Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for July and August 2019

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. Believe it or not, some of this year’s free summer concert series schedules still haven’t been announced yet – as soon as they are, the good stuff will be on this page.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how unreliable the subway is 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.

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 ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily 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! Next performance is 7/16, 7 PM : an all-Brahms program with two trios, Op. 40 for Waldhorn, Violin and Piano, then Op 87 for Piano, Violin and Cello with Nancy Garniez – piano; Gregor Kitzis – violin; Dave Eggar – cello; Jacob Garniez – Waldhorn; sug don, email for details/address

7/14-28, 8 PM this year’s International Keyboard Festival featuring inexpensive performances by all kinds of up-and-coming and veteran talent at the Lang Recital Hall, on the 4th floor of the North Building at Hunter College. Most concerts are $10. Too many artists to list: the lineup is here

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 tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

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.

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 July at 10 (9 PM on 7/1) at LIC Bar darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family – sometimes just frontwoman/bassist Yula Beeri and her loop pedals, other times with a parade of special guests

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

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. 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 woke, 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 usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

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

Wednesdays at 8:30 PM purposeful postbop jazz guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg leads his trio at the Bar Next Door, $12

Wednesdays at 9ish 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

Most Thursdays at 8:30, 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

Saturdays in July, 6 PM guitar monster Jeremiah Lockwod and singer Jewlia Eisenberg’s surreal, intense klezmer/oldtime gospel guy/girl duo Book of J at Barbes

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 three Saturdays: 7/6, 13 and 20 at 4 PM 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 July, 5 PM wildly diverse multi-string player Joanna Sternberg leads a series of old and newschool jazz, folk and possibly klezmer groups on bass and guitar at Barbes

Sundays in July, 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of groups at the Bar Next Door

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

7/1, 6:30 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Jocelyn Gould leads a trio at the Bar Next Door

7/1, 7:30 PM cult favorite gonzo pianist Dred Scott with his Trio at Mezzrow, $20 gen adm

7/1, 8:30 PM lyrical jazz pianist Yoko Miwa leads her trio at Birdland, $20 at the bar

7/1 9ish spiky, serpentine, hypnotic microtonal African-influenced guitar-and-drums duo 75 Dollar Bill play the album release show for their new one at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

7/1, 9:30 PM deliriously fun accordion band Los Mochuelos play classic Colombian vallenato and oldschool cumbias at Barbes

7/2, 6:30 PM the Swingtime Big Band on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/2, 7 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman  followed at 9 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes, $10

7/2, 7 PM lyrical, incisive alto saxophonist Dave Pietro leads his group at the Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Square South, free, early arrival advised

7/2, 730 PM bassist Ernesto Holman and his Trio play Chilean jazz at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/2-7 8:30/10:30 PM intense, sophisticated, propulsively tuneful bassist Linda May Han Oh leads a quintet at the Vanguard

7/2, 8ish BeMaeva play their beguiling, bouncy, psychedelic Malgasy-Caribbean-soul grooves at Ferns, 166 1st Ave (10/11)

7/2, 9 PM pastoral gothic accordion art-rock with Sam Reider & the Human Hands at the small room at the Rockwood

7/2, 9ish an underground hip-hop summit at SOB’s with Gorilla Nems, Benny the Butcher, Jay Lonzo, Rick Hyde & Lil Dee, hosted by Talib Kweli , $25 adv tix rec

7/2, 9:30 PM fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/roadhouse jamband Lizzie & the Makers at 11th St Bar

7/3, 1 PM trombonist David White‘s Jazz Orchestra at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don

7/3, 6 PM intense, lyrical, politically fearless tenor saxophonist Roxy Coss lleads a quartet at the Bard Gallery, 18 W 86th St, free

7/3, 6 PM Conjunto Guantánamo play oldschool Cuban salsa on the High Line between 15th and 16th Sts – might actually feel like Guantanamo the prison

7/3, 7 PM Sephardic dance jamband Yemen Blues at Joe’s Pub, $30

7/3, 7;30 PM the Sisterhood of Swing Seven with Catherine Russell  on vocals plus Camille Thurman,saxophone; Emily Asher, trombone;Endea Owens,bass; Shirazette Tinnin, drums; Champian Fulton,piano; and Molly Ryan guitar celebrate the legacy of legendary all-female 30s swing band the Sisterhood of Swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/3 8 PM brilliantly feral improvisational pianist Mara Rosenbloom leads her trio at I-Beam, $15

7/3, 830 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” and hash-smoking anthems from the 1930s at Troost.

7/3, 9 PM Camello Feo play tropical psychedelic soul, cumbia, and hard funk at Shrine . Good original stuff

7/3. 10 PM slinky, tuneful bass monster Ayal Tsubery’s Zoo Berries psych-funk project at the big room at the Rockwood

7/4, 7:30 PM El Rey del Bajo, Bobby Valentín leads his Orchestra playing 70s Fania classics at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 7 PM the Casym Steel Orchestra and soca hall of famer Mighty Sparrow – see if he cancels again this time – at Springfield Park in Queens

7/4 ,10 PM the great unsung NYC hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin leads his Zebtet at the Fat Cat. He’s also here 7/9 and 7/16 at 7

7/5, 6 PM irrepressibly eclectic, deviously witty jazz pianist Misha Piatigorsky leads a trio at 55 Bar

7/5, 7:30 PM trumpeter Joe Battaglia &The New York Big Band play 30s/40s swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 7:30 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Ed Cherry with Kyle Koehler on organ at the Bar Next Door $12

7/5, 8 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka leads one of his excellent projects at Barbes. He killed here last week with his Nashaz Middle Eastern band

7/5, 8:30ish conscious hip-hop artist Leikeli47 followed by Chicago hardcore mc Mick Jenkins – who had the sense to nick a Gil Scott-Heron song for the title of his latest album – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/5, 9 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his groupfollowed eventually at 11 by blowtorch soul singer Lizzie Edwards of fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/roadhouse jamband Lizzie & the Makers at Pete’s

7/5, 10:30 PM tuneful oldschool soul/jazz trombonist Dave Gibson leads his band at the Fat Cat, 7/7, same time he goes up to the big leagues at Smalls

7/5-6 10:30 PM cutting-edge, often psychedelic sax player Wayne Escoffery & Tenor Traditions at Smalls

7/6, 11 AM (in the morning) Romany jazz accordionist Albert Behar and band at the Green Dome Garden, 229 N 12th St in Williamsburg

7/6, 3:30 PM Luisa Muhr’s amazing multidisciplinary series Women Between Arts features vocalist/storyteller Crystal Penalosa,,performance artist Jill Guyon and sound artist/instrument inventorThessia Machado at Women Between Arts at the Glass Box Theatre at the New School, $12, no one turned away for lack of funds

7/6, 7 PM epic, woke, Middle Eastern rap night with Narcy, wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soul and Oddissee at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/6, 7 PM cinematic noir soul instrumentalists the Ghost Funk Orchestra at Union Pool, $12

7/6, 8 PM lyrical pianist Matthew Shipp with Michael Bisio on bass at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

7/6, 8 PM Miss Cactus & the Desert Band play roots reggae at Silvana

7/6, 9 PM trippy, dubby roots reggae and ska sounds with Avo & Skalopy at the Jalopy Tavern

7/6, 9 PM latin-tinged hard funk band Shelley Nicole’s Blackbushe at C’Mon Everybody, $12

7/6, 9:30 PM elegant, sharply lyrical parlor pop stylist Heather Eatman followed eventually at 11:306 by dark gutter blues band Fife & Drom at Freddy’s, Avoid the putrid, whiny band in between at all costs

7/6, 10 PM epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

7/7, 1/3 PM indie classical ensemble Sandbox Percussion play works of Julia Wolfe, Steve Reich, Jonny Allen, Andy Akiho,Victor Caccese, Elliot Cole and a world premiere by Brendon Randall-Myers in the park on Governors Island,

7/7, 1 PM B3 organ genius Greg Lewis and similar jazz guitarist Marvin Sewell play brunch at Bar Lunatico. Theyr’e back on the 21st; Lewis is also here on the 16th at 9 doing his Juke Joint Jelis project with badass singer Brianna Thomas

7/7, 3 PM ish the ageless godfather of boogaloo, Joe Bataan at Union Pool, free

7/7, 3 PM Christina Conroy plays the Irish harp at Jefferson Market Garden in the west village. She’s also here at 10 AM (in the morning) on 7/21

7/7, 6 PM Raf Vertessen on drums, Anna Webber on sax and Adam O’Farrillo on trumpet duel at Downtown Music Gallery

7/7, 7 PM accordion genius Shoko Nagai ’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project  followed by paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

7/7 7 PM exotic vibraphone-driven surf band the Vibro-jets at LIC Bar

7/7, 7 PM Aztec Sun play hard funk at Pier One on the upper west side

7/7, 7 PM  soca hall of famer the Mighty Sparrow in a very very rare intimate show at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/7, 7 PM the Seed of Enchantment play flamenco at Silvana

7/7, 8 PM perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar

7/8, 6 PM the Greenpoint Songwriters Exchange – a diverse bunch playing everything from folk noir to Costelloesque, literatry rock to Indian ragas and oldschool soul – at Pete’s

7/8, 7 PM  tuneful postbop pianist Jim Ridl leads his group from behind the Rhodats at 55 Bar

7/8, 9 PM hard honkytonk band Alan Lee & the Whiskey Bumps at Bar Chord

7/8. 9 PM psycho mambo band Gato Loco bandleader and bass sax monster Stefan Zeniuk followed by darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family at LIC Bar

7/8, 9 PM smartly lyrical, eclectically tuneful 70s British style pub/punk rockers Binky Phillips & the Planets at Arlene’s, free

7/8, 10ish the NYC Gaita Club – a Bulla en el Barrio spinoff – play rustically pounding Afro-Colombian trance-dance music at Barbes

7/8, 11 PM lo-fi newschool psychedelic band Gringo Star at the Mercury, $10 adv ti xrec

7/9, 6:30 PM Fleure Seule play continental swing on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/9, 7 PM Greg Lewis’ brilliant, fearlessly political Organ Monk Trio at the NYU Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Sq S, free

7/9,  7 PM eclectic, hard-hitting, lyrical composer/tenor saxophonist Stan Killian at 55 Bar

7/9, 7 PM trombonist Craig Harris plays solo in the Rose Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, free. Presumably this will be a peaceful set.

7/9, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Brazilian rainforest song chanteuse Elba Ramalho,“The Queen of Forró,” at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/9, 7:30 PM the ferocious Matt Nelson, soprano and tenor saxophones and Ron Stabinsky on piano improvise at Arete Gallery, $15

7/9-14, 8/1030 PM iconic bassist Ron Carter leads a quartet with Jimmy Greene on tenor and Renee Rosnes on piano at the Blue Note, $30 standind room avail

7/9 8:30 PM transgressively funny postbop saxophonist Jon Irabagon with Peter Brendler on bass and Mark Ferber on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

7/9, 8:30 PM irrepressible improvisational violinist  Pauline Kim Harris leads a series of ensembles at the Stone, $20. Choice pick; 7/10 leading a massive stirng jazz ensemble

7/9, 9 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black play the album release show for their new one at Muchmore’s, $7

7/9, 9ish soul-rockers NO ICE‘s charismatic frontman Jamie Frey at Freddy’s

7/9, 9:30 PM catchy, slinky psychedelic funk/punk band Eliza & the Organix at City Winery, $10

7/10, noon  Dingonek Street Band play second line, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz,  and the L Train Brass Band – who never show up when you need them – at Lincoln Square Park on the upper west

7/10, 1 PM classy, cinematic NZ jazz pianist Alan Broadbent plays the album release show for his new one with his trio at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don

7/10, 6 PM charmingy edgy all-female latin tropicalia dance band Ladama at Madison Square Park

7/10, 7 PM the Venice Baroque Orchestra make a rare outdoor NYC appearance playing works by Handel, Vivaldi and others at Temple Emmanu-El, 1 E 65th St, free, rsvp req

7/10 7 PM the Rich Shemaria Big Band w/vibraphonist Mike Mainieri at the NYU Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Sq S, free, They’re back here on 7/17

7/10, 7 PM  psychedelic Brazilian band Os Clavelitos at the small room at the Rockwood

7/10, 7:30 PM the mighty, Middle Eastern-tinged Eyal Vilner Big Band with special guest Brianna Thomas burning down the house on vocals at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/10, 8 PM intense Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, traditional Turkish band Dolunay  at Barbes

7/11, 6 PM sharply lyrical, seriously woke southwestern gothic/Americana songwriter Tom Shaner at the LIC Landing in Hunter’s Point South Park, 51st Ave and Center Boulevard in LIC, 7 to Vernon-Jackson and walk to the water

7/11, 6:30 PM irrepressible 60s-style blue-eyed soul singer Eli “Paperboy” Reed under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

7/11, 6:30 PM saxophonist TK Blue leads a killer quintet with Sharp Radway on piano playing a Randy Weston tribute at Socrates Sculpture Park

7/11, 7 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece and group at the Fat Cat

7/11, 7 PM soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar

7/11, 7:30 PM brilliant blues guitarist, above-average bassist, strongly tuneful blues songwriter and badass singer Celisse Henderson at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/11, 7:30 PM avant garde vocal summit with Amirtha Kidambi Jean Carla Rodea, Jasmine Wilson and Stephanie Lamprea at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, 520 Clinton Ave, just off Fulton ,Ft. Greene, C to Clinton-Washington, $10

7/11, 7:30 PM Shirley Alston Reeves – lead singer of the Shirelles, you know, the Phil Spector-produced 60s girlgroup – at the bandshell in Forest Park, Woodhaven Blvd, Queens, closest train is the 121st St. stop

7/11, 7:30 PM Argentine pianist Analía Goldberg’s tango Sextet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/11, 8 PM  dark cabaret/Romany song legend Sanda Weigl and her band followed by eclectic, electric, guitarishly excellent C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts at Barbes

7/11, 8 PM rising star sax player Anna Webber leads a chordless trio followed at 9 by Hearing Things keyboard sorcerer JP Schlegelmilch leading a quartet with Dana Lyn – violin; Jake Charkey – cello at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

7/11, 8 PM female-fronted Colombian rock en Espanol vets Aterciopelados at Queensbridge Park,

7/11, 9 PM B3 organist Pat Bianchi leads his trio at Bar Lunatico

7/11, 9:30 PM mathrock band Faster Than Light, singer Hannah Fairchild’s explosive, lyrically brilliant noir punk power trio Hannah vs. the Many and and colorful, Bowie-esque female-fronted glamrockers the Manimals at the Nest, 504 Flatbush Ave, B/D/Q to Prospet Park, $8

7/11, 10 PM anthemic Iron Maiden-style metal band the Blackfires at the Mercury, $10 adv tix

7/11, 10 PM  fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band  at Skinny Dennis.

7/11, 9 PM guitar goddess Barbara Endes’ exhilarating psychedelic janglerock band Girls on Grass followed at 10 by explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas at Niagara upstairs, Ave. A/7th St.

7/11, 11 PM the Naked Gypsy Queens play a mashup of AC/DC and gutter blues at the small room at the Rockwood

7/12, 5:30 PM elegantly angst-fueled, individualistic torchsong/parlor pop piano songwriter Jeanne Marie Boes at the American Folk Art Museum. She’s also at LIC Bar on 7/14 at 4 PM

7/12, 7 PM ornate, shreddy metal instrumentalists Shadow Eden at the Delancey, $10

7/12, 7:30 rock en Espanol night, in reverse order: latin soul singer Gaby Moreno with  soaring, epic all-female mariachi/tropicalia orchestra Mariachi Flor de Toloache , anthemic janglerock/stadium rock band Enjambre and folksinger El David Aguilar at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/12, 7:30/9:30 PM darkly sweeping, cinematic singer/composer Jihye Lee and her Orchestra at the Jazz Gallery, $25

7/12-13, 7:30 PM drummer Sylvia Cuenca leads a killer quintet with Ralph Bowen on tenor and Jared Gold on organ at Smals

7/12, 7:30 PM Maria Muldaur  – yeah, her, Midnight at the Oasis – sings a Blue Lu Barker tribute and more at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/12, 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 by Los Cumpleanos – with Nestor Gomez – vox/percussion; Lautaro Burgos – drums; Eric Lane – keyboards; Alex Asher – trombone and others playing trippy, dubwise tropical psychedelia at Barbes

7/12-13, 8/10 PM powerful jazz belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor –  Charenee Wade leads her group at Ginny’s Supper Club, $20

7/12, 8 PM veteran Argentine folksinger Leon Gieco at Queensbridge Park

7/12 9 PM honkytonk guitarslinger Danny Weiss and charming singer Mary Olive Smith’s oldschool C&W band Stillhouse Serenade at Sunny’s

7/12, 10 PM Mamita Peyote play female-fronted tropical psychedelia at Silvana

7/13, 3 PM gamelanesque percussion innovator Susie Ibarra leads the DreamTime Ensemble in the performance of her new suite Fragility: A Game of Polyrhythms in front ot Building 10A in the park in the middle of Governors Island, free, $3 roundtrip ferries leave Manhattan on the half hour. Ibarra is also at Issue Project Room on 7/27 at 8 for $20/$15 stud/srs

7/13, 3 PM Video Music Box founder and hip-hop legend Ralph McDaniels emcees an afternoon at Socrates Scuulpture Park

7/13, 4 PM ish clever female-fronted Colombian hip-hop group Choc Quib Town at Central Park Summerstage

7/13, 6 PM a hall of fame guitar summit: Big Lazy‘s noir mastermind Steve Ulrich and the eclectic, psychedelic, Hasidic and Malian-inspired Jeremiah Lockwood at Barbes

7/13, 7:30 PM a Hindustani trio with Gauri Niwargi – vocal; Tarit Mazumder – tabla; Arjun Ramakrishnan – harmonium followed by santoorist Vinay Desai at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music  $20

7/13, 7:30 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra playing their 15th annual tribute to Illinois Jacquet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/13, 7:30 PM cynical punk glam/powerpop band the Right Offs at the Delancey, $10

7/13, 8 PM the Bright Smoke – imagine a more psychedelic, slower, more lingering, female-fronted Joy Division – at the small room at the Rockwood followed eventually at 1 AM (wee hours of 7/14) by jaggedly jangly rockers the Twenty Sevens . The Bright Smoke are also at Littlefield playing the album release show for their amazing new one on 7/27, time/price tba

7/13, 8 PM eclectic. energetic Ecuadorian folk group Andes Manta accompany Ayazamana dance company’s performance of traditional repertoire at Sinatra School of the Arts,  35-12 35th Avenue, Astoria, N to 36th Ave, ,$25/$20 stud/srs

7/13, 8 PM  haunting folk noir/Americana songwriter Emily Frembgen at the Owl

7/13, 9 PM Maggie Carson of Spirit Family Reunion and disgruntled Americana band the Horse-Eyed Men at the Jalopy, $10

7/13, 10 PM Yanga play Afro-Caribbean punk-folk at Barbes

7/13, 10 PM Hollywood’s Dan Finnerty leads his savagely hilarious top 40 parody group the Dan Band at Joe’s Pub,, $25

7/13, 11 PM ferocious psychedelic guitarist Debra Devi, at the Fox & Crow,  594 Palisade Ave in Jersey City Heights

7/14 noon the Rockaway Beach Music Festival all down the peninsula, acts tba, not announced yet but a schedule is supposed to be up at some point, Ostensibly a bunch of good surf acts (including one named after a Chicha Libre song) and a bunch of indie posers as well are on the bill

7/14, the annual Bastille Day festival along 60th St. starts at 12:45 PM with charmingly inscrutable Parisienne jazz chanteuse Chloe & the French Heart Jazz Band followed at 2 by  chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s bouncy, tropically-tinged Blue Dahlia  and at 3 by Brooklyn’s original punk Balkan horn group Hungry March Band,

7/14, 1 PM  low-key deep-Brooklyn sounds with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens playing a gospel brunch show at Bar Lunatico.. They’re back on the 28th

7/14, 3 PM spiky, serpentine, hypnotic microtonal African-influenced guitar-and-drums duo 75 Dollar Bill  at the Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road, Long Island City, free w/museum adm, N/W to Broadway and about a 10 minute walk

7/14, 3 PMish intense, purposeful, scorching guitarist Ava Mendoza and her band at Union Pool, free

7/14, 4 PM a killer triplebill in the backyard at LIC Bar: elegantly angst-fueled, individualistic torchsong/parlor pop piano songwriter Jeanne Marie Boes  entertainingly shuffling, harmony-driven jug band the Salt Cracker Crazie, and powerhouse retro 60s soul singer Meah Pace and her killer band

7/14, 5 PM stride pianist Spike Willner – Mr. Smalls and Mezzrow – plays a rare free solo show at Mezzrow . He’s back here on the 21st and 28th.

7/14. 6:30 PM 20s/30s swing purists the David Berger Jazz Orchestra at Birdland, $30

7/14, 7 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio  at 55 Bar

7/14, 7 PM dynamic accordionist Rob Curto’s Forro for All play dusky Brazilian rainforest folk at Pier One on the upper west side

7/14, 7:30 PM elegantly tuneful duets between guitarist Nate Radley and Gary Versace on piano at Mezzrow, $20

7/14, 8 PM pianist Jerome Rose plays works by Schumann, Chopin and Brahms at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

7/14, 8 PM dark blues/folk noir/oldschool soul songwriter Kelley Swindall at 11th St. Bar

7/14, 9 PM Arki play psychedelic, funky Ethiopian grooves at Silvana

7/14, 9:30 PM Miriam Phyro sings an Edith Piaf tribute at Joe’s Pub, $15

7/14, 10:30 PM  noir-inspired alto saxophonist/composer Nick Hempton leads his ensemble at Smalls

7/15, 7 PM astonishingly prolific and acerbic guitarist Mary​ ​Halvorson‘s Thumbscrew at the NYU Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Sq S, free

7/15, 7:30 PM the Jimi Hendrix of the cuatro, Jorge Glem leads a jazz trio with Ari Hoenig on drums at Smalls

7/15-17, 8/10:30 PM pyrotechnic soprano/tenor saxophonist James Carter leads his combo at the Blue Note, $20 standing room avail,

7/15, 9 PM legendary dual-reedman George Braith – who can play two saxes at once better than most guys can play one – leads his quartet at the Fat Cat

7/15. 9:30ish vibraphonist Felipe Fournier‘s wild Tito Puente and Dave Brubeck cover band, Supermambo at  at Barbes

7/16, 6 PM tabla wizard Samir Chaterjee leads a jam celebrating the guru-student tradition at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music  free

7/16, 6:30 PM hard-hitting, brass-fueled female-fronted newschool latin soul/boogaloo dance band Spanglish Fly on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/16, 7:30/9:30 PM the haunting, smokily atmospheric Michael Leonhart Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, $30

7/16, 7:30 PM jazz chanteuse Carolyn Leonhart with lyrical, latin-tinged pianist  Helen Sung at Mezzrow, $20 gen adm

7/16, 8 PM pianist George Li plays works by Beethoven and Schumann at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

7/16-21, 8;30.10:30 PM this era’s arguably best jazz pianist, Vijay Iyer leads his quintet at the Vanguard

7/16, 9 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 Bar Chord

7/16 ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black  at Gold Sounds.

7/17, 1 PM Jambalaya Brass Band spinoff Ralph Hamperian’s Tuba D’Amore at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don, bring on those lows!

7.17, 7 PM adventurous cellist Brent Arnold and tabla master Aditya Kalyanpur at the Rubin Museum of art, $22 adv tix rec

7/17, 7/9:30 PM beardo Americana road warriors Okkervill River at City Winery, $25 standing room vail

7/17, 7:30/9:30 PM  fearlessly political, tuneful trombonist/composer Ryan Keberle & Catharsis at the Jazz Standard, $30

7/17, 8 PM spaghetti western punk with Snakeskin Skull followed by unpredictably fun, funny psychedelic art-rock band the Academy Blues Project at LIC Bar

7/17, 8 PM tuneful, terse tenor saxophonist Ayumi Ishito and her excellent group at Erv’s on Beekman,2122 Beekman Ph, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, B/D to Prospect Pk

7/17, 9 PM harmony-driven, Leonard Cohen-influenced songwriter Jim Andralis & the Syntonics at 11th St Bar

7/17, 10 PM catchy, fun guy/girl indie soul band Sunshine Nights at the Parkside

7/17, 10 PM lyrical Israeli jazz pianist Anat Fort leads her trio at Birdland, $20

7/18, noon the thunderous hip-hop influenced Brooklyn United Drumline and seriously woke psychedelic soul with Fantastic Negrito at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

7/18, half past noon the self-explanatory, reliably adrenalizing, surprisingly dynamic Gypsy Jazz Caravan at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th

7/18, 6:30 PM Colombian trance-dance band Kombilesa Mi under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

7/18, 6:30 PM Lisa Hoppe on bass with Kalia Vandever on trombone and Dayeon Seok on drums at the Bar Next Door. Kinetic, funky, globally influenced, strange and fun stuff.

7/18, 7 PM  spine-tingling, darkly mystical art-rock/avant-garde/chamber pop songwriter Carol Lipnik – pretty much everybody’s choice for best singer in all of NYC –  at Pangea

7/18, 7 PM A Far Cry play works by Muffat, Caroline Shaw, Beecher and Tschaikovsky at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th Stl free, rsvp req

7/18, 7:30 PM Americana rockers Darlingside and acoustic Americana supergroup I’m with Her – Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/18, 8:30 PM purist CBs style female-fronted powerpopsters the Carvels NYC – a rare rock band with sax that’s actually good – and ferocious, twin guitar-fueled, Radio Birdman-esque psychedelic punks the Electric Mess at Berlin, $12

7/18, 8:30 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” and hash-smoking anthems at Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street (just off of 37th Ave), Jackson Heights

7/18, 9ish tango pianist Pablo Estigarribia at the Owl

7/19, 5:30 PM soaring 20s hot jazz with Sweet Megg & the Wayfarers outside the Old Stone House in Byrne Park in Park Slope, free

7/19, 6 PM terse, intense, individualistic, often hypnotic acoustic songwriter Kalyani Singh at the American Folk Art Museum. One of this blog’s new favorites.

7/19, 7 PM the Salsa Warriors at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park

7/19, 7:30/9:30 PM cinematic, noir-tinged singer/bandleader Nerissa Campbell at the Jazz Gallery, $20

7/19, 7:30 PM the Orchestra of St. Luke’s play new works by Viet Cuong, James Diaz, José Martinez, and Liza Sobel at the DiMenna Center, $20

7/19-20, 7:30 PM reliably tuneful multi-saxophonist John Ellis leads a quartet at Smalls

7/19, 8 PM dusky, rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY followed by deliriously fun accordion band Los Mochuelos playing classic Colombian vallenato and oldschool cumbias at Barbess. If there’s any band in town who deserve a Friday night slot it’s these guys.

7/19, 8 PM pianist Vadym Kholodenko plays works by Tschaikovsky, Mozart and Beethoven at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

7/19, 8 PM Natacha Diels premieres her new suite Sad Music for Lonely People, “a series of recent works involving inspirational quotes, messages from another world, and a step-by-step guide to using heavy machinery in healing rituals featuring NYC outdoor noise field recordings,” followed by Michael Morley’s Music for the Never Quartet – played on bowed acoustic guitars – at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs. The program repeats on 7/20 with Ursula Scherrer & composer Michael Schumacher doing a similar found-sound project in place of Dielss

7/19-20, 8 PM purposeful guitarist/Monk reinventor Miles Okazaki leads a quartet with Caroline Davis on sax at Happy Lucky No.1 Gallery, $20

7/19,, 8:30 PM noir Americana songwriter Eilen Jewell and her amazing guitar-driven band at City Winery, $20 standing rom avail

7/19, 10:30 PM rising star bassist Zaccai Curtis leads his band at the Fat Cat

7/20, noon purist CBs style female-fronted powerpopsters the Carvels NYC – a rare rock band with sax that’s actually good –  at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

7/20. 5 PMish bfilliantly lyrical, torchy oldtimey songwriter Robin Aigner‘s torchy oldtimey bass-and-vocal duo Hello Bittersweet and the washboard-and-banjo driven Homestead St. Band at the Gowanus Dredgers Society Boathouse, free

7/20, 5 PM psychedelic cumbia/reggaeton bandleader Ana Tijoux at Corporal Thompson Park in Staten Island

7/20, 5:30 PM soul/gospel belter (and Lenny Molotov collaborator) Queen Esther at the American Folk Art Museum 7/30 at 9 she’s at Sunny’s

7/20, 7 PM darkly torchy swing band Davina & the Vagabonds at Kingsborough Community College auditorium, 2001 Oriental Boulevard, Manhatttan Beach, Q to Brighton Beach and about a 15 minute walk. They’re at Iridium on 7/24 at 7:30 for

7/20, 8 PM teen banjo sensation Little Nora Brown followed by brilliant, historically spot-on oldtime blues guitar/banjo/piano genius Jerron Blind Boy Paxton;; afterward they duet at the Jalopy, $20

7/20, 8 PM oignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo’s tango quartet at Barbes

7/20. 8 PM Trio Casals play contemporary composers David Nisbet Stewart, Emma-Ruth Richards, Joanne D. Carey, Allyson B. Wells, L Peter Deutsch, Christopher Brakel, Clare Shore, Keith Kramer, and Mathew Fuerst. at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $25

7/20, 8 PM  riveting, populist tenor sax visionary/improviser Matana Roberts; iconic Wilco guitar noisemaker Nels Cline with harpist Zeena Parkins, and ascinatingly lyrical, individualistic pianist Sylvie Courvoisier wither her trio (Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen) at Roulette, $30 adv tix rec

7/20, 8 PM a good tunesmith twinbill: cleverly lyrical, edgily funny, soaring-voiced powerpop/acoustic rock singer Tamara Hey  followed by the much darker, more eclectic  Lorraine Leckie at Pete’s

7/20. 7 PM underground hip-hop at a fashion show: sharply observational, weeded-out emcees Akin Haynes and the MIserable Genius, and vintage 90s style hardcore wih Magnetic the Shaman, plus a bumch of autotune corporate pop acts at 320B Canal St (Bwy/Church), free

7/20, 8ish NYC Americana vet Samoa Wilson, and eclectic, tuneful folk noir accordionist/guitarist/songwriter Ali Dineen at the Owl

7/20, 9 PM popular third-wave garage rockers the Mooney Suzuki at the Mercury, $20 gen adm. Be aware that the 7/19 show is sold out

7/20 9 PM pianist Alon Goldstein plays works by Beethoven, Bernstein, Schumamn and Avner Dorman at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

7/20, 9 PM Alloy Orchestra play a live score to the 1925 German silent film Varieté at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/21, noon feral singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Flushing Town Hall, $16, $10 stud/srs, 13-18 w/NYC school ID get in free

7/21 time tba (afternoon) spellbinding all-female Bulgarian vocal harmony trio Black Sea Hotel sing a house concert in Greenpoint, $15 seats avail, email for location/deets, bbq to follow, weather permitting

7/21, 2 PM ish the Fogo Azul Women’s Drumline play thunderous Brazilian rhythms at the Rubin Museum of Art, free, museum open free all day

7/21, 4 PM pianist Vladimir Feltsman plays works by Chopin and Beethoven at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

7/21, 7 PM sarod virtuosos Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangashat Joe’s Pub, $15

7/21, 6 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. at the bar at 106-01 Shore Front Parkway, Rockaway Beach 7/25 at 8 they’re at Otto’s

7/21, 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

7/21, 7 PM hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec

7/21, 7 PM high-voltage psychedelic cumbia/Afrobeat jamband MAKU Soundsystem at Pier One on the upper west side

7/21 7 PM the Bhangra Jazz Trio with percussionist Deep Singh and klezmer trumpet icon Frank London at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, free

7/21. 8 PM adventurously tuneful bassist Lisa Hoppe‘s Third Reality at Scholes St Studios, $10

7/21, 8 PM in reverse order: John Zorn’s Simulacrum (John Medeski, Matt Hollenberg and Kenny Grohowski); gothic rock legend JG Thirlwell; John Medeski; Val Jeanty and Fay Victor at Roulette, $30 adv tix rec

7/21, 9 PM awesome, female-fronted, kinda funky Turkish psychedelic band Altin Gun at Rough Trade, $15 gen adm. Really love this band.

7/21, 9 PM smart purist jams with tenor and baritone sax: the Sam Dillon/Frank Basile group at the Fat Cat

7/21, 11 PM pensive, purposeful Slavic jazz guitarist Martina Fiserova at the small room at the Rockwood

/22, 7 PM Rolling Stones tenor saxophonist Tim Ries‘ Universal Spirits at the NYU Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Sq S, free

7/22, 9 PM darkly torchy southwestern gothic/Europolitan songwriter/guitarist Miwa Gemini followed by darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family at LIC Bar

7/23, 6:30 PM dusky Brazilian rainforest folk with Rafael Piccolotto de Lima’s Forró Sem Palavras on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/23, 7 PM the Slavo Rican Asssembly mash up salsa and Balkan sounds at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

7/23-24, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with soloist Vilde Frang play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Eroica Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

7/23, 8 PM virtuoso Egyptian accordionist Nabawy leads a killer band with Sami Abu Shumays – violin and Zafer Tawil – oud at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Fulton St. at Lafayette, C to Clinton-Washington, sug don

7/23-28, 8:30/10:30 PM lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch   leads his trio at the Vanguard

7/23, 9 PM brooding cello slowcore songs with Meaner Pencil at Freddy’s

7/23, 9 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriter Julia Haltigan and her killer band on her old home turf at 11th St Bar

7/23, 9 PM smartly tuneful oldschool soul/psych-pop songwriter Mimi Oz at the small room at the Rockwood

7/24, 5:30 PM kickoff night of the annual Bryant Park Accordion Festival, It continues on 7/31, same time. Last year’s was off the hook

7/24, 7 PM powerhouse all-female swing harmony trio the Ladybugs at Birdland, $20

7/25, 5 PM Junior Marvin’s version of what’s left of Bob Marley’s group the Wailers on the plaza outdoors at NJPAC in Newark

7/25, noon ecsatic Mardi Gras funk band Cha Wa at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn. The following night 7/26 they’re at Bryant Park at 7

7/25, half past noon accordion genius Shoko Nagai’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th St

7/25, 5 PM powerhouse oldschool-style soul husband-wife team the War & Treaty at Wagner Park on the river north and west of Battery Park

7/25, 7 PM eclectic, politically fearless tropical rock band La Santa Cecilia at Damrosch Park

7/25, 7:30 PM International Contemporary Ensemble play works by Fure & Thorvaldsdottir at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/25, 7:30/9:30 PM a string quattet plus drums play new string jazz works by Ethan Helm, Nathan Parker Smith and the brilliant Miho Hazama at the Jazz Gallery, $15

7/25, 8:30 PM glimmering, noir-inspired vibraphonist Tom Beckham on vibes leads a trio with Nate Radley on guitar at the Bar Next Door, $12

7/25, 9ish fearless, historically-inspired badlands gothic songstress and powerful singer Karen Dahlstrom – possibly the only writer to record an oldtime Idaho-themed album – and ubiquitous, moodily lyrical, politically savvy Irish folk-rocker Niall Connolly at the basement room at the Rockwood, $10. Avoid the generic goth dude opening the show at 8:30

7/25 9 PM colorful saxophonist Michael Blake with a string section (!?!?!) at Bar Lunatico

7/25, 8ish brilliant, soaring south Indian chanteuse Falu and her eclectic, relatively hard-rocking 90s band Karyshma Collective at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

7/25, 10 PM drummer Arthur Vint & Associates reinvent classic Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks at Barbes

7/26, 7 PM magically spiky tropical psychedelic band Inti & the Moon on the water at 125th Street and Marginal Street at the West Harlem Piers

7/26, 7 PM individualistic Belgian cello rocker/improviser Helen Gillet followed by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy at Damrosch Park

7/26, 7 PM salsa romantica with Los Hermanos Moreno and crooner Lalo Rodriguez at Soundview Park in the Bronx

7/26-27, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival String Orchestra play Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

7/26, 8 PM  art-rocker Pierre de Gaillande’s Bad Reputation playing witty chamber pop English translations of Georges Brassens classics followed at 10 by the world’s creepiest, slinkiest, most blackly funny crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Barbes

7/26, 8 PM erudite, purist torchy cosmopolitan jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the Delancey 5 at Flushing Town Hall $16, $10 stud/srs, 13-18 w/NYC school ID get in free

7/26-27, 8 PM iconic guitar noisemaker Nels Cline leads his trio at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20. Ingrid Laubrock joins them on the 27th.

7/26, 9 PM singer Carmela Ramirez‘s seven-piece Afro-Peruvian group Festejation at Bar Lunatico

7/26, 11 PM badass cello metal/punk rock cellist Polly Panic at the Way Station

7/27, 3 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra play Mozart’s Gran Partita at St. Paul’s Chapel Downtown, free, get there early

7/27, 6 PM guitar monster Jeremiah Lockwod and singer Jewlia Eisenberg’s surreal, intense klezmer/oldtime gospel guy/girl duo Book of J followed at 8 by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri playing their creepy Transylvanian jazz and at 10 by amazingly fun, noirish, psychedelic surf/cinematic  trio Hearing Things at Barbes

7/27, 7 PM sitar and vocals- Supratik Sengupta and Kasturi Bandopadhya at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music  $20

7/27, 7 PM iconic singer Penelope Houston‘s legendary, still-relevant first-wave punk band the Avengers at El Cortez, $tba. It ws twenty bucks last time.

7/27, 7 PM walk through Green-Wood Cemetery to a collaboration between haphazardly psychedelic Afrobeat-influenced psych-punk guitarist/bandleader Yonatan Gat and Native American drum-and-dance group the Eastern Medicine Singers, $25

7/27, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: ubiquitous pan-latin psychedelic guitar god Adrian Quesada leads a Texas soul band with vocalists Jonny Benavidez, Eric Burton, Kam Franklin, Johnny Hernandez, Ruben Ramos, and Paul Schaldal James Brown contemporaries Lee Fields & the Expressions and darkly psychedelic soul band the Black Pumas

7/27, 7:30 PM Changing Modes – NYC’s funnest, most unpredictable, sharply lyrical new wave art-rock band – at the Bitter End, $10. Wickedly jangly, tuneful Americana rockers the Sloe Guns play after at around 10 if you can manage to stick around

7/27, 9ish legendary, intense former Come bandleader and haunting indie-psych guitarist Thalia Zedek at Troost

7/27, 11 PM ishhauntingly noisy/ambient cellist Leila Bordreuil plays the album release show for her debut, Headflush at Fridman Gallery, 169 Bowery, $20

7/28, starting at noon music and dance from all over the world including but not limited to the Ukrainian Village Voices, Diwas Gurung playing Nepalese tunes, and tar lute player Khurshed Alidodov playing haunting Iranian Parmi music and more at the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park

7/28, 3 PM ish  pyrotechnic clarinetist and Dave Tarras protege Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn, and psychedelic Incan folk band Inkarayku on the plaza at Lincoln Center

7/28, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: salsa dura bands Las Caras Lindas de Mi Gente Negra featuring Moncho Rivera, Cita Rodriguez (daughter of the great El Conde) & Su Banda, and allstar percussionist Carlitos Padron & Su Banda

7/28, 7 PM retro continental swing sounds with singer Tatiana Eva-Marie & the Avalon Jazz Band at Pier One on the upper west side

7/28, 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

7/28, 9 PM Brain Cloud frontwoman Tamar Korn‘s charming torch-swing band Kornucopia at Sunny’s

7/28, 9ish pioneering Afro-punk bass player Felice  Rosser of Faith in a rare duo show at the Treehouse at 2A

7/29, 7 PM violinist, Gregory Harrington plus cellists, Eleanor Norton and Zsaz Rutkowski and Brandon Lewis on drums reinvent material “from Bach to Bocelli, from Coltrane to Cohen” and many other musical styles at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W 22nd Str $25

7/29, 10ish feral singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Barbes

7/29, mdnight boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at the Ear Inn

7/30, 7 PM the Underground Spiritual Ground, a new supergroup and Anbessa Orchestra spinoff exploring the connection between African-American spirituals, Ethiopian and Caribbean music followed by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

7/30, 7 PM the Cold Club of Queens play hot 20s jazz at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

7/30. 7 PM the Orchestra of St. Luke’s play works by anna Clyne, Florence Pryce, Samuel Barber and otehs at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th St, free rsvp req

7/30-31, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra play two Mozart works and Brahms’ Symphony No.3 at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

7/31, noon the Catahoula Cajun Band and percussive, trance-inducing, bitingly tuneful, Middle Eastern-tinged female-fronted jamband SisterMonk at Lincoln Square Park on the upper west

7/31, 1 PM veteran postbop guitar sage Peter Leitch‘s New Life Orchestra at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don

7/31, 7 PM salsa romantica with Edgar Joel and Ray de la Paz at Crotona Park

7/31, 7 PM not a music event but very NY-centric: a new English translation of Leon Kobrin’s 1912 NYC Yiddish tenement drama Breach of Promise – pretty radical for its time – at YIVO at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St, $15/$10 stud/srs

7/31, 7:30 PM jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington leads a bewilderingly eclectic all-star all-female band including Rhiannon Giddens, Xiomara Laugart, Ledisi, Amina Claudine Myers, Cleo Reed, Valerie Simpson, Charenée Wade, and Lizz Wright of at Damrosch Park

7/31, 8 PM a theatrical Afrobeat tribute with FELA! The Concert at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and you’lll need to get there early to get in

7/31, 8 PM unpredictably fun, funny psychedelic art-rock band the Academy Blues Project at Shrine

7/31, 8ish hotshot, funny rockabilly band the Royal Hounds, olschool Warped Tour style punkpopsters the Take and the Old Firm Casuals – sort of the missing link between Social Distortion and early 80s British oi punk bands like GBH – at St. Vitus, $20,

7/31, 9 PM terse, acerbic trumpet improviser Steph Richards at Public Records, free

7/31 scampering, irrepressibly fun girlpunks Sharkmuffin at Berlin

8/1, noon eclectic Texas acoustic blues guitarist Ruthie Foster at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

8/1, 5 PM ferociously powerful, politically fearless southern gothic guitar/banjo player Amythyst Kiah at Wagner Park on the river north and west of Battery Park

8/1, 6:30 PM oldschool salsa jazz with Yunior Terry & Son De Altura under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/1, 7:30 PM summery Brazilian samba chanteuse Tulipa Ruiz at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/1, 9ish fiercely brilliant guitarist Ava Mendoza at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, $15 cash only at the door, space limited, RSVP to reserve your ticket

8/1 menacingly orchestral metal band Doomstress at Lucky 13 Saloon

8/2. 6 PM classical ensemble the Harlem Quartet play a program TBA at Bryant Park

8/2, 7ish hypnotically percussive Afro-Honduran sounds with the Garifuna Jazz Ensemble at Crotona Park

8/2-3, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

8/3, 6 PM legendry hip-hop dj Funk Flex celebrates his bday and EPMD celebrate the 30th anniversary of their 1989 classic Unfinished Business at Crotona Park

8/3, 7ish PM politically fearess Taiwanese guy/girl piano pop duo Tizzy Bac at Central Park Summerstage

8/4, 4ish hypnotically pointillistic microtonal African guitar/drums jams with 75 Dollar Bill at Union Pool, free

8/4, 7:30 PM rappers of south Asian heritage: G. Sidhu, Rianjali, Taizu, Rolex, Robin Dey, SA Grooves, Project Convergence, IMGE Dance at Damrosch Park

8/6, 1/3 PM improvisational jazz big band Go: Organic Orchestra & 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 material from their upcoming triple vinyl album in the park on Governors Island,

8/6, 7 PM New Bojaira play flamenco jazz at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

8/6, 7 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play works by Rodrigo, Piazzolla, Gabriela Lena Franh and others at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th St, free, rsvp req

8/6, 7 PM New Bojaira play flamenco jazz at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

8/6-7, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with soloist Joshua Bell play Mozart’s Symphony No. 38, Dvorak’s Violin Concerto and Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

8/7, noon metal band the Beautiful Distrortion – loudest act ever to play outdoors at the triangle at 72nd St. and Broadwaya t Lincoln Square Park on the upper west

8/7, 6 PM  terse, crystalline-voiced guitarist/jazz chantense Camila Meza & Nectar Orchestra at Madison Square Park

8/7, 6 PM terse, crystalline-voiced guitarist/jazz chantense Camila Meza leads her chamber jazz septet Nectar Orchestra at Madison Square Park

8/7, 7:30 PM amazing, atmospheric Hindustani singer/multi-instrumentalist  Arooj Aftab opens for a flameco dance performance at Darnrosch Park

8/8, noon surprisingly vital first-wave Jamaican roots reggae band Third World at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

8/8. 7:30 PM  newgrass and classcial with violinist Tessa Lark and bassist Michael Thurber  at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/9,,7 PM rousing, anthemic janglerock/Americana band the Harthorns at the small room at the Rockwood

8/9-10, 7:30 PM the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra with soloist Steven Osborne play Haydn’s Overture in D, the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2, Schittke’s Mozarr a la Haydn and Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 at Avery Fisher Hall, $35

8/9, 7:30 PM a Marvim Gaye tribute with guitarist Felicia Collins, sax powerhouse Alexa Tarantino, Toshi Reagon, Siedah Garrett, Kecia Lewis, and others at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/10 4 PM Japanese koto/shamisen virtuoso Yoko Reikano Kimura in a rare US performance at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $30

8/10, 6 PM reggae acts from across the years, in reverse order at Central Park Summerstage: dancehall king Elephant Man, ex-Black Uhuru singer Junior Reid, Estelle and newschool conscious roots band Raging Fyah at Central Park

8/10, 7:30 PM psychedelic cumbia night with the slinky female-fronted Delsonido and Bomba Estéreo at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/10, 10 PM hard-hitting, brass-fueled female-fronted newschool latin soul/boogaloo dance band Spanglish Fly play the album release show for their new one at Barbes

8/11, 3 PM ish funk-punk-postpunkers the B Boys play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool, free 

8/11, 5 PM Romany jazz accordionist Julien Labro leads his group at Jefferson Market Garden in the west village

8/13, 7 PM rustic Colombian sounds with the Cumbia River Band at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

8/14, noon: :hard-hitting bassist Dawn Drake & Zapote‘play hard funk followed by mystery band Hasta La Zeta at Lincoln Square Park on the upper west

8/14, 6 PM intense retro 60s influenced Nubian funk band Alsarah & the Nubatone at Madison Square Park

8/14, 6 PM intense retro 60s influenced Nubian funk band Alsarah & the Nubatonesat Maison Square Park. 8/15, 6:30 PM they’re under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/15, 5 PM newschool gospel with Texas singers the Walls Group & Washington DC all-female classical trio the String Queens on the plaza outdoors at NJPAC in Newark

8/15, 5:30 PM chamber ensemble Leadlights play selections by Debussy, Ravel, Schubert, and Jessie Montgomery.at Belvedere Plaza in Battery Park City

8/15, 7:30 PM newschool Mississippi hill country blues with Cedric Burnside at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/17, 7 PM ish honkytonk guitarslinger Danny Weiss and charming singer Mary Olive Smith’s oldschool C&W band Stillhouse Serenade at the Gowanus Dredgers Society Boathouse, free

8/17, 8ish conscious hip-hop legend Talib Kweli at Marcus Garvey Park

8/18, 5 PM the NY Jazzharmonic play a program of music associated with the early women in jazz at Jefferson Market Garden in the west village

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto and La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and youlll need to get there early to get in

8/18, 6 PM what’s left of multiple incarnations of Bob Marley’s band the Wailers featuring Julian Junior Marvin at Marcus Garvey Park

8/21, 1 PM the upbeat, oldtimey Ebony Hillbillies – NYC’s only oldschool African-Amerian string bnad – at Lincoln Square Park on the upper west

8/22, 6:30 PM Bollywood-influenced oldschool soul harmony band Say She She under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/22 7:30 PM whirlwind tropical accordion star El Rey Vallenato Beto Jamaica and band at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/23, 7 PM in reverse order at Marcus Garvey Park: eclectic, purist jazz singer Brianna Thomas, South African croone Vuyo Sotashe, the JBs’ Fred Wesley, erudite jazz drummer Winard Harper & Jeli Posse at Marcus Garvey Park

8/24, 3 PM in reverse order; alto powerhouse Ravi Coltrane, chanteuse Quiana Lynell, the all-star all-femael trio Reclamation with Camille Thurman, Nikara Warren and Brandee Younger at Marcus Garvey Park

8/25, 3 PM in reverse order at Tompkins Square Park: drum eminence grise Carl Allen’s Art Blakey Tribute, tenor man George Coleman’s Trio,  lyrical pianist Fred Hersch and eclectic altoist Lakecia Benjamin at Tompkins Square Park

8/25, 8ish popular 90s salsa chanteuse La India at Central Park Summerstage

8/29, 730 PM the Haitian funk band that started it all, Boukman Eksperyans at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

9/1,  3 PM ish the largescale improvisational ensemble who started it all, the Sun Ra Arkestra outdoors at Union Pool, free

9/3, 8 PM tuneful latin-inspired pianist/organist Bennett Paster at Halyards

9/7, 1/3 PM intense, microtonal string ensemble the Sirius Quartet play Jeremy Harman, Fung Chern Hwei, Gregor Huebner, plys original arrangements of Radiohead & the Beatles in the park on Governors Island

9/8, 7 PM catchy, anthemic newgrass/blue-eyed soul band the Levins at the basement room at the Rockwood, $12

9/21, 5 PM ish intense, brilliantly relevant oldtime gospel/Africa Africana music maven Vienna Carroll and the irrepresibly theatrical, politically spot-on Ukuladkes at the Gowanus Dredgers Society Boathouse, free

The Mise-En Festival; Arguably 2019’s Best New Music Marathon

There are several annual festivals dedicated to new orchestral and chamber music in New York, but no organization casts a wider net than Ensemble Mise-En. Over the past few years, they’ve championed some of the best obscure composers from around the world and resurrected others whose work has been undeservedly forgotten. Last night at Scandinavia House, an expanded edition of the group played a marathon conclusion to their annual festival. The first half was a characteristically rare treat.

The first piece of the night was the world premiere of João Quinteiro‘s Energeia, with Yoon Jae Lee conducting an octet of strings, winds and percussion. Assembled from a vast series of flitting, momentary motives, it became all but impossible to figure out who was playing what, Just when an idea hinted that it would coalesce, it was gone. The two percussionists, Josh Perry and Chris Graham, had a blast, their whirs and buzzes and a momentary, thunderous boom from a large collection of strikable items punctuating a dancing, flickering parade of fragmentary imagery. That put everyody in a good mood.

The night’s piece de resistance was the American premiere of Seoul-based Yie Eun Chun‘s Urban Symphony, Lee conducting a fifteen-piece ensemble throughout its striking, cinematic, whirlwind cinematic shifts. A portrait of the composer’s home turf, it evoked the noir bustle of Charles Mingus, the persistent unease of Messiaen, a little circular Steve Reich in the background along with Miho Hazama at her most majestic. Insistent, kinetic riffage that rose to frantic levels and a creepy chase scene midway through contrasted with tense, minimalist call-and-response over a pulse that began on the cowbell and then made its way through less comedically evocative instruments. It flickered out calmly at the end: peace had finally come to the city. It’s hard to imagine a more consistently thrilling new orchestral work played anywhere in this city this year: it deserves a vast audience.

Another consistently gripping if somewhat quieter composition was another American premiere, Peder Barratt-due‘s microtonal duet ldfleur. Violists Anna Heflin and Hannah Levinson brought its spare, determined unresolve into sharp, sometimes disquieting, sometimes jaunty focus with their dynamic interplay, down to whispery harmonics and then back.

The coda of the first half of the marathon – which was scheduled to run late into the night – was the world premiere of Martin Loridan‘s Concerto pour Piano et Ensemble. Windy, toneless gusts filtered in from the winds and horns, to the violins – watching Marina Im and Sabina Torosjan blow into their instruments was ridiculously funny, considering how meticulously they would articulate the composer’s calm, hovering lines afterward. Pianist Yumi Suehiro’s grim, fanged, revolving phrases, both on the keys and inside the piano, contrasted with that hazy sustain, first from the strings and then the rest of the full ensemble. If Reich had ever wanted to write theme music for a Halloween haunted house, this could have been it.

This was it for the Mise-En Festival, but the group maintains a year-round schedule, both at their home digs in Bushwick and points further from the dreaded L train.

Wadada Leo Smith Puts Out Another Riveting Civil Rights Epic

It’s hard to think of a more consistently relevant artist in any style of music than trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith. Over the last seven years, he’s chronicled the Civil Rights Movement, celebrated the endangered ecology of our Great Lakes and National Parks, and suggested that we shouldn’t stop with occupying Wall Street: as the title of his 2013 album instructs, we ought to Occupy the World. His song cycle Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs – streaming at Spotify – is his most ambitious and often harrowing release since his epic 2012 Civil Rights era narrative Ten Freedom Summers. In general, this album is more atmospheric – and in that sense enveloping – maybe because it’s about a pivotal moment and the embryonic days of the movement it springboarded. Smith is playing a weeklong stand with a series of ensembles, including some of the artists on this album, at the Stone at the New School starting on June 25 at 8:30 PM; cover is $20.

As with Ten Freedom Summers, this album’s orchestration is lavish: Smith plays as part of the BlueTrumpet Quartet with Ted Daniel, Hugh Ragin and Graham Haynes, alongside the RedKoral string quartet and drummer Pheeroan akLaff. There are three singers: Karen Parks, Min Xiao-Fen and Carmina Escobar.

The opening instrumental prelude has a shattering, Shostakovian intensity: a horrified blaze of trumpets, sirening strings, disjointed anguish and yet, in the center of it all, a calm horn presenced which is probably Smith’s own portrayal of Parks’ determination to hold onto her seat and stand up for justice in the midst of assaults from all sides.

As the suspense mounts, there are keening highs over tense, expectant lows from the strings and slow exchanges with the brass. Maybe it’s the presence of Min Xiao-Fen and her spiky pipa, but the first vocal number, The Montgomery Bus Boycott has a big-sky Chinese pastoral vastness, a salute to solidarity and what it can accomplish.

Escobar’s fond but emphatic vocal matches the still sternness of the string quartet in The First Light, Gold, a shout-out to how Martin Luther King picked up the ball and ran with it after Rosa Parks got everything started. Vision Dance 2: Defiance, Justice and Liberation [Smith likes subtitles] is a slowly shifting tone poem for the whole ensemble plus samples from early works by Smith’s AACM collaborators Anthony Braxton on alto and Steve McCall on drums.

Parks sings Change It!, a soberingly poetic contemplation of democratic ideals clashing with reality, with an operatic intensity over mutedly pulsing and then resonant strings, akLaff flickering behind them. His majestically cynical, dismissive solo is sublime. Escobar takes the mic on The Truth, alternately spacious and insistent, then hands off to Min Xiao-Fen for No Fear, a hauntingly resonant setting of Rosa Parks’ own simple explanation of how she got up the courage to kick off a revolution.

More than a tinge of the macabre permeates the shivery, slowly unfolding Vision Dance 3: Rosa’s Blue Lake. Shalini Vijayan’s woundedly expressive viola solo introduces Min Xiao-Fen’s similarly moody vocal dramatics in The Second Light. Yet victory seems within reach as the trumpets enter in Vision Dance 4: A Blue Casa; slipsliding strings remind that it won’t be an easy task.

Parks sings the last of the songs, Pure Love, a celestially lingering look at the Greek concept of agape via MLK. Smith saves his most dynamic solo for The Known World: Apartheid amid disembodied string horror. The brief postlude seems like a Pyrrhic victory until akLaff deliciously gets the last word. This music is as rich and as troubling as the history it commemorates: like Ten Freedom Summers, you can get lost in it. Count this among the half-dozen best albums of the past several months.

The New York Philharmonic End the Season with a Turbulent, Epic Coda

In his Brooklyn debut this past evening in Prospect Park, conductor Jaap van Zweden led the New York Philharmonic through an electric, kaleidoscopically detailed, unselfconsciously transcendent version of Rachmaminoff’s Symphony No. 2. It’s impossible to think of a better way to introduce the orchestra to those across the lawn who either hadn’t seen the group before, or couldn’t afford to visit them at their Lincoln Center home base.

There’s a point in the second movement where a bassoon solo signals the symphony’s first bellicose theme. But van Zweden didn’t pull back the string section gratuitously. Resolute yet rather mysterious, it burbled just above the waterline amid a vast, extremely uneasy tide. The Red Sea didn’t part all the way: the orchestra gave this wanderer just enough room to make his way through without much stress. There were innumerable other moments like that throughout the rest of the evening.

The greatest composers like to keep orchestras on their toes and give audiences plenty of bang for their buck along with jokes and insider references for the diehards. Gloomy as most of it is, why is this symphony one of the most popular in the entire repertoire,? For all of those reasons. Rachmaninoff griped to his inner circle about how long it took him to orchestrate it, but as the dominoes fell one by one, the mosaic this orchestra created with it was viscerally breathtaking, in both scope and substance.

It’s a familiar theme in Rachmaninoff: the composer writing his way out of a very dark headspace. The opening movement bristled with a relentless, downcast intensity, livened with endlessly clever exchanges of riffs and a thematic interweave that finally paid off mightily, a wall of pictures at an exhibition, in the concluding movement. In between, the heartbreak of the third movement contrasted mightily with the anger of the fourth, which came across with more aggression than most orchestras tend to give it.

And that ho-ho-ho intro to the last movement? That’s an inside joke, one that may have completely evaded audiences for decades. It’s a reference to the opening motif of his Symphony No. 1, which was infamously performed only once in his lifetime – to a withering critical reaction that devastated him and left him unable to composer for three full years. After dazzling the crowd for the better part of an hour, Symphony No. 2 becomes Rachmaninoff thumbing his nose at anyone who thought he could never pull it off. For the record, the Rachmaninoff 1 is a frequently audacious work, which, had the composer decided to resurrect it during his lifetime, probably would have become a part of the classical canon much earlier than it did.

In front of the orchestra, van Zweden tends to bounce, but not a lot, as if he’s standing on a heavy truck spring that gives way ever so slightly As much strurm ung drang as this piece has, he didn’t exert himself much except when there was a jewel of a detail that had to be pulled from the storm in a split second. And when that happened, van Zweden seized those moments, one by one, whether fluttery ornamentation from the violins after the cartoonish laughter of the final movement, or a suddenly stark, martial stacccato from the cellos in the third. For all the calm in his body language, he’s exceptionally communicative with the orchestra. The audience afterward were marveling about the level of detail, range of dynamics and sheer freshness he and the orchestra had brought to a familiar piece they’d played several times just a few months ago.

There was other material on the bill: operatic buffoonery and jaunty orchestrated bluegrass, along with a couple of miniatures – one unexpectedly close to horizontal music, and the other very baroque – by a pair of gradeschoolers mentored in the orchestra’s Very Young Composers program.

But all that was just a warmup for the crowning jewel in a year that’s seen the ensemble revitalized like never before in this century. Not to be disrespectful to Alan Gilbert, a gifted conductor who in many ways set the scene for van Zweden to take the reins, but over the course of the past season, the Philharmonic’s programming and performances have been more ambitious and relevant than ever. What a great feeling it is to be excited about New York”s hometown orchestra again.

Hauntingly Triumphant Klezmer and Classical Sounds Fill Central Park

This past evening Central Park was ablaze with music that stretched back as far as several thousand years, if you believe the liturgy. Either way, the best of those ancient Jewish cantorial melodies were as catchy and anthemic as they were darkly rustic, which is the point. The choir isn’t likely to get up to full steam if the tunes aren’t there.

Most of those tunes were sung by the New York Cantors, the trio of  Azi Schwartz, Yanky Lemmer and Netanel Hershtik flanked by a robust crew of backup singers. This time, rather than inciting a friendly cantorial smackdown like they did two years ago, very memorably, their Central Park Summerstage performance was all about harmony and tradeoffs. At their best, they were spectacular. Hershtik’s operatic baritone soared and implored, echoed by Schwartz from time to time as hometown hero Lemmer gave each a wide berth and stayed subtle and low-key for the most part.

In its heyday, cantorial music was as competitive and thrilling a sport as African-American gospel. This show was more socialist than pugilist, enhanced by the lush, velvety backdrop of a chamber orchestra including but not limited to Michael Winograd and Dmitri Slepovitch on reeds and Ljova Zhurbin on viola.

But as impassioned as the cantors were, the highlight of the night was trumpeter Frank London‘s brand-new suite Freylekhs – A Klezmer Fantasy for Orchestra and Trumpet. He gave it a gorgeous, Middle Eastern-tinged, modal solo intro, then the group entered with a supple pulse, then shifted from a stately minor key sway to a bit of a Klezmatics-style romp (London co-founded that legendary band) and an unexpectedly sweeping, majestic interlude with vivid echoes of Egyptian trailblazer Mohammed Abdel Wahab. They wound it up with an even punchier trumpet solo and a triumphant coda.

There was other music on the bill, but that didn’t measure up: centuries-old ngunim don’t translate easily to a cloying, cliched 80s-style power ballad format. And as if we haven’t already heard enough about the death of the corporate record industry, the night’s emcee announced that Universal Music’s big signing this year is…drumroll…Shulem, a twentysomething Israeli crooner whose seven-digit youtube pageviews may or may not be authentic. His voice is definitely the real deal: the guy can belt with anyone, and held the crowd’s attention with a lustrous contemporary classical ode to his home turf. But even a Yiddish second verse couldn’t redeem God Bless America from its association with Bush-era torture, murder and police state terror, both here and abroad.

Further to the north, it was redemptive to be able to catch the New York Philharmonic playing the final movements of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (which they’re reprising at 8 PM on Friday night in Prospect Park: you should go). Binoculars would have been a good idea: the Philharmonic in Central Park is probably the year’s biggest event there. With the array of speaker towers extending south of the stage, it was like watching Rachmaninoff at the Isle of Wight, loudly amplfified. But those of us in the back needed that sonic boost. And the music was everything it should be: delicate in the delicate parts, robust when needed, which was most of the time. The melancholy third movement seemed infused with some righteous anger; then again, that could have been the amplification. Maestro Jaap van Zweden brought his usual meticulousness to the music: he has transformed this orchestra like no other conductor in recent memory.

The Da Capo Chamber Players Unveil a Stunningly Diverse, Global Mix of Sounds at Merkin Concert Hall

The Da Capo Chamber Players have an enviable track record performing a vast stylistic range of lesser-known works that deserve to be heard on a much wider scale. Wednesday night at Merkin Concert Hall, the theme was global.

The coda was a richly noir, relentlessly shifting narrative that frequently resembled Bernard Herrmann’s best work. But Reinaldo Moya‘s Cronica de una Muerta Anunciada was much more of a horror soundtrack than a suspense theme. The full ensemble – Steven Beck on piano, Chris Gross on cello, Curtis Macomber on violin, Patricia Spencer on flute, Nuno Antunes on bass clarinet and clarinet, and Michael Lipsey on vibraphone and percussion – reveled as much as  a group can revel in a story about a grisly murder. Fleeting quotes from a couple of familiar wedding themes appeared early on. before a couple of chase scenes and a sharp, stomping finale illustrating the savage public stabbing immortalized in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Aptly, a recurring, dancing riff for the violin and piano spelled out the name of the murder victim, Santiago Nasar, who’d been the illicit lover of a young woman in a rural Colombian village.

The opening piece – for cello, violin, flute and piano – was Chinary Ung‘s Child Song, interpolating several Asian modes around a lively pentatonic theme based on a surrealistic Cambodian nursery rhyme. The quartet wove a series of graceful exchanges punctuated by sudden dramatic bursts and a moody cello solo as the tonalities cleverly drifted further into western territory. Historically, this 1985 piece was a triumphant return to composition for Ung, who’d spent much of the previous ten years simply trying to stay alive in his native Cambodia while so many of his colleagues were murdered.

While Chou Wen-chung‘s Ode to Eternal Pine celebrates a Korean longevity archetype , it’s written in a western idiom. The ensemble rose from spacious, spare exchanges to a serene majesty in tribute to rugged mountaintop greenery, mysetrious ambience alternating with echo phrases and a sudden, striking coda.

Gabriela Lena Frank’s four-part suite Cuatro Bosquejos sent a shout out to now-vanished civilizations on the Peruvian and Colombian coast. Gross’ cello, in particular, stood out through acerbic chromatic passages in lively, shapeshifting depictions of an ancient, insistent group of flutists, the contrasting cascades in a portrait of a pre-Colombian man-bird, seaside calls into a desert wind, and a methodical disassembly of a panpipe-influenced tune.

Also on the bill were also a brief, elegant partita for solo flute by Noel Da Costa, and a persistently unsettled, steady, occasionally noirish Second Viennnese School trio for clarinet, violin and piano by Pablo Ortiz.

The New York Philharmonic Premiere David Lang’s Chillingly Relevant New Opera

David Lang has more contempt for a police state than he does for capital letters. That’s a lot. A sold-out audience last night were treated to the New York Philharmonic‘s world premiere of his sometimes allusively haunting, sometimes horrifyingly realistic new opera “enemy of the state” [all lowercase, as is the style throughout his catalog]. It’s easy to read Lang’s new take on the theme Beethoven followed in his lone opera, Fidelio, as a Julian Assange parable. Although with the iconic Wikileaks founder reportedly near death from mysterious causes in a British prison, he doesn’t seem to have anyone as willing amd able to spring him as the central prisoner’s wife is in Lang’s new magnum opus. It’s an important work for our time: $34 tickets are still available for tonight and tomorrow night’s 8 PM performances. You should see it.

Lang has always been an anomaly, a brilliant tunesmith in a field too often dominated by both pigheaded obscurantism and twee amateurishness. The music of this new work (Lang also wrote the lyrics) resembles the Hindustani-influenced art-rock of singer Peter Gabriel, the late 70s recordings of the rock band King Crimson at their most purposeful, and the anthemic, artsy side of 80s new wave, more than it recalls Beethoven. Strings and percussion dominate throughout. Late in the narrative, a trumpeter perched on one of the balconies will sound a particularly sardonic variation on an already cynical fanfare. The sheer gorgeousness of the vocal overlays and harmonies of singers Julie Mathevet, Eric Owens and Alan Oke offer cruelly sarcastic contrast with a relentlessly grim, profoundly philosophical narrative that quotes Arendt and Macchiavelli and coldly references Bentham on what the ideal prison should be.

How did maestro Jaap van Zweden tackle the music? Bouncing on his heels as he pulled subtle variations on Lang’s tersely expanding, cellular, Glass-ine themes from the orchestra, he validated every claim about his dedication to new music. Lang’s metrics are challenging, to say the least, and the conductor had those rhythms in his pocket. He was having as much fun as anyone can have leading an orchestra, choir and soloists through the story of a potentially averted execution (you will not find out here how it ends).

The acting is as strong as the singing. Mathevet’s tantalizingly brief flights upward are matched by a resolute presence (as in Fidelio, we are expected to believe that in costume she can pass for a boy, a real stretch). Owens is almost as imperturbable as a would-be Eichmann, just doing his job, but not 100% completely devoid of humanity. Oke, as prison honcho, exudes pure evil as coldblooded sociopath and executioner.

We never even get to see the titular Prisoner, played with depleted, almost-out-of-gas determination by Jarrett Ott, until the third movement. Nor do we ever learn why he’s behind bars – although, as the Jailer avers, he probably has powerful enemies. The difference between life behind bars and outside, as the Prisoner puts it, is that inside, you can see the bars. In this Hobbesian terror state, ruled by greed, corruption and (allusively) Instagram, the jailers are as much prisoners as those they watch over. And somebody’s always watching.

Behind the scenes, Donald Nally matched van Zweden for mastery of uncanny rhythms, leading the orange-clad prisoner choir personfiied by the many men of the Concert Chorale of New York. Elkhannah Pulitzer’s direction sets the stage aptly, with imaginative use of projections and a Guantanamo-like set. When van Zweden emerged from an unexpected entry point, he set off the lone flicker of laughter in this otherwise chillingly relevant retelling of an all-too-familiar story.;

Yelena Grinberg Rescues Rare Classical Treasures from Obscurity

For the last six years, pianist Yelena Grinberg‘s salon has become an Upper Westside institution. The lost treasures of the classical world couldn’t wish for a more enthusiastic, insightful advocate. The energy she put into finding them, and then bringing them back to life is astonishing. For context, she mixes in some of the more popular chamber works that you might see at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, although, realistically, all of this repertoire deserves such a wide audience. Grinberg is a generous hostess and fascinating to talk to. So many professional musicians are blase about their work. Grinberg is 180 degrees the opposite, a tirelessly passionate historian and interpreter of forgotten gems..

At Salon number 186 last weekend, Grinberg’s focus was on works for piano, flute and viola. She explained that she’d found exactly one, from an unexpected source: Tatiana Nikolayeva, best known as a virtuoso concert pianist and major interpreter of Shostakovich. Alongside that one, Grinberg added a piano/flute/viola arrangement of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp. There was also music for flute and piano, and flute and viola, delivered in high resolution. In addition to an extensive concert program, Grinberg gave the audience a detaiiled rundown of each work: she’s as entertaining a tour guide as the tour itself.

The musicianship was topnotch. Flutist Jessica Taskov played meticulously, from ripe, full-toned lows to sturdy swaths of sound and bright, sharply executed accents. This concert was also a rare opportunity to see the great violist Ljova, a.k.a. Lev Zhurbin playing other peoples’ music: he’s been one of New York’s leading composer-performers for over a decade.

The highlight of the program was the Weinerg piece, opening with troubled, slowly unfolding exchanges between flute and viola over an ominous implied pedalpoint. Grinberg’s spiky accents and occasional glissandos energized the desolate call-and-response, up to what came across as a twisted parody of a klezmer dance. Clearly, the horrors the composer had survived, first from the Nazis, and then the Soviets, still lingered when he wrote it in 1979. Having witnessed the Philharmonic playing Corigliano’s terrifying Symphony No. 1 the previous night, this carried even more of a wallop.

Nikolayeva’s eight-part suite turned out to be as delightful a mix of flavors as a composer can possibly pack into about twenty minutes: baroque dances, a puckishly precise scherzo, moody contemplation from flute and viola, allusions to a Balkan bagpipe tune, a slow, starry waltz and finally a clever, Spanish-tinged variation that brought the music full circle. Was this a New York premiere? Or even a North American one?

Likewise, Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style for Violin and Piano (flute playing the violin part) explored familiar tropes from the baroque and onward: a lilting Sicilienne, a strutting ballet and n unexpectedly serioso duet with more than a hint of Mozart. The fugue was where Grinberg’s passion for Bach made itself the clearest, with perfect articulation on the keys that managed at the same time not to be fussy.

Grinberg characterized Alexander Zhurbin‘s piano and viola arrangement of the Waltz from his opera Doctor Zhivago, as “buoyant and passionate,” and she nailed its dynamic neoromanticisms in tandem with the younger Zhurbin (Ljova is Alexander’s son). The two closed with Anton Rubenstein’s Viola Sonata in F Minor, which as Ljova explained, is full of “macho energy.” The violist went deep into the composer’s rich low-register sonics, contrasting with the deviously sotto-voce harmonics of the third movement. And the piece is just as much of a concerto for piano, but Grinberg dug in for its cruelly challenging, stabbing, Schumann-style chordal runs.

The next salon is sold out; after that, Grinberg is offering a fantastic program on June 19 at 7 and the June 23 at 5 PM, with Rachmaninoff’s shattering Trio Elegiaque, along with the famous Arensky piano trio plus lesser known works by Tschaikovsky and Myaskovsky. The salon webpage accepts reservations; you can email the impresario for additional information. If you’re coming from outside the neighborhood, it’s about two minutes from the 96th St. stop on the 1/2/3 – exit at the front of the train.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for June and July 2019

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly. Believe it or not, some of this year’s free summer concert series schedules still haven’t been announced yet – as soon as they are, the good stuff will be on this page.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, 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.

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 ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

7/14-28, 8 PM this year’s International Keyboard Festival featuring inexpensive performances by all kinds of up-and-coming and veteran talent at the Lang Recital Hall, on the 4th floor of the North Building at Hunter College. Most concerts are $10. Too many artists to list: the lineup is here

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 tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.

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 and tv work (Boardwalk Empire; 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 at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Mondays starting at around 10:45 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. 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 woke, 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 usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

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

Wednesdays at 8:30 PM purposeful postbop jazz guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg leads his trio at the Bar Next Door, $12

Wednesdays at 9ish 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

Most Thursdays at 8:30, 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 three Saturdays: 7/6, 13 and 20 at 4 PM 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 June, 5 PM tuneful postbop composer and Hearing Things drummer Vinnie Sperrazza leads a series of ensembles at Barbes

Sundays in June, 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of groups at the Bar Next Door

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

6/1, 1/3 PM up-and-coming chamber group Ensemble Connect play Ives’ Symphony No. 3 plus other works on Governors Island, free

6/1, 5 PM ecketic, fiery jazz improv guitarist Ryan Ferreira followed at 6 by atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and band, at 8 by purist front-porch folk banjo player/singer Stephanie Jenkins and eventually at 11 by creepy 80s goth/folk noir group Ghost Harbor at Pete’s

6/1, 6 PM a Azeri ensemble TBA play works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Lecuona, and Azerbaijani composers Qara Qarayev, Tofik Kuliyev, Aziza Mustafazadeh. at the Sheen Center, $25/$15 stud/rs

6/1, 7 PM a wildly diverse bunch including (probably not in consecutive order) Alsarah and the Nubatones, Nicole Atkins, Rafiq Bhatia, Kevin Breit, Banning Eyre, Fantastic Negrito, Binky Griptite, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Kaia Kater, Brandon Ross, Amythyst Kiah, Rachael & Vilray, Abdoulaye Alhassane Toure, Jontavious Willis, and Brandee Younger. play a Memphis Minnie tribute on the water behind the World Financial Center

6/1, 7:30ish oldschool 60s style soul crooner/guitarist Durand Jones & the Indications followed by Americana soulstress Emily King at Central Park Summerstage. To get in, you may have to stand through a set by a putrid opening act that starts about a half hour earlier

6/1, 7:30 PM erudite jazz drummer Winard Harper & Jelly Posse at Smalls

6/1, 8 PM  clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniac Slavic Soul Party celebrate 15 years at Barbes

6/1, 8 PM gothic rock legend JG Thirlwell followed by wryly psychedelic cinematic Italophile instrumentalists/parodists Tredici Bacci at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20. 6/26 at 7 they’re at National Sawdust for five bucks more in advance plus you have to deal with L train bullshit

6/1-2, 8./10;30 PM reliably acerbic alto sax powerhouse Kenny Garrett leads his band at the Blue Note, $20 standing room avail

6/1 9 PM Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with Brooklyn cover crew Band of Others, the mysterious Derangers, ageless, jangly, purist NY originals the Supertones and surfed-out tv themes from Commercial Interruption sometime after midnight

6/1, 9 PM electric, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts at Bar Chord

6/1, 10 PM sharply literary, ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

6/2, 1130 AM ish this years’s Celebrate Israel Parade on 53rd St between 5th and 6th Aves, performers tba

6/2 2 PM the Scandia String Quartet with flutist Lisa Hansen play works by Friedrich Kuhlau, Lard-Erik Larsson, Jean Sibelius, Edward Grieg, and Frank Foerster on the Billings Lawn on the downhill slope on the Hudson side of Ft. Tryon Park,

6/2, 5 PM ferocious, twin guitar-fueled, Radio Birdman-esque psychedelic punks the Electric Mess at FM Jersey City , $tba

6/2. 6 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band followed by energetic delta blues/Romany swing guitarist Felix Slim at LIC Bar

6/2, 6 PM dynamic Americana/highway rock guy/girl duo Ransom Pier followed by the female-fronted AC/DC, Hannah Wicklund & the Stepping Stones at the Mercury, $12 adv tixx rec

6/2, 6 PM potentially spine-tingling, quiet improvisations from bassist Giacomo Merega, low register reed maven Joshn Sinton and guitarist Todd Neufeld at Downtown Music Gallery

6/2, 7 PM violinist Miranda Cuckson and ensemble play her works plus pieces by Aaron Jay Kernis, Reena Esmail’s Teen Murti and a Peter Askim world premiere at National Sawdust, $25 adv tic rec

6/2, 7 PM improvisational choir Constellation Chor at Spectrum, $15

6/2, 7:30 PM disarmingly direct, lustrous jazz singer Marianne Solivan leads her quartet at Smalls. 6/10 at 8:30 she’s at the Bar Next Door with with Leonardo Pellegrino on guitar and Gregg August on bass, $12

6/2, 8 PM perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar

6/2, 8 PM , 8 PM edgy female-fronted funk band Eliza & the Organix – feat. swirly alto sax player Kristen Tivey –  at the Knitting factory, $12

6/2, 8:30 PM skittish, oldschool 70s style powerpop band the Penultimate followed at 10;30 by quirky, smartly lyrical avant cello-rock band the Icebergs at Pete’s

6/2, 10 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black  at Footlight Bar, $10

6/3, 6 PM kinetic Cuban jazz pianist Elio Villafranca leads a trio and choir playing his new suite about Cuban freedom fighter Florentina Zulueta battling slave traders and conquistadors, at Barretto Point Park (a former slave burial ground) in the Bronx, free. In the case of rain, the concert will move indoors at 1440 Story Avenue – Bronx Charter School for the Arts

6/3, 9 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece and group at the Fat Cat

6/4 drinks at 5:30, show at 6 the Bent Duo -David Friend, piano; Bill Solomon, percussion – play works by Hannah Lash, Sarah Hennies and Mayke Nas at the Miller Theatre, free

6/4, 7 PM Afro-Peruvian jazz/classical/psychedelic folk pianist/chanteuse Chi-Chi Glass and band followed by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes. 6/26, 6:30 PM SSP are outdoors at 300 Ashland Place, corner of Lafayette Ave & Flatbush Ave, Ft. Greene

6/4-5, 7:30;9:30 PM brilliantly eclectic vibraphonist Joel Ross leads a quintet with Immanuel Wilkins – alto saxophone; Jeremy Corren – piano ; Kanoa Mendenhall – bass ; Jeremy Dutton – drums at the Jazz Standard, $30

6/4, 8 PM bassist Nick Dunston, who blends jazz, 20th and 21st-century western classical music, experimental music, and no wave, leads his ensemble through the premiere La Operación for soprano, two alto saxophones, two basses, and two percussionists. “Inspired by the 1982 documentary of the same name by Ana María García, La Operación is an abstract interpretation of a historical phenomenon involving colorism in Puerto Rico, eugenics, medical malpractice, second-wave feminism, and American colonialism” at Roulettte, $18 adv tix rec

6/4, 8 PM 70s disco nostalgia with Patti LaBelle at Prospect Park Bandshell – this will be a mobscene, try watching from behind the back fence if you’re going

6/4, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Mozart, Brahms and others at Washington Square Park

6/4-8, 8:30/10/30 PM lyrical pianist Renee Rosnes leads aquartet wih Steve Nelson on vibes at the Vanguard

6/4-8, 8:30 PM hauntingly Middle Eastern-influenced alto saxophonis Uri Gurvich leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20 Choice pick: 6/7 playing blues with Adam O’Farrill (trumpet) Edward Perez (bass) Clarence Penn (drums)

6/4, 10 PM the Belle Curves – who have an achingly gorgeous new janglerock single out – at Coney Island Baby, $10

6/5, 1 PM violinist Brian Hong plays a program tba at the Greene Space, free, rsvp req

6/5, 7 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Hank’s, free

6/5, 8 PM the DaCapo Chamber Players perform a program of music from a global cast of composers including Chou Wen-chung, Reinaldo Moya, Chinary Ung, Pablo Ortiz, Noel da Costa and Gabriela Lena Frank at Merkin Concert Hall ,$20

6/5, 8 PM klezmer clarinet/mandolin wizard Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

6/5, 9 PM oldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Bar Chord

6/5, 9 PM pedal steel player Jonathan Gregg and his trio followed by guitar goddess Barbara Endes’ exhilarating psychedelic janglerock band Girls on Grass at Hank’s, $tba

6/5, 9 PM high-voltage Texas stoner boogie/heavy psych power trio Jason Kane & the Jive at Otto’s

6/5, 9:30 PM sepulchral, otherworldly Cairo singer/multi-instrumentalis Nadah El Shazly – who puts an eerie shoegaze spin on classical Arabic song – at Joe’s Pub, $15

6/5, 11 PM eclectic pan-latin and Middle Eastern-inflected acoustic songwriter Miriam Elhajli at the small room at the Rockwood

6/6, 6:30 PM postbop drum vet Winard Harper leads his typicaly excellent band at Marcus Garvey Park

6/6, 7 PM intense, Lynchian guitarist Jay Vilnai leads a trio playing the album release show for his lurid new murder ballads record at Arete Gallery, $15

6/6, 7:30 PM viola night with improvisational sorceress Jessica Pavone, cynical, corrosively insightful tunesmithing with Forgotten Bottom and indie classical adventurers Du.0 (violinists Aimee Niemann and Charlotte Munn-Wood,) at the American Can building, 232 3rd St., Gowanus, downstairs, $15, F to 4th Ave ,RSVP strongly suggested

6//6, 7:30 PM, repeating 6/7-8 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play David Lang’s new opera Prisoner of the State – inspired by Beethoven’s Fidelio, it chronicles the rise and fall of a tyrant and an escape attempt by a freedom fighter, what a coincidence in 2019! $34 tix avail

6/6-7, 7:30 PM tuneful, purist postbop guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg leads his quartet at Smalls

6/6, 8 PM an avant string twinbill: acerbic indie classical violin duo String Noise (Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris) play new works by George Lewis, Sam Yulsman, Jessie Cox, Pauline Kim Harris. Then the String Trio of New York: James Emery, Tony Marino and Rob Thomas, with guest percussionist Thurman Barker perform works by Emery, Billy Bang, John Lindberg, Muhal Richard Abrams at Roulette, $20 gen adm

6/6, 8 PM jangly highway rock and gothic Americana with the Rural Alberta Advantage at the Mercury, $20 adv tix rec. Notice how so many old Bowery Ballroom acts are being squeezed into this much smaller space lately? Hmmm…

6/6, 8 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez followed by theremin virtuoso Pamelia Stickney‘s awesome quartet with Sarah Bernstein: violin, Stuart Popejoy: piano/keys, & Danny Tunick: vibraphone. at Barbes, Stickney is back there on 6/12 at 8 and then on 6/21 she’s at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery with Ches Smith , $20. She’s back there the following night 6/22 with Chris Mannigan and Danny Tunick

6/6, 9 PM the irrepressible Ellia Bisker’s explosive Balkan/New Orleans flavored Funkrust Brass Band  followed by Dingonek Street Band playing second line, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz, and the funky Black Tie Brass at Pine Box Rock Shop

6/6, 9 PM dark new psychedelic improvisational electroacoustic trio Sly Horizon with Rick Parker (trombone, electronics, synths), Álvaro Domene (7 string electric guitar and electronics), and Jeremy Carlstedt (drums/electronics). playing the album release show for their debut album at Arete Gallery, $15

6/7, 5 PM Sonoro Nuyorkina featuring Mayra Bello, Osmay Calvo, and Wilson Quevedo play salsa, merengue and bachata at Bryant Park

6/7, 5:30 PM rousing spiritual/soul singer Vienna Carroll at the American Folk Art Museum

6/7, 6 PM eclectic, tuneful folk noir accordionist/guitarist/songwriter Ali Dineen and similarly dark, carnivalesque oldtimey songwriter Feral Foster on the terrace in Pier 3 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, past the basketball courts

6/7, 6:30 PM brilliant drummer/percussionist Willie Martinez leads his salsa jazz Quartet at Sunset Park Recreation Center in Sunset Park, 43rd Street at 7th Ave

6/7, 7 PM oldtimey torch-swing cult favorite Jolie Holland acoustic and unamplified at the Rubin Museum of Art, $25 adv tix ec

6/7-8, 7 PM the annual steel guitar Unconvention at the Jalopy, $25. Friday nght’s lineup begins with pedal steel and cello duets from Bob Hoffnar and Christopher Hoffman – wow – followed at 8 by the: Dime Store Romeos featuring Raphael McGregor, at 9 Dave Easley, at 10 Atlanta sacred steel band Kashiah Hunter and the Sacred Sounds. Saturday nght’s lineup starts at 7 with latin steel sounds from John Eichleay, at 8 Hazmat Modine’s fierce Michaela Gomez, at 9 Anupam Shobhakar playing Indian sarod and at 10 PM Murnel Babineaux on Cajun steel guitar

6/7-8, 7:30 PM cutting-edge B3 organ grooves with the Jared Gold quartet with Jeremy Pelt on trumpet at Smalls

6/7, 8 PM new music ensemble Desdemona – Adrianne Munden-Dixon (violin), Carrie Frey (viola), Julia Henderson (cello), and Margarita Rovenskaya (piano – play works by Peter Kramer, Tom Morrison and Finola Merivale at Arete Gallery, $15

6/7, 8ish long-running, wickedly jangly, tuneful Americana rockers the Sloe Guns at Shrine. 6/11 at 9 PM they’re at Arlene’s, $10

6/7, 8 PM a rare duo performance by darkly tuneful pianist Kris Davis with saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

6/7, 9ish terse, acerbic trumpet improviser Steph Richards leads her trio at the Owl

6/7, 10 PM savage, theatrical Romany punk band Bad Buka – like a louder, more Balkan Gogol Bordelllo – at Barbes

6/7, 10 PM the Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra at the Cutting Room,, $30 adv tix rec

6/7, 10:30 PM catchy Booker T-esque soul jazz with the David Gibson/Jared Gold Hammond B3 organ band at the Fat Cat

6/7, 11 PM Athan Hilaki and his band play classic Greek rebetiko rock and pop hits at Drom, $15 standing room avail

6/8, noon LES punk guitar legend Simon Chardiet’s harder-swinging band the Rooftoppers at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/8, 1 PM chanteuse/uke player Dahlia Dumont’s Blue Dahlia play edgy, smartly lyrically-fueled, jazz-infused tunes in English and French with classic chanson and Caribbean influences at Ruppert Park, Second Ave. bet. E. 90 St. and E. 91 St.

6/8, 7 PM latin drum maven Bobby Sanabria, and band at Playground Fifty-Two, 681 Kelly St, in the Bronx, 2 6 to Jackson Ave

6/8, 7 PM ethereal yet powerful singer/composer Kristin Hoffmann celebrates World Oceans Day at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $20

6/8, 7 PM catchy, bouncy Oregon garage/psych/soul band the Midnight Callers at the Bitter End

6/8 7:30 PM Burnt Sugar  The Arkestra Chamber revisit their longime collaborator, renaissance man/filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles’ compositions, performing a live score with actors and band members reading from the original script while a silent print of his classic film Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song is projected onto the big screen on Fort Greene Park’s Myrtle Avenue hill.

6/8, 7:30 PM seven-piece chamber jazz ensemble Wide Open with Mark Feldman – violin Michel Gentile – flute Jacob Garchik – trombone Anna Webber – saxophones Daniel Kelly – piano Matt Pavolka – bass Rob Garcia – drums at Brookliyn Conservatory of Music, $tba

6/8, 8 PM trumpeter Ben Holmes’ broodingly Middle Eastern/klezmer-tinged Naked Lore trio followed at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

6/8. 8 PM the String Orchestra of Brooklyn  perform newly commissioned works by Greg Spears and Phil Kline alongside Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla at Roulette, $18 gen adm

6/8, 8 PM guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – followed eventually at 10 by world-weary noir pop songwriter Mara Connor at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec

6/8, 8:30 PM the world’s creepiest, slinkiest, most psychedelic crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Pasta e Vino, 136 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, 5 minutes from the Grove St. Path train, $10.. Crime jazz at a red sauce Italian restaurant in Jersey City,  Hmmm…

6/8, 8:30ish postbop/improv jazz drum maven Ches Smith leads a pretty scary quartet with Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman on guitars plus Nick Duonston on bass at I-Beam, $15

6/8, 9ish a rare reunion of retro, low-key, horn-driven third-wave ska band the Bluebeats at Hank’s, $10

6/9, noon punk/rockabilly band the Screaming Rebel Angels at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/9, 1 PM brilliant, fearlessly political B3 organist Greg Lewis teams up with similarly diverse guitarist Marvin Sewell at Bar Lunatico for brunch. They’re back here on the 23rd

6/9, 2 PM the mighty Mariachi Real de Mexico de Ramon Ponce near the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island

6/9, 2 PM the Scandia Brass Quintet on the Billings Lawn on the downhill slope on the Hudson side of Ft. Tryon Park,

6/9, 3-11 PM an allday free Wall to Wall John Coltrane marathon at Symphony Space,, lineup tba includes Lakecia Benjamin, the Brooklyn Raga Massive and others

6/9, 3 PM roots and dancehall reeggae with British Dependency, Mr. Kool, and Paul Brown at St. Albans Park in Queens

6/9, 3 PM the  NJ Symphony Orchestra play Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream plus Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail, if you can’t get to Central Park for the Philharmonic playing that symphony, you should go to this

6/9, 6 PM a killer twinbill at LIC Bar with wildly theatrical, creepy circus rock band Orphan Jane  followed by sharply lyrical southwestern gothic/Americana songwriter Tom Shaner f

6/9, 3 PM Elspeth Davis, mezzo-soprano and Gloria Kim, piano perform an all George Crumb program 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

6/9, 7 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at 55 Bar. 6/30 at 9 they’re at Bar Lunatico.

6/9, 7 PM brilliantly eclectic Ameriana guitarist Jason Loughlin‘s String Gliders play western swing followed by followed at 9:30 or so by paradigm-shifting Romany swing/psychedelic rock guitarist Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

6/9,  7 PM spine-tingling, darkly mystical art-rock/avant-garde/chamber pop songwriter Carol Lipnik – pretty much everybody’s choice for best singer in all of NYC –  at Pangea

6/9, 7 PM Bobtown – NYC’s most allusingly lurid folk noir harmony band – play the album release show for their slightly less creepy new one at the big room at the Rockwood

6/9, 8:30 PM quirky, whirling, string-driven chamber pop/art-rock band Gadadu at Pete’s

6/10 4 PM whirlwind klezmer violin icon Alicia Svigals plays her soundtrack to the cult classic 1920s silent film The Ancient Law, with pianist Donald Sosin at the Queens Library at Forest Hills, 108-19 71st Ave.. 6/13 at 5 they’re at Queens Library at Kew Gardens, 72-33 Vleigh Pl in Flushing

6/10, 6 PM the Brooklyn Songwriters Exchange – a diverse bunch playing everything from folk noir to Costelloesque, literatry rock to Indian ragas and oldschool soul – at Pete’s

6/10, 8 PM brilliantly improvisational pianist Mara Rosenbloom leads her trio then joins with Bone Labyrint, i.e. the Mara Rosenbloom Trio meets Melanie Dyer’s We Free Strings at I-Beam, $15

6/10, 8 PM International Contemporary Ensemble  and the City of Tomorrow woodwind quintet play a three-part program featuring rare works by Ursula Mamlok, Natasha Anderson, and Felipe Lara at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

6/10, 7 PM otherworldly Norwegian folk singer Marja Mortensson puts an ethereal art-rock spin on ancient reindeer herding songs at Joe’s Pub, $20

6/10, 7 PM  tuneful postbop pianist Jim Ridl leads his group from behind the Rhodes followed at 10 by eclectic, witty, paradigm-shifting B3 jazz organist Brian Charette at 55 Bar

6//10, 7 PM up-and-coming indie classical ensemble Face the Music with flutist Claire Chase play Anthony Braxton compositions at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

6/10, 10ish the NYC Gaita Club – a Bulla en el Barrio spinoff – play rustically pounding Afro-Colombian trance-dance music at Barbes

6/11, drinks at 5:30, show at 6 Ensemble Échappé play works by Selim Göncü, Katherine Balch, Nina C. Young and others at the Miller Theatre, free

6/11, 7 PM composer Matt Frey celebrates the release of his operatic concept album, One-Eleven Heavy about the suspicious 1998 plane crash of Swissair Flight 111 off Nova Scotia, at Arete Gallery, free

6/11, 7 PM eclectic, hard-hitting, lyrical composer/tenor saxophonist Stan Killian at 55 Bar

6/11, 7:30/9:30 PM the haunting, smokily cinematic Michael Leonhart Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, $30

6/11, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Brahms and Mohammed Fairouz at Washington Square Park

6/11, 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 plus other stuff at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The program repeats on 6/12 in Central Park, 6/13 in Cunningham Park, at 193rd Street, near 81st Avenue or Union Turnpike in Queens, 6/14 in Prospect Park. The orchestra’s brass and percussion also play a free concert on 6/16 at 4 at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island

6/11, 8:30 PM alto saxophonist Caroline Davis with Rick Rosato on bass and Kenneth Salters on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

6/11-15, 8:30 PM vivid, intense, lyrical jazz pianist Myra Melford leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20 Choice pick: 6/13 with Mary Halvorson (guitar) Ingrid Laubrock (sax) Tomeka Reid (cello)

6/11, 9 PM torchy noir jazz legends  the Jazz Passengers go slumming at Bar Chord

6/11, 9 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriter Julia Haltigan at 11th St Bar

6/11, 9 PM edgy jazz oudist and bassist Omer Avital leads a quintet at Bar Lunatico

6/11, 9 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at Bar Chord. They’re back here on 6/29 at 9.

6/12, 7 PM a cantorial music showdown with Azi Schwartz, Yanky Lemmer and Netanel Hershtik backed by an all-star band led by trumpet legend Frank London at Central Park Summerstage

6/12, 7 PM soaring, epic all-female mariachi/tropicalia orchestra Mariachi Flor de Toloache at the Poisson Rouge, $20 adv tix rec

6/12, 7 PM Los Pleneros de 21 play classic Puerto Rican bomba and plena sounds at Albee Square (corner of Fulton and Bond), downtown Brooklyn

6/12, 7 PM Jog Blues mash up Indian and American jazz sounds – but nothing related to running or blues – at National Sawdust, $30 adv tix rec

6/12, 8:15 PM the Take Off Collective trio with Marko Djordjevic: drums; the magically microtonal Ole Mathisen: tenor saxophone; Matthew Garrison: bass at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/12, 8:30 PM brilliant noir swing/Romany jazz/latin soul composer and guitarist Jack Martin (ex-Knoxville Girls and Dimestore Dance Band) at Troost. He’s also here on 6/26

6/12, 8:30 PM  pensively intense microtonal violinist/singer Sarah Bernstein‘s excellent Veer Quartet with Sana Nagano – violin; Leonor Falcón – viola; Nick Jozwiak – cello at Arete Gallery, $15

6/13, half past noon polymath latin jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill leads a small group at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th St

6/13, 6-9 PM the Museum Mile Festival with free admission at museums all along 5th Ave

6/13, 7 PM soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar

6/13, 7:30 PM  fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/roadhouse jamband Lizzie & the Makers and folk noir duo the Tall Pines playing the album release show for their new one at Coney Island Baby, $12

6/13, 7:30 PM bassist Anne Mette Iversen leads an excellent quintet with John Ellis on soprano sax at Smalls

6/13, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by Quatre Vingt Neuf, who do playfully improvisational versions of hot jazz classics with a rock rhythm section at Barbes

6/13, 8 PM Duo Violete – Émilie Fortin (trumpet) and Laura (violin and viola) – play transcontinental violin-trumpet works by John Mallia (Boston), Bekah Simms (Toronto), Ryan Maguire (Virginia), Lucy Hollier (NYC), Maxime Daigneault (Montreal), and Dan Antoniu at the Owl

6/13, 8ish wild, epic Afrobeat jamband the Brighton Beat at the Knitting Factory, $12

6/13, 9 PM hauntingly jangly retro 60s Laurel Canyon psychedelic band the Mystic Braves at Rough Trade, $15 gen adm

6/13, 10 PM a rare reunion gig by pioneering salsacore/Puerto Rican punk band Ricanstruction at Shrine

6/14, 5:30 PM a fearsome lineup of acoustic and Americana talent tba celebrate irrepressible impresario and songwriter Lara Ewen‘s bday at the American Folk Art Museum

6/14, 6 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Ed Cherry and band at J Hood Wright Park W. 173 St. bet. Haven Ave. and Ft. Washington Ave. uptown

6/14, 7 PM exhilarating klezmer/latin/cumbia jamband Metropolitan Klezmer on the roof of the Manhattan JCC, $18, noshes and drinks available

6/14, 8 PM Afrobeat bassist Will Graefe and band followed by eclectic, cinematic keyboardist Frank LoCrasto playing the album release show for his coy new tropicalia/exotica record at Union Pool, $12

6/14-15, 8 PM fascinatingly lyrical, individualistic pianist Sylvie Courvoisier with Mary Halvorson on guitar at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

6/14, 8 PM Indian reggae-rock band Kabir Cafe at Flushing Town Hall, $16

6/14, 8 PM serpentine, cinematic art-rock instrumentalists You Bred Raptors followed by jaggedly guitar-driven, female-fronted anthem band Grayhunter at the Knitting Factory, $10

6/14, 8 PM Lost Dog New Music Ensemble play the the world premiere of new orchestrations of Leonard Bernstein’s haunting Dybbuk and his much more carefree early suite Fancy Free.at the DiMenna Center, $20

6/14, 8:30 PM surf rock night at Freddy’s: Brooklyn cover trio the Band of Others and  the majestic, darkly cinematic TarantinosNYC.

6/14, 9 PM dark intense lyrical southwestern gothic/paisley underground rockers Shanghai Love Motel at Connolly’s, 121 W 45th St., $10

6/14,, 9 PM Bollywood-influenced oldschool soul harmony band Say She She followed by psychedelic Afrobeat jamband Ikebe Shakedown at Rough Trade, $15 ad tix rc

6/14 10 PMLos Cumpleanos with Nestor Gomez – vox/percussion; Lautaro Burgos – drums; Eric Lane – keyboards; Alex Asher – trombone play Colombian cumbias, salsa and originals at Barbes

6/15, 2 PM hard-hitting bassist Dawn Drake & ZapOte at Parkside Ave & Ocean Ave outside the subway

6/15, 5 PM ferociously lyrical, Macbeth-inspired art-rock/psychedelic songwriter Rose Thomas Bannister,  at the Gowanus Dredgers Society Boathouse, 2nd St. and the canal (past Bond, two blocks left of Smith), free

6/15, 5 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra  at Marcus Garvey Park

6/15 boarding a 6 PM, sailing at 7 noisy, hazily jangly, psychedelic slowcore/free jazz/avant instrumentalists Sunwatchers and psychedelic latin soul tinged band Garcia Peoples aboard the Lucille, leaving from behind the heliport at 23rd St. and the East River, $20 adv tix available at the Rocks Off Concert Cruise box office there

6/15, 7 PM drummer Jack DeJohnette leads a Coltrane tribute trio with Ravi Coltrane on alto and Matt Garrison on bass at Central Park Summerstage

6/15, 7 PM Orquesta Afinke play oldschool salsa dura at Gorman Playground bordered by 30 Ave. and 25 Ave. and  84th  St. and 85th St. way out on the way to LaGuardia in Queens

6/15, 7 PM drummer/composer Matt Slocum plays the album release for his new trio album with Adam Birnbaum – piano; Larry Grenadier – bass at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don $20

6/15, 730 PM thunderous Ukrainian folk-punk stompers Dakhabrakha at the Schimmel Auditorium at Pace University downtown, $30

6/15, 7:30 PM the  Queens Symphony Orchestra play Honegger’s “Pastorale d’été,” Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks Concerto,” Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in C Major, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” at Flushing Town Hall, free, rsvp req

6/15, 8 PM poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo’s tango quartet followed at 10 by Cumbiagra – who’ve been going in a much more psychedelic, electric cumbia direction lately – at Barbes

6/15, 8 PM high-voltage psychedelic cumbia/Afrobeat jamband MAKU Soundsystem followed by Super Yamba playing their psychedelic Afrobeat jams at C’Mon Everybody, $10. Super Yamba are also at Barbes on 6/22 at 10.

6/15, 8 PM Yousef Shamoun & Tarab Ensemble play slinky, haunting Middle Eastern jams at the Poisson Rouge, $20 adv tix rc

6/15, 9ish playful improviser Ingrid Laubrock, tenor sax; Eva Novoa, piano ; Drew Gress, bass ; Tom Rainey, drums at I-Beam, $15

6/15, 10 PM Greg Lewis’ brilliant, fearlessly political Organ Monk Trio at the Fat Cat

6/15, 10:30 PM charismatic, adventurous postbop/avant garde trombonist/crooner Frank Lacy‘s Tromboniverse at Smalls. 6/25, 8 PM they’re in Washington Square Park

6/15, 11 PM circus rock legends World Inferno at the Market Hotel, $20

6/16, 2 PM the Scandia String Orchestra  perform Nordic works by Frank Foerster, Niels W. Gade, Johan Helmich Roman, and Svend S. Schultz on the Billings Lawn  on the downhill slope on the Hudson side of Ft. Tryon Park,

6/16, 3 PM ish the largescale improvisational ensemble who started it all, the Sun Ra Arkestra outdoors at Union Pool, free

6/16, 4 PM psychedelic Brazilian band Os Clavelitos at followed eventually at 7 by darkly psychedelic circus punks Yula & the Extended Family at LIC Bar

6/16, 5 PM Bang on a Can regular and bass clarinetist Ken Thomson leads his sextet followed by eclectic indie classical piano trio Bearthoven at Arete Gallery, $15. At 8 PM there’s a separate show featuring trio In Dreams exploring “the hope and discomfort of dreams, the moments when we let go and imagine a thing wouldn’t name when we’re awake” including Houtaf Khoury’s “Apres un reve” (2008), a modern nightmare reacting to the terror of relentless war in the Middle East: a dream of hope amidst the fatigue of fear. Hasan Ucarsu’s “…the city of anachronistic nostalgia, Istanbul…” (2003) celebrates his and Derin’s hometown of Istanbul, a city rich in contradictions and layers,” plus an adaptation of Claude Debussy’s “Bilitis”, and Michael Fiday’s “Nine Haiku” that sets works by 8th century poet Basho with flashes of powerful images, dreams that come into focus for only a moment before they vanish,” separate $15 adm

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/sr

6/16 8 PM intense, lyrical janglerock/Americana/soul songwriter Matt Keating and guitarist Steve Mayone’s catchy project the Bastards of Fine Arts at 11th St. Bar

6/16  9:30 PM sharply lyrical alto saxophonist Dave Pietro leads a killer sextet including Gary Versace on organ at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

6/16, 10 PM the anthemic, grittily 80s-tinged Dark Moon Apache at Footlight Bar, $10

6/17, 7 PM singer Rocío de Frutos & harpist Manuel Vilas perform a rare program of Quecha mystical music at the Americas Society, $20

6/17, 7:30 PM fiery alto saxophonist Lucas Pino’s eclectic, dynamic No No Nonet at Smalls

6/17, 7:45 PM singer Simona Minns leads her quartet playing “tribal roots, pagan spells, Lithuanian zither sounds, and chants incorporated into urban musical styles” at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

6/17 , 9:30 PM ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach at Barbes

6/18, 7 PM popular, eclectic, edgy orchestra the Knights play works by Mendelssohn, Britten and Lisa Bielawa at Temple Emmanu-El, 1 E 65th St, free, rsvp req

6/18, 730 PM a Django Reinhardt tribute with Uptown Guitars, Franglais, Daniel John Martin & Romane Quartet at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/18-19, 8 PM acoustic goth/folk noir dude Sea Wolf with a string quartet at National Sawdust, $25 dv tix rec

6/18, 8 PM the Festival Chamber Orchestra play works by Liszt, Barber and Beethoven at Washington Square Park

6/18, 8 PM composer Alex Weiser “presents an evening of songs culminating the complete first act of his opera-in-progress, State of the Jews, with librettist Ben Kaplan. State of the Jews follows Theodor Herzl in the last year of his life, as his efforts to establish a Jewish state become increasingly desperate. It includes scenes from the Sixth Zionist congress, in which Herzl proposes Uganda as a possible land for Jewish settlement, and Herzl’s planned visit with Pope Pius X, to seeksthe Pope’s support for a Jewish state,” at Roulette, $18 adv tix tec

6/18 8:15 PM tuneful latin-inspired pianist/organist Bennett Paster leads his quintet playing the album release for this typically eclectic new one at the basement room at the Rockwood, $15

6/18-23, 8:30/10:30 PM perennially popular postbop pianist Brad Mehldau leads his trio at the Vanguard. Be aware that the early shows are selling out

6/18-22, 8:30 PM klezmer-jazz piano ico Anthony Coleman leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20 Choice pick: opening night, leading a chamber jazz nonet with strings

6/19, 6:30 PM sizzling violin-driven tarantella/Romany string band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino outdoors at 300 Ashland Place, corner of Lafayette Ave & Flatbush Ave, Ft. Greene. 6/23 they’re at Joe’s Pub at noon for a $20 cover

6/19, 7 PM the annual Juneteenth celebration at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall with the Harlem Chamber Players, pianist Cyrus Chestnut and his trio and many others, free, tix avail at the box offiice or here

6/19, 7 PM bass sax monster Stefen Zeniuk’s punk mambo crew the NY Fowl Harmonic at Hank’s , free

6/19, 8 PM haunting noir singer Karla Rose & the Thorns play her menacingly playful, brilliantly lyrical songs at 11th St. Bar

6/19, 8 PM rapturousy subtle tropicalia drummer/bandleader (and former Chicha Libre timbalera) Karina Colis leads a piano quartet at Barbes

6/19, 10:30 PM scampering, irrepressibly fun girlpunk/psychedelic band Sharkmuffin at Coney Island Baby, $10

6/20, noon ageless soul-jazz pioneer and Blaxpolitation film soundtrack icon Roy Ayers at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/20, half past noon amazing, mostly-female, kinetic klezmer/cumbia/cinematic jamband Isle of Klezbos at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th St

6/20. 6 PM whirlwind klezmer violin icon Alicia Svigals ‘ Klezmer Fiddle Express at Queens Library in Flushing at 41-17 Main St. with accordionist Will Holshouser and bassist Brian Glassman, 7 train to Flushing

6/20 7PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. serenade the annual record sale at the Archive of Contemporary Music, 54 White Street (between Broadway and Church St.), free. 6/27 at 8 they’re at Ottos

6/20, 7:30 PM bluesy funk followed by gullah-influenced soul: organist: Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles and Tank & the Bangas at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/20, 7:30 PM catchy, eclectic ska-pop/latin/reggae sounds from the Brown Rice Family followed by soaringly haunting Yorkshire lass Jan Bell and her all-female Americana band the Maybelles under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

6/20, 7:30 PM Icelandic bassist & composer Sigmar Matthíasson and his Arora trio at Scandinavia House, $15

6/20 8 PM Zoë Aqua (violin) teams up with her Tsibele co-conspirator Zoe Guigueno (bass) to play new original Yiddish songs at Barbes

6/20, 8 PM 90s hip-hop nostalgia with Pharaoh Monche at Von King Park, 670 Lafayette Ave in Bed-Stuy, G to Bedford-Nostrand

6/20 8 PM enigmatic psychedelic funk guitarist/singer Aubrey Haddard and her band at South House in Jersey City, free. Edgy and fearlessly jazzy like a young Alice Lee

6/20, 8 PM sound sculptor Cecilia Lopez‘s RED, which “investigates interactions with unstable acoustic feedback systems,” hmmm, at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

6/20, 8 PM searing, intense, brilliantly tuneful Turkish-American rockers Barakka at the old Nublu, $10

6/20, 8:30 PM edgy Macedonian band Tavche Gravche at Bar Bayeaux, 1066 Nostrand Ave, 2 to Sterling St

6/20, 9 PM epic psychedelic soujl jamband the Black Capsule at the Bitter End

6/20, 9 PM scruffy punkish jamband Jeff the Brotherhood at Industry City Courtyard, 238 36th St, Sunset Park, $15 adv tix avail at the Bell House

6/21, noon Americna banjo maven and indie classical composer Jayme Stone‘s Folklife at Bryant Park

6/21, 5 PM guitarslinger Lenny Molotov’s slyly literary, period-perfect 1920s/30s styel swing band the Fascinators at Cato’s Army & Navy 654 Manhattan Ave (Nassau/Norman), Greenpoint, free, G to Nassau ave

6/21, 5 PM traditional Swedish music by Paul Dahlin and his fellow fiddlers from the American Swedish Institute at Wagner Park on the river north and west of Battery Park

6/21, 6 PM a rare uptown appearance by Brooklyn folk noir icon Liz Tormes at the American Folk Art Musem

6/21, 6 PM soaringly haunting Yorkshire lass Jan Bell and soul/gospel belter (and Lenny Molotov collaborator) Queen Esther on the terrace in Pier 3 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, past the basketball courts

6/21-22, 7 PM iconic low register reedman Scott Robinson switches to tenor for a show by his Tenormore Quartet at Birdland, $30

6/21, 7:30 PM psychedelic blues singer/bandleader Aida Victoria followed by desert rock/southwestern gothic legends Calexico fronted by that Iron & Wine dude at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/21, 8 PM careeningly explosive ten-piece Balkan brass crew Veveritse at Shrine

6/21, 8 PM pianist Huizi Zhang and composer-pianist Gu Wei play an evening of contemporary music for toy and “real” piano featuring pieces by Phyllis Chen, Jun An Chew, Daniel Despins, Chris Parrello, Yuting Tan, and Gu Wei at the DiMenna Center, $20

6/21, 10 PM psychedelic salsa bandleader Zemog El Gallo Bueno at Barbes

6/22, 10 AM the annual free Punk Island allday concert on Governors Island, dozens of bands from all styles of punk. Houston folk-punk faves Days N Daze on the bill with dozens of others. Keep in mind that security to get on the ferry is FEROCIOUS, no alcohol alllowed, you will be searched.

6/22, 2 PM  Shelley Thomas – best known as a spectacular, haunting singer specializing in music from across the Middle East and the Balkans, but also an accomplished oudist  – with fellow oudist/percussionist Zafer Tawil, play a house concert in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, free, RSVP req, email for deets and location

6/22, 2 PM Stefanie Minatee & Jubilation celebrate 20 years of singing ecstatic gospel tunes at NJPAC in Newark, $34 tix avail

6/22, 3 PM “dozens of musicians from Syria, Croatia, Egypt, Brazil, Cuba, and all over the world—many of whom are revitalizing their musical lives after resettling here in the U.S.— perform both traditional and contemporary music” at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, free

6/22, 8/10 PM powerful jazz belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor –  Charenee Wade leads her group at Ginny’s Supper Club, $20

6/22, 8 PM Afrobeat-influenced jazz sextet Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine at Toast, 1130 Nostrand Ave in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, 2 to President St

6/22, 8:30 PM hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes and sardonically relevant guitar-fueled female-fronted Americana punks Spanking Charlene at Coney Island Baby, $10

6/22, 8:30 PM psychedelic Chicago postrock/downtempo legends Tortoise at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/22, 10 PM sardonically catchy powerpop/janglerockers the Hell Yeah Babies at the small room at the Rockwood

6/22, 11 PM fiery oldschool soul, rockabilly and retro rock wiht Carrie & the Cats at the Bitter End

6/23, 11 AM the annual Porchstomp festival of acoustic Americana and oldtimey music alll over Governors Island, free, dozens of great acts

6/23, noon sizzling violin-driven tarantella/Romany string band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino at Joe’s Pub, $20. Multi-instrumentalist avant-garde singer Ka Baird  and dark cinematic klezmer art-rockers Barbez  play a twinbill there at 9:30 for $15 separatte adm

6/23, noon ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach at Riis Park Beach Bazaar in the Rockaways

6/23, 4 PM ish electroacoustic film composer/performer Haley Fohr aka Circuit des Yeux at Union Pool, free

6/23 7 PM a rare NYC show by French jazz cellist Vincent Courtois with Daniel Erdmann – tenor saxophone and Robin Fincker – tenor saxophone. followed at 9:30 by paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel

6/23, 8 PM the original cello rockers, Rasputina, as fearless and funny and relevant as ever, at Baby’s All Right, $20

6/23, 9ish the Abyssmals mash up horror surf and garage-psych sounds at the Gutter, $7

6/23, 10 PM edgy lefty latin soul guitarist Damian Quinones acoustic at Freddy’s, 6/25 at 9 he leads an electric power trio at Bar Chord6/30, noon  jangly New York original surf rock cult heroes the Supertones  at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/24-28, half past noon perennially tuneful, Monk-influenced, witty Microscopic Septet pianist Joel Forrester on the terrace at Bryant Park

6/24, 7 PM catchy, lyrically edgy, anthemic janglerock tunesmith Greta Keating at the small room at the Rockwood

6/24, 7:30 PM Danish guitarist Mikkel Ploug with bassist Jeppe Skovbakke and drummer Sean Carpio at Scandinavia House, $15

6/24. 10 PM catchy folk noir/Nashville gothic songwriter Emily Frembgen at the Knitting Factory, $10

6/25, 6:30 PM Dennis Lichtman and Tamar Korn from  popular western swing band Brain Cloud lead a pickup band on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

6/25, 7:30 PM pointillistic Nordic jazz with keyboardist Kari Ikonen with bassist Olli Rantala and drummer Markku Ounaskari at Scandinavia House, $15

6/25 7:30 PM Johannes Fleischmann plays the album release show for his new record with works by Korngold and Erich Zeisl at the Austrian Cultural Center, free, rsvp req

6/25, 7:30 PM Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, the boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band that pretty much singlehandedly springboarded the oldtimey swing revival in NYC, at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

6/25, 8ish psychedelic doom metal band Witchkiss at St. Vitus, $15

6/25, 9 PM brilliant oldshool soul and Chicago blues guitarist Binky Griptite’s bday bash with his Orchestra (formerly Sharon Jones’ brilliant oldschool soul backing band) at Bar Lunatico

6/25-29, 8:30 PM iconic trumpeter and fearlessly political composer Wadada Leo Smith leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: 6/28 with Mariel Roberts, Okkyung Lee (cellos) Erika Dohi, Gabriel Zucker (pianos)

6/25, 9:30 PM Russian quirk-rock, ska punk and freak-folk with Vezhlivy Otkaz – Russian for “polite refusal” –  “one of the most original and erratic rock bands in Russia” at Drom, $15 adv tix rec

6/25, 10 PM serpentine, cinematic, epic art-rock band Book of Harmony at Shrine

6/26, 7:30 PM latin jazz drum maven Dafnis Prieto‘s Si o Si Quartet and Cuban piano legend Chucho Valdés at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/26-27, 7:30/9:30 PM edgy postbop guitar improviser Liberty Ellman leads a septet including both Jonathan Finlayson and Steve Lehman at the Jazz Gallery, $20

6/26, 730 PM sunshine psych-pop songwriter Sam Kogon at Sunnyvale, $10

6/26, 8 PM this era’s most fearlessly relevant, hard-hitting tenor saxophonist, JD Allen unveils his brand-new trio and plays the album release show for his latest one, Barracoon at Bar Bayeaux, 1066 Nostrand Ave in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, free, 2 to Sterling St. omfg

6/26, 8:30 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriter Julia Haltigan and her killer band at Berlin, $12

6/26, 9 PM cult favorite gonzo pianist Dred Scott leads his trio at at Bar Lunatico

6/26, 10 PM a rare reunion of wild Brooklyn psychedelic cumbia legends Chicha Libre at Barbes. For anyone who missed their seven-year weekly residency here, this is a must-see. Their show Monday night was off the hook.

6/27, half past noon playfully eclectic trombonist Art Baron and band at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th St

6/27, 5:30 PM Avenida B play oldschool salsa dura under the Manhattan Bridge archway

6/27, 7 PM golden-age hip-hop vets Smif & Wessun and Black Moon at Betsy Head Park in Brownsville, 3 to Saratoga Ave

6/27, 7 PM pianist Yumi Kim plays Monk at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/27, 7:30 PM Jamaican dancehall night with conscious singer Jah9 and her rootsy band followed by Protoje at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/27, 7:30 PM Swedish multi-reed player Thomas Backman leads a quartet playing Nordic jazz and “widescreen chamber pop” at Scandinavia House, $15

6/27, 9 PM the eclectic, electrifying accordion-driven Los Mochuelos play classic gangsta Colombian vallenato and cumbia at Bar Chord

6/27, 9;30 PM noir Americana/torchsong icon Eleni Mandell playing songs from her harrowing new album about life behind bars, at the big room at the Rockwood, $15

6/27, 10 PM intense, eclecic oudist Brian Prunka’s ambitious, slinky, improvisaional Middle Eastern jamband Nashaz at Barbes

6/28, 5:30 PM one of New York’ most acerbic, distinctive voices in front-porch folk, Jo Williamson,  star Pakistani crooner Ali Aslam, and richly lyrical noir soul band Sweet Soubrette at the American Folk Art Museum

6/28, 6 PM intense, multistylistic blues guitarist/singer Will Scott with violinist Charlie Burnham on the terrace in Pier 3 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, past the basketball courts

6/28, 6:30 PM Orquesta Afinke play oldschool salsa dura at Elton Street and Jamaica Avenue (in Highland Park), Cypress Hills, J to Norwood St.

6/28, 7 PM the all-female Resistance Revival Chorus sing epic, inspiring original populist gospel tunes and anti-trumpie broadsides at Pier 45 in Hudson River Park – take W 10th St to the river

6/28, 7 PM ten-piece theremin orchestra the Thereminoes at Spectrum, $15. Even if they aren’t very good this could be insanely fun.

6/28, 7 PM Indian classical mandolinist Snehasish Mozumder at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

6/28-29, 7:30/9:30 PM terse, crystalline-voiced guitarist/jazz chantense Camila Meza leads a chamber jazz septet at the Jazz Gallery, $25

6/28, 7:30 PM Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta play their fiery Afrobeat jams followed by singer/accordionis Celso Piña – the psychedelic Mexican “Rebelde del Acordion” – at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/28. 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 world’s creepiest, slinkiest, most psychedelic crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Barbes

6/28, 8 PM terse, enigmatic avant garde singer/percussionist Anais Maviel‘s new largescale improvisational piece Time Is Due – synthesizers and custom-made percussion instruments, played by an ensemble of vocalists/multi-instrumentalists at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

6/28-29, 8/10 PM eclectic, purist jazz singer Brianna Thomas and band at Ginny’s Supper Club, $20

6/28-29, 8 PM incisive, latin-inspired sax improviser Maria Grand leads a trio with Hwansu Kang: bass; Savannah Harris: drums at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20.

6/28, 9 PM  Antibalas spinoff Armo play Afrobeat at Bar Lunatico

6/28, 9ish eclectic guitarist Monica Passin’s rockabilly/soul band Lil Mo & the Monicats at Sunny’s

6/28, 10 PM Certain General guitarslinger Phil Gammage plays his dark Americana and blues followed by wryly retro, period-perfect classic 60s style female-fronted honkytonk band the Bourbon Express at Hank’s $10

6/29, sets at 5:30 and 7:30 PM exceptionally adventurous indie classical group Ensemble Mise-En wind up their four-day festival with a free concert at Scandinavia House featuring works by 30 composers from 20 countries, including 27 premieres

6/29, 7 PM violinist Elissa Cassini and powerhouse cellist Ashley Bathgate present an evening of music by living female composers plus Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

6/29, 7ish psychedelic, minimalist Cameroonian crooner/guitarist Blick Bassy at Central Park Summerstage

6/29, 7:30 PM well-loved, riff-rocking Boston fourth-wave garage rockers Muck & the Mires at Coney Island Baby, $10

6/29, 7:30 PM rustic Cuban country music band Los Hacheros play ancient island grooves at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

6/29, 8 PM the dynamic, propulsive Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band at Barbes

6/29, 8 PM, repeating on 6/30 at 2 PM the reliably entertaining, adventurous Chelsea Symphony wind up their socially aware season with Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D Minor with soloist Adam von Housen; and Corigliano — Symphony No. 1. 6/30 they switch out the Mendelssohn for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, at the DiMenna Center, $20

6/29, 9 PM irrepressible, historically informed, crystalline-voiced folk noir/art-rock/loopmusic songwriter Elisa Flynn at 519 Evergreen Ave in Bushwick, J/M to Gates Ae

6/29 10ish feral singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Barbes

6/30, noon  jangly New York original surf rock cult heroes the Supertones  at Bay 9 East at Riis Park in the Rockaways

6/30, 3 PM ish  irrepressible storyteller/psychedelic guitarist/new wave cult hero Wreckless Eric at Union Pool, free

6/30, 3 PM the Queens Symphony Orchestra play a program TBA at  the bandshell in Forest Park on Woodhaven Boulevard, J to Woodhaven Blvd and a long walk

6/30, 5:30 PM bass trombonist Jennifer Wharton‘s Bonegasm trombone ensemble – hey that’s her name for the group – at Birdland, $30-

6/30, 7 PM Battle Trance’s Travis LaPlante opens solo for the album release show by Big Dog Little Dog – Jessie Montgomery, violin; Eleonore Oppenheim, bass at Arete Gallery, $10

6/30 9ish eclectic violinist Dana Lyn’s protean, psychedelic, ecologically woke jazz project Mother Octopus at the Owl

7/1, 6:30 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Jocelyn Gould leads a trio at the Bar Next Door

7/1, 7:30 PM cult favorite gonzo pianist Dred Scott with his Trio at Mezzrow, $20 gen adm

7/1, 8:30 PM Lyrical jazz pianist Yoko Miwa leads her trio at Birdland, $20 at the bar

7/1 9ish spiky, serpentine, hypnotic microtonal African-influenced guitar-and-drums duo 75 Dollar Bill play the album release show for their ne wone at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

7/1, 9:30 PM deliriously fun accordion band Los Mochuelos play classic Colombian vallenato and oldschool cumbias at Barbes

7/2, 6:30 PM the Swingtime Big Band on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/2, 7 PM lyrical, incisive alto saxophonist Dave Pietro  leads his group at the Provincetown Playhouse on Washington Square South, free, early arrival advised

7/2, 730 PM bassist Ernesto Holman and his Trio play Chilean jazz at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/3, 7;30 PM the Sisterhood of Swing Seven with Catherine Russell  on vocals plus Camille Thurman,saxophone; Emily Asher, trombone;Endea Owens,bass; Shirazette Tinnin, drums; Champian Fulton,piano; and Molly Ryan guitar celebrate the legacy of legendary all-female 30s swing band the Sisterhood of Swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/4, 7:30 PM El Rey del Bajo, Bobby Valentín leads his Orchestra playing 70s Fania classics at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 7 PM the Casym Steel Orchestra and soca hall of famer Mighty Sparrow – see if he cancels again this time – at Springfield Park in Queens

7/5, 7:30 PM trumpeter Joe Battaglia &The New York Big Band play 30s/40s swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/5, 8:30ish conscious hip-hop artist Leikeli47 followed by Chicago hardcore mc Mick Jenkins – who had the sense to nick a Gil Scott-Heron song for the title of his latest album – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/6, 7 PM epic, woke, Middle Eastern rap night with Narcy, wild Palestinian hip-hop/dancehall reggae/habibi pop band 47soul and Oddissee at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/7, 3 PM ish the ageless godfather of boogaloo, Joe Bataan at Union Pool, free

7/7, 3 PM Christina Conroy plays the Irish harp at Jefferson Market Garden in the west village. She’s also here at 10 AM (in the morning) on 7/21

7/7, 7 PM Aztec Sun play hard funk at Pier One on the upper west side

7/9, 6:30 PM Fleure Seule play continental swing on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/9, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Brazilian rainforest song chanteuse Elba Ramalho,“The Queen of Forró,” at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/10, 6 PM charmingy edgy all-female latin tropicalia dance band Ladama at Madison Square Park

7/10, 7 PM the Venice Baroque Orchestra make a rare outdoor NYC appearance playing works by Handel, Vivaldi and others at Temple Emmanu-El, 1 E 65th St, free, rsvp req

7/10, 7:30 PM the mighty, Middle Eastern-tinged Eyal Vilner Big Band with special guest Brianna Thomas burning down the house on vocals at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/11, 6:30 PM irrepressible 60s-style blue-eyed soul singer Eli “Paperboy” Reed under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

7/11, 6:30 PM saxophonist TK Blue leads a killer quintet with Sharp Radway on piano playing a Randy Weston tribute at Socrates Sculpture Park

7/11, 7:30 PM brilliant blues guitarist, above-average bassist, strongly tuneful blues songwriter and badass singer Celisse Henderson at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/11, 7:30 PM Shirley Alston Reeves – lead singer of the Shirelles, you know, the Phil Spector-produced 60s girlgroup – at the bandshell in Forest Park, Woodhaven Blvd, Queens, closest train is the 121st St. stop

7/11 7:30 PM Argentine pianist Analía Goldberg’s tango Sextet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/11, 8 PM female-fronted Colombian rock en Espanol vets Aterciopelados at Queensbridge Park,

7/11, 9:30 PM mathrock band Faster Than Light, singer Hannah Fairchild’s explosive, lyrically brilliant noir punk power trio Hannah vs. the Many and and colorful, Bowie-esque female-fronted glamrockers the Manimals at the Nest, 504 Flatbush Ave, B/D/Q to Prospet Park, $8

7/12, 7:30 PM Maria Muldaur  – yeah, her, Midnight at the Oasis – sings a Blue Lu Barker tribute and more at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/12, 8 PM veteran Argentine folksinger Leon Gieco at Queensbridge Park

7/13, 3 PM Video Music Box founder and hip-hop legend Ralph McDaniels emcees an afternoon at Socrates Scuulpture Park

7/13, 7:30 PM retro swing with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra playing their 15th annual tribute to Illinois Jacquet at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

7/14, 3 PM spiky, serpentine, hypnotic microtonal African-influenced guitar-and-drums duo 75 Dollar Bill  at the Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road, Long Island City, free w/museum adm, N/W to Broadway and about a 10 minute walk

7/14, 7 PM dynamic accordionist Rob Curto’s Forro for All play dusky Brazilian rainforest folk at Pier One on the upper west side

7/16, 6:30 PM hard-hitting, brass-fueled female-fronted newschool latin soul/boogaloo dance band Spanglish Fly on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/17, 8 PM tuneful, terse tenor saxophonist Ayumi Ishito and her excellent group at Erv’s on Beekman,2122 Beekman Ph, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, B/D to Prospect Pk

7/18, noon the thunderous hip-hop influenced Brooklyn United Drumline and seriously woke psychedelic soul with Fantastic Negrito at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

7/18, half past noon the self-explanatory, reliably adrenalizing, surprisingly dynamic Gypsy Jazz Caravan at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th

7/18, 6:30 PM Colombian trance-dance band Kombilesa Mi under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

7/18, 7 PM A Far Cry play works by Muffat, Caroline Shaw, Beecher and Tschaikovsky at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th Stl free, rsvp req

7/18, 7:30 PM Americana rockers Darlingside and acoustic Americana supergroup I’m with Her – Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan – at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/19, 7 PM the Salsa Warriors at the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park,

7/20, 5 PM psychedelic cumbia/reggaeton bandleader Ana Tijoux at Corporal Thompson Park in Staten Island

7/20, 9 PM Alloy Orchestra play a live score to the 1925 German silent film Varieté at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/21, 7 PM high-voltage psychedelic cumbia/Afrobeat jamband MAKU Soundsystem at Pier One on the upper west side

723, 6:30 PM dusky Brazilian rainforest folk with Rafael Piccolotto de Lima’s Forró Sem Palavras on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library

7/23, 7 PM the Slavo Rican Asssembly mash up salsa and Balkan sounds at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

7/25, 5 PM Junior Marvin’s version of what’s left of Bob Marley’s group the Wailers on the plaza outdoors at NJPAC in Newark

7/25, noon ecsatic Mardi Gras funk band Cha Wa at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn. The following night 7/26 they’re at Bryant Park at 7

7/25, half past noon accordion genius Shoko Nagai’s haunting, increasingly loud and psychedelic Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project at St. Marks Park, 2nd Ave/10th St

7/25, 5 PM powerhouse oldschool-style soul husband-wife team the War & Treaty at Wagner Park on the river north and west of Battery Park

7/25, 6 PM opening night of this year’s Bryant Park Accordion Festival, acts TBA – the last two years have been sublime

7/25, 7 PM eclectic, politically fearless tropical rock band La Santa Cecilia at Damrosch Park

7/25, 7:30 PM International Contemporary Ensemble play works by Fure & Thorvaldsdottir at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/26, 7 PM magically spiky tropical psychedelic band Inti & the Moon on the water at 125th Street and Marginal Street at the West Harlem Piers

7/26, 7 PM individualistic Belgian cello rocker/improviser Helen Gillet followed by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy at Damrosch Park

7/26, 7 PM salsa romantica with Los Hermanos Moreno and crooner Lalo Rodriguez at Soundview Park in the Bronx

7/27,7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: ubiquitous pan-latin psychedelic guitar god Adrian Quesada leads a Texas soul band with vocalists Jonny Benavidez, Eric Burton, Kam Franklin, Johnny Hernandez, Ruben Ramos, and Paul Schaldal James Brown contemporaries Lee Fields & the Expressions and darkly psychedelic soul band the Black Pumas

7/28, 3 PM ish  pyrotechnic clarinetist and Dave Tarras protege Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn, and psychedelic Incan folk band Inkarayku on the plaza at Lincoln Center

7/28, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: salsa dura bands Las Caras Lindas de Mi Gente Negra featuring Moncho Rivera, Cita Rodriguez (daughter of the great El Conde) & Su Banda, and allstar percussionist Carlitos Padron & Su Banda

7/28, 7 PM retro continental swing sounds with singer Tatiana Eva-Marie & the Avalon Jazz Band at Pier One on the upper west side

7/30. 7 PM the Orchestra of St. Luke’s play works by anna Clyne, Florence Pryce, Samuel Barber and otehs at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th St, free rsvp req

7/31, 7 PM salsa romantica with Edgar Joel and Ray de la Paz at Crotona Park

7/31, 7:30 PM jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington leads a bewilderingly eclectic all-star all-female band including Rhiannon Giddens, Xiomara Laugart, Ledisi, Amina Claudine Myers, Cleo Reed, Valerie Simpson, Charenée Wade, and Lizz Wright of at Damrosch Park

7/31, 8 PM a theatrical Afrobeat tribute with FELA! The Concert at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and you’lll need to get there early to get in

8/1, noon eclectic Texas acoustic blues guitarist Ruthie Foster at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

8/1, 5 PM ferociously powerful, politically fearless southern gothic guitar/banjo player Amythyst Kiah at Wagner Park on the river north and west of Battery Park

8/1, 6:30 PM oldschool salsa jazz with Yunior Terry & Son De Altura under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/1, 7:30 PM summery Brazilian samba chanteuse Tulipa Ruiz at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/2. 6 PM classical ensemble the Harlem Quartet play a program TBA at Bryant Park

8/2, 7ish hypnotically percussive Afro-Honduran sounds with the Garifuna Jazz Ensemble at Crotona Park

8/3, 6 PM legendry hip-hop dj Funk Flex celebrates his bday and EPMD celebrate the 30th anniversary of their 1989 classic Unfinished Business at Crotona Park

8/3, 7ish PM politically fearess Taiwanese guy/girl piano pop duo Tizzy Bac at Central Park Summerstage

8/4, 4ish hypnotically pointillistic microtonal African guitar/drums jams with 75 Dollar Bill at Union Pool, free

8/4, 7:30 PM rappers of south Asian heritage: G. Sidhu, Rianjali, Taizu, Rolex, Robin Dey, SA Grooves, Project Convergence, IMGE Dance at Damrosch Park

8/6, 7 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play works by Rodrigo, Piazzolla, Gabriela Lena Franh and others at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th St, free, rsvp req

8/6, 7 PM New Bojaira play flamenco jazz at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

8/7, 6 PM  terse, crystalline-voiced guitarist/jazz chantense Camila Meza & Nectar Orchestra at Madison Square Park

8/7, 7:30 PM amazing, atmospheric Hindustani singer/multi-instrumentalist  Arooj Aftab opens for a flameco dance performance at Darnrosch Park

8/8, noon surprisingly vital first-wave Jamaican roots reggae band Third World at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

8/8. 7:30 PM  newgrass and classcial with violinist Tessa Lark and bassist Michael Thurber  at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/9, 7:30 PM a Marvim Gaye tribute with guitarist Felicia Collins, Toshi Reagon, Siedah Garrett, Kecia Lewis, and others at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/10, 6 PM reggae acts from across the years, in reverse order at Central Park Summerstage: dancehall king Elephant Man, ex-Black Uhuru singer Junior Reid, Estelle and newschool conscious roots band Raging Fyah at Central Park

8/10, 7:30 PM psychedelic cumbia night with the slinky female-fronted Delsonido and Bomba Estéreo at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/11, 3 PM ish funk-punk-postpunkers the B Boys play the album release show for their new one at Union Pool, free 

8.13, 7 PM rustic Colombian sounds with the Cumbia River Band at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City

8/7, 6 PM Camila Meza & Nectar Orchestra at Madison Square Park

8/14 6 PM Alsarah at Madison Square Park

8/15 5 PM newschool gospwl with Texas singers the Walls Group & Washington DC all-female classical trio the String Queens on the plaza outdoors at NJPAC in Newark

8/15, 5:30 PM chamber ensemble Leadlights play selections by Debussy, Ravel, Schubert, and Jessie Montgomery.at Belvedere Plaza in Battery Park City

8/14, 6 PM intense retro 60s influenced Nubian funk band Alsarah & the Nubatonesat Maison Square Park. 8/15, 6:30 PM they’re under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/15, 7:30 PM newschool Mississippi hill country blues with Cedric Burnside at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/17, 8ish conscious hip-hop legend Talib Kweli at Marcus Garvey Park

8/18, 6 PM oldschool salsa with Jose “El Canario” Alberto and La Sonora Ponceña at the Coney Island Amphitheatre, free, it’s a pretty small place run by corporate idiots and youlll need to get there early to get in

8/18, 6 PM what’s left of multiple incarnations of Bob Marley’s band the Wailers featuring Julian Junior Marvin at Marcus Garvey Park

8/22, 6:30 PM Bollywood-influenced oldschool soul harmony band Say She She under the Manhattan Bridge archway in Dumbo

8/22 7:30 PM whirlwind tropical accordion star El Rey Vallenato Beto Jamaica and band at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

8/23, 7 PM in reverse order at Marcus Garvey Park: eclectic, purist jazz singer Brianna Thomas, South African croone Vuyo Sotashe, the JBs’ Fred Wesley, erudite jazz drummer Winard Harper & Jeli Posse at Marcus Garvey Park

8/24, 3 PM in reverse order; alto powerhouse Ravi Coltrane, chanteuse Quiana Lynell, the all-star all-femael trio Reclamation with Camille Thurman, Nikara Warren and Brandee Younger at Marcus Garvey Park

8/25, 3 PM in reverse order at Tompkins Square Park: drum eminence grise Carl Allen’s Art Blakey Tribute, tenor man George Coleman’s Trio,  lyrical pianist Fred Hersch and eclectic altoist Lakecia Benjamin at Tompkins Square Park

8/25, 8ish popular 90s salsa chanteuse La India at Central Park Summerstage

8/29, 730 PM the Haitian funk band that started it all, Boukman Eksperyans at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

Bewitching Detail and Thunderous Power from Pianist Karine Poghosyan at Carnegie Hall

Last night the thunderstorm over Carnegie Hall was no match for what Karine Poghosyan was doing inside. New York’s most charismatic classical pianist played for more than two hours, completely from memory – including five pieces by Liszt. Flinging her hair back, swaying on the piano bench, she embodied the grace of a gymnast and also the strength and stamina of a boxer. Her response to the standing ovation at the end was to flex her biceps and give everybody the revolutionary salute, left fist triumphantly in the air. She’d earned it.

There’s a fleeting moment in Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole where instead of a new thematic variation, the composer offers a split-second shadow of a doubt: are we really going in the right direction, toward real Romany-inspired bliss, he asks? Other pianists capable of playing the piece would likely burn through that moment. But Poghosyan caught it, as she did so many similar instances throughout the rest of the program.

Poghosyan has a righthand with a quicksliver precision but also crushing power, and a left hand so ferocious that she could ride the pedal, as she frequently did throughout the show, and still Liszt’s stabbing low-register chords would resonat cleanly. But ultimately, what differentiates her from the hundreds of other hotshot pianists around the world who can play on her level is that that she goes much deeper into the music, for narrative, and emotion, and especially amusement.

This bill was conceptual, springboarded by an epiphany she had after an apparently disheartening meeting with a top agent a couple of years ago. After that, Poghosyan swore off trying to please people and instead decided to concentrate on what she likes playing most. She offered this program simply as a collection of works that make her feel the most alive. Truth in advertising: she could have woken the dead.

Sporting a crimson jumpsuit, she leapt from the piano after nimbly negoatiating the cruelly challenging octaves and jackhammer flamenco passages of the night’s first number, DeFalla’s Fantasia Betica. After changing to a shiny copper dress for the second half of the program, she closed with two pieces by Khachaturian, a composer whose work she has fiercely advocated. An arrangement of the adagio from his opera Spartacus came to life as a coy flirtation, a cat-and-mouse game between possible lovers, jaunty precision against airy, balletesque joy laced with caution and bittersweetness..

Khachaturian’s 1961 Piano Sonata was a study in far more intense contrasts, from gorgeously glittering yet enigmatic Near Eastern tonalities, a Debussy-esque garden in a hailstorm, and finally the crushing volleys of a dance with far heavier artillery than mere sabres. And she approached the Liszt with almost shocking sensitivity and attention to detail. Poghosyan shifted with seamless verve between angst and exhilaration, dazzling upper righthand constellations and stygian terror from the low left, in the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 7, the Grande Etude de Paganini, No, 3 and the lilting Spozalizio, from his Annees de Pelerinage. And as hubristic as Liszt’s arrangemetn of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 was, Poghosyan was undaunted as she worked the counterpoint with High Romantic flair. She encored with the romping finale from Stravinsky’s Firebird.

In academia, both piano faculty and students refer derisively to “sovietization:”a cookie-cutter approach to performance. Last night, Poghosyan reaffirned her status as the least Sovietized pianist in the world.