classical music | New York Music Daily

January 1, 2019

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for January and February 2019

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date. Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance. Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you found out about here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of south-of-the-border-style bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

Mondays in January and February, 8 PM the unpredictably fun, funny art-rock/psychedelic soul band the Academy Blues Project at Shrine

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Also Monday and Tuesday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Iguana, 240 W. 54th St ( Broadway/8th Ave) , 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Mondays at the Vanguard the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra – composer Jim McNeely’s reliably good big band vehicle – plays 9/11 PM, $30 per set plus drink minimum.

Mondays in January, 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays in January Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in January clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Wednesdays in January, 8 PM the Binky Griptite Orchestra (formerly Sharon Jones’ brilliant oldschool soul backing band) at Threes Brewing Outpost, 113 Franklin St (Greenpoint/Kent Aves) in Greenpoint, free

Thursdays at 8:30 in January the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays and Saturdays at 5 PM adventurous indie classical string quartet Ethel plus frequent special guests playing a mix of classical and more contemporary material at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM in January at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in January, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes at Barbes

Saturdays in February, 6 PM low register reedman Josh Sinton’s Phantasos play Morphine at Barbes. Hard to think of anyone more capable of tackling that ominously kinetic songbook

1/1-6, 8:30/10:30 PM lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch at the Vanguard, through 1/3 with his trio and the rest of the stand with a quartet

1/2, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

1/2, 8:30 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” at Troost. 1/17, same time they’re at at Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street (just off of 37th Ave), Jackson Heights

1/3, 7 PM improvisational ten-piece reeds/vox/drums ensemble PRNCX at Arete Gallery, $15. Followed at 9 (separate $15 adm) by Iraqi composer Saman Samadi and his Quintet at Arete Gallery, $15

1/3, 7:30 PM, repeating on 1/5 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play Sibelius’ Lemminkainen and Maidens of the Island suites plus Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloe and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with soloist Gautier Capuçon at Avery Fisher Hall, $34

1/3, 7:30 the booking agents’ convention is in town and there are some phenomenal, cheap lineups around town. Tonight at Drom there’s a free show with intense, rapturous Balkan/Middle Eastern ensemble the Secret Trio –Tamer Pinarbasi, Ismail Lumanovski & Ara Dinkjian – followed at 8:30 by brooding Greek crooner Pericles Kanaris and at 10:00 by chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia playing edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences

1/3, 7:30/9:30 PM playfully lyrical postbop pianist Art Hirahara plus a killer rhythm section of bassist Linda Oh, & drummer Rudy Royston at Mezzrow, $20

1/3, 7:30 PM trumpeter Etienne Charles’ creole jazz band at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

1/3, 7:45 PM slinky female-fronted psychedelic tropicalia band Delsonido at the big room at the Rockwood

1/3, 8 New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez followed at 10 by Sveta Kundish & Patrick Farrell play original Yiddish songs for voice and accordion at Barbes

1/3, 8 PM bouncy Iranian/Swedish dance-pop sister act Abjeez followed by charismatic Egyptian revolutionary singer Ramy Essam at the Poisson Rouge, $25 adv tix rec

1/3, 8 PM Alaskan Americana fiddler/poet Ken Waldman opens his annual mega-star show at at the Jalopy followed by short sets featuring but not limited to torchsong duo Max Hatt & Edda Glass, fiddle/cello duo Hen’s Teeth with Jane Rothfield and Nathan Bontrager, the DuoDuo Quartet with Maeve Gilchrist, Nic Gareiss, Natalie Haas, Yann Falquet–virtuosic harp, dance, cello, guitar; Scottish and Appalachian string music by Jenna Moynihan & Mairi Chaimbeul ,Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer doing gypsy jazz to classic country to anything else; Cajun songstress Erica Weiss & Shindig and bluegrass guitar/bass duo Mark Kilianski & Nate Sabat at the Jalopy, $15

1/3, 8 PM legends from the zeros: singer/guitarist Genie Morrow’s super-catchy, erudite powerpop band Sputnik at the Parkside

1/3, 9 PM wild live techno band Bombrasstico at Bar Chord

1/3, 9 PM wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers at 11th St. Bar

1/3, 10 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Skinny Dennis. He’s also here on 1/31 at 9

1/3, 10 PM the great unsung NYC hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin at the Fat Cat. He’s also here on 1/8 at 7

1/4, 7 PM best free concert of the year? Maybe. Toronto Cuban salsa dura band Okan followed at 7:45 by psychedelic tropicalia-folk bandleader Ramon Chicharron; at 8:30 Mexican border-rock songwriter Quique Escamilla; 9:15 a lame Replacements ripoff; at 1o high-voltage Neapolitan tarantella string band Newpoli; 10:45 Haitian funk/pop singer Malou Beauvoir; and at 11:30 the amazing, phantasmagorical klezmer band Lemon Bucket Orkestra at Drom

1/4, 7 PM folk noir singer Anna May – the missing link between Aimee Mann and Kath Bloom, maybe – at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

1/4, 7 PM semi-supergroup Vicki Kristina Barcelona (the incomparable, charismatic Rachelle Garniez, Bollywood-influenced Amanda Homi, and Terry Radigan) reinvent the songs of Tom Waits at Pangea, $20

1/4, 7:30 PM Tibetan throat-singing ensemble Altai Kai at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

1/4, 8 PM ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach followed by sizzling Niger duskcore guitarist/bandleader Mdou Moctar at Baby’s All Right, $15

1/4, 8 PM haunting, magical Middle Eastern classical singer Shelley Thomas and her band followed at 10 by Super Yamba playing their psychedelic Afrobeat jams at Barbes

1/4, 9 PM hauntingly lyrical art-rock songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Joanna Wallfisch at the small room at the Rockwood

1/4. 10 PM Garifuna bandleader Andy Ordonez and his psychedelic coastal Caribbean combo at Silvana

1/4-6 and 1/10-12, 10 PM (except for 1/6 at 8 PM) singer/dancer Nora Chipaumire “reckons with the production and consumption of pop sound and imagery in the hyper-reality of global capitalism, resurrecting the era of drum magazines, African broadcast stations, color bars, and a people with active connections to rural and township lifestyles playing all-night parties at underground apartheid-era South African speakeasies” at Jack, $25

1/4, 10:30 PM catchy Booker T-esque soul jazz with the David Gibson/Jared Gold Hammond B3 organ band at the Fat Cat

1/5, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed at 8 by intense, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leading his Tango Quartet, and at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

1/5, 6 PM state-of-the-art jazz bassist Christian McBride and his quartet at Bethany Baptist Church – 275 W Market St, Newark, free

1/5, 7:30 PM an awesomely inexpensive global lineup: theToomai String Quintet with psychedelic tropicalia chanteuse Miss YaYa play all kinds of adventurous, global classical repertoire followed at 8:15 by haunting, psychedelic Turkish band Yeni Nostalji ; at 9 the Bil Afrah Project celebrates one of the Middle East’s legendary albums: Ziad Rahbani’s 1975 Bil Afrah suite. An all-star NYC lineup includes percussionist Michel Merhej, who played on the haunting, dynamic original album, very rarely played live in its entirety; at 9:45 sizzling Niger duskcore guitarist/bandleader Mdou Moctar; at 11:15 haphazardly psychedelic Afrobeat-influenced psych-punk guitarist/bandleader Yonatan Gat at & the Eastern Medicine Singers; at midnight awesomely slinky downtempo/cumbia/psychedelic salsa dura band La Mecanica Popular and at 12:45 AM explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas at Drom, $10

1/5. 7:30/9:30 PM mighty, tectonic latin jazz with the Dafnis Prieto Big Bandat the Jazz Standard, $30

1/5, 8 PM latin jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez & Migration followed by soaring, epic all-female mariachi/tropicalia orchestra Mariachi Flor de Toloache at Highline Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec

1/5, 8 PM legendarily eclectic surf band Tiki Brothers followed at 9 by guitarslinger Phil Gammage playing his dark Americana and blues at the Way Station

1/5. 8 PM guitarist Loren Connors duets with fellow six-string luminary David Grubbs and performance poet Steve Dalachinsky; bookended around an a cappella performance by bluesy vocalist Suzanne Langille and poet Yuko Otomo at Holo, $10

1/5, 8:30 PM darkly lyrical Middle Eastern-tinged jazz pianist Laila Biali at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10

1/5 Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with the percussive Bongo Surf, at 10 metalish Providence band the Infra-Men, at 11 wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers and at midnight or so majestic, darkly cinematic surf band the TarantinosNYC.

1/5, 9 PM eclectic, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts at Bar Chord

1/5, 10 PM fiery electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at Skinny Dennis

1/6, 11 AM (in the morning) NY original klezmer icons Metropolitan Klezmer & their mostly-female sister band, kinetic klezmer/cumbia/cinematic jamband Isle of Klezbos at City Winery, $10

1/6, 4 PM a launch event for the new Philip Glass Institute at the New School including a performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble, a panel discussion including the composer and a performance of an excerpt from Lisa Bielawa’s in-progress, made-for-TV opera, Vireo, at the New School ground floor auditorium at 63 5th Ave, free

1/7, 6 PM short sets by violinist Rubén Rengel, trumpeter Brandon Ridenour, the Thalea String Quartet, Verona Quartet and brass quartet the Westerlies at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, free,

1/6, 7 PM wildly theatrical, creepy circus rock band Orphan Jane at LIC Bar

1/6, 7 PM pastoral gothic accordion art-rock with Sam Reider & the Human Hands followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

1/6. 8 PM in reverse order: spot-on Vermont retro honkytonk band Wild Leek River, fiery oldtimey string band the Four O’Clock Flowers. and eclectic, tuneful accordionist/songwriter Ali Dineen at Starr Bar, 214 Starr St. off Irving, Bushwick, L to DeKalb

1/6, 8 PM perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar

1/6, 9 PMoldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Skinny Dennis

1/6, 9ish eclectic, globally-inspired violinist Dina Maccabee at the Owl

1/6, 10:30 PM hotshot bluegrass mandolin slinger Jacob Joliff and band at the big room at the Rockwood

1/7, 4 and 7 PM all-star indie classical choir Roomful of Teeth sing the world premiere of Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices at Times Square, free, follow the sound if you can hear it

1/7, 7 PM riveting, purposeful 30s swing singer Catherine Russell, torchy Europolitan swing band the Hot Sardines & South Atlantic Coast Gullah soul band Ranky Tanky at City Winery, $20 standing room avail

1/7, 7:30 PM indie classical chamber orchestra Wild Up, dark Mediterranean psychedelic bandleader Zola Jesus and intrepid NYC indie classical composer William Briittelle at Merkin Concet Hall, $25

1/7, 7:30 PM pyrotechnic klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, Kathleen Tagg and the Omer Quartet play works by Prokofiev, Debussy, Golijov, John Zorn and Kinan Azmeh at Music Mondays, Advent Church, northwest corner of 93rd and Broadway, free

1/7, 8:30 PM Lebanese art-rock/metal/goth band Gurumiran at Pete’s

1/7, 9 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece and group at the Fat Cat

1/7, 9:30ish Los Mochuelos plays classic Colombian vallenato music at Barbes

1/7, 8:30 PM brief half-hour sets by cellist Clarice Jensen, Carolina Eyck (theremin), and indie classical group ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) at Drom, $10

1/7, 9 PM slashing guitarist Steve Antonakos plays slide guitar blues with his band at Bar Chord. He’s also at the Parkside on the 19th at 8

1/7, 10 PM tuneful, state-of-the-art postbop jazz guitarist Will Bernard and group followed eventually at midnight by awesome, creepy Texas psychedelic band Acid Carousel at the small room at the Rockwood

1/8, 7 PM eclectic, hard-hitting, lyrical composer/tenor saxophonist Stan Killian at 55 Bar

1/8, 7:30/9:30 PM a killer, darkly lyrical trio: crystalline-voiced, noir-tinged third-stream jazz chanteuse Tessa Souter with brilliant latin jazz piaist Luis Perdomo and bassist Dezron Douglas at Mezzrow, $20. She’s also at 55 Bar on 1/11 at 6 for less.

1/8, 8:15 PM edgily lyrical guitarist Matt Forker leads his catchy but acerbic sextet at Shapeshifter Lab, $12

1/8-13. 8:30/10:30 PM pensively edgy, purposeful latin jazz pianist Edward Simon with his Steel House trio at the Vanguard

1/8, 9 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriter Julia Haltigan and her killer band on her old home turf at 11th St Bar

1/8, 9:30 PM the Bronx Conexion play their mighty salsa big band jazz at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

1/9, 7:30/9:30 PM pan-Asian chanteuse/composer Jen Shyu with her hauntingly atmospheric Jade Tongue ensemble at the Jazz Gallery, $25

1/9, 7 PM celebrating the centenary of politically fearless sound collage pioneer Ake Hodell, a rare public performance of the original quadraphonic versions of three of Hodell’s most revered text-sound compositions – on the disappearance of Black Panther members, apartheid in Rhodesia and a JG Ballard-esque history of the 20th century through the prism of automobiles – plus Fia Backström reads from her new translations of Hodell’s writing, at the Emily Harvey Foundation, 537 Broadway #2 (Spring/Prince), $10

1/9, 7 PM Nublu honcho and psychedelic postbop tenor saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin wears many hats throughout the night, which starts with Nublu Orchestra doing a tribute to their late great conductor/leader Butch Morris; at 8:30 longtime Gil Scott-Heron collaborator and electric pianist Brian Jackson; at 10 Silver with Ersahin, Eddie Henderson, Juini Booth, Kenny Wollesen playing the album release show for their new one and at 1 AM Ersahin’s Oceanvs Orientalis at Nublu 151, $tba

1/9, 9 PM darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family at LIC Bar

1/10. 7 PM soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar

1/10, 7 PM electrifying Balkan/Americana violinist/bandleader Sarah Alden at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10

1/10, 7:30/9:30 PM tenor saxophonist Jure Pukl leads a killer band with Melissa Aldana – saxophone; Harish Raghavan – bass; Kush Abadey – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $20

1/10, 7:30 PM Burnt Sugar celebrate 20 years of lush Braxton-ish largescale improvisation, hard funk, James Brown and Bowie covers and more at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

1/10, 7:30 PM, repeating on 1/12 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with soloist Simon Trpčeski, Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen Suite and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade at Avery Fisher Hall, $31

1/10, 7:30 PM Soule Monde – imagine RIck Wakeman playing Booker T & the MG’s – at Symphony Space, $30/$20 age 30 and under

1/10, 8 PM hauntingly noisy/ambient solo cello from Leila Bordreuil plus electoacoustic sets by David Wesley Sutton, singer Charmaine Lee and Kieran Morris at the Fridman Gallery, 169 Broadway, $20/$15 stud

1/10, 8 PM dynamic, subtle all-female klezmer band Tsibele at Barbes

1/10, 8:30 PM tarantella percussionist Alessandra Belloni jams out classical Indian carnatic themes with bansuri flutist Steve Gorn at the Jalopy, $15

1/10, 8:30 PM brilliantly improvisational pianist Mara Rosenbloom‘s philosophically-inspired FLYWAYS with bassist Adam Lane and singer/percussionist Anais Maviel at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

1/10, 8:30 PM Greg Hammontree’s Trumpet Marmalade: “four-NYC hailing, old-school dixieland style jazz musicians call upon Louis Armstrong for inspiration,” at Arete Gallery, $15

1/11, 5:30 PM laid-back Americana/country blues songwriter Jon LaDeau at the American Folk Art Museum

1/11, 7:30 PM this era’s most spellbinding oldschool country singer, Laura Cantrell acoustic at the Rubin Museum of Art, $25 adv tix rec

1/11-12. 7:30/9:30 PM this era’s most cutting-edge, politically relevant large jazz ensemble, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society at the Jazz Gallery, $25

1/11, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow – at Bargbes

1/11, 8 PM a screening of the fascinating documentary Milford Graves Full Mantis, exploring the work of the polymath jazz drummer/music historian/cardiac music visionary, plus a drum duel between Susie Ibarra and Brian Chase at the Fridman Gallery, 169 Broadway, $20/$15 stud

1/11, 8 PM irrepressibly fun blues/swing harmony pals Mamie Minch and Tamar Korn; followed by Hawaiian guitar group King Isto’s Tropical String Band playing the album release show for their new one at the Jalopy, $10

1/11, 8 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou Stephanie Chou and band play her new suite Comfort Girl, focusing on women forced into sexual slavery in Asia during World War II at the Cell Theatre, $20

1/11, 9 PM Super Yamba play their psychedelic Afrobeat jams at Bar Chord

1/11, 9:30 PM catchy, fun guy/girl indie soul band Sunshine Nights at Freddy’s

1/12, 3 and 5 PM the new electroacoustic, gospel-inspired opera Stinney: An American Execution, examining the ugly background behind the murder of 14-year-old South Carolina black teenager, framed and executed in 1944 for a crime he didn’t commit, at the French Institute, 55 E 59th St., $30

1/12, 4 PM this year’s first installment of Luisa Muhr’s amazing Women Between Arts multidisciplinary series opens with performance poet Adeenna Karasick with klezmer trumpet legend Frank London, nterdisciplinary artist Alison Kobayashi and Marisa Michelson & Constellation Chor, who do hypnotic Pauline Oliveros style improvisations at the Glass Box Theatre at the New School, 55 W 13th St, $20, “sliding scale available” for low-income/students

1/12, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes followed at 8 by surreal, intense klezmer/oldtime gospel guy/girl duo Book of J and at 10 byPangari & the Socialites playing classic ska and rocksteady – most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog – at Barbes

1/12, 7 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 with Emmanuel Ax as soloist and Tschaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

1/12. 7 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play late works by Mozart and Dvorak at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, $25 tix avail

1/12, 8 PM the Royal Arctic Institute – who veer between surfy rock instrumentals and darker, quieter, more noir and jazz-tinged themes – at the Parkside

1/12, 8 PM electronic works by Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree, magical thereminist Dorit Chrysler and Nadav Assor screening video and doing “tunneling” – archaeology? Subway building? – at the Fridman Gallery, 169 Broadway, $20/$15 stud

1/12, 8 PM erudite, purist torchy cosmopolitan jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the NY Swing Collective at the Cell Theatre, $15

1/12, 8 PM raucous, politically sharp, anthemic folk noir songwriter Mac McCarty at Sidewalk

1/12, 8 PM subversive avant garde/psych-folk Iranian crooner Mohsen Namjoo at Symphony Space, $30 tix avail

1/12, 8 PM Victor Jara-influenced songwriter Fred Arcoleo followed by south Williamsburg oi punk band the Infiltrators at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

1/12, 8ish creepy noir chamber pop/murder ballad duo Charming Disasterand high-voltage steampunk duo Frenchy & the Punk at Coney Island Baby

1/12, 8:30 PM theatrical newgrass/Americana band the Lobbyists at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

1/12, 10:30 PM hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes followed by a mysterious guy named Davey playing electric sitar at Freddy’s

1/13, 3 PM violinist Juliet Kurtzman and Libertrio play a program TBA at the 92nd ST. Y, free

1/13, 3 PM the North/South Chamber Orchestra plays works by Christopther James, Max Lifchitz, Alexandro Rodriguez and John Winsor. Violinist Claudia Schaer and guitarist Hermann Hudde are the soloists, free, at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church, 122 W. 69th St

1/13, 3 PM indie classical ensemble Sandbox Percussion play a program TBA at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

1/13, 4 PM ten-piece early music ensemble the Academy of Sacred Drama perform the modern premiere of Giovanni Antonio Gianettini’s 17th century cautionary oratorio/parable, La creatione de’ magistrati at Corpus Christi Church, 529 W 121St St $10 tix avail

1/13. 5 PM pianists Joseph Kissner and Evelyne Luest play music of Brahms, Schumann and Chopin at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

1/13, 7 PM Bombay Rickey’s Drew Fleming does his honkytonk Telecaster twang thing with Brain Cloud’s Skip Krevens on pedal steel and Super Hi-Fi’s Ezra Gale on bass followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

1/13, 7 PM smart, darkly pensive third-stream jazz pianist Noa Fort at the small room at the Rockwood. Intense female-fronted psychedelic groove/funk band Imunuri are next door at the big room, same time

1/13, 7 PM haunting Middle Eastern guitarist Ayman Fanous at Scholes St. Studio

1/13, 7:30 PM Igor Butman & the Moscow Jazz Orchestra play their tectonic, epic repertoire at Dizzy’s Club, $35

1/13, 8 PM solo sets by renowned tuba player Dan Peck, singer Chiquita Magic, guitar loopmusic composer Wendy Eisenberg, bassist Sean Ali and intense improvisational cellist Leila Bordreuil at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, $15

1/13, 9:30 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at 55 Bar

1/14, 7 PM tuneful postbop pianist Jim Ridl leads his group from behind the Rhodes at 55 Bar

1/14, 7 PM “a double bill of two genre-defying drummers performing their newest work. Shayna Dunkelman performs a rare solo set weaving electronic sounds with acoustic percussion. Still searching for a word to describe a live performance with acoustic percussion and electronics that isn’t like watching karaoke. It’s dope, so shut up and call/text/@ if you think of the word. Lia Braswell brings her new project, Mimi Was with Jared Samuel; a combination of improvised as well as composition: ethereal landscapes, intertwining soft grooves between a variety of dynamic and pedal-infused instrumentals to compliment the melodic power of theatrical lyricism, busting ass with class (and vice versa) at Arete Gallery, $15

1/14, 9 PM energetic delta blues/Romany swing guitarist Felix Slim at LIC Bar

1/14, 9:30 PM Cumbiagra – who’ve been going in a much more psychedelic, electric cumbia direction lately- at Barbes

1/15, 7 PM bassist Max Johnson’s Heroes Trio with Jason Rigby on saxophone, Jeff Davis on drums playing “compositions by the great bassists and heroes, past and present, such as Jimmy Garrison, Henry Grimes, Charlie Haden, Mark Dresser, Slam Stewart and many more” at Barbes followed at 9 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

1/15, 7:30/9:30 PM the haunting, smokily atmospheric Michael Leonhart Orchestra with Chris Potter on tenor sax at the Jazz Standard, $30

1/15, 7:30 PM edgy, shapeshifting, charismatic Korean art-rock/chamber folk/acoustic psychedelic band Black String jam with Ned Rothenberg (woodwinds), Jonathan Goldberger (electric guitar), Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) and more special guests at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix avail. Black String are also at the Lincoln Center atrium on 1/17, same time for free.

1/15, 8 PM slinky, oud-fueled Middle Eastern/Nile Delta dance orchestra Alsarah & the Nubatones at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, $18, rsvp reqd, this is an intimate space and likely to sell out, early arrival advised

1/15, 8:30 PM perennially tuneful, lyrical piano improviser/composer Kris Davis leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: 1/16 with the bes rhythm section she’s ever had, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts and John Hébert, wow

1/15-19, 8:30/11 PM Jamaican jazz piano icon Monty Alexander at Birdland, $30 seats avail

1/15-20, 8:30 PM perennially vital latin jazz piano sage Eddie Palmieri at the Blue Note, $30 standing room avail

1/15, 9 PM elegant oldtimey/frontporch folk/jazz songwriter Shannon Pelcher at Bar Chord

1/15, 9:30 PM the charismatic Fran Pado – of dark art-rockers Goddess – and Hannah Bleier star in Prism and Dewdrop’s Cult Sing-A-Long: “Hell takes many forms. In this hilarious, painful battle between haggard cult devotees, you’ll sing along with Prism and Dewdrop, two middle aged 70’s burnouts with ravished faces and frail selves. They grapple for the love, or at least sexual attention, of their long dead cult leader whose rotting corpse graces the stage. And they, frozen at 14 yrs., recreate, again and again, their yearning for adult male approval. Much Ado About Nothing meets Stage Door in this bio-feminist roller coaster of laughter and tears,” at Dixon Place, $13 adv tix rec

1/15, 10 PM psychedelic funk/Afrobeat jammers the People’s Champs at Baby’s All Right, $10

1/15, 10:30 PM brilliant drummer/percussionist Willie Martinez & La Familia Sextet play classic salsa grooves at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, $10

1/16 and 1/22, 7:30 PM, also on 1/19 at 8 the NY Philharmonic with soloist Yefim Bronfman play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 at Avery Fisher Hall, $31

1/16. 8 PM pianist Simone Leitao plays Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor plus works by Villa-Lobos and Bach at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $30

1/16, 9 PM cinematic rock band Fuck You Tammy play amazingly spot-on recreations of themes and songs from Twin Peaks and David Lynch films at LIC Bar

1/16, 9 PM world-weary noir pop songwriter Mara Connor at Baby’s All Right, free

1/17, 7:30/9:30 PM an all-star 18-piece big band plays new jazz compositions by Angela Morris, the Wing Walker Orchestra’s Drew Williams and the cinematic Heyseon Hong at the Jazz Galley, $15

1/17, 7:30 PM pianist Per Tengstrand plays works by Debussy, Ravel & Chopin. at Scandinavia House, $25

1/17, 7:30/9:30 PM tuneful, purposeful guitar/piano duos by Nate Radley & Gary Versace at Mezzrow, $20

1/17, 7:30 PM edgy, shapeshifting, charismatic Korean art-rock/chamber folk/acoustic psychedelic band Black String at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

1/17, 8 PM centuries-old, mystical Jewish spiritual counting songs performed by Psoy Korolenko (vocals), Zisl Slepovich (clarinet, flute, piano, vocals) & Ilya Shneyveys (accordion, guitar, vocals) at Barbes

1/17, 8 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black at Gold Sounds, $10

1/17, 8 PM dark cabaret legend Sanda Weigl sings her new interpretations of obscure 13th century revolutionary poet Walther von der Vogelweide at Joe’s Pub, $18

1/17, 8:30 PM Indian-inspired cellist George Crotty plays the album release show for his new one at the Jalopy, $15

1/17. 9 PM thunderous, titanic Rhode Island Balkan street band What Cheer Brigade, hard-hitting, brass-fueled newschool latin soul/boogaloo dance band Spanglish Fly and epic, original, intense original Balkan monsters Raya Brass Band at Littlefield, $12

1/18-19, starting at 6 PM it’s Golden Fest, the nation’s most ecstatically fun festival of minor keys, chromatics, eerie close harmonies and music from the Balkans to points further east and west. Not cheap, but a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet is included. At Grand Prospect Hall, 263 Prospect Ave in south Park Slope, R train to Prospect Ave.

1/18, 7 PM improvisational organist/multi-instrumentalist Jamie Saft with bassist Brad Jones and drummer Bobby Previte plus cellist Hank Roberts with drummer Vinnie Sperrazza and pianist Jacob Sacks at the Owl

1/18, 7 PM the debut of classical ensemble Quartet121 playing works by Olga Neuwirth, Katherine Balch, Camila Agosto, James Diaz and Reiko Füting, featuring soprano Amber Evans at the Tenri Institute, $10/$5 stud

1/18, 7:30/9:30 PM drummer/hip-hop artist Kassa Overall duets with Jason Moran at the jazz Gallery, $25, get there early

1/18, 7:30 PM carnatic vocal/tabla duo Ganavya and guitarist Ty Citerman’s Bop Kabbalah playing ‘new radical liberation songs” at Arete Gallery, $15

1/18, 8 PM rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY at Barbes

1/18, 9 PM catchy, brilliantly lyrical, irrepressibly sardonic janglerock/folk-punk songwriter, New Yorker illustrator and White Hassle alum Marcellus Hall at Pete’s

1/18, 10 PM a short and very welcome return show by singer Jodie Rae Plaut’s refreshingly down-to-earth, wickedly smart, Costelloesque janglerock band Delusions of Grand Street at the Parkside

1/18, 11 PM the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir and dark cabaret – at Sidewalk

1/19, 7 PM an avant garde summit: fearlessly relevant, genuinely riveting, populist tenor sax visionary/improviser Matana Roberts , electroacoustic film composer/performerHaley Fohr aka Circuit des Yeux & Suzanne Langille and Daniel Carter, plus Brooklyn Raga Massive sitar mastermind Neel Murgai & Loren Connors at Issue Project Room, $25/$15 stud

1/19, 7:30 PM cleverly funny, catchy female-fronted band Talay, edgy, punk-inspired female-fronted funk band Eliza and the Organix , creepy, psychedelic circus rock/Russian folk band Mad Meg and guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery power trio the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – at Coney island Baby, $10

1/19, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes followed at 8 by trumpeter Ben Holmes’ broodingly Middle Eastern/klezmer-tinged Naked Lore trio and then at 10 by psychedelic salsa bandleader Zemog El Gallo Bueno at Barbes

1/19, 8 PM Americana songstress Erin Durant and Philly Goat and ferociously lyrical, Macbeth-inspired art-rock/psychedelic songwriter Rose Thomas Bannister and her killer band at the Jalopy, $10

1/19, 8 PM in the round: fearlessly political, picturesque retro folk/blues songwriter Joshua Garcia, 60s folk vet Tom Smith and Gary Allard at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

1/19, 8 PM kinetic jazz vibraphonista Yuhan Su leads her quintet at the Cell Theatre, $15

1/19, 9:30 PM ominous Laurel Canyon-style psych-folk band the Flowered Gnomes – a Volebeats spinoff – at Pine Box Rock Shop

1/19, midnight baritone crooner Sean Kershaw‘s Serpentones play “hi octane Brooklyn honkytonk”at at Sidewalk

1/20, 3 PM a dynamic, haunting, sometimes explosive afternoon of Hungarian music with Vadalma and Fényes Banda at Hungarian House, 213 W 82nd St., $15

1/20, 6:30 PM a post Golden Fest Balkan blowout at the Jalopy with the Balkan-American stars of decades to come, Cocek Nation followed at 7 by dynamic, subtle all-female klezmer band Tsibele, at 8 by the Romany-flavoed Sarma Brass Band and at 8 by the ferocious Novi Hitovi Brass Band, $10, “nobody turned away,” proceeds to benefit Balkan music education

1/20, 6 PM fearlessly relevant, genuinely riveting, populist sax visionary/improviser Matana Roberts duets on alto with Darius Jones followed at 7 by RaaDie with Lorenz Raab on trumpet and Christof Dienz on zither at Downtown Music Gallery

1/20 ,7 PM darkly torchy southwestern gothic/Europolitan songwriter/guitarist Miwa Gemini at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10

1/20, 9 PM violinist Damian Dudu leads a nine-piece band playing classic and new rembetiko sounds at Drom, $15 standing room avail

1/21, 7:30 PM jazz trumpeter Bria Skonberg and her swing band, edgy, eclectic pan-Mediterranean art-rock/latin/chanson ensemble Banda Magda and hip-hop/math-metal band R.O.T.I. at National Sawdust, pay what you can, all proceeds to Planned Parenthood in celebration of the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade

1/21, 9:30 PM ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach at Barbes

1/22-27, 7:3-0/9:30 PM this era’s arguably best jazz pianist, Vijay Iyer at the Jazz Standard, $30. 1/22-23 he lead his trio, 1/24-26 with his sextet

1/22, 8 PM ex-Dylan lead guitarist Larry Campbell with singer Teresa Williams at City Winery, $25 standing room avail

1/22, 8 PM hard-charging oldschool soul/funk/rock singer Bette Smith and band at the Mercury, $10

1/22, 8:30 PM haunting Middle Eastern jazz violinist Layale Chaker and group play the album release show for their new one at the Stone at the New School, $20. Very highly recommended.

1/22, 9 PM brooding cello slowcore songs with Meaner Pencil at Freddy’s

1/22, 10 PM rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill‘s Stranger Days Quartet at 55 Bar

1/23-26, 7/9 PM ferociously smart postbop trumpeter Ingrid Jensen leads her quintet at Birdland, $30 seats avail

1/23, 7:15 PM classic rural Macedonian sounds with reedman Vedran Boshkovski and ensemble at Balkan Cafe, 455 W. 56th St, $15

1/23-26, 8:30 PM hauntingly atmospheric pan-Asian chanteuse/composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New Scnool, $20. Choice pick:1/24 with drum sampler Ikue Mori and wicked violist Mat Maneri

1/24, 7 PM the epically haunting Moscow-based East/West Trio – Marina Omelchenko, organ ; Oganes Kazarian, duduk; Tehmine Zaryan, soprano performing works by Bach, Ekmalyan, Komitas, Mozart, Pachelbel and Shirakazi at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, free

1/24, 7 PM perennially sharp;, wickedly tuneful, jangly Americana band Mary Lee’s Corvette revisit their classic live performance of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks album in its entirety at Joe’s Pub, $18

1/24, 7:30 PM, repeating 1/25-26 at 8 Jaap van Zweden conducts the NY Philharmonic in Julia Wolfe’s new immersive visual and musical event — featuring lights, chamber choir, video, and projection — weighing the legacy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, at Avery Fisher Hall, $31

1/24, 7:30 PM Son Sublime play oldschool Afro-Cuban charanga jams at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

1/24, 7:30 PM poet Paul Muldoon hosts a colorful roundttable with fellow poet Jorie Graham, novelist Colm Tóibín and visionary violinist/social critic Laurie Anderson discussing how to keep the arts alive amid corporate fascism, social media saturation and other grim current events at National Sawdust, $30 adv tix rec

1/24, 8 PM edgy lefty lead guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at Barbes

`1/24, 8:30 PM clarinetist Aaron Novik and band explore classic Indian raga themes at the Jalopy, $15

1/24, 8:30 PM ambient guitar ensemble Fyrn – whose guitars are “bowed with metal files and metal bars, creating dense and hauntingly beautiful, decaying sonic ambient landscapes that engulf the audience as the ensemble sets up in a large circle around them,” at Arete Gallery, $15

1/24, 8 PM conversational pianist Jeffrey Siegel plays musical miniatures by Wilhelm Stenhammar (Sweden), Jean Sibelius (Finland), Carl Nielsen (Denmark), Dag Wirén (Sweden), Christian Sinding (Norway) and Brahms at Scandinavia House, $25

1/24, 8 PM Lea Bertucci and Amirtha Kidambi sing their new duo vocal project followed by the world premiere of Mass of Dissolution, Bertucci’s new work for percussion trio Tigue (Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody), “an incantation against the blind violence of military-industrial power that dominates global dynamics,” at the Kitchen, $25

1/24, 8:30 PM a wild klezmer dance party with Steven Weintraub Ken Maltz, Lauren Brody, Aaron Alexander at Town & Village Social Hall, 334 E 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

1/24, 10 PM raucous Boston newgrass band Mamma’s Marmalade at Pete’s

1/25, 6 PM oldtime resonator guitarist/songwriter Rust Dust at the American Folk Art Museum

1/25, 7:30 PM violinist Stanichka Dimitrova leads a quintet playing a haunting, literary twinbill: Beethoven – Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9, Opus 47 (“Kreutzer”) and Janáček – String Quartet “Kreutzer Sonata”at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $25/$10 stud/srs

1/25, 8 PM the year’s best twinbill so far: intense Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, traditional Turkish band Dolunay followed by the world’s creepiest crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Barbes

1/25-26, 8 PM the reliably entertaining, adventurous Chelsea Symphony play an Aaron Dai world premiere plus Frank Martin — Ballade for Flute and Orchestra with soloist Kim Lewis; Bach — Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052R; Sibelius — Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 43. The 1/26 show switches out the Martin for Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, at St. Paul’s Church, 315 W 22nd St., $20 sugg don

1/25, 8 PM meticulous, unbelievably tight, hypnotic tabla-and-harmonium ensemble Talavya at Flushing Town Hall, $16/$10 stud/srs, under 19 free w/id

1/25, 8 PM the 11-person Tri-Centric Vocal Ensemble perform lush, microtonal Anthony Braxton works from their new album of his Syntactical Ghost Trance Music at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

1/25, 8 PM pianist Mary Prescott plays solo improvisations at Arete Gallery, $15

1/25, 8 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra with soloist Daniel Trifonov play Schumann’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

125. 8 PM the American Symphony Orchestra play works of Robert Mann, Jacob Druckman, Vivian Fine and William Schuman at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, $25 tix avail

1/25, 8 PM lustrously tuneful percussionist James Shipp with guitarist Taylor Ashton and elegant folk noir songwriter Jean Rohe at the Owl

1/25, 8 PM ex-October Project bandleader and art-rock chanteuse Mary Fahl at City Vineyard, $25

1/25, 9 PM Stefan Jackiw, violin & Conrad Tao, piano play works by Stravinsky, Lutoslawski, Saariaho and Brahms at the 92nd St. Y, $25

1/25, 11 PM purist CBs style female-fronted punks the Carvels NYC followed by punk/rockabilly band the Screaming Rebel Angels at the Mercury, $12

1/26, 2:30 PM pianist Beth Levin performs works of Wang Jie, Vladimir N. Drozdoff,Beethoven and Handel at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, free

1/26, 4 PM “music, performances, and readings inspired by Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 song “C.R.E.A.M” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) with a lineup led by Sable Elyse Smith, including Jibade-Khalil Huffman and Simone White, Devin Kenny, and Bonita Oliver, as well as poetry readings by A. H. Jerriod Avant and Smith herself. “Works that dismantle and reimagine “C.R.E.A.M.” as a song and as a larger cultural moment. The contributors interrogate mass incarceration and shed light on the interrelationship between the prison-industrial complex and high finance, violence, intimacy, and trauma, to pursue what exists beyond those broken narratives,” free w/rsvp

1/26, 4/5:30 PM oldschool Colombian cumbia jammes La Cumbiamba Eneye at Flushing Town Hall, $14,$8 kids

1/26, 6 PM eclectic, edgy soul/art-rock/funk/chamber-pop cellist/singer Marika Hughes followed at 8 by the Dirty Waltz Band- a seven-piece group playing more than a dozen instruments in 3/4 time from Balkan, Irish, jazz, blues and American folk traditions – and then at 10 by the haphazardly funny Eastern Blokhedz – who do psychedelic covers of 60s Russian psychedelic pop songs and specialize in the catalog of legendary Polish singer Edita Piaha –at Barbes

1/26, 8 PM the Orlando Consort, Joined by bass Robert Macdonald,sing works by Josquin des Prez, Clemens non Papa, Nicolas Gombert and others, concluding with Lamentations by English Tudor composer Robert White at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 46th St, $30 tix avail

1/26, 10:30 PM long-running, high-energy, sardonic Irish folk-punk band Box of Crayons at Freddy’s

1/27, 4 PM the Orchestra Now play Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” and Ravel’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s classic, creepy “Pictures at an Exhibition,” at Symphony Space, free

1/27, 4 PM German recorder quintet Han Tol & Boreas Quartett Bremen play medieval tunes by Tye, Holborne, Dowland, Vivaldi, Boismortier and others at Corpus Christi Church, 529 W 121St St $10 tix avail

1/27, 7 PM brilliant steel guitarist Mike Neer’s Steelonious – who do Monk covers in the same vein as Buddy Emmons – followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

1/27, 7 PM Wavefield Ensemble premiere works by Matthew Ricketts, Rebecca Saunders, Katherine Balch’s Una Corda, plus works by Iannis Xenakis at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

1/27, 8:30 PM eclectic, tuneful accordionist/songwriter Ali Dineen at Pete’s

1/28, 7:30/9:30 PM powerhouse reedwoman Anna Webber plays flute and sax leading a sextet with Matt Mitchell on piano at the Jazz Gallery, $15

1/28, 10ish singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Barbes

1/29, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, indie classical chamber group Either/Or play works by their leader Richard Carrick at the Miller Theatre, free

1/29, 6:30 PM “In her new film Pellea[s], Josephine Meckseper adapts Maurice Maeterlinck’s otherworldly play Pelléas et Mélisande for our current sociopolitical landscape, weaving together fictional scenarios and dramatic footage captured from the last Presidential inauguration, as well as from the landmark women’s march that followed. Conflating contemporary political realities with a timeless love story, the city of Washington D.C. and its architecture become a context and site of departure, giving voice to debates around notions of gender found in the original play. Underscoring the film is Arnold Schoenberg’s modernist version of Pelléas et Mélisande,” at the Kitchen, free

1/29, 8 PM New Andalucia play Middle Eastern tunes at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Washington St., C to Clnton/Washington

1/29-2/2, 8:30 PM perennially interesting piano/percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire lead a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New Scnool, $20. Choice pick: 1/31 with bassoonist Katherine Young

1/29, 9 PM sharply lyrical janglerock/Americana/soul songwriter Matt Keating and guitarist Steve Mayone’s catchy new project the Bastards of Fine Arts at 11th St. Bar

1/30, 7:30 PM unstoppably edgy, deservedly iconic, fearlessly political downtown guitarist Marc Ribot plays his enigmatic, witty acoustic score to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid at the World Financial Center, free

1/30, 7:30/9:30 PM whirlwind B3 jazz organist Pat Bianchi leads a killer quartet with Joe Locke on vibes at the Jazz Standard, $30

1/30-31, 7:30 PM, repeating 2/1-2 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play Mozart’s Symphony No, 1 and Jupiter Symphony; Emmanuel Ax joins them on piano for Stravinskiy’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra and Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 at Avery Fisher Hall, $34

1/30, 8 PM haunting, cinematic lapsteel genius Myk Freedman leads his band at Barbes

1/30, 8 PM bassist Nick Dunston leads his highly improvisational quintet, Atlantic Extraction, with Louna Dekker-Vargas on flutes, Ledah Finck on violin, Tal Yahalom on guitar, and Stephen Boegehold on drums at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

1/30, 9 PM powerhouse soul singers Meah Pace, Shelly Bhushan, Nicole Zuraitis, Carol Thomas and special guests salute Aretha Franklin at LIC Bar

1/31, 7 PM Burnt Sugar celebrate 20 years of lush Braxton-ish largescale improvisation, hard funk, James Brown and Bowie covers and more at the Brooklyn Museum, $16

1/31, 7:30 PM a screening of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu with electronic score by Irene and Linda Buckley at the World Financial Center, free

1/31, 7:30 PM fearlessly relevant latin rock songwriter and protest song connoisseur Ani Cordero at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

1/31, 7:30/9:30 PM postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a new two-guitar quartet with both Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman at the Jazz Gallery, $15

1/31, 8 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co at Otto’s

1/31, 8:30 PM dynamic, subtle all-female klezmer band Tsibele at Town & Village Social Hall, 334 E 14th St. (between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

1/31 8:30 PM Indian carnatic singer Samyukta Ranganathan with her electric raga band at the Jalopy, $15

1/31, 8:30 PM Brooklyn folk-punk legend Paranoid Larry at Freddy’s

1/31, 10 PM drummer Arthur Vint & Associates reinvent classic Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks at Barbes

1/31, 10 PM legendary punk-soul bandleader Jon Spencer at Rough Trade, $20 gen adm

1/31. 10;30 bouncy live hip-hop groove band the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at the Blue Note, $20 standing room avail

1/31, 10:30 PM noisy, careening, paint-peeling duo Wolf Eyes at Brooklyn Bazaar $17

2/1, 5:30 PM soul/gospel belter (and Lenny Molotov collaborator) Queen Esther at the American Folk Art Museum

2/1, 7 PM indie classical ensemble SoundArt NYC play a rare program of Costra Rican composers including Valeria Brenes, Carlos Jose Castro Mora and Susan Campos-Fonseca at the Americas Society, free

2/1, 7:30 PM Alloy Orchestra play their live score to Josef von Sternberg’s silent gangster film Underworld at the World Financial Center, free

2/1, 9:30 PM chamber tango night with poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo’s Tango Quartet and similarly adventurous pan-latin singer Sofia Tosello at joe’s Pub, $20

2/1, 9:30 PM Cumbiagra – who’ve been going in a much more psychedelic direction lately – at Barbes. They’re also here on 2/11 at 9:30ish

2/1, 10 PM Atlas & the All World Band play fiery, socially aware roots reggae at Shrine

2/2, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed eventually at 6 by low register reedman Josh Sinton’s Phantasos playing Morphine covers, followed at 8 by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri playimg their creepy Transylvanian jazz at Barbes

2/2. 5 PM pensive, Middle Eastern-tinged guitarist Jonathan Goldberger and band followed at 6 by atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

2/3, 7 PM tuneful, state-of-the-art postbop jazz guitarist Will Bernard and band play Strayhorn followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

2/4, 9:30ish Los Mochuelos plays classic Colombian vallenato music at Barbes

2/5, 7 PM Free Range Rat with Slavic Soul Party‘s John Carlson 0- trumpet, pocket trumpet & flugelhorn; Eric Hipp – tenor saxophone – Shawn McGloin – bass and George Schuller – drums, followed at 9 by SSP doing their amazing Balkan brass/hip-hop mashups at Barbes

2/6, 8 PM pyrotechnic clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski’s ferociously kinetic NY Gypsy All-Stars at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

2/6, 9:30 PM high lonesome Orbisonesque acoustic Americana with Bobby Blue the Balladeer at the Jalopy. 2/16 at 11 they’re at Better Days, 302 Broome St; 2/22 at 10 they’re at Diviera Drive, 131 Berry St in Wiliamsburg

2/9, 8 PM the NY Repertory Orchestra with Gretchen Windt, mezzo-soprano play Vaughan Williams: English Folk Song Suite; Elgar: Sea Pictures; Moeran: Symphony in G minor at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 26th St., $15 sug don

3/24, 5 PM the Manhattan Chamber Players perform works by Mozart, Schumann, and Bruch at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

4/7, 5 PM the Kandinsky Trio perform a lyrical early Beethoven piano trio and then will be joined by clarinetist Jose Garcia Taborda and narrator Patricia Raun for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

5/26, 5 PM pianist Andrea Lam performs Bach, Schumann and Stravinsky at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

6/16, 5 PM cellist Angela Lee, with pianist Evelyne Luest play works by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Janáček at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/srs

December 27, 2018

Full Throttle Intensity with Lionel Yu at Carnegie Hall

It’s impossible to remember seeing as many kids in a Carnegie Hall audience as there were for Lionel Yu this past evening. Not just gradeschoolers, but pretty much every age group alive had come out to see the Chinese-American pianist work up a sweat with his superhuman technique, crushing volleys of chords and catchy hooks.

Yu takes the High Romantic as high as it can possibly go – and nobody knows better than Yu that the piano is a percussion instrument. If nonstop thrills are your thing, he’s your man. His chops are astonishing: he lives in that magic space where his fingers hit the keys with a perfectly unwavering attack, just hard enough to unleash the loudest possible sound. Great drummers work the same way, allowing their kits to resonate rather than trying to beat the sound into them.

Yet as much as Yu is all about raw power and breathtaking speed, ultimately he’s defined by passion. It felt viscerally redemptive to watch this conservatory-trained composer attack the keys with blitz after blitz of icepick staccato phrases, often riding the pedal, an effect that would make a lot of piano teachers cringe. In an era where conservatories have been Sovietized to churn out an assembly line of cookie-cutter players, a rugged individualist like Yu stands out even more. That’s probably why all the kids came out to see him: his music is the furthest thing from safe or tame.

Although online pageview counts can never be trusted, his youtube channel boasts over 19 million hits. Whether or not that’s completely accurate, he’s popular enough to pack Carnegie Hall. His compositional style is deceptively simple: high-voltage variations on strikingly direct, translucent themes which often look straight back to the baroque. There’s also a very strong, and catchy Chinese folk influence in his writing, and whenever a simple progression threatens to slide off the table into video game drama or pageantry, he steers clear of cliche, shifting to a slashing chromatic phrase or an accidental.

He began the night with the epic Rolling Thunder, a red herring in the sense that it was the night’s most dynamically shifting number: this evening was all about hard and fast. Never Surrender, with its lightning cascades, dates from ten years ago when Yu was out of work and depressed and trying to write himself out of that downward spiral, he explained to the crowd. Apparently, the attempt was a success.

Gallop, with its Rachmaninovian chromatics, Arabic and flamenco licks, came across as an escape narrative. Yu’s biggest youtube hit, Fires of a Revolution, was also the most challenging piece of the night, ablaze with punishing, machinegunning staccato octaves, a whirlwind descent or three and like many of the other pieces on the bill, a lefthand that was every bit as daunting and exhilarating as the firestorm further up the keys.

The most amusing piece on the bill was Pachelbel’s Nightmare, a scenario where Yu envisioned the composer being taken over in his sleep by a “shadow” figure, the famous Canon turned from major to minor and given a deliciously severe thrashing before something approximating calm finally returns.

Yu has his limitations: like Art Tatum (or Motorhead), ballads are not his forte (they’re not forte enough – sorry). Yu could have given guest violinist Christina Bouey – no stranger to passion and sizzling technique herself – a chart that was every bit as much of a workout. Instead, she was limited to assertive, sometimes insistent phrases that any third-year student could have played, if with less dynamic subtlety. Yu can play quietly and lustrously if he wants, but those moments were gone in a flash as his jackhammer lefthand kicked in. And until he worked his way up to full blast, those quieter interludes felt muzzled.

But for sheer adrenaline, Yu is unsurpassed. Very, very few pianists have the physical prowess to be so forceful and graceful at the same time. Kathleen Supove is a rare example of one who does; Tatum was the same way. Judging from the size and diversity of the crowd, Yu’s time has come. At a point in history where the average age of audiences at the big Manhattan concert halls is 65, we need performers like this guy more than ever.

December 25, 2018

A Musical Tribute to America’s Best-Loved Supreme Court Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a.k.a. The Notorious RBG is not the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court, but her contributions to American jurisprudence arguably surpass those of any other female member and most of its men as well. With that in mind, let’s wish an equally long and influential career to Sonia Sotomayor – she and Ginsburg are needed there more than ever. Beyond RBG’s acerbity and ever-increasing value as a rare voice of reason, she’s beloved for her sense of humor. And like many jurists, she’s not averse to the spotlight, whether on or off the bench. For example, she’s performed in an opera, which makes more sense considering that her daughter-in-law is soprano Patrice Michaels.

While best known as an opera singer, Michaels is also a composer. Her suite The Long View: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs is the centerpiece of the album Notorious RBG in Song, streaming at Spotify. Backed by eclectic pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, Michaels traces the career of her mother-in-law through music as diverse as the cases RBG has had to hear. All the songs here are distinctly 21st century: the cellular phrasing of Philip Glass seem an obvious influence, along with jazz and the early, quasi-neoromantic Schoenberg. Michaels’ tendency here to shift between a bel canto delivery and sprechstimme also brings to mind Schoenberg’s art-songs as well as the operas of Missy Mazzoli.

Michaels’ song cycle begins with the brief, incisively insistent foreshadowing of Foresight, based on a 1943 letter from Justice William O. Douglas contemplating when the time might come to allow women to serve as clerks on the court – talk about low aspirations! Celia: An Imagined Letter from 1949, an uneasily circling, spacious ballad, offers insight into how Ginsburg’s mom encouraged her aspirations while holding fast to tradition.

RBG’s father-in-law, Morris Ginsburg, gets a shout in Advice from Morris, balancing the neoromantic with hints of boogie-woogie. Michaels gives voice to RGB’s late husband, Martin D. Ginsburg in the wry lawyers-in-love anecdote On Working Together. Anita’s Story, an 80th birthday present for RBG is a much funnier narrative, colorfully illustrating a political awakening the jurist jumpstarted in one of her clerks.

The brief, Debussy-esque New York, 1961 offers insight into her daughter’s early years as a latchkey kid. The Elevator Thief is a more lighthearted, vividly imagistic picture of innocuous mischief from an era when kids had to come up with ways to entertain themselves instead of relying on their phones.

Dissenter of de Universe: Five Opinions and a Comment is a pastiche of quotable RGB statements on affirmative action, women’s and voting rights (the infamous Shelby v. Holder case), and a mouthful for Michaels to sing, but she’s game all the way through. In the suite’s scampering coda The Long View, Questions Answered, Michaels channels RBG’s tirelessness (more or less, anyway), irrepressible wit and gravitas: it’s the album’s most dramatic moment.

The album contains four more songs. Lori Laitman’s miniature Wider than the Sky is a gently pastoral setting of an Emily Dickinson poem. Vivian Fung’s Pot Roast à La RBG captures a sardonic, unexpectedly acidic kitchen scenario. Stacy Garrop’s poignant aria My Dearest Ruth employs one of RBG’s husband’s final love letters. The final track is Derrick Wang’s You Are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution, from his comic opera Scalia/Ginsburg. Like the other songs here, it’s a challenge to make music out of prose that, while entertaining. was hardly written to be sung. That’s where the comedy comes in; one suspects that the Notorious RBG would approve.

December 24, 2018

A Bracingly Majestic Double Concerto and a Couple of Classy Museum Mile Gigs From Bandoneon Innovator JP Jofre

JP Jofre may be known as one of the world’s foremost soloists on the bandoneon, the little accordion that Astor Piazzolla catapulted to fame. But Jofre is also a brilliant and pioneering composer whose work transcends nuevo tango to encompass the neoromantic, indie classical and jazz. His latest and most ambitious project yet is the first ever Double Concerto for Bandoneon and Violin – streaming at Spotify – which he performs along with violinist Michael Guttman and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. This won’t be on the bill at the Argentine-born composer’s next New York performance; instead, he’ll be leading his Hard Tango Band at the ongoing series of free 5:30 PM shows at the balcony bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Dec 28 and 29.

Throughout the Double Concerto, there’s a great deal of conversational interplay between the bandoneon and the violin; reduced to lowest terms, Guttman is typically the good cop. Jofre, as usual, gets extraordinary dynamic range out of his instrument, from ominous low drones to chirpy flourishes at the top while the orchestra follows similarly challenging trajectories. Rhythmic shifts are constant and counterintuitive, and the whole unit follows them seamlessly, hardly an easy task.

Jofre opens solo before Guttman sails in overhead, building steely, unresolved intensity to usher in the explosively pulsing allegro movement. The orchestra tackle it with a meticulous but vigorous pulse, its bursts of counterpoint blending such disparate elements as orchestral Piazzolla, Debussy and the baroque. Guttman resolutely answers Jofre’s creepy chromatic loops, then the mighty dance ensues again.

Brooding Jofre atmospherics contrast with wistful Guttman violin, the orchestra and piano adding Tschaikovslan lustre in the adagio. An astringently leaping solo violin cadenza introduces the milonga and its impassioned pulse, rising and falling with Persian-tinged echo effects.

The album’s final three pieces, all duets, have specific titles beyond tempo indicators. Jofre’s rainswept washes and subtle insistence give Guttman a launching pad for his plaintively soaring lines in the elegaic Before the Curtain. Como El Agua maintains the mood with its slow tidal shifts and La Vie En Rose allusions, while Sweet Dreams is a more impassioned lullaby than you might expect. Whether you call this nuevo tango or classical music, it’s characteristic of the ambition and brightly focused melodicism that have defined Jofre’s career up to this point.

December 19, 2018

A Richly Eclectic, Rapturous Program of Ljova Compositions for Strings at Lincoln Center

Since the early zeros, virtuoso violist Ljova a.k.a. Lev Zhurbin has built one of the most colorfully eclectic repertoires of any string player anywhere. Lush, enveloping film themes, tangos, wild Russian string band music, original arrangements of some of the ancient folk themes that Stravinsky drew on for the Rite of Spring, and hypnotic loopmusic are just the tip of the iceberg. Thursday night, Lincoln Center’s Jordana Leigh was clearly psyched to have him back after having booked his high-voltage, cinematic Kontraband a few years back. To her, Ljova is fam – and as he confided late in the show, he and his kids became big fans of the mostly-weekly free concerts here. This time out, joined by a brilliant and similarly diverse cast from the worlds of latin music, classical and the avant garde, he aired out some of the rarer material in his ever-increasingly vast songbook.

Using a loop pedal, he built the night’s opening piece, Say It from a gorgeously bittersweet, Gershwinesque four-chord riff to a soaring, bittersweet anthem: it was like watching a one-man string quartet, bolstered by the cello-like low end from his signature six-string fadolin. He’s come a long way since that cold night at Barbes a few years back where he broke out the pedal in concert for the very first time.

Another solo piece, Healing, was dedicated to his late friend, the great tango pianist Octavio Brunetti – whose final show, Zhurbin noted, was across the campus at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. With Zhurbin bowing on and off the low strings and inducing skittish high harmonics, its wounded austerity shifted in and out of focus, a subtle showcase for the violist’s vaunted technique.

“I’d like to start inviting people up here in batches,” Zhurbin grinned, as cellist Yves Dharamraj, violinists Cornelius Dufallo and Ariana Kim joined him for a series of ballet pieces. Asha, dedicated to legendary Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle, echoed one of the Bach cello suites. Melting River, the title track from his 2013 one-man band recording, seamlessly blended the High Romantic with Philip Glass-ine minimalism.

Zhurbin was in top form as cynical raconteur, explaining that when he was in music school, those who deviated from twelve-tone severity were dismissed as potential film composers. So he decided to try his hand at an ad jingle or two. Window Cleaner, which he and the group delivered live for only the second time ever, was the night’s most irresistibly amusing piece, shifting from brooding Russian Romanticism – dirty windows? – to a swinging romp through a shiny faux French musette.

Bassist Pedro Giraudo had joined the ensemble by the time they got to Mecklenburg, another ballet number, which was far more serious, considering it originated as an improvisation and attempt to get the kids running around the room at an upstate house concert to chill out. But by the end, it seems the kids had won, as the circling motives gave way to latin flair.

Violinist Melissa Tong and Curtis Stewart, violist Hannah Nicholas and cellist Joshua Roman took the stage with the rest of the ensemble for the final three numbers. The high point of the evening was The Comet, a swirling, turbulent, troubled piece written in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election. Through its muted images of troops massing on the border to a volcano of leaping, jarring, searingly atonal riffs, it brought to mind the work of Kurdish composer and kamancheh mastermind Kayhan Kalhor, with whom Zhurbin has worked in the past. He’d premiered it as a loopmusic piece on that same that cold night at Barbes in 2016.

They closed with Holodomor, a wounded, elegaic narrative of the deadly displacement of Russian peasants under Stalin, and then a surrealistically bittersweet, punchy string band approximation of Balkan brass music dedicated to the late composer Harris Wulfson, an old Golden Fest pal, It’s hard to think of any other composer other than Ljova writing as fluently and playfully across so many styles.

This year’s mostly-weekly free concerts at the atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. winds up on Dec 20 at 7:30 PM with psychedelic tropicalia dancefloor personality Miss Yaya; get there early if you’re going.

December 17, 2018

World-Class Symphonic Grandeur From an Unlikely Spot

Playing devil’s advocate, here’s how Roger Nichols introduces the liner notes for the Utah Symphony’s sumptuous new recording of Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony: ”Igor Stravinsky remembered Saint-Saëns as ‘a sharp little man’, demonstrably unimpressed by the sounds emanating from the orchestra in The Rite of Spring. Succeeding generations have perpetuated this view of Saint-Saëns as a carping pedant, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who excelled in providing music that was all surface and little content.”

#gutpunch.

Nichols quickly goes on to explain how that perception is only part of the picture. In the days when it was even more customary (and often necessary) for composers to rely on commissions from the entitled classes to pay the rent, guys like Saint-Saëns would churn out one predictably cheery, cliched score after another. After all, the landed gentry of 1880s France had no more interest in anything challenging or cutting edge than the tattooed newcomers to Bushwick and Bed-Stuy do now. But as anybody who’s heard Carnival of the Animals or Danse Macabre – each written for Saint-Saëns’ family – will agree, there’s a whole different side to his work.

This is a rare recording – streaming at Spotify – where the shorter pieces on the program actually upstage the centerpiece. Conductor Thierry Fischer and the ensemble give Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 every bit of opulent ostentatiousness it deserves, a fullscale orchestral work supercharged with both organ and piano, the icing on a many-layered sonic cake. As classical party music goes, this is about as good as it gets. Recorded live in concert just over a year ago on the group’s home turf, the sound quality is magnificent. Solos throughout the orchestra, from James Hall’s oboe to Louise Vickerman’s harp, are precise and emphatic. Exchanges between various sections of the group are seamless, and the dynamics cover as much ground as a symphonic ensemble possibly can. And the hooks come at you, over and over again: just when you’re humming one, another will jump in and displace it.

The performance of the composer’s only slightly less lavish 1909 suite Trois Tableaux Symphoniques d’Après La Foi is even more of a thrill. If less ambitiously than Bartok, Saint-Saëns by then had fallen under the spell of North African music. While this is limited to what fans of Middle Eastern sounds cynically call “Hollywood hijaz,” the French Romantic was obviously feeding off a big jolt of inspiration and that translates to the orchestra here. Its cinematic vistas may be comfortable and predictably catchy, but they’re hardly shallow. And the wistful finale has poignancy to rival anything Samuel Barber ever wrote. The orchestra follow by stampeding through the chromatics of the famous Bacchanale from the opera Samson & Delilah, every single click of the castanets fired off with relish.

Over the years, the people of the state of Utah haven’t done themselves any favors by pulling stunts like withdrawing from the Boy Scouts of America since girls are allowed to join Scout troops now (you’d think that it would be the other way around, that all the boys would want to join the Girl Scouts for the sake of the enormous profits in selling cookies, but that’s a topic for another time). Rather than reinforcing any regional preconceptions, this album reminds how great art sometimes flourishes in unlikely places. Put this on your playlist along with the best-ever recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, by the Rochester Symphony Orchestra…if you can find it.

December 9, 2018

A Rare NYC Performance of a Centuries-Old French Epic

Music Before 1800’s monthly concerts give ambitious concertgoers a chance to hear rare works that sometimes haven’t been performed here for centuries..or maybe ever, in the hundreds of years since they were written. Most of these shows are at Corpus Christi Church at 529 W 121St St., just up the hil from the 125th St. stop on the 1 train. You can get in for as little as $10.

Has Marc Antoine Charpentier’s Christmas Pastorale, dating from around 1686, ever been performed in New York? If so, Music Before 1800 may have staged it. For serious verisimilitude, they’re bringing in French vocal and instrumental group Ensemble Correspondances to the church play it this Dec 16 at 4 PM. The ensemble – whose name means “connections” – recorded it a couple of years ago, and have a new album of Charpentier’s La Descent d’Orphee aux Enfers streaming at Spotify. It’s a good way to become acquainted with how they tackle Charpentier’s alternately lavish and spare dynamics, as well as his similarly diverse themes.

If you can get used to a Gallic group who roll their R’s, Spanish style, this album will immerse you in elegant, sometimes unexpected counterpoint, with striking yet comfortably balanced contrasts between the men’s and women’s voices. While this was not written in contemporary French, if you speak the language, the dialogue is remarkably easy to understand. While the suite’s theme may be on the hellish side, the music is anything but, with sinuous flute harmonies woven into lushly lilting strings and a thicket of viola da gamba, all imbued with the ambered, slightly astringent tone that period instruments deliver. As is the custom with digital recordings these days, the album is divided up into 26 separate tracks, many of them less than a minute long.

Soprano Caroline Weynants displays a stately but fetching, almost imploring delivery at times. As the protagonist’s journey becomes more perilous, the music grows more stark and austere, then tilts toward an epic grandeur. Breathlessly scampering nymphs, desperate shepherds, cowardly lovers, all sorts of torments and ghosts pass through the sonic frame. The way the group motor along in places, it becomes very clear that our hero and his entourage can’t wait to get the hell out. Lively operatic drama gives way to a brightly flurrying fanfare and then a moodily waltzing downward trajectory: Euridyce, show your face so this poor guy can go home! “Stay with us forever,” is the choir’s solemn response. The end is every bit as somber as the intro is buoyant.

December 1, 2018

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for December 2018 and January 2019

Daily updates, and a January/February calendar coming 1/1 –til then, if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how the trains are at night and on the weekend.

Mondays at the Vanguard the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra – composer Jim McNeely’s reliably good big band vehicle – plays 9/11 PM, $30 per set plus drink minimum.

Mondays in December, 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays in December, Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting at 10:30 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests.

Tuesdays in December, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at 9 PM at Barbes (check the club calendar). Get there as soon as you can as they’re very popular. $10 cover.

Wednesdays in December, 8 PM the Binky Griptite Orchestra (formerly Sharon Jones’ brilliant oldschool soul backing band) at Threes Brewing Outpost, 113 Franklin St (Greenpoint/Kent Aves) in Greenpoint, free

Three Thursdays in December: 12/6, 12/13 and 12/20, 7ish Sophia Sobers’ enveloping, hypnotic electronic soundscape Synthetic Sound Baths at 320-B Canal St (Bwy/Church). Chill on plush soft sculptures Sobers created as part of her multimedia installation, free

Thursdays at 8 in December the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Free classical concerts on Saturdays at 4 PM in October at Bargemusic; usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Sundays in December, at sometime past noon at Hank’s, Nashville gothic crooner Sean Kershaw‘s legendary honkytonk brunch is back; special guests from his wide circle of NYC Americana acts keep the afternoon going until about 7. It’s just like 1999 again -at least until the bar closes sometime this year

Sundays in December, 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of trios at the Bar Next Door; the 12/30 show is a very very rare solo gig

12/1, 5 PM, cinematic guitar-and EFX dude Xander Naylor followed by atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl – sort of a more straightforwardly trippy version of John Hollenbeck – at Pete’s

12/1, 7 PM Tejas Tope solo on tabla, sarangi player Rohan Misra, then a carnatic vocal performance by Shankhadip Chakraborty with Misra, Todd Miller on tabla and Niyati Kashyap on harmonium at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

12/1, 7:15 PM dark psychedelic acoustic blues/klezmer/reggae/soca jamband Hazmat Modine at Terra Blues. They’re also here on 12/15

12/1, 8ish acerbic, smartly historically-inspired, politically fearless acoustic songwriter Kristin Lems at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

12/1, 8 PM brilliantly improvisational pianist Mara Rosenbloom‘s philosophically-inspired FLYWAYS with bassist Adam Lane and singer/percussionist Anais Maviel at I-Beam, $15

12/1, 8 PM drummer Devin Gray’s intricately kinetic, highly improvisational Dirigo Rataplan at Greenwich House Music School, $15/$12 stud/srs

12/1, 8 PM a rare NYC appearance by high-voltage Afro-Colombian bullerengue bandleader Darlina Saenz at the Jalopy, $15

12/1, 8 PM imagistic, compellingly lyrical acoustic songwriter Sandy Bell guests at chamber pop stylist Alice Bierhorst’s album release show followed at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

12/1, 8 PM the NYU01 Orchestra play Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85; Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, “Italian” at the NYU Skirball Center, LaGuardia at Washington Square South, free

12/1, 9 PM a stripped-down oud and vocal version of Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, slinky, oud-driven Turkish band Dolunay at the Owl

12/1, 8:3o PM soul-rockers NO ICE‘s charismatic frontman Jamie Frey followed by scruffy indie gutter blues duo Eleanor at the Gutter, $5. Frey is also at Freddy’s the following night, 12/2 at 8.

12/1 Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with the surf-punk Tsunamibots, the Swiss Obsidians, the brand-new Renegade Lounge and sometime around midnight the kazoo-driven El Muchacho

12/1, 9 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

12/1, 9 PM the Space Merchants – the missing link between the Stooges and X – at Hank’s, $8

12/1, 10 PM oldschool soul ballads with singer Camille Atkisson’s Empire Beats at the Way Station

12/2, 1 PM low-key deep-Brooklyn sounds with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens playing a gospel brunch show at Bar Lunatico. They’re also here on 12/16

12/2, 2 PM Trio Solisti play works by Haydn, Brahms and Dvorak at the Town Hall, $17

12/2, 2:30 PM erhu player Feifei Yang leads her quartet playing a wild mix of 1930s Shanghai speakeasy tunes, coy classical and cheesy top 40 covers at Flushing Town Hall, $16/$10 stud free for 18 and under

12/2, 3 PM Chloe Fedor and Jessica Park,violin; Monica Davis,viola; Benjamin Larsen,cello and Stuart Breczinski,oboe play Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370; Paolo Marchettini: Septem vitia capitalia (The Seven Deadly Sins); Britten: Phantasy Quartet for Oboe & String Trio in F minor, Op. 2 and Beethoven: String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, Park Slope, any train to Grand Army Plz, sugg don

12/2, 3 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play works by Milhaud, Stravinsky’s Firebird and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with soloist Aaron Diehl at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

12/2, 3 PM the Greenwich Village Orchestra play the Beethoven Triple Concerto in C Major and the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra at All Saints Church, 230 E 60th St (2/3rd Aves), $20, $20

12/2, 3:15 PM concert organist Daniel Brondel plays a program TBA at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

12/2, 4 PM the Orchestra Now plays Bartok’s Symphony No. 6 at Symphony Space, free

12/2, 7:30 PM serpentine, cinematic, epic art-rock band Book of Harmony and string metal band Stratospheerius at Drom, $10 adv tix rec. This twinbill absolutely slayed at Gold Sounds last summer.

12/2, 8 PM perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar

12/2, 8:30 PM Cameron Mizell – the best pastoral jazz guitarist not named Bill Frisell – at Pete’s

12/3, 6 PM the improvisationally-inclined Osso String Quartet at the Fat Cat

12/3, 7 PM the Argus Quartet premiere string quartets by Ted Hearne, Christopher Cerrone and Juri Seo at 1 Rivington St., 2nd Fl. just off Bowery, $20/$10 stud,

12/3, 7 PM diverse, purposeful, poignant bassist/composer Iris Ornig plays the album release show for her new one Storyteller with a killer quintet featuring Arco Sandoval on piano at 55 Bar

12/3, 8 PM witheringly lyrical Texas populist songwriter James McMurtry at City Winery, $28 standing room avail

12/3, 8 PM fascinatingly lyrical, individualistic pianist Sylvie Courvoisier with her trio, then joined by trumpeter Nate Wooley at Roulette, $18 adv tix req

12/4, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, perennially interesting piano/percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire play works by Crumb, Saint-Saens and Tschaikovsky at the Miller Theatre, free

12/4, 7 PM lustrous singer and badass cello-rock bandleader Serena Jost at Pangea, $20

12/4, 7:30 PM the NY Philharmonic play Britten’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s ferocious antiwar Symphony No 7 at Avery Fisher Hall, $30 tix avail

12/4, 8:30 PM Thurston Moore leads a series of non Sonic Youth bands at the Stone at the New School, $20. Get there early. Choice pick: opening night with Bill Nace (guitar) Samara Lubelski (violin)

12/4, 9 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriter Julia Haltigan and her killer band on her old home turf at 11th St Bar

12/4, 10 PM Ensemble Ipse play recent music for string quartet including works by Stephanie Griffin (the hilarious Happy Car Ride from her Lost String Quartet), Alex Hall, Ari Sussman, Ursula Brown and Can Bilir at Arete Gallery, $20/$10 stud/sr

12/4, 10:30 PM charismatic, adventurous postbop/avant garde trombonist/crooner Frank Lacy leads his sextet at Smalls

12/5, 1 PM rising star pianist Mackenzie Melamed plays works by Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Medtner at the Greene Space, free, res req

12/5, 7 PM the New School Studio Orchestra plays a rare all-John Clayton big band jazz program at the New School auditorium at 63 Fifth Avenue, Room U100, free

12/5, 7:30 PM postbop sax cult hero Kenny Brooks leads his quartet at Smalls

12/5-8 the annual three-day free Roots & Ruckus Festival at the Jalopy starts tonight, with short sets by an insanely good, pan-global cross section of the NYC folk underground. Stage 1 at the Jalopy Theatre begins at 9:00 PM – The Jalopy Chorus; 9:30 PM – Taylor Plas; 10:00 PM – Yva Las Vegass 10:30 PM – fearlessly haunting, dynamic, charismatic Romany/Balkan chanteuse Eva Salina with pyrotechnic accordionist Peter Stan; 11:00 PM – Lord Youth; 11:30 PM – Rashad Brown; Stage 2 at the Jalopy Tavern starts at 8:00 PM – Wyndham Baird; 9:00 PM – Hannah Thompson 10:00 PM – The adrenalizing, bluegrass fiddling Berger Sisters; 11:00 PM – Anna J. Witiuk

12/5, 8 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” and Middle Eastern flavored hash smoking anthems at Troost

12/5, 8/9:30 PM rising star singer/pianist and Christian McBride protegee Kelly Green with Alex Tremblay (bass), Evan Hyde (drums) at Mezzrow, $20

12/5, klezmer clarinet/mandolin wizard Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

12/5, 9 PM bass goddess/soul singer Felice Rosser’s ageless reggae-rock-groove band Faith at C’Mon Everybody, $10

12/5, 9 PM Lainie Fefferman premieres her electroacoustic song cycle White Fire, “about feminist ways of re-owning foundational Jewish texts – attempting to give a powerful voice to matriarchs and heroines often sidelined in the narrative,” at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

12/6, 7 PM cellist Matt Haimovitz and the Mannes Cello Ensemble play a program TBA at the New School auditorium, Room A106, 66 W 12th St, free

12/6, 7 PM the Jazz Passengers’ spectacular vibraphonist Bill Ware leads his quintet followed by the great unsung NYC hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin at the Fat Cat. Rubin is also here on 12/11 and 12/18 at 7

12/6, 7:30 PM, repeating on 12/8 at 8 Jaap van Zweden leads the NY Philharmonic playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, plus works by Schubert and Strauss at Avery Fisher Hall, $31 tix avail

12/6, 7:30 PM adventurously tuneful pianist Aruan Ortiz with special guest tba; the concert’s second half features two chamber pieces: Living in the Midst of a Twisted Globe, to be performed by the trio of violinist Mary Rowell, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler & pianist Geoffrey Burleson; and Ogguere (when the soul of the earth, dances around spectral motions), played by brass quintet: Daniel Blankinship and Nate Wooley (trumpets), Ryan Keberle (trombone), Vince Chancey (French horn) & José Dávil (tuba) at Greenwich House Music School, $25/$20 stud/srs

12/6, 7:30 PM kinetic Cuban jazz pianist Elio Villafranca leads his trio at Aaron Davis Hall, free, rsvp req

12/6, 6 PM klezmer violinist Jake Shulman-Ment with rippllng tsimbl (Ukrainian Jewish dulcimer) player Pete Rushefsky at Poe Park in the Bronx.

12/6, 7 P{M pianist Biljana Petrovska plays a rare program of works by Macedonian composers Tamislav Zografsky, Damjan Temkov, Bete Ilin and Dimitrije Buzarovski plus her own haunting arrangements of folk tunes at Gallery MC

12/6, 7:30 PM the playful the Nouveau Classical Project perform a program of emerging composes TBA at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

12/6, day 2 of the annual three-day free Roots & Ruckus Festival at the Jalopy continues with short sets by an insanely good, pan-global cross section of the NYC folk underground. Stage 1 at the Jalopy Theatre starts at 8:30 PM – Miss Maybell with Charlie Judkins; 9:00 PM – Brooklyn Raga Massive with Neel Murgai & Mir Naqibul Islam; 9:30 PM – Bobby Blue The Balladeer 10:00 PM -western swing faves Brain Cloud’s frontwoman Tamar Korn – who can impersonate any instrument ever made; 10:30 PM – wild, spiraling, rare rustic minor-key Polesian klezmer dances and grooves with Litvakus;11:00 PM -pensively psychedelic, massively tuneful Moroccan/Venezuelan-influenced songwriter Miriam Elhajl; 11:30 PM – fiery oldtimey string band the Four O’Clock Flowers. Stage 2 at the Jalopy Tavern has 8:00pm – Paisley Fields; 9:00pm – Mara Kaye; 10:00pm – Skalopy Brass

12/6, 8 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez followed by Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, slinky, oud-driven Turkish band Dolunay at Barbes

12/6, 8 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co with “guest vegan” Stella Rose Saint Clair at Mable’s Smokehouse, 44 Berry St, Williamsburg, free

12/6, 8:30 PM the world’s creepiest crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Bar Lunatico

12/6, 9 PM intense, soaring harmonium player/singer Elana Low – a more organic, trancey version of Marissa Nadler, maybe – at Petes

12/6, 9 PM Betsayda Machado y La Parranda – “the voice of Venezuela” and the Jimi Hendrix of the cuatro, Jorge Glem lead an allstar band playing parranda, gaitas y aguinaldos and more at Drom, $25 gen adm

12/6, 10 PM perennially haunting, atmospheric folk noir/art-rock chanteuse Marissa Nadler at Rough Trade, $15 gen adm

12/6, 10:30 PM long-running phantasmagorical art-rockers/circus punks Devotchka at the Manderley Bar, $27.50. 12/8 at 8 they’re at Elsewhere, $27.50 gen adm

12/7, 6 PM magical ex-Chicha Libre timbalera Karina Colis leads her latin jazz group followed at 10:30 by cutting-edge B3 organ and trombone soul/jazz grooves with the Jared Gold and Dave Gibson Band at the Fat Cat

12/7, 6:30 PM high-voltage psychedelic cumbia/Afrobeat jamband MAKU Soundsystem at the rec center at Marcus Garvey Park, free. The following evening, 5/8 an hour earlier they’re at the Arrow Fieldhouse, 35-38 35th St. in Astoria, free, N/W to 36th Av e, They’re also at Joe’s Pub on 12/13 at 9 for $15

12/7, 7 PM the Bil Afrah Project celebrates one of the Middle East’s legendary albums: Ziad Rahbani’s 1975 Bil Afrah suite. An all-star NYC lineup includes percussionist Michel Merhej, who played on the haunting, dynamic original album, very rarely played live in its entirety. The group absolutely slayed with this last year – at CUNY Elebash Hall, 365 5th Ave north of 34th St., $25

12/7 day 3 of the annual three-day free Roots & Ruckus Festival at the Jalopy continues with short sets by an insanely good, pan-global cross section of the NYC folk underground. Stage 1 at the Jalopy Theatre starts at 8:00 PM – Eli Smith 8:30 PM -the haunting Ukrainian Village Voices; 9:00 PM – plaintive Yorkshire/Appalachian singer Jan Bell – whose gloomy chronicles of Brooklyn gentrification are spot-on; 9:30 PM – charismatic, politically fearless, historically-inspired oldtime country blues duo Piedmont Bluz; 10:00 PM – The Sunwrays (Frankie Sunswept & Kyle Morgan);10:30 PM – The Horse-Eyed Men; 11:00 PM – Isto; 11:30 PM – Nat Myers. Stage 2 at the Jalopy Tavern has 7:00 PM – Starcrossed Losers; 8:00 PM – blues guitarist Will Scott – who can play just about any style from all over the country; 9:00 PM -King Isto’s Tropical String Band play jaunty, balmy Hawaiian sounds; 10:00 PM – Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, slinky, oud-driven Turkish band Dolunay ; 11:00 PM – The Rocket 88’s

12/7, 7 PM irrepressible, transgressively funny postbop saxophonist Jon Irabagon does double duty, first with his noisy Axis project, then with pianist Gabriel Zucker. Cellist Mariel Roberts of the Mivos Quartet follows, solo at Spectrum, free

12/7, 8 PM amazing string quintet Sybarite5 – who are also the world’s coolest Radiohead cover band – at the Cell Theatre, $27

12/7, 8 PM downtown guitar icon Elliott Sharp followed by Hat (the electroacoustic Iranian music project) at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20 for both sets, $15 for one. Sharp is also there the following the night, 12/8 an hour earlier followed by eclectically tuneful keyboardist Brian Marsella & Tuba Mob

12/7, 8:30 PM fearlessly smart, eclectic, avant garde-inclined Toot Sweet accordionist Mary Spencer Knapp solo at the Gutter, $5

12/7, 10 PM Pangari & the Socialites play classic ska and rocksteady – most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog – at Barbes

12/7-8, 10 PM purist, lyrical postbop tenor saxophonist Alexa Tarantino leads her group at Birdland, $30

12/8, 4 PM the Erik Satie Quartet – Ron Hay (trombone), Max Seigel (bass trombone), Ben Holmes (trumpet), and Andrew Hadro (bari sax) –reinvent classic and obscure Satie chamber pieces as well as rare compositions by his obscure contemporaries, followed at 8 by Holmes’ broodingly Middle Eastern/klezmer-tinged Naked Lore trio with Kyle Sanna and Shane Shahanan and then at 10 by psychedelic salsa bandleader Zemog El Gallo Bueno at Barbes

12/8 day 4 of the annual free Roots & Ruckus Festival at the Jalopy continues with short sets by an insanely good, pan-global cross section of the NYC folk underground. Stage 1 at the Jalopy Theatre starts at 7:00 PM – Barry Clyde; 7:30 PM – Brother Roy; 8:00 PM – preteen banjo sensation Nora Brown; 8:30 PM – Aaron Frazer; 9:00 PM – perennially relevant, boisterously amusing acoustic Veracruz-style folk-punk band Radio Jarocho; 9:30 PM -soul/gospel belter (and Lenny Molotov collaborator) Queen Esther 10:00 PM -eclectic, tuneful accordionist/songwriter Ali Dineen; 10:30 PM – high-voltage Americana jamband Spirit Family Reunion;; 11:00 PM -dark, carnivalesque oldtimey songwriter Feral Foster; 11:30 PM – haunting flamenco/Sicilian folk chanteuse Julia Patinella. Stage 2 at the Jalopy Tavern has 7:00 PM -brilliantly lyrical dark oldtimey songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Pete Lanctot & the Stray Dogs ; 8:00 PM – Fatboy Wilson & Old Viejo Bones; 9:00 PM –Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues – who do an awesome, slyly funny evocation of the Memphis Jug Band; 10:00 PM – La Nueva Canción; 11:00pm – Wyndham Baird & His Band

12/8, 7 PM rapturously bristling minor-key viola and clarinet duos and improvisations: Lev ‘Ljova’ Zhurbin & Vasko Dukovski at Spectrum $15

12/8, 7:30 PM pianist Jonathan Biss plays music by Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann at Irving Auditorium, Irving Pl/17th St., $16

12/8, 8 PM the Barnard-Columbia Chorus’ Holiday Concert with the Symphony of Psalms: Igor Stravinsky, Magnificat: J. S. Bach at Church of the Ascension, 221 W 107th St.

12/8, 8 PM the 60-piece Manhattan Wind Ensemble play works by Camille Saint-Saëns, David Holsinger, David Maslanka, Johan de Meij and Hector Berlioz at Symphony Space, $18 adv tix rec

12/8, 8ish veteran politically fearless acoustic songwriter Charlie King at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

12/8, 8 PM drummer Sanah Kadoura’s Middle Eastern jazz group at the Cell Theatre,

12/8. 8 PM terse, anthemic dark folk/Americana songwriter Lara Taubman followed at 9 by raucous, politically sharp, anthemic folk noir songwriter Mac McCarty at Sidewalk

12/8, 8:30 PM the Spheres chamber music collective play new works by Adam Billings, Rohan Chandler, Cem Guven, Kyle Brenn, Elliott Roman and Nathan Shreve at Scholes St. Studios, $10

12/8, 10 PM the slinky, cinematic Ghost Funk Orchestra play the vinyl release show for their new single at Footlight Bar

12/8, 10 PM sizzling electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at Skinny Dennis

12/8, 11 PM funny, explosive oldschool style punk rockers the Live Ones at Hank’s, $10

12/9, 2:30 PM the 2001 at 50 festival at Barbes with a free screening of the Space Odyssey with a new score by Aaron Kruzini & Ryan Pate; Arturo Reyes; Chris Bacon (Claudio Carboni); Chris Northrup; Dinnersss; Jay Vilnai; Nick Shea; Peter Litvin and Rajeev Maddela.

12/9, 4 PM fiery, force-of-nature klezmer/classical violin/piano duo Lara St. John and Matt Herskowitz at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

12/9, 6 PM guitarists Jay Sorce and Jordan Dodson, cellist JoAnn Whang, clarinetist Mark Dover, saxophonist Kendra Emery play music by Susanna Hancock,Maria Kaoutzani, Finola Merivale, Emma O’Halloran, Gemma Peacocke, and Shelley Washington at 1 Rivington St., 2nd Fl. just off Bowery, $20/$10 stud,

12/9, 6 PM Fackpamp (guitarist Anders Nilsson, drummer Hampu Ohman-Frolund and amazing microtonal violinist Sarah Bernstein followed at 7 by irrepressible, transgressively funny saxophonist Jon Irabagon‘s noisy Axis sax trio with John Hegre and Nils Dronen and at 8 by the compellingly conversational Giacomo Merega and Kent O’Doherty bass/sax duo at Downtown Music Gallery

12/9. 7 PM spine-tingling, darkly mystical art-rock/avant-garde/chamber pop songwriter Carol Lipnik – pretty much everybody’s choice for bst singer in all of NYC – with similarly haunting pianist Matt Kanelos at Pangea, $20

12/9, 7 PM crystalline-voiced noir Americana songwriter Jessie Kilguss shares a short-set bill with a lot of cult-favorite talent: Dave Derby, Nathan Schram, badass Whiskey Girls cellist Patricia Santos, first-class Americana crooner Cliff Westfall at Mirror Tea House, 575 Union St., (3rd Ave/Nevins), Gowanus, free

12/9, 7 PM genre-smashing avant-jazz saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band debut her harrowing jazz suite about women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese in WWII at the third stage at the Rockwood, $15

12/9, 7:30 PM rapturously eclectic jazz chanteuse Marianne Solivan leads her quartet at Smalls

12/9, 7 PM jamgrass/folk-punk road warriors Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band at the Mercury, $12 adv tix rec

12/9, 8ish NYC’s answer to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hugh Pool at 11th St Bar

12/9, 8 PM reggae-rockers Zion80 and wild, hilarious klezmer punks Golem at Drom, $15 adv tix rec

12/9, 8:15 PM cinematic, kaleidoscopic jazz composer/singer Annie Chen plays the album release show for her new one at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

12/10, 11 AM sharp the Momenta Quartet play their deviously hilarious multimedia Lost String Quartet for children with original music by Momenta violist/composer Stephanie Griffin, theater direction by Mexican director Fernando Villa Proal and scenography by Pedro Pazáran Trujillo. Kids love the crazy humor, but the music is very sophisticated and will grab you regardless of how old and cynical you are. At Time In Children’s Arts Initiative 227 W. 29th Street, Studio 4R, free, rsvp reqd,

12/10, 5 PM perennially tuneful, lyrical piano improviser/composer Kris Davis leads the New School Jazz Orchestra in an all-Carla Bley program at Room I531, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St, free

12/10, 8 PM pianist/composer Burnett Thompson plays his new jazz arrangements of Chinese tribal melodies with bassist Alex Blake at Mezzrow, $20

12/10, 8:30 PM wildfire guitarist Brandon Seabrook with Cooper-Moore on diddley bow and Gerald Cleaver on drums at Bar Lunatico

12/11, 7 PM “the Slippery Fish pay tribute to the Mexican pedal steel master Tõno Quirazco, who in the 1960’s combined the new sound of ska music out of Jamaica with country twang to invent a twist on the Caribbean sound. With Ari Folman-Cohen – bass and John Echelay – pedal steel,” followed at 9 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

12/11, 7 PM magical microtonal violinist Sarah Bernstein’s Unearthish and the vocal/piano duo of Shelley Hirsch and klezmer-jazz piano icon Anthony Coleman at Arete Gallery, $15

12/11, 7:30/9:30 PM bassist Harish Raghavan with Joel Ross – vibraphone; Immanuel Wilkins – saxophone; Micah Thomas – piano at the Jazz Gallery, $15

12/11, 7:30 PM the Manhattan Chamber Players perform Shostakovich’s ethereal, haunting String Quartet No. 13 in Bb minor, Bruch’s Kol Nidre Variations, plus works by Brahms and Schumann at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, $25

12/11-14, 8PM hauntingly jangly noir Americana/surf/punkgrass band the Sadies at Union Pool, $20. Wickedly catchy Americana/paisley underground rockers Girls on Grass open the 12/11 show at 8, with the Sadies at 9.

12/11-15, 8:30 PM no wave laptop percussion legend Ikue Mori leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: 12/13 with amazing, darkly intense pianist Satoko Fujii’s latest quartet Mahobin (Japanese for “thermos”), and 12/14 with Mephista: Ikue Mori (electronics) Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) Susie Ibarra (drums)

12/11-16 and then 12/18-23, 8:30/10 PM hard-hitting postbop piano legend Kenny Barron leads his bands at the Vanguard: the first stand with his quintet, the second as a trio with special guest Regina Carter on violin

12/11, 8:30 PM ambitious, smart, noir-inclined tenor saxophonist Patrick Cornelius with Jared Gold on B3 organ and Mark Whitfield Jr. on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

12/11, 9ish explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas at Hank’s

12/12, 7 PM violinist Siwoo Kim and violist John Stulz play works by Vivian Fung, Andrew Norman, and Stulz in a “string-trio concert evoking a musical house of mirrors” with Metropolis Ensemble cellist Michael Katz at 1 Rivington St., 2nd Fl. just off Bowery, $20/$10 stud,

12/12, 7:30 PM magical percussionist Rajna Swaminathan’s improvisational Indian band Mangal with María Grand – tenor sax; Linda May Han Oh – bass; Joel Ross – vibraphone + special guest Imani Uzuri – voice at the Jazz Gallery, $15

12/12, 7:30 PM the amazing, haunting, otherworldly NY Andalus Ensemble – who play ancient Middle Eastern and North African Jewish sounds from as far back as a thousand years ago – at La Nacional, 239 W 14th St, $20/$16 stud/srs

12/12, 8 PM the all-female Resistance Revival Chorus sing epic, inspiring populist gospel tunes and anti-trumpie broadsides at the Knitting Factory, $20

12/12, 8 PM bassist Max Johnson presents a wild new trio made up of Anna Webber (saxophone, flute), and Michael Sarin (drumset), performing all newly written and rearranged original compositions at Barbes

12/12, 8 PM pianist Margaret Mills premieres of four new solo works by Richard Wilson, Betty Wishart, Brian Schober and Libby Larsen at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church, 122 W. 69th St

12/12, 8:30 PM poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leading his Tango Quartet at Bar Lunatico. 12/15 they’re at Barbes at 8

12/12, 9 PM fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/southern rockers Lizzie & the Makers at LIC Bar

12/12, 9 PM edgy lefty lead guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at Bar Chord

12/12, 10 PM NY horror surf legends the Coffin Daggers at the Mercury, $10

12/13, 7:30 PM oldtime slide guitar country blues with Stevie from St. Lou plus Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, slinky, oud-driven Turkish band Dolunay at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St at 3rd Ave., Gownaus, $12, F/R to 4th Ave/9th St., beer and wine available

12/13, 7:30 PM blues harpist Frank Fairfield and guitarist Meredith Axelrod play oldtimey country blues at Symphony Space, $30/$20 thirty and under

12/13, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical latin jazz pianist Helen Sung plays her Helen Sung with Words project with special guest Cecile McLorin Salvant at the Jazz Standard, $30. Sung is also solo at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem on 12/18 at 7 for a third the price

12/13, 7:30 PM Ljova – one of the world’s great violists, and a colorful, cinematic composer – plays “an adventurous evening of his music for strings, featuring an expanded ensemble with members of the PUBLIQuartet, Secret Quartet, and special guest” at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

12/13, 8:30 PM hard-charging oldschool soul/funk/rock singer Bette Smith and band at Bar Lunatico

12/13, 8 PM baritone crooner Jack Grace does double duty, first leading his country/southwestern gothic band then fronting his legendary 90s jamband Steak at Hank’s, $10. Grace and his current band are also at Bar Chord at 9 on 12/28

12/13, 8 PM avant jazz composer-performer summit: Anthony Davis and Earl Howard reconvening their quartet at Roulette, $20 gen adm

12/13, 8 PM “Sara Milonovich, Daria Grace and Vibeke Saugestad are The Wynotte Sisters. They discovered a mutual love for three part harmonies and genre-crossing covers off the beaten track. From vintage Andrews Sisters to Steve Earle to Pink, they deliver an unexpected trove of holiday chestnuts. With special guest: Greg Anderson,” at Barbes

12/13, 9 PM hauntingly atmospheric pan-Asian chanteuse/composer and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu‘s latest work-in-progress at Arete Gallery, $15

12/13, 9 PM wild live techno band Bombrasstico at Bar Chord

12/14, 3 PM the Mannes Orchestra play Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6 Auditorium, University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue, Room U100, free

12/14, 6 PM fearlessly political, picturesque retro folk/blues songwriter Joshua Garcia at the American Folk Art Museum

12/14, 6 PM charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band at Club Bonafide, $20

12/14, 7 PM unpredictably fun, funny psychedelic art-rock band the Academy Blues Project at Shrine. They’re at Joe’s Pub at midnight on 12/15 for $20.

12/14, 7:30 PM the Trump Beatles – who sing Beatles hits with hilarious new political lyrics – at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

12/14, 7:30 PM the Orchestra Now play Rimsky-Korsakov’s first symphony, and Reinhold Glière’s expansive Symphony No. 3 at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall $25 tix avail

12/14, 7:30 brilliant, eclectic jazz oudist Dhafer Youssef at the Poisson Rouge, $30 adv tix req

12/14, 8 PM the Shantypeople sing twisted sea chanties; Mike Baggetta and Nick Millevoi duel it out on their guitars; the Endangered Heart Quartet with Jazz Passengers Roy Nathanson trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, join versatile bassist Tim Kiah and violinist Jesse Mills at the Owl

12/14, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow –followed at 10 by the intoxicatingly clattering, sintir bass lute fueled Moroccan trance grooves of Innov Gnawa at Barbes

12/15, 1/4 PM puppeteer Lake Simons’s annual theatrical performance of Saint-Saens’ subtly creepy Carnival of the Animals at the Miller Theatre. No under-fours; kids get in for $9, adults for $15.

12/15, 2 PM jazz pianist Roberta Piket solo followed by cinematic bassist Mark Wade leading his lyrical piano trio at Flushing Town Hall, $5

12/15, 3 PM the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra play Marin Alsop’s Gospel Messiah (the Handel epic with an African-American gospel spin) at the United Palace Theatre, 4140 Broadway in Washington Hts, $15 tix avail

12/15, 4 PM new klezmer music by pyrotechnic clarinetist and Dave Tarras protege Michael Winograd and trumpeter Ben Holmes followed at 8 by poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leading his Tango Quartet at Barbes

12/15, 7:30 PM the acclaimed Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio play the first part of the Beethoven trio repertoire at Irving Auditorium, Irving Pl/17th St., $16

12/15, 7;30 PM edgy Middle Eastern-inspired alto saxophonist Uri Gurvich with Peter Slavov on bass and Francisco Mela on drums at Bar Next Door

12/15, 8 PM dark blues/folk noir/oldschool soul songwriter Kelley Swindall followed by similarly shadowy Britfolk songwriter Adam Masterson at Berlin, $10

12/15, 8 PM an eclectic concert of works by adventurous composer/conductor Sarah Weaver with a fantastic series of lineups. “Sound in Peace (2016)” Joe McPhee, multiple instruments, Sarah Weaver, electronics. “Symmetry of Presence (2018)” David Taylor, bass trombone, electronics, Sarah Weaver, electronics. “Fountain of Synthesis (2018)” Jane Ira Bloom, soprano saxophone, Yoon Sun Choi, voice, Julie Ferrara, oboe, english horn, Joe McPhee, multiple instruments, Ned Rothenberg, woodwinds, Min Xiao-Fen, pipa, sanxian, ruan, Ray Anderson, trombone, David Taylor, bass trombone, Denman Maroney, piano, Mark Helias, bass, Gerald Cleaver, drumset, percussion, $25/$20 stud/srs at the DiMenna Center

12/15, 9 PM ageless CB’s era funk-punk/postrockers the Bush Tetras at the Kitchen, $20

12/16, 2 PM the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra play A Grand, Grand Overture – Malcolm Arnold; Tangazo – Astor Piazzolla; The Composer Is Dead!; Nathaniel Stookey, with text by Lemony Snicket; Rimsky-Korsakov- “Christmas Eve” Suite at the Brooklyn Museum, $20

12/16, 3 PM, repeating on 12/21 at 7 PM the Salvatones vocal ensemble, New York Virtuosi string quartet, and organist Stephen Fraser perform works by Bach, Vivaldi, Tavener, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, plus more traditional holiday fare at St. Malachy’s Church/The Actors’ Chapel, 239 W 49th St. free

12/16, 4 PM meticulous baroque vocal/chamber Ensemble Correspondances perform Charpentier’s Christmas Pastorale at Corpus Christi Church, 529 W 121St St, $10 tix avail

12/16, meet at the Washington Square arch at 5:45, march to Tompkins Square Park at 6 PM, this year’s Unsilent Night electronic music procession is a NYC institution and one of the funnest, trippiest things you can do this holiday season. Download one of the twinkling piece’s four tracks for your phone, stream it or borrow one of composer Phil Kline‘s original cassettes for your boombox. Fun for the whole family!

12/16, 6 PM guitarist Borche Naumoski and string quartet play baroque guitar concertos by Mauro Guiliani and Ferdinando Carulli at Gallery MC

12/16, 6 PM the Human Rites Trio with violinist Jason Kao Hwang, basssist Ken Filiano and drummer Andrew Drury jam it out at Downtown Music Gallery

12/16, 7:30 PM intense, fearlessly relevant Middle Eastern clarinetist Kinan Azmeh’s Syrian jazz City Band at Drom, $15 adv tix rec

12/16, 8:30 PM Jane Lecroy’s edgy, intensely lyrical electro-punk band Ohmslice at Footlight Bar, $10

12/16, 9 PM twangy Nashville gothic band Karen & the Sorrows at C’Mon Everybody, $10

12/17, 7:30 PM the NY New Music Ensemble octet play new works by David Rakowski and Mark Applebaum at 87 Eldridge St.,just south of Grand, $20/$10 stud/srs

12/17, 7:30 PM Lusterlit play their ominous, noirish literary chamber pop at a house concert at 618 Hart St Apt #1, Bushwick, M to Central Ave,, FREE and BYOB friendly.

12/17, 8 PM Violist Jeongeun Park plays music by Fauré, Reinecke, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev with pianist Eric Zuber at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $20

12/17, 9:30 PM ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach at Barbes

12/18, 7 PM slinky Ladino/Middle Eastern grooves with Alhambra followed by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

12/18, 7 PM new works by avant garde trumpeter Nate Wooley followed at 8 by low-register reedman Josh Sinton and at 9 Loadbang trombonist William Lang playing solo works by Dai Fujikura, Thanos Chrysakis, Yu Kuwabara, and Klaus Hubner at Arete Gallery. $10 per set or $20 for all three.

12/18, 7:30 PM violinist Elmira Darvarova, clarinetist Amy Zoloto, and hornist Howard Wall join pianist Thomas Weaver playing works by Villa-Lobos, Gershwin, Piazzolla and others at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, free, tix avail now at the box ofc

12/18, 8 PM the SoHarmoniums Women’s Choir presents “She Hath Wings,” songs of hope and perseverance, including new music by Abbie Betinis and Sarah Quartel as well as Vaughan Williams’ Magnificat” at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

12/18, 8 PM Adam Caine plays solo on guitar followed by accordion genius Shoko Nagai’s Fidoquartet with trumpeter Ron Horton and singer Maryanne de Prophetis at Scholes St. Studio, $15 sug don

12/18, 8:30 PM trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s legendary noir jazz outfit Sexmob in a rare Bed-Stuy appearance at Bar Lunatico

12/18, 9 PM jangly Dylanesque acoustic dude Hiss Golden Messenger at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $20 adv tix rec

12/18, 9 PM sharply lyrical janglerock/Americana/soul songwriter Matt Keating and guitarist Steve Mayone’s catchy new project the Bastards of Fine Arts at 11th St. Bar

12/18, 9:30 PM eclectic, globally-inspired violinist Dina Maccabee at Pete’s

12/18, 10 PM brilliant drummer/percussionist Willie Martinez & La Familia Sextet play classic salsa grooves at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

12/19, 7 PM pianist Sunhwa Park plays works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach and Brahms at Symphony Space, $30 adv tix req

12/19, 8 PM accordion genius Shoko Nagai ’s haunting Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project at Barbes

12/19, 9 PM oldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Bar Chord. 12/26, same time she’s at Skinny Dennis.

12/19, 9 PM pianist Gabriel Zucker plays his extended composition Weighting, inspired by Rachel Kushner’s novel The Flamethrowers at Arete Gallery, $15

12/20, 7:30 PM Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel duels it out with with fellow six-string hotshot Thor Jensen at Symphony Space, $30/$20 thirty and under

12/20, 7:30 PM psychedelic cumbia singer/personality Miss Yaya at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

12/20. 8:30 PM rising star santoor player Vinay Desai with tabla player Ehren Hanson at the Jalopy, $15

2/21, 11:45 AM baritone Tobias Greenhalgh leads a free audience-participatory performance of Schubert’s Winterriese, walking through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Audience members provide :the accompaniment via hand-held radios that emit the original piano music. Enter Brooklyn Botanic Garden at 1000 Washington Avenue to meet at Magnolia Plaza at 11:45am and receive a handheld transmission radio on loan. Radios are available for the first fifty participants, or bring your own! The procession sets off at 12:00pm sharp and wends its way south through newly restored areas of the garden. Rsvp reqd, put “Winterize” in the subject line, guest list is at the visitors entrance at 990 Washington Ave, 2/3/4/5 train to Franklin Ave

12/21, 2 PM brilliant baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian‘s LSQ at Flushing Town Hall, $5

12/21, 8 PM rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY followed at 10 by accordionist/sitarist Kamala Sankaram’s hot surfy Bollywood/cumbia/psychedelic rock project Bombay Rickey – a launching pad for her spellbinding four-octave voice – at Barbes

12/21, 9 PM twisted twin-trombone dub reggae instrumentalists Super Hi-Fi play their sick dub xmas jams at Bar Chord

12/21, 11 PM the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir and dark cabaret – at Sidewalk

12/22, 4 PM soaring, eclectic, picturesque Americana/ psychedelia/new wave songwriter Lianne Smith at Pete’s

12/22, 7:30 PM a wild klezmer dance twinbill: pickup band the YNY All-Stars – with violinist Deborah Strauss and trombonist Daniel Blacksberg plus the Klez Dispensers (who are anything but sweet and crunchy) at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, 414 14th St (just east of 1st Ave), $20

12/22, 8 PM trombonist Vera Kemper’s Blu Cha Cha band followed by garifuna bandleader Andy Ordonez and his combo at Barbes

12/22, 8 PM percussionist Alessandra Belloni‘s rustically witchy tarantella band at Theatre for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th) $25

12/22, 8:30 PM fiery gutbucket organ music with the Juke Joint Jelis with Brianna Thomas on vocals and Greg Lewis on B3 at Bar Lunatico

12/23, 2:45 PM fiercely populist Boston Yiddish choir A Besere Velt celebrate fighting the power, and also the 75th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, at the Town and Village Synagogue, 334 E 14th St, $20

12/23, 7/9:30 PM short sets by edgy leading lights of Yiddish song past and present: the Klezmatics’ Lorin Sklamberg, Michael Alpert, Eléonore Biezunski, Nicole Borger, Joanne Borts, Sarah Gordon, Itzik Gottesman, Daniel Kahn, Jeanette Lewicki, Sasha Lurje, Ethel Raim, Mark Slobin, Pete Rushefsky, Jake Shulman-Ment and Josh Waletzky at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th St, $15/$10 stud/sr

12/24, 8 PM Yiddish salsa mashups with percussionist Roberto Juan Rodriguez, pianists Marilyn Lerner and Anthony Coleman, Danny Sadownick, the Klezmatics’ Richie Barshay, and the reputedly amazing OY-NY Yiddish Divas – Joanne Borts, Nicole Borger, Daniella Rabbani and Alexandra Czarny – at Drom, $15 adv tix rec

12/24, 9 PM violinist Jake Shulman-Ment, guitarist Yoshi Fruchter, bassist Zoe Guigueno, and Ben Holmes on trumpet join forces for an allstar night of klezmer classics and originals from across the diaspora. Guest singers Tamar Korn and Eleanor Weill conttribute some Yiddish faves at Barbes

12/25, 8 PM a live recreation of two klezmer albums from the 50s. Pyrotechnic clarinetist and Dave Tarras protege Michael Winograd leads an all-star band performing Tarras’ legendary Tanz! album from 1955 – a cult classic and high point in mid-century minor key jamming. Then trumpeter Frank London of the Klezmatics and percussionist Deep Singh tackle Irving Fields’s schlocky 1959 LP Bagels & Bongos lp at the Town and Village Synagogue, 334 14th St, $20,

12/25-30, 8:30/10 PM high-voltage tenor saxophonist Chris Potter leads his quartet at the Vanguard, $30

12/26, 7:30 PM a global klezmer lineup: Moldovan singer/composer Yefim “Fima” Chorny and pianist Suzanna Ghergus, Adrienne Cooper’s daughter Sarah Gordon, the perennially transgressive Daniel Kahn, pianist Marilyn Lerner, otherworldly crooner Ilya Shneyveys, nimble tsimblist Pete Rushefsky and other special guests at Bohemian National Hall, 321 E 73rd St. (between 1st and 2nd Ave), $25

12/26, 8 PM an all-Japanese series of ensembles play music from across the centuries: koto group Violyre. cello champions Cellissimo, plus the Jets a.k.a. Chia-Dan joining forces with the US National Cheerleading Champions at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Halll, free tix avail now

12/26, 8 PM singer Bethany Yarrow and cellist Rufus Cappodocia shift betwee Middle Eastern, jazz and Gregorian chant inspired material at Barbes

12/26, 8 PM percussive, trance-inducing, bitingly tuneful, Middle Eastern-tinged female-fronted jamband SisterMonk at the small room at the Rockwood

12/26, 10:30 PM trumpeter Josh Evans leads his quartet at Smalls

12/27, 8 PM Lionel Yu – virtuoso pianist, youtube sensation and composer of wild, crazy, occasionally Asian-tinged themes like Pachelbel’s Nightmare (follow-up to the Canon) at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $30 tix avail

12/27, 9 PM scorching, purposeful, female-fronted heavy psych band Ruby the Hatchet and the slower, doomier Dead Meadow at the Knitting Factory, $25 adv tix rec

12/28, 7 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez plays her third annual farewell party at Pangea, $25

12/28-29, 8 PM a rare reunion of Thalia Zedek’s legendary, scorching 90s twin-guitar band Come at Union Pool, $20

12/28, 8:30 PM Antibalas spinoff Armo play Afrobeat at Bar Lunatico

12/28, 9 PM baritone crooner Jack Grace leads his legendary, wryly amusing 90s jamband Steak at Bar Chord

12/28, 10 PM the world’s creepiest crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Barbes

12/28, 10 PM 70s dark folk legend Kath Bloom – who has a haunting new album out – at Elsewhere, $12

12/28, 11 PM cynical new wave band Hedge Fund at the small room at the Rockwood

12/29, 8 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia playing edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences followed at 10 by Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for 89, a revolutionary date in case you weren’t aware) playing New Orleans brass music at Barbes

12/29, 8:30 PM state-of-the-art postbop guitarist Will Bernard and group at Bar Lunatico

12/29, 11 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co and bass-driven rockabilly hellraisers Little Lesley & the Bloodshots at Otto’s

12/30, 6 PM noir-inspired low-register reedman Ben Goldberg and ensemble at Downtown Music Gallery

12/30, 6:30 PM haunting folk noir/Americana songwriter Emily Frembgen followed eventually at 8:30 by terse, anthemic dark folk/Americana songwriter Lara Taubman at Sidewalk

12/30, 7 PM sizzling steel guitarist – and Thelonious Monk reinventor – Mike Neer with his band at Barbes

12/30, 11 PM shapeshifting instrumentalists International Orange – who mash up Afrobeat, gutbucket organ grooves,stoner downtempo and some funk at Offside Tavern, 137 w 14th st,

The most Burning Man New Year’s Eve concert is at Rubulad in Bushwick – duh, right? On the bill: the irrepressible Ellia Bisker’s explosive Balkan/New Orleans flavored Funkrust Brass Band, hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes, herky-jerky 80s style funk-punks Van Goose and the gay version of Gil Scott-Heron, $20 before 8 PM, email for location/deets/rsvp

The loudest New Year’s Eve concert of the year starts at 11 at St. Bartholomew’s Church with William Trafka at the organ, free

The cheapest New Year’s Eve show is an admission-free house party at 11 at 184 Irving Ave (at Stanhope) in Bushwick withcscampering, irrepressibly fun girlpunks Sharkmuffin. It’s about equidistant from the J/M at Knickerbocker and the L at DeKalb, assuming the latter is running.

New Year’s Eve, 10:30 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg -charismatic, fearlessly political Brooklyn legend playing slinky organ funk jams with a great horn band behind him, free

New Year’s Eve, 11 PM ish the US Bombs – who have some of the coolest album titles of any punk band from any era – at the Kingsland, $25

New Year’s Eve, 11 PM awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra at Barbes, $20 no tv, no champagne toast

1/1-6. 8:30/10:30 PM lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch at the Vanguard, through 1/3 with his trio and the rest of the stand with a quartet

1/3, 7:30 the booking agents’ convention is in town and there are some phemonenal, cheap lineups around town. Tonight at Drom there’s a free show with intense, rapturous Balkan/Middle Eastern ensemble the Secret Trio –Tamer Pinarbasi, Ismail Lumanovski & Ara Dinkjian – followed at 8:30 by brooding Greek crooner Pericles Kanaris and at 10:00 by chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia playing edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences