, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th streets, 212.247.7800

Theater

‘OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL’

And the title tells you all if you’ve read Allan Gurganus’s bestselling novel. Except that it doesn’t say the adapter is producer Martin Tahse, the director is that resourceful fellow Don Scardino, and the tart-tongued, tell-all heroine is played by the ultra-distinguished Ellen Burstyn, not seen on a local stage since 1995. We’ll be listening. FEINGOLD

Previews begin today, opens November 17, Longacre Theatre, Broadway and 48th Street, 212.239.6200

 

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SATURDAY

NOVEMBER 1

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Art

‘MY PEOPLE WERE FAIR AND HAD CUMIN THEIR HAIR (BUT NOW THEY’RE CONTENT TO SPRAY STARS FROM YOUR BOUGHS)’

The T-Rex title might better have been left unaltered, but curator Bob Nickas does have his finger on the pulse of the moment in this motley all-guy show of mostly small works about sucking, fucking, and “sexual energy as a key to the kingdom.” The teenage-bedroom sensibility is additive, addictive, and negligent. Nickas calls it his protest against Bush. LEVIN

Through November 15, Team, 527 West 27th Street, 212.279.9219

Film

SAMMY DAVIS JR.

The Rat Pack revival has sparked new interest in the last of the song-and-dance men (and, per Sandra Bernhard, “the world’s hippest Jew”). Today, it’s Sammy on TV and, opposite Eartha Kitt, in Anna Lucasta (1958); Sunday, watch his career turn in Porgy and Bess (1959) and his Miles Davis impersonation in A Man Called Adam. HOBERMAN

Today and Sunday, American Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Avenue and 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, 718.784.2007

Music

CÉSARIA ÉVORA

The so-called “barefoot diva” has got those Cape Verdean blues again, mama. No one does post-colonial melancholy better than sixtysomething Évora and her plum-toned voice. The “deep-rooted ache of the heart” she sings of in the title song of her new album, Voz d’Amor, nicely summarizes the island’s morna tradition, while her accompanying guitar, violin, accordion, and clarinet suggest a West African cabaret. GEHR

At 8, Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, 212.496.7070

JUNIOR SENIOR+ELECTRIC SIX

D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat, Junior Senior’s opening salvo, offers more thrills per minute than anything released this year outside of the new Basement Jaxx—when the least party-starting thing on it is the “Mony Mony” steal, you know you’re dealing with professionals. Electric Six come damn close on Fire (Beggars)—they didn’t invent the night, as they claim, but they’ll keep it going. Today with the Affair. MATOS

At 10 and Tuesday at 9, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, 212.533.2111; Tuesday at Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, New Jersey, 201.653.1703

 

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SUNDAY

NOVEMBER 2

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Art

TIM ROLLINS & K.O.S.

With some 40 small studies, “Works on Paper 1983-2003” is a perfect mini-retrospective in miniature of their paintings on text pages or music scores. It compresses their condensations of literary meaning into an emblematic image (the golden horn that graces Kafka’s Amerika, satin ribbons striping “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”) or substance (animal blood, ashes, holy oil, mustard seed). And for once this gallery’s multitask space works. LEVIN

Through November 15, A.R.T., 210 Eleventh Avenue, 212.691.5956

Books

‘HEBREW JAM’

The search to define cultural and political identity, long a struggle for Israelis of all measure, begat this conglomeration of poetry and song. Writers, poets, actors, and translators will congregate to meld classical Israeli poetry and works-in-progress with experimental jazz and traditional Israeli pop hits. A live mix of images from visual artists and audience participation rounds out the simcha. SNOW

At 6, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, 212.294.8301

Music

KID KOALA

Meditative music for turntable, vinyl, and bent finger. Kid Koala furthers his drunk-trumpet style on his second full-length, Some of My Best Friends Are DJs. Heard at a distance, it can all seem like whimsy without substance. Reconstructed live, though, it’s a wonderwork of pastiche and dexterity. Also: DJ P-Love, DJ Jester, Lederhosen Lucil. CARAMANICA

Today and Monday at 6:30, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, 212.533.2111

Theater

‘TABOO’

London makes strange things happen both in and to this new musical about the swinging club scene of the ’80s. George O’Dowd, better known as Boy George, wrote the score (some then, some now) and stars in the show, but not as himself; the new transatlanticized book is by Charles Busch; the choreographer, making his Broadway debut, is downtown’s Mark Dendy. FEINGOLD

In previews, opens November 13, Plymouth Theatre, Broadway and 45th Street, 212.239.6200

 

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MONDAY

NOVEMBER 3

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Music

REGINA CARTER

A violinist of great appeal, she swings hard, often improvising with a lyrical charm and a sound that has grown increasingly sure over time. For this concert, she will perform arrangements from Paganini: After a Dream, backed by a 16-piece orchestra conducted by Ettore Strata and involving several guests. She will play the Guarneri “Cannon,” a violin rarely allowed out of Genoa. GIDDINS

At 8, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Broadway and 65th Street, 212.721.6500

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TUESDAY

NOVEMBER 4

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Dance

GEORGE PIPER DANCES

You won’t find a Mr. Piper on the roster of this British troupe making its New York debut: The company’s moniker fuses the middle names of Michael Nunn and William Trevitt—a/k/a the Ballet Boyz—former Royal Ballet dancers who bring us works by Christopher Wheeldon and Russell Maliphant (both fellow Royal alums) and William Forsythe. ZIMMER

At 8, and November 4 through 9, Joyce Theater, 75 Eighth Avenue, 212.242.0800

Music

RAEKWON

Here comes the Chef again, cooking up something marvelous. His forthcoming album The Lex Diamonds Story is, by all accounts, a return to his Cuban Linx glory days. Like his spiritual cousin Ghostface Killah—also slated for a powerful return in the coming cold season—Rae’s lingually fascinated with the possibilities of sheisty doings in the ‘hood. Hope Ghost himself drops in to commiserate. With C-Rayz Walz & Ice Water Inc. CARAMANICA

At 8, B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 West 42nd Street, 212.997.4144

Photo

BILL JACOBSON

Jacobson delves further into the sublime with a group of soft-focus color photos so luminous they seem to glow from within. Whether his subject is the stormy sky over a country road, the sunlight glinting down a narrow corridor of buildings, or a seated nude, Jacobson carves out a space as charged as it is contemplative—truly a world of his own. He uses color with deft assurance, giving the work a blushing, powdery tactility you want to sink right into. ALETTI

Through November 29, Julie Saul Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, 212.627.2410

Theater

‘THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME’

“Tis the season, apparently, when Thornton turns wilder.” This play by Paula Vogel—her first since How I Learned to Drive —concerns a suburban family swept into a cosmic car crash. Randy Graff, Mark Blum, and Enid Graham lead director Mark Brokaw’s plummily promising human cast; their puppet colleagues are designed by Basil Twist. FEINGOLD

Opens today, Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street, 212.353.0303

‘HENRY IV’

This is the version where they don’t just stand still and say the lines. Dakin Matthews’s condensation of Shakespeare’s two-part drama of the prince with two daddies and two lifestyles, directed by Jack O’Brien, features a high-gloss cast headed by Kevin Kline as Falstaff. With Dana Ivey, Richard Easton, Ethan Hawke, Audra MacDonald, and Michael Hayden also involved, a phat night should be had by all. FEINGOLD

Previews begin today, opens November 20, Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center, 212.239.6277