An Insider Look at This Year’s Amazing Accordion Festival at Bryant Park

The annual accordion festival at Bryant Park continues with a couple of amazing shows tomorrow, July 19 at 6 PM and then the grand finale, which starts at 5 on Friday the 21st with the haunting Lebanese sounds of the Bil Afrah Project ,with Gregorio Uribe headlining and leading a wild celebration of Colombian Independence Day at 9 PM.

If you’ve spent any time at the festival over the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed a tall blonde woman calmly making her way across the park, taking lots of pictures and getting lots of hugs from accordionists. She always seems to have a Mona Lisa smile on her face. Then again, you’d be smiling too, if you ran an accordion festival.

That irrepressible impresario is Ariana Hellerman, who’s also the publisher of the indispensable Ariana’s List of free summer concerts and events all over New York. Backstage Sunday night at the Innov Gnawa show on the Upper West Side, Hellerman shared some history and some secrets:

New York Music Daily: First, I just want to say thanks for finding so much sonic bliss, and sharing it with us. I think your festival should be a yearlong event. Any hope for making it longer this year?

Ariana Hellerman: I have ideas, but nothing is set in stone – yet. Stay tuned!

But in general, my work is around making arts accessible to people and I get most pleasure from producing in public space – parks, plazas, etcetera. Because of winter weather, it becomes more difficult to work in these places. I’m beginning to think about public spaces that exist indoors. If anyone has ideas, I’m always open.

NYMD: How do you find these people? Other than googling “accordionist NYC”?

AH: I have a few sources. Before I was invited to help design this series, Bryant Park had lone accordionists strolling around the park once a week. The Park had about fifteen people on their roster. When I came on board with the “Accordions Around the World” idea – and with the hopes of making the series more of a destination for the park -, I brainstormed all the local accordionists I knew in New York. Because my interest is mainly music from around the world, I tried to think of all the bands I knew who had accordion – and there were quite a few. In addition, I racked the brains of others and scanned the webpages of some of my favorite venues and festivals – Barbes in Brooklyn and the annual Balkan music festival, Golden Fest were amongst the lot.

In 2013, the first year of this incarnation of the series, I was able to find thirty additional accordionists. I continue to do this type of research regularly so that we can be more inclusive of new styles and musicians. But because the series is becoming more of a destination, many people have begun to reach out to me. Over the last five editions, my list has grown to 470 accordionists!

NYMD: Does you own personal taste in accordion music include tango, cumbia, klezmer, Middle Eastern, tarantella, Celtic, cajun and jazz?

AH: Yes. While I like some genres more than others, my priority is sharing culture. Even if my ears don’t agree with the sound, I continue to be inclusive because this is “Accordions Around the World” and we want as many styles of music represented in the series.

NYMD: I always find myself having to explain to people why I think the accordion is one of the three coolest instruments in the world – the oud and the church organ being the other two. Do you find yourself having to do the same sort of thing? What do you tell people?

AH: When I tell people I curate an accordion festival, I’m usually met with a “Really????,” followed by a surprised or disgusted look, and then a sheepish giggle. My usual spiel in response is: “You know, when Americans usually think of the accordion, they think of polka, Lawrence Welk, and yesteryear kitsch. But, in many parts of the world, it’s one of the most important instruments to convey the sound of the region. And in New York, we are lucky to have access to many of these cultures.” And then I outline the cultures.

I also think the accordion is cool because it’s an instrument of immigration, migration, and connections. You can hear similar sounds in Cajun music – which traveled from Quebec to Louisiana with obvious French influence prior – and forró from the northeast of Brazil. Many immigrants from all over Europe – Italian, German, Jewish, Polish, etcetera – came to the US in the late 19th/early 20th century and brought their music forms with them. This continues today with more recent immigrant communities such as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Accordion usually sparks conversation and each week in the park, I almost always hear “You know, my grandfather/grandmother/father/mother/aunt/uncle played the accordion.” I like that many people of very different backgrounds have a personal connection to the instrument.

NYMD: Can you give us a capsule history of the Bryant Park Accordion Festival? How did it start? You’ve been doing it for four years now….

AH: Dan Biederman, the president of Bryant Park, took a trip to France and stumbled upon an accordionist in a park and was enchanted. Since Bryant Park has Parisian elements, the experience made him want to create a similar, serendipitous experience. For a few summers, a accordionist would stroll around for a few hours. It was nice, but people weren’t coming to chase after the lone musician.

I have a blog, arianaslist.com, where I share free cultural events in New York. Many people in the field read the blog since I write about their events and because I provide ideas on how to make the arts more accessible to audiences. In spring of 2013, Ethan Lercher, the executive producer of Bryant Park Presents, their cultural arm, contacted me. He had read one of my blog posts that described my experience at the Festival Vallenato in Valledupar, Colombia. I had just come back from living in Colombia and had attended a festival of Vallenato music, a Colombian genre that focuses on the accordion. He asked, “what do you know about accordion?” He wanted to make the accordion more prominent in the Park’s programming. My response was, “I don’t know that much but what fascinates me about the instrument is how it’s played in so many cultures.” From there, we began to explore the idea of “Accordions Around the World.”

NYMD: Are you happy with how the festival has gone this year, with rescheduling and all?

AH: It’s been wonderful. This is the first season that we’ve had our “Accordion Picnic” format for the entirety of the series. In the past, the audience and passer-bys were invited to stroll around to see accordionists play two-hour sets in different pockets of the park. This year, the accordionists come to the audiences: each accordionist plays a 15 minute set before another comes in. This way, if an audience member sets up shop in one location, they will hear eight styles of music over the two hour span. There are also six stations around the park so people can “chase” the music or artist they would like to hear.

Since we’re eager to provide a good experience for audience members, Bryant Park provides blankets to borrow, encourages picnics, and even sells alcoholic beverages that can be consumed on the lawn. It’s lovely and we’ve noticed an uptick in attendance.

NYMD: Yeah, I should say. Another thing I want to mention is that there’s no sonic competition with shrieking alarms on city buses. And it’s also a lot easier now that you don’t have to chase the accordionist.

AH: With this format, the artists are also able to engage with the other accordionists, and see other styles of music on the accordion. My secret hope is that I’m sparking relationships between accordionists ,and new, exciting projects will come from this!

NYMD: What highlights do you have to share? I’ve seen so many great acts – Rachelle Garniez, Simon Moushabeck ,Guillermo Vaisman,,Melissa Elledge , so many others. Who have you seen that really floored you this year?

AH: We have incredible artists in the series. I can’t choose one! They’re all near and dear to my heart. In this moment, the Brazilian artists in this series really stand out: I love Felipe Hostins who is from Santa Catarina, Brazil. He grew up playing polkas, which was the main accordion music in his hometown in the south of Brazil. Today he is helping to lead the forró movement in New York. Vitor Gonçalves has been playing choro, an instrumental genre which originated in 19th century Rio de Janeiro, his hometown. As a trained jazz musician, he also incorporates a lot jazz into his sets. Eduardo de Carvalho lives in Newark and has mainly played restaurant gigs to date. He is ready for a bigger stage with his incredibly strong sertanejo and forro. Rob Curto grew up in a Sicilian family but spent many years living in Brazil. Today he shares his blend of bluegrass and forró with us. These four players are so incredibly strong. But again, we have so many incredible artists in these series. If we had time, I would tell you about each and every one!

NYMD: Can I ask you, you’re a pianist. Why aren’t you an accordionist, you obviously love the instrument so much…and it’s a lot easier to take an accordion with you when you move. I realize also that this isn’t a fair question, you could ask me the same thing and I wouldn’t have a really good answer for you…

AH: Accordion never even seemed to be an option while I was studying classical piano. And now I’m a music appreciator more than a musician. Though because I know so many accordionists, it has crossed my mind to take up lessons and to become (or more likely, fail at becoming) the singer-songwriter-rockstar I am in my dreams. 

NYMD: You lived in Colombia and Argentina. To what degree did that influence your accordion fixation?

AH: Obviously living in Colombia became the inspiration for this series, as you know. And while I knew tango and the bandoneón – the free reed instrument played for tango – before living in Argentina, I was introduced to chamamé, a folk music genre from northeast Argentina, while living there. It is a fusion of Guaraní  – the indigenous population from this part of the world –  Spanish, German, Polish, and Ukrainian music. There were a lot of Eastern European immigrants to this region in the early 20th century. I’m thrilled that we have our first chamamé artist, Guillermo Vaisman in the series this season.

NYMD: Do you have a desert island accordion song? Or album? Or accordion song you’d want somebody to play at your wedding?

AH: No. Though I just stumbled upon a short clip I recorded of Felipe Hostins from last week’s edition and I’ve been listening to it on loop. He says its his original composition called “Minh’alma” (My Soul) and it’s chamamé – our artists are obviously inspired by all forms of music! It’s so good.

While I love accordion and I can identify when the music is really good, for me, this is about sharing culture with the people of New York. My work is all about creating live performance opportunities for artists and audiences alike. I get joy from seeing these connections made and the joy it brings others.

NYMD: What’s your alltime favorite accordion concert?

AH: Our Accordions Around the World Festival is always a highlight, obviously. But outside of the performances I curate… I always love Lila Downs and we’re lucky to have her accordionist, George Saenz in our series!

NYMD: Just saw her at Prospect Park at the end of last month. Amazing. Nice work getting him!

AH: Another experience that comes to mind – when I was in Argentina, one of my colleagues connected me to Chango Spasiuk, who is one of the most famous musicians down there, who is known for chamamé. He picked me up in a limo, along with his bandmates, and I got to watch his whole show from backstage. The experience was pretty cool!

NYMD: Tell me about closing night on the 21st, this Friday.Is this a bunch of debuts? Has the Bil Afrah project ever played anywhere elase before? How about Peter Stan’s new band? It’s gonna be amazing!

AH: The Bil Afrah Project has performed before but not in a setting that can yield this large of an audience – in past years, we’ve had about four thousand people. It’s very exciting. We’ve put the word out to the Lebanese and Arab community and we hope they will come out. Ziad Rahbani is one of the most important and known composers from the Arab World, son of the famous Fairuz.

Peter Stan’s Zlatni Balkan Zvuk is brand new and will be debuting at the Festival. In talking with Peter – of Slavic Soul Party fame – I asked him if he ever played traditional Serbian music since SSP is more of a jazz/funk Balkan brass group. He told me he didn’t think there would be a market for it. After he shared more information and shared examples of Balkan wedding music, I chose to disagree! All of the musicians in this group are from the Balkans  – including Peter’s son who is also an accordionist! – and have been rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. I’m really excited to welcome them, and was happy to provide the opportunity to Peter to be a bandleader for the first time. Given how amazing Peter is, I know this is just the beginning for them. 

An Intense, Mesmerizing New Album From the Mehmet Polat Trio

The Mehmet Polat Trio are one of the world’s most distinctive and cutting-edge groups in Middle Eastern and Turkish music. Their songs are epic and picturesque, incorporating elements of West African, Andalucian, Romany and Balkan sounds as well. Bandleader and oud virtuoso Polat can play with blazing speed if he wants, but he typically prefers a dynamically charged approach. His compositions have a cinematic sensibility that gets very dark on occasion. In this group he’s joined by kora player Dymphi Peeters and ney flutist Sinan Arat. Their show last summer at Lincoln Center was one of the most compelling concerts of the year; their latest album Ask Your Heart is streaming at Spotify.

This is deep, rich, impeccably crafted music that demands repeated listening. The opening epic, Untouched Stories, builds out of an enigmatic intro with echoes of Indian baul minstrelsy to a catchy, verdantly anthemic sway, It wouldn’t be out of place on an early 80s Pat Metheny album, but with organic production values. Arat’s balmy flute solo eventually gives way to Polat’s low, suspenseful oud solo over a syncopated strum, a high-spirited highway theme of sorts that calms as the rhythm drops out and segues into the second track, Dance It Out. Hazy ney over a hypnotically leaping, circular hook rises to a gently triumphant chorus, then a waterfalling kora solo and an unexpectedly insistent, enigmatic coda that Polat steers back toward the Levant. All this brings to mind the most energetic original work of fellow Turkish composer/oudist Omar Faruk Tekbilek.

The trio open Sandcastles as a pouncing, bristling, modal suspense theme with flamenco and Romany echoes, then the bandleader takes it into more pensive terrain with an insistent, minimalist solo, rising and falling. Neset quickly becomes even more insistent and imbued with longing, the kora at times supplying ripples akin to a kanun or santoor in Egyptian or Iraqi music while Polat essentially plays a bassline, ney wafting mournfully overhead.

Likewise, a muted, wounded sensibility pervades the beginning and end of Whispering to Waves, a brooding interweave of oud and kora falling away for a shimmering. crescemdoing kora solo and then desolate solo ney.

With its implied melody and pensively dancing syncopation, the album’s title track lives up to its name. Polat plays melismatic, sitar-like low-register lines, then guardedly picks up steam. Arat’s gentle rhythmic puffs add a hypnotic element.

Evening Prayer, with allusively heartbroken lyrics by Leyla Hamin and melody by Turkish oudist Kazanci Bedih, is more gently sprightly than you might expect. although the catchy tune grows more pensive as the band builds variations on it. A brooding solo by Arat bridges into the more anthemic and also much darker Everything iIs n You as it rises from the lows (Polat plays a custom-built oud with extra low register). His aching, angst-ridden solo midway through could be the high point of the album.

Serenity opens with stately, starry kora, but the band picks up the pace, taking it down into murkier depths via a syncopated take on a familiar Middle Eastern progression. The band double their dancing lines and then dig in hard in Simorgh, an altered waltz, hypnotic kora anchoring Polat’s pulsing solo. The album ends with Mardin, a lilting flute tune by Turkish oudist Ahmet Uzungol. Meticulous interplay, striking tunes and a fascinatingly unorthodox lineup of instruments make this one of the best albums of the year.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for July and August 2017

Free and cheap concerts in just about every neighborhood. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how awful the trains have been lately.

Constant updates. Considering how Trump’s minions are hell-bent on slashing funding for the arts, this might be the last good season of free summer shows here for awhile. So you might want to bookmark this page and check back every so often – and then go out! If there was ever a summer in New York to check out some cool free live music, this is it!

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 here, something for everyone

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

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. Up next: Bartok, Mozart and fascinating improvisations. Sugg don $10 (pay what you can), delicious gluten-free refreshments, beverages and lively conversation included! email for info/location.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mondays in July at midnight wild noir piano jazz with the Dred Scott Trio back at their old spot, the small room at the Rockwood.

Tuesdays in July, 8:30 PM the George Gee Swing Orchestra play surprising new arrangements of old big band standards at Swing 46, 349 W 46th St,  $15

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

Tuesdays in August, 10:30 PM oldschool Texas-style fingerstyle acoustic blues with fantastic guitarist Noe Socha and Cliff Schmitt on bass at Pete’s 

Wednesdays at 6 PM a wild tribe of accordionists take over Bryant Park, performers scattered throughout the space, booked by the brilliant Ariana Hellerman of Ariana’s List. Too many amazing players to list. Choice pick: the July 5 lineup with Melissa Elledge, Shoko Nagai and Sam Reider, wow!

Wednesdays at 8 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 Owl, $15

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

Wednesdays at 9 PM Feral Foster’s Roots & Ruckus takes over the Jalopy, a reliably excellent weekly mix of oldtimey acts: blues, bluegrass, country and swing.

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 around 9:30 PM Bulgarian Romany sax legend Yuri Yunakov with his wild but haunting band at Mehanata

Fridays in July, 9 PM Bulgarian Romany sax legend Yuri Yunakov with his wild but haunting band at Mehanata

Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic there are impromptu free classical concerts, usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles: if you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in July, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – “take inspiration from the intersection of the sacred and the radical to create hit songs from the depths of American psalmody, Yiddish folklore, and international Jewish liturgical traditions” at Barbes. i.e. sacred and possibly profane.

Saturdays eclectic compelling Brazilian jazz chanteuse Marianni and her excellent band at Zinc Bar, three sets starting at 10 PM.

Sundays there’s a klezmer brunch at City Winery, show starts around 11:30 AM – 2 PM, $10 cover, no minimum, lots of good bands

Sundays in  July at sometime past noon at Hank’s, Nashville gothic crooner Sean Kershaw‘s legendary honkytonk brunch is back! It’s just like 1999 again!

7/1, noon the Reggay Lords at the Riis Park Beach Bazaar in the Rockaways, get to the beach and follow the sound Take the ferry straight to the beach for $2.75 

7/1, 3ish boogaloo legend Joe Bataan outdoors at Union Pool, free. 7/7 at 7:30 he and the band are at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/1, 5 PM in reverse order: NYC’s arguably finest oldtime swing band Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the charming, female-fronted cosmopolitan swing crew Avalon Jazz Band and 20s jazz chanteuse Aurora Nealand at Central Park Summerstage

7/1, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – followed at 8 by eclectic, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts  and then at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes. The Jug Addicts are at Bar Chord at 10 on 7/7

7/1, 7:30 PM the Binky Griptite Orchestra – the late, great Sharon Jones’ backing band – at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/1, 7/9:30 PM perennially lyrical, prolific tenor postbop tenor saxophonist/composer Tom Tallitsch and his group at Minton’s, $15

7/1, 8 PM Iranian art-rock/avant garde violinist Parnaz Partovi and Electric Monks at Drom, $20 adv tix rec

7/1, 8 PM high voltage skiffle/Americana band the Salt Cracker Crazies followed at 9 PM by Divining Rod – who work the furthest open-tuned corners of 70s Britfolk – and then at 11 PM by oldschool psychedelic soul/groove band Empire Beats at the Way Station. Empire Beats are also here on 7/7 at 10

7/1, 8 PM classic 30s swing with the Rob Stoneback Big Band with vocalists Kathy Jenkins & Rob Kevlin at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/1, 8 PM oldtime blues guitar/banjo/piano genius Jerron Blind Boy Paxton at Iridium, $25. He’s finally playing for the tourists now.

7/1, 8:30 PM the world’s creepiest crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Bar Lunatico

7/1, 8:30 PM perennially fresh jazz trumpet star Dave Douglas and his quartet play the album release show for his new one Riverside: A New National Anthem at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/1, 8:30 PM darkly growling jazz guitarist Joe Morris with lustrously lyrical pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. At 9:30 he plays a duo set with haunting violinis Mark Feldman, $15

7/1, 8:30 PM popular 90s chamber pop/Americana songsmith David Poe at the third stage at the Rockwood, $15

7/1, 9 PM sweeping, kinetic, Mediterranean and Andalucian string sounds with the Maureen Choi Quartet at Terraza 7, 40-19 Gleane St, Queens, $10

7/1, 9 PM haunting, cinematic noir guitar soundscaper/loopmusic songwriter Ben Von Wildenhaus with his “professional band” at Bellocq Tea Atelier, 104 West St in Greenpoint. 7/6 they’re at the McKittrick Hotel at 10, 7/8 at 10 at Troost and on 7/12 back in Greenpoint again at 9ish at a semi-private show at the luncheonette at Nassau Ave and Russell

7/1, 9 PM Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 with surfed-up tv themes from Commercial Interruption, Link Wray covers by the Wraycyclers and at midnight by majestic, cinematic surf instrumentalists the TarantinosNYC  

7/1, 9/10:30 PM state-of-the-art melodic postbop trumpet: Russ Johnson leads a quartet with  Aruan Ortiz, piano;  Michael Formanek, bass;  Gerald Cleaver, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

7/1, 10:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at Smalls. 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.

7/1, 11 PM lush, intense, artfully orchestrated psychedelic rockers Aunt Ange  at the small room at the Rockwood

7/2, noon jangly New York surf rock cult heroes the Supertones at the Riis Park Beach Bazaar in the Rockaways, get to the beach and follow the sound Take the ferry straight to the beach for $2.75 

7/2, 8 PM bassist Andrew Sheron and Tuvan folk ensemble Alash mash up otherworldly, stark Central Asian and bluegrass sounds at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/2, 9 PM Romany jazz guitar powerhouse Olli Soikkeli pinch-hits for Stephane Wrembel at Barbes. He’s also here on 7/9

7/2, 10:30 PM keyboardist and occasional Karla Rose collaborator Frank LoCrasto‘s cinematic organ sounds at Pete’s

7/2, 10:30 PM tuneful soul-jazz trombonist David Gibson leads his  quintet at Smalls

7/3, 8 PM minimalistic postrock/thrash instrumentalists the Austerity Program followed by retro 80s goths and Fields of the Nephilim soundalikes Fotocrime at St. Vitus, free   

7/3, 8 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Sunny’s

7/3, 8 PM indie classical guitarist Dan Lippel plays a program TBA at Branded Saloon of all places

7/3, 9 PM Lowpines play their low-key Elliott Smith soundalike psych-pop at Pete’s 

7/3, 9:30 PM El Imperio play Afrobeat at Barbes

7/4, 2 PM awesomely unhinged horror surf/hotrod instrumentalists the Mad Doctors  open an allday bill, with Carolina Oliveros’ trippy tropicalia band Combo Chimbita – who mash up cumbia, salsa, champeta and a whole bunch of other south of the border styles – and then finally careening noise/psych/doom band Stuyedeyed headlining at around 10 at Sunnyvale, $10 

7/4, 3 PM perennially fiery, relevant guitarist Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance Project – Civil Rights, WWII European partisan resistance songs, plus originals, with vocalist Fay Victor, James Brandon Lewis (sax), Gintas Janusonis (drums), Josh Werner (bass) and Davi Viera (perc) to create “something that encourages people to engage in resistance” followed by high-voltage psychedelic cumbia band MAKU Soundsystem – whose new album takes a detour toward Caribbean and African sounds – at the Knockdown Center, $15

7/4, 6:45 PM catchy, funky hip-hop brass band the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at South St. Seaport

7/4, 7 PM torchy singer Aurora Nealand ’s New Orleans swing band the Royal Roses followed by careening ten-piece Balkan brass band Veveritse – a more trad  Slavic Soul Party – followed at 11 by that group’s multi-saxman Peter Hess and drummer Matt Moran wailing on Balkan themes at Barbes

7/4, this era’s most cutting-edge, politically relevant large jazz ensemble,Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society  plays the most confrontationally cool 4th of July show anywhere in town, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/4, 7:30 PM David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong repertory big band at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/4, 9:30 PM the first of three very rare NYC shows by haunting psychedelic bandleader and Nick Cave soundalike Weinf, who brings to mind the Doors, Blue Oyster Cult and maybe the Frank Flight Band, at Sidewalk. He’s back there on 7/6 at 10 and then plays a house concert on 7/7 at 8, email for info/location 

7/4, 10:30 PM snarling female-fronted Nashville gutter blues band Thelma & the Sleaze at Baby’s All Right, $10. They’re at the Mercury the following night, 7/12 at 10 for the same price 

7/5, 1 PM jazz pianist Eugene Marlow’s lush, darkly eclectic, latin-tinged Heritage Ensemble at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, free

7/5, 6 PM ambitiously lyrical, cutting-edge rising star jazz composer/singer Annie Chen and her septet at at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

7/5 inspired, cutting-edge trombonist/composer Ryan Keberle & Catharsis play the album release show for their incendiary, politically-fueled new one, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/5, 7:30 PM a rare, killer B3 organ twinbill:Jared Gold with his trio followed by Brian Charette with his quartet at Smalls. Charette’s also here on 7/6, same time

7/5, 7:30 PM the Isaac Delgado Orchestra play their mighty Afro-Cuban salsa at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/5, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

7/5, 8 PM a free screening of Pink Floyd’s The Wall at Brooklyn Bazaar, rsvp reqd 

 7/5, 9 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” at Troost 

7/6. 6:30 PM cellist Nioka Workman’s intense Firey String Sistas chamber jazz project at Socrates Sculpture Park, Broadway at Vernon Blvd in Long Island City, G to 21st St.

7/6, 7 PM ageless Mexican folk-rock jamband Los Lobos at Wagner Park just north of Battery Park on the water

7/6, 7:30 PM lush, dynamically eclectic Korean folk/art-rock band Coreyah mash up lustrous, often plaintive themes with hard-charging hip-hop and dance tunes at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/6, 7:30 PM the Peekaboos – a large allstar NYC cast including but not limited to guitarist Oren Bloedow, singer Michelle Casillas and saxophonist Briggan Krauss – play rocksteady classics at the Owl

7/6, 8 PM Brooklyn’s funnest new band, psychedelic organ-driven Middle Eastern-tinged surf rock trio Hearing Things followed at 10 by epic, cinematic guitar soundtrack composer Christina Courtin at Barbes

7/6, 8 PM confrontational Iranian singer/violinist Sadaf H. Nava collaborates with artist Evan Caminiti and filmmaker Paul Clipson in a multimedia exploration of the general toxicity of urban areas at Issue Project Room, $15

7/6, 8 PM elegant, sharply lyrical parlor pop stylist Heather Eatman at Hifi Bar

7/6, 8 PM smartly populist oldtimey-flavored Americana band 2/3 Goat and long-running 90s alt-country favorites Rusty Truck at Hill Country

7/6, 8/9:30 PM Romany jazz accordionist Julien Labro and guitarist Olli Soikkeli lead their quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/6, 9 PM Quantum Peruvian – who blend jangly Plan 9 psychedelia, GBV scruffiness and a little glam – at the Delancey 

7/6, 8:30 PM the lyrical Caroline Davis on saxophone with Pablo Menares on bass and Kenneth Salters on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

7/6, 9ish noir-tinged crooner/guitarslinger  Phil Gammage leads his four-piece band at the Parkside

7/6, 9 PM the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie  – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir and dark cabaret – at Pete’s. 7/25 at 9 she’s solo at Lovecraft Bar on the LES; 7/21 at 11 she’s at Sidewalk with her fiery Americana band the Demons.

7/6, 10 PM slyly lyrical New Orleans oldschool soul/groove/Americana crew the Nat Osborn Band at Rough Trade, $12 adv tix rec

7/6, 10 PM Hollywood’s Dan Finnerty leads his savagely hilarious top 40 parody group the Dan Band at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/6, 10 PM Of Clocks & Clouds play their twisted postrock and goth-tinged post-new wave anthems at Bowery Electric, $12

7/7, 7:30 PM psychedelic funk and Afrobeat with the People’s Champs at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/7, 8 PM the Ulysses Quartet play works by Schubert, Golijov, Turina and Janacek’s harrowing String Quartet No. 2 at Scholes St. Studios

7/7, 8:30 PM the fifteen-piece Makrokosmos Orchestra with jazz singer Christine Correa play compositions by Tim O’Dell and Richard Nelson at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

7/7, 9:30 PM elegantly exhilarating tarantella/Neapolitan folk jamband Newpoli at Joe’s Pub, $15 adv tix rec

7/7, 9:30 PM violinist Dana Lyn’s shapeshifting, powerfully relevant, cinematic-jazz improvisers Mother Octopus at I-Beam, $15

7/7, 10 PM intense charismatic danceable metal cumbia/skaragga/latin rockers Escarioka at at Bar Chord, free. They’re at Mehanata the following night, 7/8 at 9 for $10

7/7, 10 PM noir soul and groove themes with the Ghost Funk Orchestra at the Gutter, $10 

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

7/7, 10 PM this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes

7/7, 10 PM bizarre segue, good twinbill: guitar genius Lenny Molotov’s torchy, lyrically smashing original female-fronted oldtimey swing crew the Fascinators  followed at 11 by ska-punks the Horsewater Skanks at Sidewalk  

7/7, 11 PM haunting, psychedelic doom metal band Matte Black at Hank’s, $8

7/7, midnight ferociously noisy punk power trio Metorana at the Bitter End 

7/7, 1 AM (actually wee hours of 7/8), psychedelic downtempo jazz quartet Mute the Commercials at the small room at the Rockwood 

7/8, 1/3 PM pioneering downtown avant garde vocalist Pamela Z in Nolan Park in the middle of Governors Island, free

7/8, 5 PM the Jimmy Heath Big Band at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/8, 6 PM Book of J –Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – followed at 8 by charismatic, fearlessly political, lurid noir Americana songwriter and banjoist Curtis Eller and at 9 by awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra at Barbes

7/8, 6 PM the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache and legendary Colombian Caribbean singer Totó La Momposina at Central Park Summerstage

7/8, 6 PM Adam Klipple‘s Organ Soul Explosion with Al Street on guitar and Curtis Fowlkes on trombone at 55 Bar

7/8, 7 PM spot-on Fela cover band Chop & Quench followed by Jamaican dancehall hitmaker Chronixx at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/8, 8 PM trombone man Wycliffe Gordon and His International All-Stars at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/8, 8 PM eclectic, richly pensive chamber works by Michal Raymond Massoud performed by an ensemble TBA at Scholes st. Studios 

7/8, 8:30 PM violin/accordion band the Ghosts of Indecision play a wild mix of Balkan and klezmer sounds at the Owl

7/8, 8:30 PM state-of-the-art postbop guitarist Will Bernard leads his band at Bar Lunatico

7/8, 9 PM intense, brilliantly lyrical, fearlessly political 1950s style original folk/blues singer Joshua Garcia at Caffe Vivaldi

7/8, 9/10:30 PM bassist Peter Brendler leads his postbop quartet with Rich Perry, tenor sax;  Gary Versace, piano;  Vinnie Sperrazza, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/8, 10 PM darkwave and carnivalesque art-rock with Children Having Children at the Cobra Club, $tba   

7/8, 10 PM jangly female-fronted latin lounge/80s chime pop band Parrot Dream at Footlight Bar, $10

7/8, 11PM Haakon’s Fault – who mash up stoner boogie, ornate keyboard-driven art-rock and a litle psych-funk – at the Bitter End 

 7/9, 5 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue followed by 70s disco hitmakers the Ohio Players at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace  in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/9, 7 PM Lyla Cante play their fiery, kinetic blend of flamenco and Sephardic sounds at Pier One on the upper west side 

7/9, 7:30 PM crystalline-voiced noir Americana songwriter Jessie Kilguss followed eventually by excellent, purist honkytonk crooner/bandleader Clifford Westfall at Union Hall, $12

7/9, 8 PM a killer duo project: fiery, eclectic, torchy Nicole Zuraitis  on vocals and Helen Sung on piano at Mezzrow, $20

7/9, 8:30 PM haunting dark Americana songwriter/soul belter Jessi Robertson followed eventually at 10:30 PM by edgy, broodingly tuneful, jangly female-fronted trio Shadow Monsters at Pine Box Rock Shop 

7/10, 8:30 PM smart, darkly pensive third-stream jazz pianist Noa Fort leads her quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/10, 9 PM 90s West Coast hip-hop nostalgia: the fearlessly political Rass Kassand the always hilarious, surprisingly lucid Alkaholiks at B.B. King’s, $20 adv tix rec

7/10, 10 PM epic Indian-inspired spacerock band Humeysha at  at the Mercury, $10

7//10, 7 PM charming, irrepressible oldtimey swing maven Tamar Korn’s Kornucopia followed at 10 by Maku Soundsystem and Combo Chimbita spinoff Dilemasronauta y Los Sabrosos Cosmicos playing psychedelic cumbias and tropicalia at Barbes 

7/10, 11 PM eclectically tuneful swing/noir/pastoral jazz combo the Jazz Thieves  at the small room at the Rockwood. They’re also at the Way Station on 7/29 at 9

7/11, 7 PM the Bushwick Book Club – a collective of incredibly diverse, typically excellent songwriters including irrepressibly fun ringleader Susan Hwang, the haunting Jessie Kilguss, and Ellia Bisker of parlor pop mavens Sweet Soubrette – followed at 9ish by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party  at Barbes

7/11, 7:30 PM popular indie classical orchestra the Knights play works by Mozart (Symphony No. 40), Purcell and John Adams at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/11, 7:30 PM conguero Eddie Montalvo and his salsa band at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/11, 7:30/9:30 PM drummer Simon Barker leads an intriguing quartet with Jen Shyu – vocals; Tony Malaby – tenor saxophone; Marc Hannaford – piano at the Jazz Gallery, $15/$10 stud

7/11, 8 PM purposeful, pensive Slavic jazz guitarist Martina Fiserova at the Way Station

7/11, 9 PM edgy female-fronted funk band Eliza & the Organix – feat. swirly alto sax player Kristen Tivey followed by anthemic, surfy chamame rock band Paracuta at Shrine. Eliza and crew are also here on 7/18 at 9

7/11, 9 PM purist oldschool guitarist Dap King Joe, “the Staten Island Soul Junkie” (aka Joe Crispiano of the Dap Kings) and band at Freddy’s

7/11, 9:30 PM lyrical, cinematic pianist Julian Shore leads his quartet with Dayna Stephens, tenor sax;  Petros Klampanis, bass;  Colin Stranahan, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/12, 5 PM the charming, female-fronted cosmopolitan swing crew Avalon Jazz Band  outdoors on the river behind the World Financial Center

7/12, 6:30 PM ace drummer Art Lillard’s Blue Heaven Swing Sextet on the plaza at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza

7/12, 7:30 PM Michael Gentile & the Rhythm Serenaders play hot 20s swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

 7/12, 7:309:30 PM pianist Jacob Sacks’ excellent 40420 Quartet with Jacob Garchik on trombone at the Jazz Gallery, $15/$10 stud

7/12-13, 7:30 PM ex-Dylan lead guitarist Larry Campbell with singer Teresa Williams at Joe’s Pub, $27

7/12, 8 PM popular psych-folk band the Cave Singers at the Mercury, $15. Purist retro dark Americana harmony band the Cactus Blossoms are also there that night at 11, $12 separate adv tix rec

7/12. 8 PM dynamic, fearlessly populist soul belter Stephanie Rooker at the Way Station

7/12, 8 PM a rare reunion of trombonist Curtis Hasselbring’s long-running cinematic jazz group the New Mellow Edwards (who aren’t that mellow) at Barbes

7/12, 9 PM saxophonist Danny Lipsitz & His Brass Tacks play hot 20s inspired swing at LIC Bar

7/12, 8:30 PM wickedly catchy Americana/paisley underground rockers Girls on Grass at Hifi Bar

7/12, 8:30 PM savage stoner boogie/doom/NWOBHM metal band Horseburnerat St. Vitus, $8 

7/12, 9:30 PM kinetic jazz vibraphonista Yuhan Su leads her quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/12, 10 PM oldschool dub and hip-hop influenced roots reggae with horns with the Merry Rockers at Silvana 

7/12, 10 PM stoner 70s Murder City style rockers Sun Voyager  followed by stoner boogie band Dead Things at Alphaville, $10 

7/12, 10 PM Waits-ish noir Americana songwriter Pokey LaFarge at Bowery Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec. 7/13 at 10 he’s at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, same deal

7/13, 7:30 PM Astoria Tango Orchestra’s ace bassist Pablo Aslan’s Aces of Rhythm pays tribute to the innovative style of legendary Argentinian bandleader Juan D’Arienzo – “El Rey del Compás” – at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/13, 7:30 PM Blick Bassy – Cameroonian crooner/songwriter who adds nifty bluegrass touches to his wildly eclectic but subtle acoustic songs – at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

 7/13, 8 PM the scuffily catchy, jangly, all-male Britanys at Baby’s All Right, $12. Avoid the sucky poser-rock band afterward

7/13, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by cinematic, brilliantly guitar-fueled Colombian art-rock band Los Crema Paraiso at Barbes

7/13, 8 PM a rare, excellent quadruplebill: garage punks QWAM, explosively theatrical, phantasmagorical indie/metal trio A Deer A Horse , the Lounge Act – who veer between dark 60s psych-pop and slicker 80s new wave – and then reverb guitar-driven janglerockers Color Tongue at Brooklyn Bazaar, $10

7/13, 8 PM tuneful, purposeful, edgy guitarist Amanda Monaco plays the album release show for her new one at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum.Followed at 9:30 by tenor saxophonist Aaron Burnett & the Big Machine: Peter Evans, trumpet;  Carlos Homs, piano;  Nick Jozwiak, bass;  Colin Stranahan, drums; separate adm and min.

 7/13, 8:30 PM ornate, theatrical metal band Cave of Swimmers at Gold Sounds, $12

7/13, 8:30 PM tuneful, cutting-edge, subtly Indian classical-influenced alto sax jazz with  Aakash Mittal‘s quartet featuring trumpeter Aaron Shraggeat i-Beam, $15

7/13, 10:30 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece leads his quintet at Smalls

7/13, 11 PM expansive brass-fueled Afrobeat jams with the Brighton Beat at American Beauty, $10

7/13, midnight exotic surf rock band the Vibro-jets – a Sea Devils spinoff – at the Way Station. They’re also at Troost the following night, 7/14 at 9

7/14, 7:30 PM a Texas honkytonk twinbill with Asleep at the Wheel‘s Ray Benson and Dale Watson at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/14-15, 7:30/9:30 PM elegant pianist Aaron Parks leads a quintet with Maria Grand – saxophone; Chris Dingman – vibraphone; Matt Penman – bass; Anwar Marshall – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/14, 8 PM art-rocker Pierre de Gaillande’s Bad Reputation playing witty chamber pop English translations of Georges Brassens classics at Barbes

7/14-15, 8 PM Gong Linna and the Bang on a Can All-Stars play her new Chinese mythology-themed art-song suite Cloud River Mountain at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St,, $25 seats avail

7/14-15, 8 PM suave, smoky tenor saxophonist Harry Allen leads a trio with Rossano Sportiello (piano), Joel Forbes (bass)at Mezzrow, $20

7/14, 8:30 PM progressive jazz sax legend Steve Coleman at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/14, 9 PM Cleveland metal band and Iron Maiden soundalikes Sunless Sky at St. Vitus, $15

7/14, 10 PM powerhouse oldschool soul band the One and Nines – NJ’s counterpart to Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings – at the Park Tavern, 725 West Side Ave. in Jersey City, free

7/14, 10 PM the Revolutionary Council Afrobeat Sextet at Bar Chord

7/14, 10 PM wryly surreal prozac rock  duo the Dream Eaters at Pete’s

7/14, 10 PM guitar mastermind Danny Weiss’ and magical Americana singer Mary Olive Smith’s soulful retro bluegrass band Stillhouse Serenade at Sunny’s

7/15, 1 PM Uncle Ralph McDaniels hosts the annual Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival with acts in reverse order: DMX, The Lox, Stretch & Bobbito, Mack Wilds, Oshun, DJ Rob Swift, and more at Brooklyn Bridge Park

7/15, 2 PM in reverse order: popular 80s Argentine janglerockers Los Pericos, LA psychedelic latin soul stars Chicano Batman and La Vida Bohéme at Central Park Summerstage 

7/15, 7 PM sax-fueled psychedelic cumbia band Consumata Sonidera at Starlight Park South Entrance, 1480 Sheridan Expressway, the Bronx, 2/5 to Freeman St and go east

7/15, 7:30 PM the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/15, 7:30 PM eclectic postbop drummer Sylvia Cuenca leads her quartet at Smalls

7/15, 8 PM captivating, wildly eclectic Afro-Peruvian/classical/art-rock singer/pianist Chi-Chi Glass at Barbes 

7/15, 8 PM aphoristic, catchy, smart Nashville folk-rock songwriter Ali Sperry at Pete’s 

7/15, 8 PM roots reggae band the Far East open for one of the several incarnation of Bob Marley’s backing band the Wailers – this one with bassist Family Man Barrett, fronted by Junior Marvin – at Highline Ballroom, $25 adv tix vec

7/15. 8 PM New Orleans-flavored swing with Dan Levinson’s Gotham Sophisticats featuring vocalist Molly Ryan at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/15, 9/10:30 PM drummer Dan Weiss leads his tuneful postbop trio with Jacob Sacks, piano;  Thomas Morgan, bass at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/15, 11:30 PM Cleveland punk cult hero Frank Secich (the Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators’ lead guitarist) followed by fuzztone garage rockers Room Full of Strangers at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec /album/bad-vacation-lp

7/15, midnight the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache  at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/16, 4ish in reverse order: cinematic vibraphone soul legend Roy Ayers, Afrobeat dance band Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and Brooklyn’s Underground System at Central Park Summerstage

7/16, 7 PM the intoxicatingly clattering, sintir bass lute fueled Moroccan trance grooves of Innov Gnawa  at Pier One on the upper west side

7/16, 7 PM witty Microscopic Septet pianist Joel Forrester followed at 9:30isy by Romany guitar legend Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

7/16, 7 PM pianist Zack Clarke’s Communer with Charlotte Greve, sax; Chris Irvine, cello ; Evan Crane, bass; Leonid Galaganov, drums followed by playful improvising quartet Bright Dog Red – “Digable Planets meets Mahavisnhu” – at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

7/16, 8:30 PM art-rockers the Tea Club play their wild, eighteen-minute, early Genesis-esque epics at the Knitting Factory, $12 adv tix rec

7/17, 7 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez  at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10

7/17, 7:30 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play Bach Brandenburg Concertos at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/17, 8ish 90s noiserock/janglerock icons Yo La Tengo – as vital as ever – at Central Park Summerstage

7/17, 8 PM the Ed Palermo Big Band – whose jazz reinventions of 60s and 70s British psychedelic rock can be hilariously fun – at Iridium, $25

7/17, 8 PM the New Alchemy Jazz Orchestra, featuring trumpeter Terell Stafford at the Cutting Room, $20 adv tix rec

7/17, 8:30 PM golden age Argentine tango with

7/17, 8:30 PM golden age Argentine tango with Malena Dayen, vocals;  David Rosenmeyer, piano at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/17, 9:30 ish Yotoco play psychedelic cumbia and boleros at Barbes

7/17, 10 PM darkly jangly, catchy, new wave-ish rockers Melissa & the Mannequins at LIC Bar

7/17, 11 PM strange but excellent segue:  tuneful pastoral jazz guitarist Cameron Mizell leads his trio followed by gonzo noir postbop pianist Dred Scott leading his at the small room at the Rockwood

7/18, 7 PM Triple Paste play hot 20s jazz and parse the Lennie Tristano’s songbook, featuring Eric Pakula, Matt Darriau, Katie Down, Rafe D’Lugoff, Arthur Kell and Vinnie Sperazza followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

 7/18, 7:30 PM badass, purposeful electric blues guitarist and compelling, eclectic singer Christina Apostolopoulos at Pete’s

7/19, 7:30 PM rising star postbop trumpeter Ryan Kisor leads his quintet at Smalls

7/18-19, 7:30/9:30 PM Ravi Coltrane leads a quintet with Brandee Younger – harp; David Virelles – Wurlitzer organ; Rashaan Carter – bass; Johnathan Blake – drums celebrating the work of his mom Alice Coltrane at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/19, 8 PM Tredici Bacci play original psychedelic instrumentals inspired by Italian film themes from the 60s and 70s at Barbes

7/18-23, 8:30/10:30 PM guitarist Mary Halvorson – arguably this era’s best six-string player not named Bill Frisell – and her lush, rapturously good octet at the Vanguard, $30

7/19, 6 PM innovative pipa virtuoso Jiaju Shen plays electroacoustic pieces at the  Rubin Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

7/19, 9:30 PM smartly eclectic pastoral jazz songsmiths Max Hatt & Edda Glass at Bar Lunatico

7/19 Count Vaseline play their undulating post-Velvets spacerock at Harefield Road, 769 Metropolitan Ave (Humboldt/Graham) in Williamsburg 

7/20, noon New Orleans’ darkly shuffling, explosively funky Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

7/20, 5 PM first-wave hip-hop: Kurtis Blow and Universal Hip-Hop Museum at NJPAC in Newark, free

7/20, 8 PM state-of-the-art postbop guitarist Will Bernard  & the BK Strays followed by Super Yamba playing their psychedelic Afrobeat jams at Barbes

7/20, 8 PM cleverly lyrical, murderously witty murder ballad/chamber pop allstars Charming Disaster  at Joe’s Pub, $15

7/20, 8:30  PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play haunting underground Greek  revolutionary anthems and hash-smoking songs from the 20s and 30s at Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street, Jackson Hts.

7/20, 9 PM edgy lefty guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at Bar Chord

7/20, 11 PM the Nuclears – who veer between galloping stoner boogie and slower doomier 70s metal – at the Gutter 

7/21, 5 PM a wild night of accordionists and accordion bands hosted by New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez featuring the iconic Middle Eastern Bil Afrah Project, the haunting sounds of Zlatni Balkan Zvuk, Brazilian rainforest group Osnelda, cumbia crooner Gregorio Uribe, and special guests at Bryant Park, free

7/21, 6 PM incisive, fearlessly populist, catchy Irish chamber-pop songwriter August Wells at the American Folk Art Museum 

7/21, 6 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue and ageless boogaloo bandleader Joe Bataan at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/21, 7:30 PM trippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa  open for intense, psychedelic Malian microtonal guitar-and-vocal band Amadou & Mariam at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/21, 7:30/9:30 PM pyrotechnic Indian classical singer Roopa Mahadevan leads a trio with violinist Anjna Swaminathan and percussionist Abhinav Seetharaman at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/21. 8 PM a rare appearance by poignantly sweeping Syrian orchestra Yousef Shamoun & the Tarab Ensemble at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

7/21, 8 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band followed by Pangari & the Socialites playing classic ska and rocksteady – most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog –  at Barbes

7/21, 8 PM haunting dark Americana songwriter/belter Jessi Robertson followed eventually at 10 by wild oldschool Houston soul brass band the Nightowls at Union Hall, $10

7/21, 9 PM ferocious, twin guitar-fueled, Radio Birdman-esque psychedelic punks the Electric Mess and garage/Merseybeat rockers the Above  at the Gutter

7/21, 9 PM noiserock guitar icon Thurston Moore and group at Bowery Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec. Why isn’t this guy playing Madison Square Garden, he’s popular enough…

7/21, 10:30 PM intense, haunting Americana/honkytonk singer Ruby Rae followed by similarly intense,more  blues-oriented Americana songstress Alice & the Underground at Pine Box Rock Shop 

7/22, 5 PM trippy Afrobeat group Budos Band on their  home tuft at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/22, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – followed at 8 by edgy lefty guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band and then at 10 by Felipe Fournier’s Tito Puente vibraphone tribute at Barbes

7/22, 6 PM the album release show from multimedia improvisers Irrevery plus sets by dangerous folk noir chanteuse Larkin Grimm  – who’s gone in a psychedelic Indian direction lately – purist, straightforward, warmly tuneful front-porch folk songwriter Joanna Sternberg and Flower Girl at City Reliquary, 370 Metropolitan Ave across from the Knitting Factory, Williamsburg, $10

7/22, 7:30 PM psychedelic, relentlessly kinetic piano-driven dancefloor postrockers Dawn of Midi followed by Beirut Middle Eastern/postrock band Mashrou’ Leila at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/22, 8 PM playful, improvisationally-inclined swing band Swingadelic at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (atOxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/22, 8 PM pianist Oliver Hagen leads a quintet playing music of Schubert, Bartok and Mozart at the DiMenna Center, $10, refreshments included

7/22, 9 PM the noisy, herky-jerky mid-80 Sonic Youth-ish Dead Tenants followed by guitarist Alyse Lamb’s fiery, subtly witty tightly psychedelic jazz-inspired postpunk band Parlor Walls at the Gutter 

7/22, 9/10:30 PM the Chopin Poject with Noah Preminger, tenor sax;  Nate Radley, guitar;  Kim Cass, bass;  Rob Garcia, drumsat Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. They’ve done Bartok so this should be a walk in the park!

7/22, 9 PM eclectic psychedelic riff-rockers Lemon Sky – who mix stoner boogie, a little flamenco and twisted Britfolk into the mix – at Arlene’s, $10 

7/22, 10 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black  at Lantern Hall, 52 Harrison Pl, (Grattan/Ingraham) in Bushwick, free, L to Morgan Ave. 

7/22, 10 PM ferocious, politically fearless soul-punk/new wave/postrock band Algiers at Baby’s All Right is SOLD OUT – no sruprise

7/23, 2 PM oldschool 70s style Cuban psychedelic salsa band Ola Fresca at at the Central Park Discovery Center, 110th St between Lenox and Fifth Aves

7/23, 5 PM hauntingly phantasmagorical art-rock/noir cabaret pianist/singer Anana Kaye at LIC Bar

7/23, 5 PM the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/23, 6 PM erudite, witty art-rock pianist/songwriter/composer Lee Feldman with special guest, Americana icon Amy Allison at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed at 8 by quartet Anouman playing Django guitar jazz, separate cover and min.

7/23, 6 PM witty Microscopic Septet pianist Joel Forrester  leads his quintet at Silvana. Will anybody actually shut up and listen there? 

7/23, 7 PM ferociously lyrical, Macbeth-inspired art-rock/psychedelic songwriter Rose Thomas Bannister followed by banjo player Stephanie Jenkins from the charming, oldtimey Pearly Snaps at Corkscrew Wines, 489 Myrtle Ave in Ft. Greene, A/C to Clinton-Washington

7/23, 7 PM killer dark retro 60s psychedelic/stoner boogie/art-rock band Medusa’s Disco at Gussy’s Bar in Queens

7/23, 7 PM lustrous, Lynchian swing chanteuse Heather Holloway & the Heebie-Jeebies at Radegast Hall

7/23, 7 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 Pier One on the upper west side

7/23, 8 PM the Verona Quartet play US premieres by Teizō Matsumura, Alejandro Cardona and Elżbieta Sikora at MOMA Summergarden, enter on 54th St., free, early arrival encouraged

7/23, 8:30ish fiery New York-centric purist janglerock/folk harmony duo the Kennedys at the Treehouse at 2A

7/25, 7:30 PM fiery alto saxophonist Lucas Pino’s twin-guitar No No Nonet at Smalls

7/25, 8 PM Brooklyn’s funnest new band, psychedelic organ-driven Middle Eastern-tinged surf rock trio Hearing Things at Barbes

7/25-30, 8:30/10:30 lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch leads his trio at the Vanguard, $30

7/25, 9 PM darkly jangly, catchy, new wave-ish rockers Melissa & the Mannequins at the Way Station

7/25, 9:30 PM cinematic Quincy Jones-style B3 gutbucket organ jazz with Colin Brown and his band at Freddy’s 

 7/25, 11:30 PM hard-hitting garage-punks the Falling Birds – like a minor-league Radio Birdman or OBNIIIs – at the Knitting Factory, $12 

7/26, noon high-voltage accordion-and-microtonal sax-fueled original Balkan tunes with Tipsy Oxcart at Madison Square Park, free

7/26, 7 PM popular jazz-folk chanteuse Rickie Lee Jones and her band play her 1981 Pirates album all the way through at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center. Reputedy rehearsals have been fantastic.

7/26, 7 PM intoxicatingly fun, bouncy Colombian coastal dance grooves with Tribu Baharu at Madison Square Park, free

7/26, 7:30 PM tersely incendiary Chicago blues guitarist Joe Louis Walker  at B.B. King’s, $15

7/26 irrepressible, transgressively funny saxophonist Jon Irabagon  leads an organ trio with Gary Versace on B3 and Nasheet Waits on drums, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/26, 8 PM eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leads his Tango Quartet followed at 10 by accordionist/sitarist Kamala Sankaram’s hot surfy Bollywood/cumbia/psychedelic rock project Bombay Rickey – a launching pad for her spellbinding four-octave voice – at Barbes

7/26, 8:30 PM fearlessly haunting, dynamic, charismatic Romany/Balkan chaunteuse Eva Salina  at Bar Lunatico

7/26, 9 PM charmingly catchy, new wave-tinged female-fronted Minneapolis band Bad Bad Hats at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $12

7/26, 9:30 PM Renata Zeiguer’s trippy, creepy Prozac rock project Cantina followed by dangerous folk noir chanteuse Larkin Grimm  – who’s gone in a psychedelic Indian direction lately – at Footlight Bar, $10

7/26, 9:30 PM lustrous, darkly enigmatic singer/composer Song Yi Jeon leads her quintet with Kenji Herbert, guitar;  Vitor Gonçalves, piano;  Matt Aronoff, bass;  Jongkuk Kim, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/27, 5 PM a rare appearance by Cuban son legends Septeto Santiaguero at NJPAC in Newark, free

7/27, 6 PM accordionist/sitarist Kamala Sankaram’s hot surfy Bollywood/cumbia/psychedelic rock project Bombay Rickey – a launching pad for her spellbinding four-octave voice – at the Bed-Stuy Community Garden, 95 Malcolm X Boulevard (Greene/Lexington), J/M to Kosciusko St. Then they jump in a cab and rush over to play at Barbes at 10. 

7/27, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: fearlessly populist LA folk-punks Las Cafeteras, our own Alynda Segarra aka Hurray For the Riff Raff,, trippy downtempo guy Helado Negro and fiery, dramatic belter Xenia Rubinos

7/27, 7 PM baritone sax goddess Moist Paula does double duty, first with her electroacoustic project Bliss Station and then with powerhouse Aussie hokum blues songwriter/revivalist CW Stoneking – who schools a lot of the Americans mining the genre –at the Mercury, $15

7/27, 7:30 PM fiery agitator Rev. Billy & the Church of  Stop Shopping Choir – sort of the Dead Kennedys or Public Enemy of original, politically spot-on original gospel music – followed bytrumpeter Steven Bernstein’s legendary noir jazz outfit Sexmob playing a live score to the 1926 silent film Maciste All’Inferno at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/27, 7:30 PM kinetic, fearlessly populist oldtime Americana songwriter/banjoist Kaia Kater at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/27, 7:30 PM catchy, cinematic, noir-inclined saxophonist/composer Nick Hempton leads his quintet at Smalls

7/27 lyrical jazz pianist Christian Sands leads his trio, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $30

7/27 , 8 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co at Otto’s

7/27, 8 PM shamisen player/singer/improviser Emi Makabe leads a trio with Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed at 9:30 by violinist Tomoko Omura and her quintet, separate cover and min.

7/27, 9:30 PM singer Sofia Tosello’s magically shapeshiftting, kinetic pan-latin folk project Chuno at Terraza 7, $10 

7/27, 9 PM wryly retro, period-perfect classic 60s style female-fronted honkytonk band the Bourbon Express at Pete’s

7/27, 9 PM darkly intense bassist Dana Schechter’s hauntingly cinematic slowcore/art-rock project Insect Ark at Matchless, $10

7/27, 10ish a rare duo collaboration between dark ex-Dimestore Dance Band guitarist Jack Martin – the missing link between Erik Satie and Django Reinhardt – and legendary free jazz drummer Dee Pop at the Cobra Club, $10

7/27, 10 PM powerpop cult heroes Dany Laj & the Looks at Hank’s, $8

7/28, 5:30 PM elegant, jazz-tinged acoustic songwriter Kalyani Singh followed eventually at 6:30 by brilliant accordionist/raconteuse/urbane lyrical eclecticist Rachelle Garniez  at the American Folk Art Museum 

7/28, 6 PM pianist Dongfeng Liu leads his trio through a mix of Chinese and latin-tinged originals  at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed by the Bryan Landrus Orchestra playing the album release show for their new lush, resonant new one, separate adm and min. Landrus is also here on 7/29

7/28, 6 PM popular salsa songstress La India at St. Mary’s Park, St Mary’s St bet. St Ann’s Ave and Jackson Ave in the Bronx, 2/5 to Jackson Ave

7/28, 7 PM Eljuri play their ferocious, brilliantly guitar-driven, fearlessly populist rock en Espanol at the park at 125th St. and the Hudson

7/28, 7 PM darkly intense ex-Band of Susans guitarist/songwriter Anne Husicksolo followed by noir-tinged crooner/guitarslinger  Phil Gammage leading his four-piece band at Sidewalk

7/28, 7 PM International Contemporary Ensemble plays Pauline Oliveros’ Applebox Double, Heart of Tones and One Hundred Meeting Places  on the plaza at Lincoln Center

7/28, 7:30 PM popular jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding and band followed by chamber pop/lit-rock icon Andrew Bird at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/28, 7:30 PM charming oldtime swing harmony trio Duchess – Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou – sing Andrews Sisters tunes to accompany a dance performance at Damrosch Park

7/28, 7:30/9:30 PM a rare appearance by Cuban son legends Septeto Santiagueroat Joe’s Pub, $15 adv tix rec

7/28, 8ish irresistibly named, darkly sizzling psychedelic garage punk rockers Anderson Council  at  Hank’s

7/28, 8:30 PM Chicago improvisational sax icon Ken Vandermark leads his group at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/28, 10 PM intense frontwoman Hannah Fairchild’s searingly lyrical punk/art-rock/noir cabaret band Hannah vs. the Many – this blog’s current favorite group – at the Way Station

7/29, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – with special guest guitarist Steve Ulrich from noir soundtrack icons Big Lazy followed at 8 by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri playing their creepy Transylvanian jazz followed and at 10 by awesome Austin psychedelic cumbia band Money Chicha at Barbes

7/29, 6 PM Taiwanese bands in reverse order: catchy pop-punks Fire Ex, low-key folksinger Dadado Huang + Berry j and Sangpuy at Central Park Summerstage

7/29, 7 PM Efendi with Scott Wilson, playing his unique “\baglama hydra”—a combination oud, saz, and bouzouki—with sounds from Turkey, Armenia, Israel, and Greece at the 96th Street Tennis Courts in Riverside Park

7/29, 7:30 PM would you sit (or, more likely, snooze) through a set by a British pop moppet at Damrosch Park just to see Dionne Warwick play a handful of songs? Maybe we should call the psychic hotline and find out!

7/29, 8 PM harrowing Palestinian oud ensemble Le Trio Joubran play the US premiere of their elegaic suite of settings of Mahmoud Darwish poems on themes of exile and resistance at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St, $30 seats avail

7/29, 9 PM high-voltage oldtimey barrelhouse swing with the 4th St. Nite Owls followed by deviously lyrical, historically spot-on, cleverly sultry oldtimey/Americana songwriter/bandleader Robin Aigner and Parlour Game at the Jalopy, $10

7/29, 9 PM deviously lyrical cult favorite Americana soul/punk songwriter Marcellus Hall at Pete’s. Last time he was there he had Ambrosia Parsley on harmonies, a great band, and he slayed. 

7/29, 9:30 PM catchy, fun indie soul band Sunshine Nights at Freddy’s

7/29, 10 PM hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes at Bar Chord

7/29, 10ish fearless punk classical cellist Valerie Kuehne at Spectrum, $15

7/29, 11 PM A Place to Bury Strangers play their hypnotic, sprawling psychedelic gutter garage blues at Poineer Works, $20 

7/30, 2 PM Certain General guitarslinger Phil Gammage and his dark rock Quartet followed by an intimate duo show by torchy, riveting, erudite countrypolitan songwriter Drina Seay at Hank’s

7/30, 5ish pioneering golden-age female hip-hop star MC Lyte at Central Park Summerstage

7/30, 7 PM fiery, charismatic soul siren Meah Pace and her oldschool band outdoors at LIC Bar

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

7/30, 7 PM La Mecanica Popular play their original, psychedelic update on classic 70s Nuyorican salsa dura at Pier One on the upper west side

7/30, 8 PM a rare reunion of Ljova and Inna Barmash’s wild Russian/Romany party band Romashka at Drom, $15 adv tix very higlhly rec

7/30, 9 PM bad segue, good jazz twinbill at an unexpected venue: purposeful, pensive Slavic jazz guitarist Martina Fiserova  followed by trumpet powerhouse Wayne Tucker & the Bad Mothers at the small room at the Rockwood. A couple doors down quirkily charismatic, powerful-voiced, kinetic avant-pop siren Grace McLean plays the third stage at 10 for $10

7/31, 8 PM bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone plays new solo works by Rebecca Saunders, Martin Bauck and Lauri Supponen at Scholes st. Studios 

7/31, 10 PM haunting, powerful Afro-Colombian trance choir Bulla en El Barrio at Barbes 

7/30, 11ish edgy, funny postpunks Single Red Cent at the Cobra Club

8/1, 7:30 PM the East Coast Chamber Orchestra play works by Holst, Shostakovich and Bach at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

8/1, 9ish haunting string soundscapes and noir Americana from all-female harmony band Little Mazarn at Troost 

8/2, noon percussive, trance-inducing, bitingly tuneful, Middle Etstern-tinged female-fronted jamband SisterMonk at the triangle at 66th St. and Broadway

8/2, noon upbeat original ska with the Brown Rice Family at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7 PM dark psychedelic soundtrack legends Morricone Youth at the long meadow in Prospect Park, closest train is actually the F/G to 15th St. 

8/2, 7 PM all-female Americana harmony trio the Wild Reeds at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7:30 PM Ibibio Sound Machine play EDM with hints of Afrobeat followed by Angelique Kidjo and band covering a crappy Talking Heads album at Damrosch Park

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

8/2, 9 PM oldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Bar Chord

8/2, 8:30 PM brilliant pedal steel player Mike Neer’s Steelonious – who do Monk covers in the same vein as Buddy Emmons – with vibraphonist Tom Beckham, bassist Andrew Hall and drummer Diego Voglino at Bar Lunatico

8/3, 5 PM lBay Area latin soul legends Tower of Power at NJPAC in Newark, free

8/3, 7:30 PM newschool cabaret agitator Nellie McKay followed by perennially fun, psychedelic banjo jamband leader Bela Fleck at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/3, 7;30 PM dance sequences from Bollywood film set to live music by a group TBA at Damrosch Park. Followed at 10:30 PM by a “silent screening” of The Big Lebowski where everybody wears headphones, supplied by the venue. Guess this means we have to text our buddies to share a laugh or two during the film.

8/3, 10 PM intense, intricately orchestrated, low register-loving psycho mambo band Gato Loco at Barbes

8/4, 6 PM a tribute to third-stream luminary Billy Childs tribute with pianist Manuel Valera, the Triton Brass Quintet, the City of Tomorrow chamber ensemble, and Billy Childs’ own Quartet at Bryant Park, free

8/4, 7;30 PM orchestral hip-hop: violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson leads a chamber orchestra playing a J Dilla tribute at Damrosch Park

8/4, 10 PM this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes. 8/12, 8:30 PM they’re at Bar Lunatico 

8/5, 2 PM indie classical types Ashley Jackson, Helen Sung, Luciana Souza, Manhattan Chamber Players, Derek Bermel and Nate Smith, and Metropolis Ensemble play music by Bermel at Bryant Park, free

8/5, 3ish Orquesta Criolla Nacional de Puerto Rico on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/5, 7:30 PM second-wave surf rock icons Los Straitjackets and British roots-rock maven Nick Lowe at Damrosch Park

8/5, 8:30 PM pantheonic, eclectic guitar hero Nels Cline leads his big pastoral jazz band at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/5 fiery, eclectic, purposeful pianist Helen Sung leads her poetic, powerfully relevant, vivid Sung With Words project at Bryant Park

8/6, 1 PM Albanian superstar vocal/accordion duo Merita Halili & Raif Hyseni and the Cheres Ukrainian Folk Ensemble on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/6, 5 PM hardcore late 90s hip-hop nostalgia with Jadakiss at Crotona Park North to South, Fulton Ave to Southern Blvd and Crotona Park East in the Bronx, 3 to Freeman St. 

8/9, 7:30 PM spectacular, fiery Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castanedafollowed by the swinging salsa dura sounds of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at Damrosch Park

8/9, 8:30 PM alto sax icon Kenny Garrett and his band at Madison Square Park, free

8/10, 7  PM lush improvising orchestra Burnt Sugar at East River Park

8/10, 7:30 PM the Brooklyn United Marching Band followed by jazz piano star Jason Moran and the Wordless Music Orchestra playing a live score to the film Selma at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/11, 6 PM Andy Montanez,  El Godfather de la Salsa, Puerto Rican bolero singer/songwriter legend at East River Park

8/12, 1/3  PM indie classical ensemble Contemporaneous plays music by Ian Gottlieb, Emma O’Halloran and Finnegan Shanahan in Nolan Park in the middle of Governors Island, free

8/16, 7 PM hard-driving, often noir-tinged swing pianist/singer Davina & the Vagabonds at Madison Square Park, free

8/17, 5 PM 90s hardcore Brooklyn hip-hop nostalgia:  Black Sheep and Das EFX  at NJPAC in Newark, free

8/19, 6 PM hypnotic, intricate, eclectically virtuosic fingerstyle guitar instrumentalist RD King – Fahey meets Kottke meets Dave Miller? – at the small room at the Rockwood

8/20, 5 PM  in reverse order: the year’s best outdoor show with ageless Ethiopian jazz composer Mulatu Astatke, fiery Tunisian art-rocker Emel Mathlouthi and slinky Middle Eastern/Nile Delta band Alsarah & the Nubatones at Central Park Summerstage

8/24, 5 PM conscious hip-hop icon Talib Kweli at NJPAC in Newark, free

 8/25, 7 PM the lavish, sax/clarinet-fueled Anat Cohen Tentet at Marcus Garvey Park

8/25, 10 PM 60s janglerock/psych-pop legends the Flamin Groovies at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $20 adv tix rec

8/26, 3 PM in reverse order:  cool jazz legends the Lee Konitz Quartet, dynamic drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, postbop drummer Louis Hayes and his group, and powerful belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor –  Charenee Wade at Marcus Garvey Park

8/27, 4 PM in reverse order: state-of-the-art alto postbop with the Joshua Redman Quartet, oldschool soul-jazz man Lou Donaldson, and the ferociously intense, charismatic Tia Fuller at Tompkins Square Park

8/29, 7 PM Inkarayku play Peruvian psychedelic folk at Gantry Plaza State Park

A Chance to Discover Some Rare Jazz Seldom Heard on This Continent

Even in this youtube-enabled era where a kid from Reykjavik or Rhode Island can develop jazz chops to rival anyone from Harlem, it takes a special kind of passion to play music that’s not native to your home turf. That’s why so many of the European jazz acts with the ambition to cross the pond can be fantastically good. And while most American fans probably don’t think of Poland as a jazz hotspot, this upcoming week’s annual Jazztopad Festival has a lineup that could open a lot of eyes and ears.

The good news is that the dreaded f-word (fusion, for folks who might have forgotten) isn’t part of the deal. There are lots of flavors. Some of the bands on the five-night bill draw on ancient, rustic Polish folk themes, others move in more of a improvisational direction. The first two nights, June 21 and 22 are at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where darkly enigmatic improvisers Stryjo and the similar Wójciński/Szmańda Quartet play at 7:30 and 9:30 PM. The Wójciński/Szmańda Quartet make another appearance on June 24 at 8 PM with eclectically brilliant cellist Erik Friedlander at the Jazz Gallery. Strings work especially well with this kind of music.

The June 23 show is at Joe’s Pub at 7:30 PM, featuring pianist Marcin Masecki and rummer Jerzy Rogiewicz playing stride and ragtime classics. Then the festival winds up at National Sawdust on June 25 at 4 PM featuring mesmerizingly improvisational string ensemble the Lutosławski Quartet with violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. This blog was in the house for the quartet’s playfully fun show there last year with pianist Uri Caine, details here.

Another uncategorizably brilliant Polish band, the trio Lautari – who are not on this bill – wound up their US tour with an often riveting set last fall at Subrosa. While their current raison d’etre is to jam out rare, obscure and often otherworldly Polish folk themes, some of their their tropes are common in Polish jazz.

The big takeaway was how diverse Polish music has always been, and still remains. Several strikingly catchy, whirling dance numbers began with biting harmonies between Maciej Filipczuk’s violin and Michał Żak’s clarinet. Then Jacek Hałas’ piano would icepick and ripple, and sometimes he’d slow the tunes down and take them in a considerably more shadowy, Lynchian direction. Or they’d make a crazy quilt of counterpoint and then reconverge. Throughout their roughly ninety minutes onstage, there were recurrent echoes of Balkan music, including one particularly incisive dance number that drew a line south, straight to Macedonia.

The night’s most poignantly surreal moment was when they played a plaintive dirge to a backing track (on Filipczuk’s phone, actually) of an aging Holocaust survivor quaveringly humming an old folk tune. It was disquieting on more than one level to see the band playing along with that long-dead voice, but also redemptive to know that they’d literally resurrected the song.

As the show went on, phantasmagorical interludes reminiscent of Frank Carlberg’s Tivoli Trio were juxtaposed with bustling, Mingus-like passages and a slow, lingering piece midway through where a guest guitarist added brooding, Satie-esque accents. Halas opened the night’s most starkly riveting number solo on accordion, with a frantically trilling, Middle Eastern edge, then the band took it in a slinky direction that sounded like Dolunay on acid. There’s no guarantee that any of this will happen at this year’s festival, but you never know.

An Epic, Explosively Catchy Balkan Brass Album from What Cheer? Brigade

What Cheer? Brigade headlined this year’s Golden Festival, the nation’s top gathering of Balkan bands. It was two in the morning in Brooklyn when they hit the stage, and by then, there were almost as many people playing as watching. Which meant more brass instruments and drums than could fit onstage, so what seemed like half the band were gathered around in front. It was an apt way to wind up what will probably prove to be the best party of the year.

Beyond the New York Philharmonic, there is no other band this size on the East Coast, and no brass band in the United States other than MarchFourth with as many members. Maybe that’s why they aren’t listed on the band’s webpage –  maybe there’s not enough bandwidth! Calling their sound titanic is beside the point.

Beyond sheer volume, what’s most impressive about their new album You Can’t See Inside of Me – streaming at Bandcamp – is how tight it is. Bands this size, let alone punk brass street bands like these people, tend to be unwieldy. Their Golden Fest set was pretty crazy, but it’s a good bet they’ll be extra tight since they just made the record – and maybe will be a little smaller in size too – when they play the album release show tonight, June 16 at around 10 at the new Littlefield at 635 Sackett St. in Gowanus, just around the corner from the old location. As a bonus, the similarly explosive if considerably more compact Raya Brass Band – arguably the best Balkan brass unit in the United States – open the night at 9. Cover is $10.

The album’s opening track, Iahabibi, is a Balkan cumbia. The way the lush wall of trumpets (and trubas, maybe) slithers and bends in unison to reach the highs on the chorus sounds effortless, but in reality it’s just the opposite. The chromatics and rat-a-tat attack get even more fearsome and catchy in the second track, Punk Gratitude, the band eventually dropping back to just the tubas and drums for a flamenco-edged trumpet solo and then an explosively flurrying drum break.

Ekremov Čoček has towering, expansive minor-key harmonies to match a big Renaissance choir. The song struts more than it careens, no small achievement. Then again, nothing about this band is small. Hora Din Petrosnitza is a mghty, bubbling punk klezmer number, like the Klezmatics turned up to eleven, with another big drum break. The epic, cinematic, funkified You Don’t Want to Go to War is packed with call-and-response and echo phrases; deep inside, it’s a soul song.

The diptych Ba Tu/Perin Čoček opens as a slow, gorgeously stormy anthem fueled by low brass chords and then picks up with an intensity that’s just short of frantic. Likewise, the breathtaking fanfare that kicks off the title track, a heavyweight, catchy Andalucian-flavored blast of brass with a tantalizingly brief, simmeringly chromatic trombone solo.. Reka Želja reaches for even greater heights, balancing flamenco fire with wry 80s new wave pop allusions and an artfully circling exchange of individual voices.

Black Cannon is sort of a swaying Balkan Hawaii 5-0; the stampeding doublespeed bridge and the breathless charge on the way out are the high points of the album. NBD is a brassy spoof of a popular early zeros rock hit, while the epically puffing, closing cover of Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets, complete with choir, is even more surreal.

The album also includes nine remixes: while it’s good to hear the songs, at least parts of them, a second time, around that’s hardly necessary considering how meticulously recorded the originals are. Big up to the folks at Pawtucker, Rhode Island’s Machines with Magnets studios for not simply lining these guys up inside McCoy Stadium and recording the album right there on the ballfield. Although it might have been just as difficult to fit everybody into the ballpark too. Count this among the top ten releases of 2017 so far.

Manhattan’s Best Venue Stages a Thunderous Benefit for Their Brooklyn Counterpart

The Barbes benefit concert at Drom Friday night wasn’t sold out, but the East Village venue was close to capacity. Big Lazy headlined. By then the dancers had been on their feet for the better part of four hours, yet didn’t seem the least bit worn out. So the shadowy, cinematic trio of guitarist Steve Ulrich, bassist Andrew Hall and drummer Yuval Lion played their slinkiest stuff. Ulrich shifted eerily between desolate big-sky tableaux, furtively chromatic crime jazz, a wryly strutting go-go theme or two and red-neon roadhouse scenes while Hall spun his bass, supplying a tight rubber-band low end in tandem with Lion’s thicket of textures from every part of his kit. Gato Loco trombonist Tim Vaughn and Balkan Beat Box baritone sax player Peter Hess added extra careening, elusive textures at the end of their tantalizingly brief set, whose centerpiece was the title track from the band’s latest album Don’t Cross Myrtle, a muted bump-in-the-night theme that turned completely savage in seconds flat.

Ulrich dedicated the song to Barbes, the band’s embattled Park Slope home base, which serves the same purpose for many other artists, the rest of the night’s bill included. Considering the song’s title and its creepy themes (it’s an instrumental), on face value it seems to address deep Brooklyn nocturnal peril. But this time out, introducing the song, Ulrich alluded to a “changing Brooklyn,” and suddenly another meaning, 180 degrees the opposite, emerged: keep your wrecking balls and other weapons of mass destruction, your money-laundering, your swindler speculators and “luxury” condos, and the status-grubbing yuppies who move into them, out of our part of town. It may be sketchy, but it’s all we have left. There isn’t anyplace else in New York in 2017 where a working class person or an artist can survive.

The brain drain out of New York and the mass displacement of artists to the most remote fringes of the five boroughs aren’t the only reasons that Barbes is in trouble. Their building has been hit with a lien for city services, no fault of the venue; in the meantime, their Indiegogo campaign is almost eighty percent funded. “I can’t believe this place still exists,” marveled one patron under her breath at the bar Saturday night while Sean Cronin’s oldschool honkytonk band played in the back room. If there’s any Brooklyn venue that deserves support or patronage right now, it’s this one.

And they have a lot of overlap with Drom, their more spacious but similarly friendly Manhattan counterpart, where acts from around the world continue to make their North American debuts, month after month. It’s not clear whether MaracatuNY, who opened the benefit, had played there before; whatever the case, it’s probably safe to say that they’re the loudest band ever to play there. And they did it without amplification. Gathered in a semicircle on the floor in front of the stage, the roughly fifteen-piece drum troupe built a thunderous torrent of intricate Brazilian polyrhythms, turning on a dime as their conductor signaled changes with his whistle and hand signals in the eye of the storm. They’d return later on.

The Jazz Passengers were just as intricate and even more entrancing. Frontman Roy Nathanson played alto sax, soprano sax and on We’re All Jews, their most epic number, both at once, working his polytonal sorcery for extra overtones. Bass player Bradley Jones teamed with the drums for a serpentine groove and lowdown funk as vibraphone star Bill Ware took a rare turn on electric piano. Their first number was the most vividly murky exploration of the noir they’ve become known for; after that, Nathanson harmonized wryly with trombonist Curtis Fowlkes on a smoky take of the 70s soul standard Everybody Plays the Fool.

Romany chanteuse Sanda Weigl – who has a new album due out from Barbes Records this fall – went deep into her powerful alto for a couple of a-cappella Romanian songs. Then a three-piece version of the all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache, New York’s only all-female mariachi band, joined their soaring voices for a harmony-fueled, all-too-brief set that began like a Mexican-flavored Dixie Chicks and then went deeper into the tricky tempos and clapalong vigor of classic south-of-the-border string band sounds, with intertwining violin, cuatro and bajo sexto.

The next two bands each put their own rustic, exhilarating spin on ancient African call-and-response chants. Charismatic singer Carolina Oliveros’ Bulla En El Barrio led her ten-piece choir-and-percussion ensemble through a mesmerizingly kaleidoscopic series of Colombian bullerengue, which sounded like a South American take on African-American field hollers, the guys and women in the band taking turns spiraling and cavorting in front of the upraised voices.

Then Innov Gnawa – who brought the biggest crowd of the night – got the crowd bouncing with their trance-inducing forest of click-clack cast-iron castanets and sintir bass lute, first played by Samir LanGus and then bandleader, Moroccan expat maalem Hassan Ben Jaafer. Their first number kicked off a rousing Arabic welcome-to-the-party jam, with sub-Saharan rhythms from what could be two thousand years ago welded to undulating North African acoustic funk, infused with bracing, sometimes moody allusions to both Arabic music and the roots of the blues.

To keep the dancers on their feet, the massive Fanfare Brooklyn – a mighty twenty-plus piece Balkan brass band comprising most of Slavic Soul Party and Red Baraat – blazed through careening jams packed with some pretty unhinged soloing, drawing from both band’s catalogs of hip-hop-inspired Eastern European brass music and Indian bhangra.

All of these bands play all over town when they’re not at Barbes. Mariachi Flor de Toloache are playing an album release weekend for their new one, with shows on June 16 at 10 and the following night, June 17 at midnight at Joe’s Pub; cover is $25. Bulla En El Barrio are back at Barbes on June 26 at around 9:30. Innov Gnawa’s next big show is at Prospect Park Bandshell at 7:30 PM on July 21, where they open for intense, psychedelic Malian microtonal guitar band Amadou and Mariam. And Big Lazy return to their monthly Friday night residency at Barbes on July 7 at 10 PM.

Stephane Wrembel Releases a Lavish, Charecteristically Edgy New Romany Jazz Album at Drom Tonight

Guitarist Stephane Wrembel made a name for himself as a stormy, erudite interpreter of Django Reinhardt, but his own body of work encompasses far more than that, using Romany jazz as a stepping-off point for his own distinctive ventures into Middle Eastern sounds and psychedelic rock. His lavish, dynamically rich, often poignant new double cd The Django Experiment is streaming at youtube. Disc one is mostly an imaginative mix of Django classics; disc two is mostly originals, in more of a jazz vein than what audiences get at his ongoing, legendary most-every-Sunday night 9 PM-ish residency at Barbes. He’s playing the album release show tonight, June 10 at 8 PM at Drom; hopefully by now you have your $15 advance tickets because it’s an extra five at the door.

The first disc opens with Nuages, Wrembel’s elegantly spare, resonant lines over Thor Jensen’s spring-loaded rhythm guitar, Ari Folman-Cohen’s bass and Nick Anderson’s drums. Wrembel takes somewhat the opposite approach with his tremolo-picking on the waltz Gin-Gin, then he and Folman-Cohen have fun working the chromatic edges of Bouncin’ Around, a close cousin to Brother Can You Spare a Dime.

Nick Driscoll’s clarinet spirals around and intertwines artfully with Wrembel on the jaunty Dinette. By contrast, Wrembel and Jensen max out the modal melancholy in a majestically spacious take of Troublant Bolero, up to a characteristically careening crescendo. It makes a good segue with the first of Wrembel’s originals, Windmills, a brisk, deliciously broodng waltz.

The band goes back to the Django catalog for a bubbly, lickety-split take of Place de Broukere, followed by the bucolic desolation of Carnets de Route,Wrembel’s moodily magical mashup of Django and Pink Floyd. The up-down dynamics continue with the coyly strutting Djangology and then Wrembel’s plaintively mined take of Sasha Distel’s Ma Premiere Guitare. Disc one winds up with Wrembel’s wistful waltz Jacques Prevert followed by a roller-coaster ride through Django’s Minor Swing. the bandleader channeling Wes Montgomery up to a mightily plucked bass solo and finally a stampede out.

The second disc begins with the epically vamping Douce Ambience. It perfectly capsulizes the confluence of Middle Eastern modalities and Romany swing that Wrembel first began mining around ten years ago, the guitarist’s understated unease in contrast with Driscoll’s relentless centrifugal force on soprano sax, Anderson taking it out with a long hailstorm of a solo. Viper’s Dream is pretty close to the Django version, with a little wryly bouncing Tal Farlow thrown in.

A waltz by Bamboula Ferrret benefits from Wrembel’s judicious, occasionally tremolo-picked phrases mixed into an attack that’s equally precise and resonant: all those notes don’t just vanish into thin air. Boston, another waltz, begins wistfully, grows more elegaic and then Wrembel builds a long, growling upward drive. Then the band flips the script with the toe-tapping shuffle Double Scotch, Driscoll adding dixieland effervescence.

Reinhardt’s midtempo stroll Tears reveals itself here as the source of a Beatles hit that Big Lazy likes to take even deeper into the shadows. Nanoc, which is Wrembel’s Caravan, opens with a levantine slink and slithers further off the rails from there. Then he makes a surreal juxtaposition with Django’s Louis Jordan-influenced Heavy Artillery, which is anything but. After that, Minor Blues is middle ground, more or less, Wrembel adding an understated intensity, part Wes Montgomery, part psychedelic rock, with a long, practically frantic sprint out.

Interestingly, the album’s best track isn’t one of the barn-burners but Wrembel’s slow, hushed, allusively flamenco-ish Film Noir. Raising the ante again, Driscoll’s clarinet infuses Songe d’Automne with an indian summer breeze. The final cut is the enigmatically balmy ballad Anouman, ironically the closest thing to straight-up postbop here. Over and over, Wrembel reaffirms his status as paradigm-shifter and one of the world’s most engaging, original innovators in Romany guitar jazz.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for June and July 2017

Free and cheap concerts in just about every neighborhood. If you’re leaving your hood, make sure you check http://www.mta.info for service changes considering how awful the trains have been lately.

Constant updates. Considering how Trump’s minions are hell-bent on slashing funding for the arts, this might be the last good season of free summer shows here for awhile. So you might want to bookmark this page and check back every so often – and then go out! If there was ever a summer in New York to check out some cool free live music, this is it!

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 here, something for everyone

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

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. Up next: Bartok, Mozart and fascinating improvisations. Sugg don $10 (pay what you can), delicious gluten-free refreshments, beverages and lively conversation included! email for info/location. Upcoming dates: Wednesdays at 7: June 21, and Sundays at 4: June 25.

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

Mondays 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 in June, 8 PM erudite, fascinating jazz guitar maven,Matt Munisteri plays “guitar for lovers” at the Jalopy Tavern, free

Mondays in June at 8/10:30 PM irrepressibly fun, female-fronted, brassy cosmopolitan swing band the Hot Sardines at the Blue Note, $15 standing room avail

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

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

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

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

Mondays in June at midnight wild noir piano jazz with the Dred Scott Trio back at their old spot, the small room at the Rockwood.

Tuesdays in June, 7 PM the great unsung hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin leads his Zebtet  at the Fat Cat

Tuesdays in June, 8:30 PM the George Gee Swing Orchestra play surprising new arrangements of old big band standards at Swing 46, 349 W 46th St,  $15

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

Wednesdays starting June 28, 6 PM a wild tribe of accordionists take over Bryant Park, performers scattered throughout the space, booked by the brilliant Ariana Hellerman of Ariana’s List. Too many amazing players to list. Choice pick: the July 5 lineup with Melissa Elledge, Shoko Nagai and Sam Reider, wow!

Wednesdays at 8 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 Owl, $15

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

Wednesdays at 9 PM Feral Foster’s Roots & Ruckus takes over the Jalopy, a reliably excellent weekly mix of oldtimey acts: blues, bluegrass, country and swing.

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 around 9:30 PM Bulgarian Romany sax legend Yuri Yunakov with his wild but haunting band at Mehanata

Fridays in June, 10:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django, $10 at the bar. 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. 

Fridays in July, 9 PM Bulgarian Romany sax legend Yuri Yunakov with his wild but haunting band at Mehanata

Saturdays in June, 11:30 AM (in the morning) til 3, individualistic guitarist Assaf Kehati plays jazz and bossa nova with a series of bassists: Steve LaSpina, Harvie S, Dave Baron, Rick Rosato, Michael O’Brien and maybe more at Il Gattopardo, 13-15 W 54th St, free. He’s got some funk, some surf and lots of classic postbop in him. 

Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic there are impromptu free classical concerts, usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles: if you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in June at Barbes, 6 PM guitarist Sean Cronin“raised on country, trained in classical, steeped in punk, and brought to maturity as a jazz musician, leads the band Very Good which is actually quite good.” No joke. Expect reinvented Leonard Cohen, menacing offcenter downtown skronk, cello jazz maybe. Something to really look forward to.

Saturdays in July, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – “take inspiration from the intersection of the sacred and the radical to create hit songs from the depths of American psalmody, Yiddish folklore, and international Jewish liturgical traditions” at Barbes. i.e. sacred and possibly profane.

Saturdays eclectic compelling Brazilian jazz chanteuse Marianni and her excellent band at Zinc Bar, three sets starting at 10 PM.

Sundays there’s a klezmer brunch at City Winery, show starts around 11:30 AM – 2 PM, $10 cover, no minimum, lots of good bands

Sundays in June at sometime past noon at Hank’s, Nashville gothic crooner Sean Kershaw‘s legendary honkytonk brunch is back! It’s just like 1999 again!

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

6/1, 7 PM  the LA Percussion Quartet play Andrew McIntosh’s epic 40-minute I Hold the Lion’s Paw, and Anna Thorsvaldsdottir’s earthy/unearthly Aura. They’ll also be premiering a virtual reality video from Chris Cerrone’s Memory Palace, at National Sawdust, $30

6/1-4, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical purist postbop trumpeter Sean Jones leads a killer, purist quartet with Orrin Evans – piano; Luques Curtis – bass; Obed Calvaire – drums at the Jazz Standard, $30

6/1, 7:30/9:30 PM the king of extended-technique trumpet, Peter Evans solo, then with a trio with Joel Ross – vibraphone; Max Jhin Jaffe – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $15

6/1, 8 PM dark urbane Romany song maven (and Berthold Brecht descendant) Sanda Weigl and her band with irrepressible trombonist Curtis Hasselbring at Barbes

6/1, 8 PM purist, soulful Chicago-style blues guitar shredder Ana Popovic and band at Highline Ballroom, $20

6/1, 8 PM Digital Diaspora play their trippy Afrobeat-influenced downtempo jams followed by bass goddess Felice Rosser’s ageless reggae-rock-groove band Faith at the Delancey, $10

6/1, 8/9:30 PM edgy, noir-inspired bassist Michael Blanco leads his quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/1, 9 PM astonishingly kaleidoscopic art-rock/postrock band Bent Knee – like early Genesis meets Radiohead, on steroids – at Rough Trade, $12

6/1, 10 PM the Dojo Trio with bandoneon powerhouse Martin Sued, cellist Augustin Uriburu and drummer Damian Allegretti play smart, original tango and tropical themes at Caffe Vivaldi

6/1, 10ish trippy downtempo/Balkan-tinged groove instrumentalists Filtron M play the album release show for their new one at Nublu 151 (presumably reopened by that time)

6/1, 10 PM careeningly bluesy post-Stooges psych/garage rockers Acid Dad at Baby’s All Right, $12

6/1, 11 PM keyboardist and occasional Karla Rose collaborator Frank LoCrasto‘s cinematic organ sounds at Pete’s

6/2, 5:30 PM 19th century string band maven (and Four O’Clock Flower) Eli Smith at the American Folk Art Museum

6/2, 7 PM oldschool-style Cuban salsa crooner Jose Conde and band in a rare Williamsburg appearance at St. Mazie’s, free

6/2-3, 7:30/9:30 PM bassist Alexis Cuadrado leads a killer band with Claudia Acuña – voice; Miguel Zenón – alto saxophone; Robert Rodriguez – piano Mark Ferber – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $22

6/2, 7:30 PM former Dizzy Gillespie guitarist Ed Cherry with a killer trio:  Kyle Kohler on organ and Anwar Marshall on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

6/2, 8 PM two of the individualistic voices from John Zorn’s Mycale vocal ensemble: the rapturous Sara Serpa and the playfully soaring Sofia Rei in a rare duo show at the Neighborhood Church, 269 Bleecker St. at Morton St., free. Serpa and her similarly dark, brilliant guitarist husband Andre Matos are at Joe’s Pub on 6/11 at 7:30 PM for $15

6/2, 8 PM new songs by Dick Connette, the incomparably lyrical, eclectic Rachelle Garniez, and Mimi Goese, featuring vocals by Suzzy Roche and Ana Egge, at Roulette, $20

6/2, 8 PM alternately unhinged and trippy postrock instrumentalists Kleptocrat followed e eventually at 10 by psychedelic soul-rockers Madam West and then exhilarating Balkan/Romany/dub groove band Tipsy Oxcart  at C’Mon Everybody, $10 

6/2, 8 PM solo and duo improvisations from saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and koto paradigm-shifter Miya Masaoka at Issue Project Room, $15

6/2-3, 8 PM lyrical, noir-tinged pianist Frank Kimbrough with Jay Anderson & Jeff Hirshfield at Mezzrow, $20 at the bar

6/2, 9:30 PM a trancey triplebill with Tigue Percussion followed b ytrippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa , then a second Tigue set and finally Afrobeat band Underground System at National Sawdust, $20 adv tix rec

6/2, 9:30 PM enigmatic female-fronted psychedelic pop/new wave band the New Tarot at American Beauty, $10

6/2, 10 PM this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes. 6/23 they’re at the Fox & Crow, 594 Palisade Ave, Jersey City

6/2, 10 PM baritone crooner Sean Kershaw‘s Serpentones play “hi octane Brooklyn honkytonk” followed by noir-tinged fellow baritone singer/guitarslinger  Phil Gammage leading his four-piece band at Otto’s. The Serpentones are also at the Delancey on 6/14 at 9:30 PM for $5

6/2, 10:30 PM dazzlingly eclectic purist jazz singer Brianna Thomas and her band at the Django, $10 at the bar. 6/9, 7:30/9:30 PM she’s at Ginny’s Supper Club for twice that

6/2, 11 PM what the rest of the country is listening to – twangy highway rock and honkytonk with the Whiskey Gentry at Hill Country, $15

6/3, 6  PM guitarist Sean Cronin“s edgy, bracing Very Good project followed at 8 by Brooklyn’s funnest new band, psychedelic organ-driven Middle Eastern-tinged surf rock trio Hearing Things and at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

6/3, 7:30 PM French marimba trio SR9 perform works by Bach and paradigm-shifting organist Bálint Karosi, with the composer in the console, at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, $20 sugg don

6/3, 8 PM the reliably entertaining, adventurous Chelsea Symphony play “Ms. Rubinstein’s Beauty,” a world premiere by Seth Bedford; plus Michael Blancaflor performs Frank Picarazzi’s Vibraphone Concertina; Melissa Kritzer performs Fernade Breilh Decruck’s Scherzo for bassoon; and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and Vocalise for orchestra at the DiMenna Center, $25. There’s another performance on 2/4 at 2 PM featuring Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano and Trumpet along with the Rachmaninoff.

6/3, 6 PM sardonic acoustic punks Norwood  & darkly jangly, catchy, new wave-ish rockers Melissa & the Mannequins at LIC Bar

6/3, 8:30 PM it’s official: the Stone has moved to the intimate Glass Box Theatre at Mannes College of Musico. Opening night has John Zorn (sax) Dave Douglas (trumpet) Uri Caine (piano) Ches Smith (drums) Chris Tordini (bass) Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet) and Jim Staley (trombone), $20, get your tix now

6/3, 9 PM a killer, cheap triplebill at Bowery Electric: female-fronted power trio Castle Black – who veer between acidic Bush Tetras postpunk, stoner metal and more straight-up, sardonic punk, followed by careening, charismatic, lyrically-fueled soul-rockers No Ice – arguably Brooklyn’s best band – and Television lead guitar legend Richard Lloyd, $10. No Ice are also  playing the annual Northside Festival on June 9 at Main Drag Music and on the 10th at the Gutter; both of those shows at 11.

6/3, 9 PM the reigning goddess of hypnotically fingerpicked apocalyptic art-rock, Marissa Nadler at St. Vitus, $20

6/3, 9 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

6/3, 9 PM Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 with the catchy, jangly, trad Agent Octopus, then the louder Kimono Dragons at 10, the careening Link Wray-influenced Howlin Thurstons at 11 and classic cover band Tsunami of Sound sometime around midnight

6/3, 9 PM drummer Devin Gray’s unpredictably improvisational Dirigo Rataplan at I-Beam, $15

6/3, 9ish NYC supergroup Patscha Perowsky and Bloedow – mems. Elysian Fields, Ollabelle and a million good jazz acts – at the Owl

6/3, 10 PM New York’s only Farsi funk group,haunting, psychedelic retro 60s/70s Iranian revivalists Mitra Sumara at Pete’s

6/3, 10 PM explosive postrock/spacerock guitarist Hubble followed by haphazard careening occasionally theatrical dreampop/noiserockers Gold Dime playing the album release show for their new one at Alphaville, $10. 6/16 Gold Dime are at C’Mon Everybody at 9 for $10

6/3, 10 PM oldschool psychedelic soul/groove band Empire Beats at the Way Station

6/3, 1 AM (actually wee hours of 6/4) dark atmospheric art-rock with the Melomaniacs at the small room at the Rockwood. Pastoral Joy Division?  

6/4, 11:30 AM/1:30 PM erudite, purist torchy cosmopolitan jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the Delancey 5 play a Ella Fitzgerald centennial celebration tribute with special guest vocalist Charles Turner at the Blue Note for brunch, $35 prix fixe

6/4, the allday Mafrika Festival at Marcus Garvey Park

6/4, 3 PM the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York play mighty arrangements of ancient themes at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

6/4, 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

6/4, 7 PM individualistic, John Fahey-esque acoustic guitar instrumentalist David Rogers plays a mix of “Spanish, flamenco, uptempo Latin, Leonard Cohen, Rolling Stones, Tim Buckley, Roxy Music, Beatles, J.S. Bach and original compositions” at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10 

6/4, 8.9:30 PM dark, sardonic, brilliantly tuneful jazz pianist Danny Fox and his Trio at Mezzrow, $20

6/4, 9:30 PM elegantly tuneful bassist Iris Ornig leads her group at 55 Bar

6/4, 10 PM Acid Witch – who sound like Sabbath at 16 RPM sometimes, other times more of a stoner boogie band with deathmetal vox – at St. Vitus, $12 

6/5, 7 PM the Secret Quartet – Cornelius Dufallo, violin (ETHEL, Ne(x)tworks), Jennifer Choi, violin (ETHEL, Either/Or), Lev Zhurbin, viola (Ljova and the Kontraband), and Yves Dharamraj, cello play John King’s Middle Eastern-themed Free Palestine Quartets at Joe’s Pub, $20

6/5, 8 PM lyrical pianist Nick Sanders and saxophonist Logan Strosahi at Mezzrow, $20

6/5, 8:30 PM fiery, eclectic, purposeful pianist Helen Sung leads her Trio w/Ricky Rodriguez & Henry Cole at Bar Lunatico. 6/10 at 10 she leads a slightly different trio at St. Paul’s  Church, 315 W 22nd St, $30/$20 srs/under 30

6/5, 9:30 PM Carolina Oliveros’ trippy tropicalia band Combo Chimbita, who mash up cumbia, salsa, champeta and a whole bunch of other south of the border styles at Barbes

6/6, drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM indie classical globetrotters International Contemporary Ensemble play animal behavior-inspired works at the Miller Theatre, free

6/6, 6:30 PM up-and-coming guitarist/songwriter Alicyn Yaffee -the rare artist who successfully bridges the gap between lyrically-fueled chamber pop and jazz – leads a guitar trio with Andrew Hartman and Pravin Thomson at the Bar Next Door

6/6,  7 PM the Bushwick Book Club – a collective of incredibly diverse, typically excellent songwriters including irrepressibly fun ringleader Susan Hwang, the haunting Jessie Kilguss, and Ellia Bisker, of parlor pop mavens Sweet Soubrette – followed at 9ish by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party  at Barbes

6/7, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

6/6, 8 PM a rapturously good piano/clarinet duo: Fred Hersch with Anat Cohen at Mezzrow, $20 at the bar

6/6. 8 PM purist, cleverly lyrical jazz singer Sari Kessler with her combo at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/6, 8:15 PM state-of-the-art string jazz: Jim Nolet: viola and perc; Arturo O’Farrill: piano; Zack O’Farrill, Rafael Barata: drums; Neymar Dias: bass at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/6, 10 PM the smuttiest man in country  music, Wheeler Walker Jr. and his surprisingly good band at Bowery Ballroom, $20

6/6, 11 PM hilarious, fearlessly political performance artist/satirist/loopmusic singer Killy Dwyer at Sidewalk

6/7, 6 PM Tendor and Tenzin Choeying play spare, stark, hypnotic Tibetan folk at the Rubin Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

6/7, 7:30 PM purist, lyrica; pianist/singer Kelly Green leads her trio at Mintons

6/7, 8 PM eclectic, brilliant jazz cellist Tomeka Reid’s large ensemble at Roulette, $20

6/7, 8 PM oldschool, no-BS all-female punk band LA Witch at Berlin, $10. They’re also at Bowery Electric on 6/9, guessing at around 11 (there a bunch of idiotic dj’s on the bill as well), $10

6/7, 8 PM oldschool/newschool bluegrass/newgrass/Americana twinbill: fiddler Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards followed by the Steel Wheels playing the album release show for their new one at City Winery, $15 standing room avail.

6/7. 8/9:30 PM drummer Devin Gray leads a tightly improvising, kinetic trio with Ellery Eskelin, tenor sax;  Drew Gress, bass at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/7, 9 PM smart, cleverly lyrical original swing chanteuse/songwriter/trombonist Emily Asher’s Garden Party at Radegast Hall

6/7, 9:30 PM creepy, jangly, swirly retro 60s Laurel Canyon psychedelia with the Mystic Braves at the Mercury, $14 adv tix rec

6/7, 9:30 PM trombonist Jacob Garchik’s mighty atheist gospel shout trombone choir the Heavens play gospel classics at Joe’s Pub, $15

6/7, 10 PM haunting, epic, tunefully individualistic pianist/composer Fabian Almazan performs his latest work, Alcanza (“Reach”), a nine movement suite written for his Rhizome large ensemble (voice, guitar, strings, piano, bass, drums and electronics) at National Sawdust

6/8, noon Ramsey Lewis – the now-octogenarian pianist who basically invented soul jazz all by himself at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/8, noon Gypsy Jazz Caravan put their own eclectic spin on Django guitar romps at St. Marks Park, 10th St/2nd Ave

6/8, 7 PM Renata Zeiguer’s trippy, creepy Prozac rock project Cantina followed by dangerous folk noir chanteuse Larkin Grimm at Sunnyvale, $15 

6/8, 7 PM the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie  – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir – with legendary, corrosively cynical bon vivant spoken-word artist Anthony Haden-Guest at Anderson Contemporary Art, 180 Maiden Lane just north of the FDR, free

6/8, 7 PM  pianist Klara Min performs preludes by Scriabin and Chopin alongside Sean Hickey’s meditative Birds of Barclay Street, dedicated to the memory of those murdered on September 11, 2001, at Symphony Space, $15

6/8, 7 PM soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar

6/8, 7:30 PM pyrotechnic, iconic avant garde pianist Kathleen Supove plays graphic scores by  Earle Brown plus premieres by Armando Bayolo, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Isaac Schankler, Arlene Sierra, and Alex Weiser at the DiMenna Center, $tba

6/8, 8 PM haunting, creepy noir art-rock pianist Lorrie Doriza at the small room at the Rockwood. She was doing her evil cinematic stuff while still in her teens; good to see her out there on the club circuit now.

6/8, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by formidable, reliably tuneful guitarist Tom Csatari‘s large-ensemble Americana jazz project Uncivilized playing Zappa tunes. Their Chico Hamilton tribute was out of character (tunewise anyway) but off the hook nonetheless. Missed them doing John Fahey, which is closer to home for them. How they’ll do this is a mystery.

6/8, 8 PM lush, intense, artfully orchestrated psychedelic rockers Aunt Ange  at the Delancey, $8

6/8, 8 PM the Momenta Quartet play John Adams’ “John’s Book of Alleged Dances” backing a dance performance at Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St, Floor 11 in the west village, sugg don. The program repeats 6/9 with a $25 cover charge

6/8, 8 PM night one of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15: Evan Mazunik and Zaha followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and then at 10 by iconic klezmer trumpeter Frank London & Co.

6/8, 8 PM wickedly rippling and ripping improvisations: pianist Geoffrey Keezer with vibraphonist Joe Locke at Mezzrow, $20s

6/8, 8 PM drummer Jordan Young leads his excellent organ groove band at the Fat Cat

6/8, 8 PM C4 Ensemble joins with Miranda Cuckson, Oren Fader, Christopher Oldfather and Matthew Ward to perform works for chorus and rock ensemble, featuring Anthony Korf’s subtle Cantata, Jonathan David’s Hounds of Spring, “a very unsubtle ode to the season that channels the spirit of old-school progressive rock;” Also on the program: Stephen Paulus’ Poemas de Amor and more. The program repeats  6/10, same time, same deal at the DiMenna Center

6/8, 8 PM Ensemble Connect play works by works by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Shulamit Ran, Anna Clyne and emerging composers tba at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

6/8, 8:30 PM ethereally enchanting art-folk autoharpist/singer Elizabeth Devlin,at at Pete’s

6/8, 8:30 PM haunting tsimbl (Ukraininan Jewish zither) player Zev Feldman and band at the Jalopy, $15

6/8, 8:30 PM ambitious, smart, noir-inclined tenor saxophonist Patrick Cornelius leads a trio at the Bar Next Door

6/8, 9 PM Ed Rosenberg’s Chewyfoot (?!) followed by Franz Nicolay’s surrealistic art-song project Peopssongs at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/8, 9 PM hot 20s swing with trumpeter Jason Prover and his Sneak Thievery Orchestra at Radegast Hall

6/8, 9:30 PM reliably unpredictable, assaultively tuneful guitarist Brandon Seabrook and his large ensemble play the album release show for his new one Die Trommel Fatale at Joe’s Pub, $15

6/8, 10 PM fiery garage rock band the NY Fowl Harmonic – a Gato Loco spinoff – at Hank’s

6/9, 6 PM Lusterlit play their ominous, noirish literary chamber pop followed by up-and-coming paisley underground band Moji Abiola – who add soulful vocals to the psychedelic mix – at the American Folk Art Museum

6/9, 6 PM crystalline-voiced, noir-tinged third-stream jazz chanteuse Tessa Souter and her band at 55 Bar

6/9, 7 PM a benefit at Drom for Brooklyn’s best venue, Barbes featuring an unbeatable lineup including mystical Moroccan trance-dance band Innov Gnawa, allstar brass pickup group Fanfare Barbès, (with members of Red Baraat, Slavic Soul Party and Banda de los Muertos), elegantly  menacing film noir instrumental icons Big Lazy, Colombian folk reinventors Bulla en el Barrio and torrential Bahian drum orchestra Maracatu NY; advance tix a bargain at $20.

6/9, 7 PM Sanjoy Banerjee and his senior protege Namami Karmakar sing Indian carnatic works at the Rubin Museum of Art, $25

6/9, 7:30 PM the fearlessly eclectic Musical Chairs Chamber Ensemble play world premieres by Kevin Wilt, Andrew Rosciszewski, Jonathan Crosmer and Elizabeth Nonemaker, and works by Koji Kondo, Julian Bennett Holmes and Alain Lefébure at the Museum of Tibetan Art, 338 Lighthouse Ave, Staten Island, $15/$5 stud

6/9, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow –followed at 10 by awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra  at Barbes.

6/9, 8 PM fearlessly haunting, dynamic, charismatic Romany/Balkan chanteuse Eva Salina with pyrotechnic accordionist Peter Stan followed at by by Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra celebrating their 10 year anniversary playing rare noir jazz and cinematic themes at the Jalopy, $12 adv tix available at the venue

6/9, 8ish the New Students play their fun, lyrically amusing, newschool trad brlugrass at Hometown BBQ in Red Hook. 6/25 at 7 they’re playing the album release show for their excellent new one at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

6/9, 8 PM no wave and punk-funk nostalgia: sampler pioneer/percussionist Ikue Mori, agelessly noisy funk-punks the Bush Tetras and Suicide’s Martin Rev with Craig Leon at the Hall at MP, $20.

6/9-10, 8 PM iconic avant garde composer Meredith Monk sings works in progress with her vocal ensemble including Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin, Jo Stewart at Queenslab, 1618 Decatur St, Ridgewood, L to Halsey St

6/9, 8 PM repeating on 6/11 at 4 PM the Brooklyn Conservatory Chorale sing works by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Fauré, and others at Church of the Assumption, 55 Cranberry St, Brooklyn Heights, $20/$10 stud/srs

6/9, 8 PM night two of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15:: Mob Job and Walter Thompson followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and at 10 by Matt Lavelle’s 12 Houses (Extended Unit) with Gil Selinger

6/9, 8:30 PM epically tuneful, anthemic, sometimes pastorally-inclined jazz guitarist Chris Jentsch leads his quartet playing the album release show for his new one Fractured Pop at I-Beam, $15

6/9, 8:30 PM edgy, acerbic violin and piano jazz duo Mark Feldman and Sylvie Courvoisier at the Glass Box Theatre at Mannes College of Music, $20

6/9, 9 PM searing, theatrical Romany/Balkan punk rockers Bad Buka acoustic at Radegast Hall.

6/9, 9/10:30 PM tuneful, purposeful bassist Michael Bates leads a trio with Michael Blake, tenor sax;  Jeremy ‘Bean’ Clemons, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/9, 10 PM deviously funny twin-trombone dub reggae crew Super Hi-Fi at Bar Chord

6/9. 10ish catchy, enigmatic female-fronted dreampop band Loosie at the Owl

6/9, 10 PM hilarious, sardonically careening glam/party band Haley Bowery & the Manimals at Hanks, be aware of $8 cover

6/9, 11 PM hilarious one-man band Tattoo Money with his twisted hip-hop tales of NYC nightlife, sizzling bluesy guitar and psychedelic, funky keys, at the Way Station

6/10, 3 PM violinist Marshall Coid, clarinetist Justin Vance and pianist Mimi Stern-Wolfe play trios by Milhaud and Kachaturian plus Stravinsky’s L’Histoire Du Soldat at St Marks Church, 10th St/2nd Ave, $15 sugg don

6/10, 4 PM trumpeter Ben Holmes and accordionist Patrick Farrell – two thirds of the fiery Yiddish Art Trio – followed at 6 by edgy jazz guitarist Sean Cronin“s bracing Very Good project at Barbes

6/10, 4 PM the Space Merchants – the missing link between the Stooges and X – at St. Vitus, $5

6/10, 5 PM a free dance party with the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra at the community center in the middle of Marcus Garvey Park, free

6/10. 7:30 PM incomparable country/jazz/janglerock icon Amy Allison at Dixon Place, free. Brilliant new material, all kinds of rarities and devastatingly funny between-song banter

6/10, 7:30/9:30 PM terse rising star postbop saxophonist Melissa Aldana leads a great quintet with Glenn Zaleski on piano at the Jazz Gallery, $22

6/10, 7:30 PM the NY Festival Orchestra play works by Mozart, Bach, Sibelius, Grieg, and premieres by Hampson Sisler and Takeichiro Hirai with gradeschool prodigy violinist sisters Fiona and Hina Khuong-Huu  at  Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church,152 W 66 St,$10

6/10, 8 PM creepy Laurel Canyon art-rock/psych-folk/dark Americana band Quicksilver Daydream followed at 9 by wryly surreal prozac rock  duo the Dream Eaters at Pete’s . The Dream Eaters are also here on 6/16 at 9.

6/10, 8ish torchy singer Jennifer Charles’ and guitar mastermind Oren Bloedow’s long-running art-rock/noir band Elysian Fields at their home base, the Owl, $18

6/10, 8 PM Romany guitar legend Stephane Wrembel airs out material from his wildly eclectic, psychedelic new double album The Django Experiment at Drom, $15 adv tix rec. At 11 (separate $15 adv tix adm) Brooklyn Balkan brass faves Slavic Soul Party featuring sensational Serbian trumpeter Demirhan Cerimovic, first-prize winner at the prestigious Guca Trumpet Festival

6/10, 8 PM energetic acoustic Veracruz-style folk-punk band Radio Jarocho at Guadalupe Inn

6/10, 8 PM night three of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15: cornetist Kirk Knuffke‘s “For Butch”followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and at 10 by iconic drummer Kenny Wollesen & the Stone Clouds

6/10, 9 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” at Troost 

6/10, 9 PM intense charismatic danceable metal cumbia/skaragga/latin rockers Escarioka at Mehanata

6/10, 9 PM one of the great saxophonists in the history of ska, Dave Hillyard & the Rocksteady 7 at Hank’s

6/10, 10 PM boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic crooner Jack Grace  at Bar Chord

6/10, 10 PM Random Test bring their roots reggae back to their home base, Shrine

6/10, 11 PM Lusterlit play their ominous, noirish literary chamber pop at Sidewalk

6/10 awesome, epic doom metal/thrash/art-rock band Dead Wake at Blackthorn 51, 80-12 51st Ave in Elmhurst, E/M/R to Woodhaven Blvd and a long walk down Queens Boulevard

6/11, 1  PM trumpeter Emile Turner leads his quartet at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, free

6/11, 4:15 PM guitarist/singer Kiki Sabater’s careeningly psychedelic, Hole-like power trio Slow Suck followed by Of Clocks & Clouds playing their twisted postrock and goth-tinged post-new wave anthems at Paperbox, free. Outdoors ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black play at 4:45

6/11, 4 PM ish fiery electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at the Hoboken Arts & Music Festival, Washington St. bet. 8th & 14th St.

5/11, 5 PM magically luminescent pastoral jazz group Bryan and the Aardvarks at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, free

6/11, 5 PM tuneful, thoughtful, lyrical Colombian pianist and composer Carolina Calvache at the small room at the Rockwood

6/11, 7 PM  harrowing psychedelic art-rock band the Bright Smoke – the female-fronted Joy Division – at the Mercury, $8

6/11, 7 PM funk legend and golden age hip-hop: Main Source and George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, hosted by the realest of all Roxannes, Roxanne Shante at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Grand Central Pkwy., Whitestone Exwy. bet. 111 St. & College Point Blvd., Park Drive E. in Queens

6/11, 8 PM jangly 80s garage/Americana nostalgia: Tom Heyman (ex-Go to Blazes) and Dan Stuart (Danny & Dusty/Green on Red) at Hifi Bar

6/11, 8:30 PM Alhambra – which is basically haunting, rivetingly intricate Turkish band Dolunay plus Isabelle Ganz on vocals –  at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min 

6/11, 9 PM ambitiously lyrical, cutting-edge rising star jazz composer/singer Annie Chen and her septet at Club Bonafide, $15

6/12, 8 PM trombone improvisation legend Steve Swell and Chamber Orchestra jam out music by David Haney at Shapeshfter Lab, $8

6/12, 9:30 PM Los Cumpleanos play psychedelic cumbias with new wave synths & retro organ, effect-laden trombone and trumpet as well as a three piece percussion section – at Barbes

6/13, drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM the Mivos Quartet play a program TBA at the Miller Theatre, free

6/13, 7 PM the Om Shalom Trio – sitar, bass and tabla – play the album release show for their new one mashing up classic Indian and Jewish themes at Shapeshifter Lab, $15 includes copy of the cd!

6/13, 7 PM Detroit noir soul goddess Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas at Baby’s All Right, $15

6/13, 7 PM reliably unpredictable, assaultively tuneful guitarist Brandon Seabrook leads his trio followed at 9 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party  at Barbes

6/13, 7:30 PM cantors Ida Rae Cahana, Elizabeth Shammash, Raphael Frieder, and Alberto Mizrahi backed by pianist Yehudi Wyner sing popular and obscure Yiddish works from both western and eastern Europe by Mordecai Gebirtig – inventor of the crime rhyme – plus elegant art songs by Lazar Weiner, theatre music by Moses Milner, the brooding Solomon Rosowsky,the fiery Janot Roskin, plus songs by Solomon Golub, Mikhl Gelbart, Joel Engel, and Maurice Rauch at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St., $15

6/13, 7:30 PM the Havana Lyceum Orchestra with pianist Simone Dinnerstein play works by Mozart and Carlos Fariñas at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

6/13, 8 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Radegast Hall

6/13, 8 PM the NY Phil play Dvorak’s New World Symphony, selections from Bernstein’s West Side Story and Gershwin’s An American in Paris at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, free, enter the park from Broadway, near W 251st St, concert site is north of the baseball fields. The program repeats on 6/15 at 8 in Cunningham Park in Queens

6/13, 8:30 PM popular newschool blue-eyed soul/Motown/swing band Lake Street Dive at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/13, 9 PM funky, lyrically intense dark folk jamband the Sometime Boys– with the riveting Sarah Mucho on vocals – at the small room at the Rockwood

6/13, 9:30 PM the Bronx Conexion play their mighty salsa big band jazz at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

6/14, 7 PM in reverse order: klezmer icons the Klezmatics, Hasidic ngunim soul band Zusha, wry a-cappella ensemble the Maccabeats with special guest cantors Chaim David Berson and Yanky Lemmer at Central Park Summerstage

6/14, 7 PM Quintet of the Americas play the Manhattan premieres of Hurricane Sandy-themed works by Bruce Odland and Kevin James at the National Opera Center, 333 7th Ave., free. 6/18 at 2 PM they play a pan-American program TBA at the Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St, 7 to Flushing/Main St., $6

6/14, 8 PM fearlessly political janglerock songwriter Fred Gillen Jr followed by the similarly fearless, even more lyrically brilliant Linda Draper at Sidewalk

6/14, 8/9:30 PM tuneful, expansive pianist Eri Yamamoto leads her trio at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/14, 8 PM the NY Phil play Dvorak’s Carnival Overture and New World Symphony plus works by Ravel, Masssenet, and Saint-Saens at the great lawn in Central Park, free, enter at 72nd St. and Central Park West. The program repeats on 6/16 at 8 at Prospect Park

6/14, 8:30 PM the wildfire NY Gypsy All-Stars  joined by brilliant guest oudist Ara Dinkjian at Drom, $10 advance tix rec

6/14, 9 PM darkly cinematic composer Nathan Xander, the opaquely jangly, dreampop-influenced Dead Painters and creepy Laurel Canyon art-rock/psych-folk/dark Americana band Quicksilver Daydream playing the al bum release show for their new one at the Mercury, $!0

6/14, 9 PM oldschool soul crooner JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound at the Bell House, $15

6/15, noon latin jazz piano titan Arturo O’Farrill leads a sextet at St. Marks Park, 10th St/2nd Ave

6/15, 7:30 PM a rare performance of kinetic, rustic Colombian gaita negra with flute-and-percussion group Paíto y los Gaiteros de Punta Brava at the Lincoln Center Atrium

6/15, 8:30 PM the irrepressible Jon Irabagon on sax with Gary Versace on organ and Tom Rainey on drums at the Bar Next Door

6/15, 8:30 PM edgy, funny Russian-French klezmer band Dobranotch at the Jalopy, $15

6/15, 9;00 PM edgy, improvisationally-inclined microtonal string ensemble the Sirius Quartet at Club Bonafide, $15

6/15, 9 PM wild, noisy, genuinely Hendrixian virtuoso lead guitarist Viva DeConcini and her band at the Way Station. She’s also here on 6/22, same time

6/15, 9 PM quirky, smartly lyrical avant chamber pop with the Icebergs – Jane LeCroy – vox; Tom Abbs – cello; David Rogers-Berry – drums – at Pete’s

6/16, 6 PM haunting trumpeter/santoorist Amir ElSaffar‘s Rivers of Sound orchestra plays the album release show for their new stormy, darkly relevant new one, Not Two, on the Plaza at 28 Liberty St. (William/Broad) in the financial district, free

6/16, 6 PM sardonic acoustic punks Norwood at the American Folk Art Museum

6/16, 7:30 PM Changing Modes – NYC’s funnest, most unpredictable, sharply lyrical new wave art-rock band – at Highline Ballroom, $15 adv tix rec

6/16, 8 PM lyrically-fueled electric folk noir band Leland Sundries at the Mercury, $!0

6/16, 8 PM keyboardist Dave Kadden’s Drunken Foreigner Band – sort of a Brooklyn counterpart to Dengue Fever, or a Thai Chicha Libre – followed at by the self-explanatory Zozo Afrobeat at Barbes

6/16, 8 PM catchy oldtimey all-female string band the Calamity Janes  at Silvana. 6/17 at 8 they’re at Shrine followed at 10 by Oxygen Box playing Haitian-inspired roots reggae

6/16, 8 PM adventurous South Seas pointillisms with the hypnotic Gamelan Son of Lion at the Park Church Coop in Greenpoint

6/16, 8 PM night one of the Jalopy’s annual International Music Festival with Zong Li Lu playing ethereal, hypnotic Chinese monochord fook, at 9 haunting flamenco chanteuse Julia Patinella, at 10 high-voltage son jarocho folk-punks Radio Jarocho  and at 10 Sharq Attack with Marandi Hostetter, 5 string violin; Brian Prunka, oud; John Murchison, double bass and Philip Mayer, percussion jamming out classic Middle Eastern themes, $20

6/16, 8ish trippy, hypnotically enveloping EWI and ambient electronics from baritone sax mastermind Moist Paula Henderson  at the Owl

6/16, 9 PM epic, original, intense original Balkan monsters Raya Brass Band; and their even more epic Rhode Island counterparts, street band What Cheer Brigade at Littlefield, $10

6/16. 9 PM wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers at Singlecut Beersmiths in Queens

6/16-17, 10 PM the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache play the album release shows for their new one at Joe’s Pub, $25

6/17, 6 PM East Winds Ensemble play works by two masters of Japanese music, Masayo Ishigure and Marco Lienhard at Isham Park in Inwood, 1 train to 215th St

6/17, 7 PM night two of the Jalopy’s annual International Music Festival with Sangita Mukhiya Chhochoon with Nhuchhe Fangol on tabla & Bimal Dangi on harmonium playing Nepali songs, followed at 8 by Zikrayat playing cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song, at 9 by Bomba y Plena with Jorge Vazquez -doing bouncy Puerto Rican grooves, at 10 African dance band Akoko Nante and at 11 wild, spiraling, rare rustic minor-key Polesian klezmer dances and grooves with Litvakus, $20

6/17, 7:30 PM violinist Monica Chen leads a string sextet with piano playing works by Schumann, Dvorak and Ke-Chia Chen at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave

6/17, 8 PM delta blues/oldtime hillbilly music maven Mamie Minch at Barbes

6/17, 8ish Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play haunting underground Greek  revolutionary anthems and hash-smoking songs from the 20s and 30s at the Owl

6/17, 8 PM vocalist Suzanne Lorge with noir jazz piano mastermind Frank Kimbrough  at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave at W183rd St, $12, reception to follow

6/17, 10 PM Miss Velvet & the Blue Wolf play quirky, torchy blue-eyed soul with incisively edgy, purist blues guitar at the big room at the Rockwood 

6/17, 10 PM edgy lefty guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at the Way Station

6/17, 2 AM (wee hours of 2/18) haunting psychedelic/doom metal band Matte Black at Arlene’s, $10

6/18, 3 PM Blythe Gruda sings her enigmatic art-rock and parlor pop at Pete’s

6/18, 4 PM Angel Lam’s moody, mysterious musical theatre piece Lost in Shanghai, with a score spanning from classical to Chinese to art-rock at Flushing Town Hall, $10

6/18, 7 PM bassist Petros Klampanis leads his hauntingly lush, string-driven septet playing the album release show for his new Middle Eastern-themed one Chroma at National Sawdust, $30

6/18, 10 PM smart, darkly pensive third-stream jazz pianist Noa Fort leads her quartet at the small room at the Rockwood

6/18. 10 PM eclectic Florida roots reggae band the Ellameno Beat at Shrine

6/19, 6 PM the improvisationally-inclined Osso String Quartet followed at 9 by legendary dual-reedman George Braith – who can play two saxes at once better than most guys can play one – leading his quartet at the Fat Cat

6/19, 8:30 PM the Attacca Quartet play a program of string quartets TBA at the third stage at the Rockwood, $15

6/19. 1 AM (wee hours of 6/20) captivating, chiming, pensively lyrical indie art-rock band Flock of Dimes at Baby’s All Right, $15 

6/20. 7 PM smart, catchy, purist, sometimes devastatingly funny acoustic pop songwriter Elisa Peimer plays her bday show at Arlene’s $8

6/20, 7 PM haunting Middle Eastern chanteuse Nani with special guests: Michael Winograd (clarinet) & Dan Nadel (guitar) at Shaoeshifter Lab, $12 

6/20, 7 PM lyrical pianist Guy Mintus plays the album release for his new trio cd at the big room at the Rockwood, $12

6/20, 7:30 PM tuneful blue-eyed soul bandleader Don Piper followed by this era’s most interesting voice in retro Britrock and glam-inspired art-rock,Edward Rogers and his killer band playing the album release show for his new one at the Cutting Room, $15 adv tix rec

6/20, 7:30/9:30 PM darkly melodic pianist Shai Maestro leads a trio with special guest Gretchen Parlato at the Jazz Standard, $25

6/20, 8 PM an iconic dark rock twinbill: the greatest art-rock pianist maybe ever, Botanica’s Paul Wallfisch and Bauhaus bassist (and theatrical songwriter) David J at Bowery Electric for $12? uh huh!

6/20, 8 PM guitarist Brendon Randall-Myers joins with the Dither guitar quartet and singer Eliza Bagg for new overtone-infused works at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

6/20, 8 PM Red Gretchen play their slowly undulating, doomy psychedelic/art-rock grooves at Shrine

6/20, 9 PM pianist Dongfeng Liu leads a fascinating Asian folk-influenced quintet with pipa and erhu at Shapeshifter Lab, $12

6/20, 10 PM brilliant drummer/percussionist Willie Martinez & La Familia Sextet play classic salsa grooves at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

6/21, 3 PM kinetic latin/Middle Eastern acoustic jamband Inti and the Moon followed by haunting, soaring, lyrically brilliant Great Plains gothic songstress Rose Thomas Bannister with guitar god Bob Bannister at Corkscrew Wines, 489 Myrtle Ave., Ft. Greene, C or G to Clinton-Washington

6/21, 3:15 PM hilarious, fearlessly political performance artist/satirist/loopmusic singer Killy Dwyer followed at 6 by funky, lyrically intense dark folk jamband the Sometime Boys– with the riveting Sarah Mucho on vocals – and eventually at 8 by smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes outdoors at Freddy’s

6/21, 6 PM cutting-edge improvisations with Japanese koto and shamisen player Sumie Kaneko  + flutist Haruna Fukazawa at the Rubin Museu of Art, free w/museum adm

6/21, 6 PM psychedelic funk and Afrobeat with the People’s Champs at the corner of Pearl and Willoughby St, downtown Brooklyn, free.  6/23 at 10 PM they’re at C’Mon Everybody for $10

6/21, 6 PM eclectic early music choir Cantus at Bryant Park

6/21, 7 PM charming psychedelic 90s hip-hop nostalgia: Digable Planets at Coffey Park, Verona St. bet. Richard St. and Dwight St. in Red Hook

6/21, 8 PM pensive parlor pop/art-rock pianist/singer Rachei Reis’ art-song project Her Crooked Heart at Barbes

6/21, 8 PM one of the year’s hottest jazz lineups: the Rolling Stones’ Tim Ries on sax, leading a quintet with Randy Brecker, the great Chano Dominguez on piano, with James Genus on bass and Clarence Penn on drums, for real, at Drom, $15 adv tix rec.

6/22, noon Gulf Coast soul band the Suffers play their horn-infused sounds at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/22, 7 PM trumpeter Jonathan Saraga and his Sextet followed by the cinematic Danny Rivera Big Band at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/22, 7:30/9:30 PM saxophonist Ole Mathisen plays the album release show for his reputedly amazing new one Floating Points with Amir ElSaffar – trumpet; Bobby Avey – piano; Gregg August – bass, wow, at the Jazz Gallery, $22

6/22, 7:30 PM South African classical guitarist Derek Gripper reinvents Malian kora music at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

6/22-24, 8 PM cleverly lyrical, darkly lyrical pianist Misha Piatigorsky records a live album with Danton Boller on bass and Rudy Royston on drums at Zinc Bar

6/22, 8 PM stark, banjo-fueled North Carolina noir Americana string band the Resonant Rogues at Shrine. Then they jump in a cab and rush down to Silvana to play at 10.

6/22, 8 PM soprano Eliza Bagg, backed by a sextet, sings Gemma Peacocke’s new song cycle based on Eliza Griswold‘s book, I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, giving voice to the struggles of Afghani women, at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

6/22, 8 PM sassy New Nashville songbird Lindi Ortega at the Knitting Factory, $15

6/22, 8:30 PM intense, rapturous Balkan/Middle Eastern ensemble the Secret Trio –Tamer Pinarbasi, Ismail Lumanovski & Ara Dinkjian – at Bar Lunatico

6/22, 9:30 PM Middle Eastern-flavored psychedelic jams with Spaghetti Eastern Music  at Sidewalk. They’re at Silvana at 8 on 6/28

6/22, 10 PM jangly, sharply lyrical folk-rock/chamberpop band the Morning Sea – like a more stripped-down, less druggy Elliott Smith – at the small room at the Rockwood

6/22, 10 PM uneasy postpunk/new wave/dreampop band Rich Girls at Bowery Electric, $10

6/23, 5 PM guitarist Amanda Monaco and band on the lower level at 570 Lexington Ave at 51st St, free

6/23, 5:30 PM charming oldtime C&W/front-porch folk harmony band Holler at the American Folk Art Museum

6/23, 7:30 PM 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 a John Coltrane tribute followed by tenor sax legend Pharaoh Sanders and his group at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/23, 7:30 PM a rare NYC appearance by Polish pianist Marcin Masecki with drummer Jerzy Rogiewicz doing their high-voltage ragtime project at Joe’s Pub, $20

6/23, 8 PN colorful classical organist Christopher Houlihan plays works by Bach, Durufle, Debussy and Hannah Lash at the  Church of the Holy Apostles, 296 9th Ave at 28th St, free

6/23, 8 PM rustic Brazilian jungle guitar sounds with Regional de NY followed at 10 by similar oldschool danceable Colombian tunes with Chia’s Dance Party  at Barbes

6/23, 8:30 PM haunting, gorgeously lyrical pianist Satoko Fujii’s Japanese folk-inspired quartet Kaze at I-Beam, $15

6/23,  8:30 PM rapturous improvisation: trumpet icon Wadada Leo Smith  – who may be the best blues player alive, among many other things – at the Glass Box Theatre at Mannes College of Music, $20

6/23, 9 PM stoner boogie with Catalina Shortwave followed eventually at 11 by the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie  – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir – at Sidewalk

6/23, 10 PM majestic, cinematic surf instrumentalists the TarantinosNYC  at the Parkside

6/23, 9:30 PM an eclectic night of trance-oriented global sounds with multi-instrumentalist Ravish Momin, tabla-and-kora ensemble Orakel, plaintive vocalist Muyassar Kurdi and avant garde duo Christine Southwoth and Evan Ziporyn at the Rubin Museum of Art, $20 adv tix rec

6/23, 10 PM fiery, fearlessly political female-fronted rockers the Last Internationale at Maxwell’s, $15. 6/24, 11 PM they’re at Rough Trade, $12 adv tix rec

6/23, 10:30 PM eclectic drummer/tabla player/composer David Weiss & Point of Departure  doing their relevant late 60s inspired stuff at the Fat Cat

6/24, 3 PM noisy, hazily jangly, psychedelic slowcore/free jazz/avant instrumentalists Sunwatchers at Union Pool outdoors on the patio, free

6/24, 5 PM newschool fado star Sofia Ribeiro, assaultive goth/Stooges punk duo Dead Combo with special guest Marc Ribot and Portuguese band the Gift at Central Park Summerstage 

6/24, 7:30/9:30 PM awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra  at Ginny’s Supper Club, $15

6/24, 8 PM sultry retro Franco-American torch jazz/chamber pop/ukulele swing band les Chauds Lapins at Barbes

6/24, 8 PM a night of solo sets: fiery guitarist Ava Mendoza, bassist Devin Hoff, Ethiopian violin maven Kaethe Hostetter and guitar noisemeister Colin Langenus at  Secret Project Robot, 1186 Broadway at Lafayette, Bushwick, J/M to Kosciusko St.  

6/24,  8 PM a rare US appearance by darkly eclectic Polish improvisers the Wójciński/Szmańda Quartet with similarly brilliant cellist Erik Friedlander at the Jazz Gallery, $22

6/24, 9 PM hip-hop brass: New Orleans  ensemble the Soul Rebels with special guests Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch and Kirk Knight at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/25, 2 PM the NY Scandia String Orchestra play a program of rare Nordic music TBA on the Billings Lawn at Fr. Tryon Park, A to 180th St., go into the park and take the path downhill, follow the sound

6/25, 4 PM the guy who built the Temple of Hip-Hop, KRS-1 at at Coffey Park Verona St. bet. Richard St. and Dwight St. in Red Hook

6/25, 4 PM  mesmerizingly improvisational string ensemble the Lutosławski Quartet with violinist Mark Feldman and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier at National Sawdust, $30 adv tix req

6/25, 6 PM in reverse order: a site-specific performance by the epically stygian Eli Keszler, cumulo-nimbus vocal experimentalist Stine Motland, enigmatically ambient reedwoman Lea Bertucci, the reliably fun Tilt Brass and avant garde marching band Ashcan Orchestra at the Knockdown Center, $15

6/25, 6 PM sharply lyrical southwestern gothic/Americana songwriter Tom Shaner at LIC Bar

6/25, 7 PM Ashley Bathgate – NYC’s go-to new-music cellist – plays works by Steve Reich and Fjóla Evans and world premieres by Emily Cooley and Alex Weiser at National Sawdust, $30 adv tix req

6/25, 8:30 PM an excellent Americana twinbill album release show: purist retro rock and C&W bandleader Monica Passin and her rockabilly outfit, Li’l Mo and the Monicats, followed by haunting DC songwriter Mary Battista & Little Pink at the Treehouse at 2A 

6/25, 9 PM a killer twinbill at Pine Box Rock Shop with wryly retro, period-perfect classic 60s style female-fronted honkytonk band the Bourbon Express and wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers

6/25, 9:30 PM Navin Chettri‘s band makes jazz out of rarely heard Nepali themes at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

6/26, 5 PM riveting, theatrical, amazingly eclectic Korean psychedelic folk band Coreyah, theatrical, high-voltage Korean disco band Ssing Ssing and Korean rappers Year of the Ox at Central Park Summerstage

6/26, 7 PM sweeping, kinetic, Mediterranean and Andalucian string sounds with the Maureen Choi Quartet at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

6/26, 8 PM the year’s most unexpected twinbill:  sardonic, irrepressible satirical songwriter Jonathan Coulton and the unstoppably dark, lyrical legend Aimee Mann at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $35

6/26, 8:30 PM thoughtful, often riveting violinist Sarah Bernstein leads her microtonal improvising quartet – Ron Stabinsky – piano; Stuart Popejoy – electric bass; Satoshi Takeishi – drums – at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/26, 8:30 PM eclectic Celtic/baroque pop harpist/singer Kristin Rebecca at the big room at the Rockwood, $10 

6/26, 8:30 PM cleverly lyrical, coolly intriguing jazz chanteuse Dorian Devins leads her trio  with Lou Rainone on keys and Paul Gil on bass at the Bar Next Door

6/27, noon Cuban son legends Septeto Santiaguero at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/27, 7 PM soaring singer Jo Williamson – who’s been mining a purist Americana folk sound these days – outdoors at LIC Bar

6/27, 7:30 PM irrepressible, historically informed, folk noir/art-rock songwriter Elisa Flynn at Cowgirl, 519 Hudson St (10th/Charles Sts.)

 6/27, 7:30 PM violinist Lara St. John leads a chamber ensemble performing works by Britten, Vaughan Williams and Jessie Montgomery at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

6/27, 8 PM lustrously dark jazz pianist Guy Mintus collaborates with flamenco guitarist Andreas Arnold at Caffe Vivaldi

6/27, 9 PM haunting folk noir duo Pear Claw – guitarist and Nick Cave soundalike Mike Shoykhet and stark, intense violist Karen Claman – at Sidewalk 

6/27, 9 PM excellent, purist honkytonk crooner/bandleader Cliff Westfall  at 11th St. Bar

6/27, 9:30  PM Indian-inspired, ex-Sharon Jones organist Colin Brown leads his trio at Freddy’s

6/27, 10 PM Palehound – who blend eerie, lyrical new wave with hypnotic motorik vintage Wire-style postpunk – at Baby’s All Right, $15

6/28, 5 PM Yotoco play psychedelic cumbia and boleros at the corner of Pearl and Willoughby St, downtown Brooklyn, free

6/28, 7 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue followed by Rare Essence at Betsy Head Park, Dumont Ave. & Strauss St., in Brownsville, 3 to Saratoga Ave. 

6/28, 7:30 PM intense, piano-based, Aimee Mann-style literate chamber pop group Elizabeth & the Catapult with the Britpop Choir & Brooklynite Choir at the Poisson Rouge, $10 gen adm

6/28, 7:30 PM timbalero Don Perignon and his Puerto Rico–based orquesta at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

6/28, 8 PM pyrotechnic Balkan multi-reedman Greg Squared‘s Circle at Barbes

6/28, 8 PM Lazurite (Megan Moncrief) plays her ukelin – a 32-stringed American folk instrument sold door-to-door as a sort of Depression-era competitor to the autoharp – over ambient drones, followed by meticulously kinetic, lustrously melodic singer/sound sculptor Lesley Flanigan performing new works in her new duo project with ceilist Mariel Roberts at Issue Project Room, $15 

6/28, 8:30 PM Antibalas spinoff Armo play newschool Afrobeat at Bar Lunatico

6/28, 9 PM Crescent City-flavored “steamboat soul” band Roosevelt Dime at Maxwell’s, $10

6/28, 9:30 PM Texas swing icons the Hot Club of Cowtown at at Joe’s Pub, $25

6/28, 9:30  PM a Planned Parenthood benefit with short sets by Americana guitar legend Eric Ambel, the Stonesy, fearlessly populist Dirty  Rollers, soul-rock cult heroine Dina Regine, powerhouse soul Lizzie Edwards of Lizzie & the Makers, oldschool Max’s style glampunks the New York Junk and others tba at the Delancey, $10

6/29, noon fiery fiddler/composer Alicia Svigals and her hotshot klezmer band at St. Marks Park, 10th St/2nd Ave

6/29, 7 PM brooding baritone sax/piano improvisations with the Charles Evans/Ron Stabinsky duo followed by the world’s funniest improvising ensemble, Mostly Other People Do the Killing, at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

6/29, 7:30 PM noir mambo powerhouse Orkesta Mendoza followed by Mexican-American folk song reinventor Lila Downs at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/29, 7:30 PM sardonic, Gil Scott-Heron-influenced soul-rock songwriter Chocolate Genius at the Lincoln Center Atrium

6/29, 8 PM 20s hot jazz revivalist/impresario/trombonist Michael Arenella leads his quartet at the Red Room, 85 E 4th St., free. 2 pairs of free tix to the 8/27 Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island to the first 50 people in the house!

6/29, 8 PM eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo leads his Tango Quartet followed at 10 by energetic acoustic Veracruz-style folk-punk band Radio Jarocho at Barbes

6/30, 7 PM St Lenox play their insightfully lyrical, fearlessly populist soul and parlor pop at the park at 125th St. and the Hudson

6/29, 8ish lush, brilliantly lyrical art-rock band the Universal Thump – the missing link between Kate Bush, Supertramp and Split Enz -at the Owl

6/30, 6 PM exhilarating Balkan/Romany/dub groove band Tipsy Oxcart at the Riis Park Beach Bazaar in the Rockaways, get to the beach and follow the sound. Take the ferry straight to the beach for $2.75 

6/30, 7:30 PM Rez Abbasi leads a guitar army playing Monk: Nels Cline, Julian Lage, Miles Okazaki, Liberty Ellman, Steve Cardenas, Anders Nilsson and Mike Baggetta, plus many ore at Greenwich House Music School, expensive, $30 but worth it.

6/30, 7:30 PM retro 1930s swing with Margi & the Dapper Dots at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

6/30, 8 PM guitar-and-bass magic: Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan play the album release show for their rapturously gorgeous, intimate new one at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

6/30, 8 PM cult favorite outlaw Americana songwriter Jim Lauderdale followed by wild, intense, frequently satirical newgrass/oldtimey hellraisers the Dustbowl Revival at City Winery, $15 standing room avail.

6/30, 8 PM darkly playful, epic piano-based art-rock singer Eve Lesov  at Sidewalk

6/30, 8 PM awful segue, two good bands: klezmer/circus rock crew Bella’s Bartok followed by female-fronted retro rocksteady band Big Takeover at American Beauty, $10

6/30, 8 PM soaring chamber-pop/art-rock singer/pianist Kristin Hoffmann at Caffe Vivaldi

6/30, 8ish in reverse order at the Knockdown Center; creepy post-industrial wastescapes with Fierro Ex Machina, uneasy soundscaper Amy Mills, hauntingly ethereal, lyrically edgy cellist Meaner Pencil, loopmusic violinist Matthais Etterm $10/$5 stud

6/30, 8:30 PM state-of-the-art trumpeter Dave Douglas and band play the album release show for his new one inspired by Carla Bley at the Glass Box Theatre at Mannes College of Music, $20

6/30, 8:30 PM accordionist Sam Reider’s amazing, cinematic pastoral jazz crew Future Folk at Bar Lunatico

6/30, 9 PM speedmetal band Sweet Magma and political punks Kilifax at Desmond’s   

6/30-7/1, 9/10:30 PM state-of-the-art melodic postbop trumpet: Russ Johnson leads a quartet with  Aruan Ortiz, piano;  Michael Formanek, bass;  Gerald Cleaver, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/30, 10 PM intense frontwoman Hannah Fairchild’s searingly lyrical punk/art-rock/noir cabaret band Hannah vs. the Many – this blog’s current favorite group -at the Way Station

6/30, 10 PM fiery, psychedelically bluesy oldschool soul/southern rockers Lizzie & the Makers at the small room at the Rockwood

6/30, 10 PM pan-tropical band Yotoco – whose rotating cast spins through cumbia and other south-of-the-border styles – at Barbes

6/30, 10 PM slinky original rocksteady with Osekre & the Lucky Bastards at Shrine

6/30, 11 PM edgy, guitar-fueled peak era King Crimson-ish art-rockers Woodhead at Hank’s

7/1, 3ish boogaloo legend Joe Bataan outdoors at Union Pool, free. 7/7 at 7:30 he and the band are at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/1, 5 PM in reverse order: NYC’s arguably finest oldtime swing band Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the charming, female-fronted cosmopolitan swing crew Avalon Jazz Band and 20s jazz chanteuse Aurora Nealand at Central Park Summerstage

7/1, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – followed at 8 by eclectic, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts  and then at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes. The Jug Addicts are at Bar Chord at 10 on 7/7

7/1, 7:30 PM the Binky Griptite Orchestra – the late, great Sharon Jones’ backing band – at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/1, 7/9:30 PM perennially lyrical, prolific tenor postbop tenor saxophonist/composer Tom Tallitsch and his group at Minton’s, $15

7/1, 8 PM Iranian art-rock/avant garde violinist Parnaz Partovi and Electric Monks at Drom, $20 adv tix rec

7/1, 8 PM high voltage skiffle/Americana band the Salt Cracker Crazies followed at 9 PM by Divining Rod – who work the furthest open-tuned corners of 70s Britfolk – and then at 11 PM by oldschool psychedelic soul/groove band Empire Beats at the Way Station. Empire Beats are also here on 7/7 at 10

7/1, 8 PM classic 30s swing with the Rob Stoneback Big Band with vocalists Kathy Jenkins & Rob Kevlin at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/1, 8 PM oldtime blues guitar/banjo/piano genius Jerron Blind Boy Paxton at Iridium, $25. He’s finally playing for the tourists now.

7/1, 8:30 PM the world’s creepiest crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Bar Lunatico

7/1, 8:30 PM perennially fresh jazz trumpet star Dave Douglas and his quartet play the album release show for his new one Riverside: A New National Anthem at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/1, 8:30 PM darkly growling jazz guitarist Joe Morris with lustrously lyrical pianist Sylvie Courvoisier. At 9:30 he plays a duo set with haunting violinis Mark Feldman, $15

7/1, 8:30 PM popular 90s chamber pop/Americana songsmith David Poe at the third stage at the Rockwood, $15

7/1, 9 PM sweeping, kinetic, Mediterranean and Andalucian string sounds with the Maureen Choi Quartet at Terraza 7, 40-19 Gleane St, Queens, $10

7/1, 9/10:30 PM state-of-the-art melodic postbop trumpet: Russ Johnsonleads a quartet with  Aruan Ortiz, piano;  Michael Formanek, bass;  Gerald Cleaver, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

7/1, 10:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at Smalls. 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.

7/1, 11 PM lush, intense, artfully orchestrated psychedelic rockers Aunt Ange  at the small room at the Rockwood

7/2, 8 PM bassist Andrew Sheron and Tuvan folk ensemble Alash mash up otherworldly, stark Central Asian and bluegrass sounds at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/2, 10:30 PM keyboardist and occasional Karla Rose collaborator Frank LoCrasto‘s cinematic organ sounds at Pete’s

7/2, 10:30 PM tuneful soul-jazz trombonist David Gibson leads his  quintet at Smalls

7/3, 8 PM minimalistic postrock/thrash instrumentalists the Austerity Program followed by retro 80s goths and Fields of the Nephilim soundalikes Fotocrime at St. Vitus, free   

7/3, 8 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Sunny’s

7/3, 8 PM indie classical guitarist Dan Lippel plays a program TBA at Branded Saloon of all places

7/3, 9 PM Lowpines play their low-key Elliott Smith soundalike psych-pop at Pete’s 

7/3, 9:30 PM cumbia band Los Cumpleanos – with new wave synths & retro organ sounds with effect-laden trombone and trumpet as well as a three piece percussion section – at Barbes 

7/4, 2 PM awesomely unhinged horror surf/hotrod instrumentalists the Mad Doctors  open an allday bill, with Carolina Oliveros’ trippy tropicalia band Combo Chimbita – who mash up cumbia, salsa, champeta and a whole bunch of other south of the border styles – and then finally careening noise/psych/doom band Stuyedeyed headlining at around 10 at Sunnyvale, $10 

7/4, 3 PM perennially fiery, relevant guitarist Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance Project followed by high-voltage psychedelic cumbia band MAKU Soundsystem – whose new album takes a detour toward Caribbean and African sounds – at the Knockdown Center, $15

7/4, 7 PM torchy singer Aurora Nealand ’s New Orleans swing band the Royal Roses followed by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

7/4, this era’s most cutting-edge, politically relevant large jazz ensemble,Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society  plays the most confrontationally cool 4th of July show anywhere in town, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/4, 7:30 PM David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong repertory big band at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/4, 9:30 PM the first of three very rare NYC shows by haunting psychedelic bandleader and Nick Cave soundalike Weinf, who brings to mind the Doors, Blue Oyster Cult and maybe the Frank Flight Band, at Sidewalk. He’s back there on 7/6 at 10 and then plays a house concert on 7/7 at 8, email for info/location 

7/4, 10:30 PM snarling female-fronted Nashville gutter blues band Thelma & the Sleaze at Baby’s All Right, $10. They’re at the Mercury the following night, 7/12 at 10 for the same price 

7/5, 1 PM jazz pianist Eugene Marlow’s lush, darkly eclectic, latin-tinged Heritage Ensemble at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, free

7/5, 6 PM ambitiously lyrical, cutting-edge rising star jazz composer/singer Annie Chen and her septet at at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

7/5 inspired, cutting-edge trombonist/composer Ryan Keberle & Catharsis play the album release show for their incendiary, politically-fueled new one, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/5, 7:30 PM a rare, killer B3 organ twinbill:Jared Gold with his trio followed by Brian Charette with his quartet at Smalls. Charette’s also here on 7/6, same time

7/5, 7:30 PM the Isaac Delgado Orchestra play their mighty Afro-Cuban salsa at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/5, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

7/5, 8 PM a free screening of Pink Floyd’s The Wall at Brooklyn Bazaar, rsvp reqd 

 7/5, 9 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” at Troost 

7/6. 6:30 PM cellist Nioka Workman’s intense Firey String Sistas chamber jazz project at Socrates Sculpture Park, Broadway at Vernon Blvd in Long Island City, G to 21st St.

7/6, 7:30 PM lush, dynamically eclectic Korean folk/art-rock band Coreyah mash up lustrous, often plaintive themes with hard-charging hip-hop and dance tunes at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/6, 7:30 PM the Peekaboos – a large allstar NYC cast including but not limited to guitarist Oren Bloedow, singer Michelle Casillas and saxophonist Briggan Krauss – play rocksteady classics at the Owl

7/6, 8 PM Brooklyn’s funnest new band, psychedelic organ-driven Middle Eastern-tinged surf rock trio Hearing Things followed at 10 by epic, cinematic guitar soundtrack composer Christina Courtin at Barbes

7/6, 8 PM confrontational Iranian singer/violinist Sadaf H. Nava collaborates with artist Evan Caminiti and filmmaker Paul Clipson in a multimedia exploration of the general toxicity of urban areas at Issue Project Room, $15

7/6, 8 PM elegant, sharply lyrical parlor pop stylist Heather Eatman at Hifi Bar

7/6, 8 PM smartly populist oldtimey-flavored Americana band 2/3 Goat and long-running 90s alt-country favorites Rusty Truck at Hill Country

7/6, 8/9:30 PM Romany jazz accordionist Julien Labro and guitarist Olli Soikkeli lead their quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/6, 9 PM Quantum Peruvian – who blend jangly Plan 9 psychedelia, GBV scruffiness and a little glam – at the Delancey 

7/6, 9 PM the darkly eclectic, enigmatic Lorraine Leckie  – equally adept at Slavic and Americana noir and dark cabaret – at Pete’s. 7/24 at 11 she’s at Sidewalk with her fiery Americana band the Demons.

7/6, 10 PM slyly lyrical New Orleans oldschool soul/groove/Americana crew the Nat Osborn Band at Rough Trade, $12 adv tix rec

7/6, 10 PM Hollywood’s Dan Finnerty leads his savagely hilarious top 40 parody group the Dan Band at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/6, 10 PM Of Clocks & Clouds play their twisted postrock and goth-tinged post-new wave anthems at Bowery Electric, $12

7/7, 7:30 PM psychedelic funk and Afrobeat with the People’s Champs at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/7, 8 PM the Ulysses Quartet play works by Schubert, Golijov, Turina and Janacek’s harrowing String Quartet No. 2 at Scholes St. Studios

7/7, 9:30 PM elegantly exhilarating tarantella/Neapolitan folk jamband Newpoli at Joe’s Pub, $15 adv tix rec

7/7, 8:30 PM the fifteen-piece Makrokosmos Orchestra with jazz singer Christine Correa play compositions by Tim O’Dell and Richard Nelson at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

7/7, 10 PM intense charismatic danceable metal cumbia/skaragga/latin rockers Escarioka at at Bar Chord, free. They’re at Mehanata the following night, 7/8 at 9 for $10

7/7, 10 PM noir soul and groove themes with the Ghost Funk Orchestra at the Gutter, $10 

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

7/7, 10 PM this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes

7/7, 10 PM bizarre segue, good twinbill: guitar genius Lenny Molotov’s torchy, lyrically smashing original female-fronted oldtimey swing crew the Fascinators  followed at 11 by ska-punks the Horsewater Skanks at Sidewalk  

7/7, 11 PM haunting, psychedelic doom metal band Matte Black at Hank’s, $8

7/7, 1 AM (actually wee hours of 7/8), psychedelic downtempo jazz quartet Mute the Commercials at the small room at the Rockwood 

7/8, 1/3 PM pioneering downtown avant garde vocalist Pamela Z in Nolan Park in the middle of Governors Island, free

7/8, 5 PM the Jimmy Heath Big Band at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/8, 6 PM the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache and legendary Colombian Caribbean singer Totó La Momposina at Central Park Summerstage

7/8, 6 PM Adam Klipple‘s Organ Soul Explosion with Al Street on guitar and Curtis Fowlkes on trombone at 55 Bar

7/8, 7 PM spot-on Fela cover band Chop & Quench followed by Jamaican dancehall hitmaker Chronixx at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/8, 8 PM trombone man Wycliffe Gordon and His International All-Stars at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/8, 8 PM eclectic, richly pensive chamber works by Michal Raymond Massoud performed by an ensemble TBA at Scholes st. Studios 

7/8, 8:30 PM violin/accordion band the Ghosts of Indecision play a wild mix of Balkan and klezmer sounds at the Owl

7/8, 8:30 PM state-of-the-art postbop guitarist Will Bernard leads his band at Bar Lunatico

7/8, 9 PM intense, brilliantly lyrical, fearlessly political 1950s style original folk/blues singer Joshua Garcia at Caffe Vivaldi

7/8, 9/10:30 PM bassist Peter Brendler leads his postbop quartet with Rich Perry, tenor sax;  Gary Versace, piano;  Vinnie Sperrazza, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/8, 10 PM darkwave and carnivalesque art-rock with Children Having Children at the Cobra Club, $tba   

7/8, 10 PM jangly female-fronted latin lounge/80s chime pop band Parrot Dream at Footlight Bar, $10

 7/9, 5 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue followed by 70s disco hitmakers the Ohio Players at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace  in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/9, 6 PM Book of J –Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – followed at 8 by charismatic, fearlessly political, lurid noir Americana songwriter and banjoist Curtis Eller and at 9 by awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra at Barbes

7/9, 7 PM Lyla Cante play their fiery, kinetic blend of flamenco and Sephardic sounds at Pier One on the upper west side 

7/9, 7:30 PM crystalline-voiced noir Americana songwriter Jessie Kilguss followed eventually by excellent, purist honkytonk crooner/bandleader Clifford Westfall at Union Hall, $12

7/9, 8 PM a killer duo project: fiery, eclectic, torchy Nicole Zuraitis  on vocals and Helen Sung on piano at Mezzrow, $20

7/9, 8:30 PM haunting dark Americana songwriter/soul belter Jessi Robertson followed eventually at 10:30 PM by edgy, broodingly tuneful, jangly female-fronted trio Shadow Monsters at Pine Box Rock Shop 

7/10, 8:30 PM smart, darkly pensive third-stream jazz pianist Noa Fort leads her quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/10, 9 PM 90s West Coast hip-hop nostalgia: the fearlessly political Rass Kass and the always hilarious, surprisingly lucid Alkaholiks at B.B. King’s, $20 adv tix rec

7/10, 10 PM epic Indian-inspired spacerock band Humeysha at  at the Mercury, $10

7/10, 11 PM eclectically tuneful swing/noir/pastoral jazz combo the Jazz Thieves  at the small room at the Rockwood. They’re also at the Way Station on 7/29 at 9

7/11, 7:30 PM popular indie classical orchestra the Knights play works by Mozart (Symphony No. 40), Purcell and John Adams at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/11, 7:30 PM conguero Eddie Montalvo and his salsa band at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/11, 7:30/9:30 PM drummer Simon Barker leads an intriguing quartet with Jen Shyu – vocals; Tony Malaby – tenor saxophone; Marc Hannaford – piano at the Jazz Gallery, $15/$10 stud

7/11, 8 PM purposeful, pensive Slavic jazz guitarist Martina Fiserova at the Way Station

7/11, 9 PM edgy female-fronted funk band Eliza & the Organix – feat. swirly alto sax player Kristen Tivey followed by anthemic, surfy chamame rock band Paracuta at Shrine. Eliza and crew are also here on 7/18 at 9

7/11, 9 PM purist oldschool guitarist Dap King Joe, “the Staten Island Soul Junkie” (aka Joe Crispiano of the Dap Kings) and band at Freddy’s

7/11, 9:30 PM lyrical, cinematic pianist Julian Shore leads his quartet with Dayna Stephens, tenor sax;  Petros Klampanis, bass;  Colin Stranahan, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/12, 6:30 PM ace drummer Art Lillard’s Blue Heaven Swing Sextet on the plaza at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza

7/12, 7:30 PM Michael Gentile & the Rhythm Serenaders play hot 20s swing at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

 7/12, 7:309:30 PM pianist Jacob Sacks’ excellent 40420 Quartet with Jacob Garchik on trombone at the Jazz Gallery, $15/$10 stud

7/12-13, 7:30 PM ex-Dylan lead guitarist Larry Campbell with singer Teresa Williams at Joe’s Pub, $27

7/12, 8 PM popular psych-folk band the Cave Singers at the Mercury, $15. Purist retro dark Americana harmony band the Cactus Blossoms are also there that night at 11, $12 separate adv tix rec

7/12. 8 PM dynamic, fearlessly populist soul belter Stephanie Rooker at the Way Station

7/12, 8:30 PM wickedly catchy Americana/paisley underground rockers Girls on Grass at Hifi Bar

7/12, 8:30 PM savage stoner boogie/doom/NWOBHM metal band Horseburner at St. Vitus, $8 

7/12, 9:30 PM kinetic jazz vibraphonista Yuhan Su leads her quartet at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/12, 10 PM oldschool dub and hip-hop influenced roots reggae with horns with the Merry Rockers at Silvana 

7/12, 10 PM stoner 70s Murder City style rockers Sun Voyager  followed by stoner boogie band Dead Things at Alphaville, $10 

7/12, 10 PM Waits-ish noir Americana songwriter Pokey LaFarge at Bowery Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec. 7/13 at 10 he’s at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, same deal

7/13, 7:30 PM Astoria Tango Orchestra’s ace bassist Pablo Aslan’s Aces of Rhythm pays tribute to the innovative style of legendary Argentinian bandleader Juan D’Arienzo – “El Rey del Compás” – at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/13, 7:30 PM Blick Bassy – Cameroonian crooner/songwriter who adds nifty bluegrass touches to his wildly eclectic but subtle acoustic songs – at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

 7/13, 8 PM the scuffily catchy, jangly, all-male Britanys at Baby’s All Right, $12. Avoid the sucky poser-rock band afterward

7/13, 8 PM a rare, excellent quadruplebill: garage punks QWAM, explosively theatrical, phantasmagorical indie/metal trio A Deer A Horse , the Lounge Act – who veer between dark 60s psych-pop and slicker 80s new wave – and then reverb guitar-driven janglerockers Color Tongue at Brooklyn Bazaar, $10

7/13, 8 PM tuneful, purposeful, edgy guitarist Amanda Monaco plays the album release show for her new one at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum.Followed at 9:30 by tenor saxophonist Aaron Burnett & the Big Machine: Peter Evans, trumpet;  Carlos Homs, piano;  Nick Jozwiak, bass;  Colin Stranahan, drums; separate adm and min.

 7/13, 8:30 PM ornate, theatrical metal band Cave of Swimmers at Gold Sounds, $12

7/13, 10:30 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece leads his quintet at Smalls

7/13, 11 PM expansive brass-fueled Afrobeat jams with the Brighton Beat at American Beauty, $10

7/13, midnight exotic surf rock band the Vibro-jets – a Sea Devils spinoff – at the Way Station. They’re also at Troost the following night, 7/14 at 9

7/14, 7:30 PM a Texas honkytonk twinbill with Asleep at the Wheel‘s Ray Benson and Dale Watson at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/14-15, 7:30/9:30 PM elegant pianist Aaron Parks leads a quintet with Maria Grand – saxophone; Chris Dingman – vibraphone; Matt Penman – bass; Anwar Marshall – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/14-15, 8 PM Gong Linna and the Bang on a Can All-Stars play her new Chinese mythology-themed art-song suite Cloud River Mountain at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St,, $25 seats avail

7/14-15, 8 PM suave, smoky tenor saxophonist Harry Allen leads a trio with Rossano Sportiello (piano), Joel Forbes (bass)at Mezzrow, $20

7/14, 8:30 PM progressive jazz sax legend Steve Coleman at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/14, 9 PM Cleveland metal band and Iron Maiden soundalikes Sunless Sky at St. Vitus, $15

7/14, 10 PM the Revolutionary Council Afrobeat Sextet at Bar Chord

7/14, 10 PM wryly surreal prozac rock  duo the Dream Eaters at Pete’s

7/14, 10 PM guitar mastermind Danny Weiss’ and magical Americana singer Mary Olive Smith’s soulful retro bluegrass band Stillhouse Serenade at Sunny’s

7/15, 2 PM in reverse order: popular 80s Argentine janglerockers Los Pericos, LA psychedelic latin soul stars Chicano Batman and La Vida Bohéme at Central Park Summerstage 

7/15, 7 PM sax-fueled psychedelic cumbia band Consumata Sonidera at Starlight Park South Entrance, 1480 Sheridan Expressway, the Bronx, 2/5 to Freeman St and go east

7/15, 7:30 PM the Harlem Renaissance Orchestra at Damrosch Park out back of Lincoln Center, $17

7/15, 7:30 PM eclectic postbop drummer Sylvia Cuenca leads her quartet at Smalls

7/15, 8 PM aphoristic, catchy, smart Nashville folk-rock songwriter Ali Sperry at Pete’s 

7/15, 8 PM roots reggae band the Far East open for one of the several incarnation of Bob Marley’s backing band the Wailers – this one with bassist Family Man Barrett, fronted by Junior Marvin – at Highline Ballroom, $25 adv tix vec

7/15. 8 PM New Orleans-flavored swing with Dan Levinson’s Gotham Sophisticats featuring vocalist Molly Ryan at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (at Oxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/15, 9/10:30 PM drummer Dan Weiss leads his tuneful postbop trio with Jacob Sacks, piano;  Thomas Morgan, bass at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/15, 11:30 PM Cleveland punk cult hero Frank Secich (the Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators’ lead guitarist) followed by fuzztone garage rockers Room Full of Strangers at the Mercury, $10 adv tix rec /album/bad-vacation-lp

7/15, midnight the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache  at Joe’s Pub, $25

7/16, 4ish in reverse order: cinematic vibraphone soul legend Roy Ayers, Afrobeat dance band Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and Brooklyn’s Underground System at Central Park Summerstage

7/16, 7 PM the intoxicatingly clattering, sintir bass lute fueled Moroccan trance grooves of Innov Gnawa  at Pier One on the upper west side

7/16, 7 PM pianist Zack Clarke’s Communer with Charlotte Greve, sax; Chris Irvine, cello ; Evan Crane, bass; Leonid Galaganov, drums followed by playful improvising quartet Bright Dog Red – “Digable Planets meets Mahavisnhu” – at Shapeshifter Lab, $15

7/16, 8:30 PM art-rockers the Tea Club play their wild, eighteen-minute, early Genesis-esque epics at the Knitting Factory, $12 adv tix rec

7/17, 7:30 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play Bach Brandenburg Concertos at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/17, 8ish 90s noiserock/janglerock icons Yo La Tengo – as vital as ever – at Central Park Summerstage

7/17, 8 PM the Ed Palermo Big Band – whose jazz reinventions of 60s and 70s British psychedelic rock can be hilariously fun – at Iridium, $25

7/17, 8 PM the New Alchemy Jazz Orchestra, featuring trumpeter Terell Stafford at the Cutting Room, $20 adv tix rec

7/17, 8:30 PM golden age Argentine tango with

7/17, 8:30 PM golden age Argentine tango with Malena Dayen, vocals;  David Rosenmeyer, piano at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum

7/17, 11 PM strange but excellent segue:  tuneful pastoral jazz guitarist Cameron Mizell leads his trio followed by gonzo noir postbop pianist Dred Scott leading his at the small room at the Rockwood

7/17, 7 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez  at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10

 7/18, 7:30 PM badass, purposeful electric blues guitarist and compelling, eclectic singer Christina Apostolopoulos at Pete’s

7/19, 7:30 PM rising star postbop trumpeter Ryan Kisor leads his quintet at Smalls

7/18-19, 7:30/9:30 PM Ravi Coltrane leads a quintet with Brandee Younger – harp; David Virelles – Wurlitzer organ; Rashaan Carter – bass; Johnathan Blake – drums celebrating the work of his mom Alice Coltrane at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/18-23, 8:30/10:30 PM guitarist Mary Halvorson – arguably this era’s best six-string player not named Bill Frisell – and her lush, rapturously good octet at the Vanguard, $30

7/19, 6 PM innovative pipa virtuoso Jiaju Shen plays electroacoustic pieces at the  Rubin Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

7/19, 9:30 PM smartly eclectic pastoral jazz songsmiths Max Hatt & Edda Glass at Bar Lunatico

7/19 Count Vaseline play their undulating post-Velvets spacerock at Harefield Road, 769 Metropolitan Ave (Humboldt/Graham) in Williamsburg 

7/20, noon New Orleans’ darkly shuffling, explosively funky Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

7/20, 8 PM cleverly lyrical, murderously witty murder ballad/chamber pop allstars Charming Disaster  at Joe’s Pub, $15

7/20, 9 PM edgy lefty guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at Bar Chord

7/21, 5 PM a wild night of accordionists and accordion bands hosted by New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez featuring the iconic Middle Eastern Bil Afrah Project, the haunting sounds of Zlatni Balkan Zvuk, Brazilian rainforest group Osnelda, cumbia crooner Gregorio Uribe, and special guests at Bryant Park, free

7/21, 6 PM incisive, fearlessly populist, catchy Irish chamber-pop songwriter August Wells at the American Folk Art Museum 

7/21, 6 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue and ageless boogaloo bandleader Joe Bataan at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/21, 7:30 PM trippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa  open for intense, psychedelic Malian microtonal guitar-and-vocal band Amadou & Mariam at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/21, 7:30/9:30 PM pyrotechnic Indian classical singer Roopa Mahadevan leads a trio with violinist Anjna Swaminathan and percussionist Abhinav Seetharaman at the Jazz Gallery, $22

7/21. 8 PM a rare appearance by poignantly sweeping Syrian orchestra Yousef Shamoun & the Tarab Ensemble at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

7/21, 8 PM haunting dark Americana songwriter/belter Jessi Robertson followed eventually at 10 by wild oldschool Houston soul brass band the Nightowls at Union Hall, $10

7/21, 9 PM noiserock guitar icon Thurston Moore and group at Bowery Ballroom, $20 adv tix rec. Why isn’t this guy playing Madison Square Garden, he’s popular enough…

7/21, 10:30 PM intense, haunting Americana/honkytonk singer Ruby Rae followed by similarly intense,more  blues-oriented Americana songstress Alice & the Underground at Pine Box Rock Shop 

7/22, 5 PM trippy Afrobeat group Budos Band on their  home tuft at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/22, 7:30 PM psychedelic, relentlessly kinetic piano-driven dancefloor postrockers Dawn of Midi followed by Beirut Middle Eastern/postrock band Mashrou’ Leila at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/22, 8 PM playful, improvisationally-inclined swing band Swingadelic at Kingsborough Colllege Lighthouse Bandshell, 2001 Oriental Boulevard (atOxford), Manhattan Beach, B/Q to Brighton Beach, free

7/22, 9/10:30 PM the Chopin Poject with Noah Preminger, tenor sax;  Nate Radley, guitar;  Kim Cass, bass;  Rob Garcia, drumsat Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. They’ve done Bartok so this should be a walk in the park!

7/22, 9 PM eclectic psychedelic riff-rockers Lemon Sky – who mix stoner boogie, a little flamenco and twisted Britfolk into the mix – at Arlene’s, $10 

7/22, 10 PM ferocious, politically fearless soul-punk/new wave/postrock band Algiers at Baby’s All Right, $15

7/23, 2 PM oldschool 70s style Cuban psychedelic salsa band Ola Fresca at at the Central Park Discovery Center, 110th St between Lenox and Fifth Aves

7/23, 5 PM the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/23, 6 PM erudite, witty art-rock pianist/songwriter/composer Lee Feldman  at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed at 8 by quartet Anouman playing Django guitar jazz, separate cover and min.

7/23, 6 PM witty Microscopic Septet pianist Joel Forrester  leads his quintet at Silvana. Will anybody actually shut up and listen there? 

7/23, 7 PM killer dark retro 60s psychedelic/stoner boogie/art-rock band Medusa’s Disco at Gussy’s Bar in Queens

7/23, 7 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 Pier One on the upper west side

7/25, 7:30 PM fiery alto saxophonist Lucas Pino’s twin-guitar No No Nonet at Smalls

7/25-30, 8:30/10:30 lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch leads his trio at the Vanguard, $30

7/25, 9 PM darkly jangly, catchy, new wave-ish rockers Melissa & the Mannequins at the Way Station

7/25, 9:30 PM cinematic Quincy Jones-style B3 gutbucket organ jazz with Colin Brown and his band at Freddy’s 

 7/25, 11:30 PM hard-hitting garage-punks the Falling Birds – like a minor-league Radio Birdman or OBNIIIs – at the Knitting Factory, $12 

7/26, noon high-voltage accordion-and-microtonal sax-fueled original Balkan tunes with Tipsy Oxcart at Madison Square Park, free

7/26, 7 PM intoxicatingly fun, bouncy Colombian coastal dance grooves with Tribu Baharu at Madison Square Park, free

7/26, 7:30 PM tersely incendiary Chicago blues guitarist Joe Louis Walker  at B.B. King’s, $15

7/26 irrepressible, transgressively funny saxophonist Jon Irabagon  leads an organ trio with Gary Versace on B3 and Nasheet Waits on drums, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $25

7/26, 8:30 PM fearlessly haunting, dynamic, charismatic Romany/Balkan chaunteuse Eva Salina  at Bar Lunatico

7/26, 9 PM charmingly catchy, new wave-tinged female-fronted Minneapolis band Bad Bad Hats at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $12

7/26, 9:30 PM Renata Zeiguer’s trippy, creepy Prozac rock project Cantina followed by dangerous folk noir chanteuse Larkin Grimm  – who’s gone in a psychedelic Indian direction lately – at Footlight Bar, $10

7/26, 9:30 PM lustrous, darkly enigmatic singer/composer Song Yi Jeon leads her quintet with Kenji Herbert, guitar;  Vitor Gonçalves, piano;  Matt Aronoff, bass;  Jongkuk Kim, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum 

7/27, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: fearlessly populist LA folk-punks Las Cafeteras, our own Alynda Segarra aka Hurray For the Riff Raff,, trippy downtempo guy Helado Negro and fiery, dramatic belter Xenia Rubinos

7/27, 7 PM baritone sax goddess Moist Paula does double duty, first with her electroacoustic project Bliss Station and then with powerhouse Aussie hokum blues songwriter/revivalist CW Stoneking – who schools a lot of the Americans mining the genre –at the Mercury, $15

7/27, 7:30 PM fiery agitator Rev. Billy & the Church of  Stop Shopping Choir – sort of the Dead Kennedys or Public Enemy of original, politically spot-on original gospel music – followed bytrumpeter Steven Bernstein’s legendary noir jazz outfit Sexmob playing a live score to the 1926 silent film Maciste All’Inferno at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/27, 7:30 PM kinetic, fearlessly populist oldtime Americana songwriter/banjoist Kaia Kater at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

7/27, 7:30 PM catchy, cinematic, noir-inclined saxophonist/composer Nick Hempton leads his quintet at Smalls

7/27 lyrical jazz pianist Christian Sands leads his trio, 7:30/9:30 PM at the Jazz Standard, $30

7/27, 8 PM shamisen player/singer/improviser Emi Makabe leads a trio with Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed at 9:30 by violinist Tomoko Omura and her quintet, separate cover and min.

7/27, 9 PM wryly retro, period-perfect classic 60s style female-fronted honkytonk band the Bourbon Express at Pete’s

7/27, 9 PM darkly intense bassist Dana Schechter’s hauntingly cinematic slowcore/art-rock project Insect Ark at Matchless, $10

7/27, 10 PM powerpop cult heroes Dany Laj & the Looks at Hank’s, $8

7/28, 5:30 PM elegant, jazz-tinged acoustic songwriter Kalyani Singh followed eventually at 6:30 by brilliant accordionist/raconteuse/urbane lyrical eclecticist Rachelle Garniez  at the American Folk Art Museum 

7/28, 6 PM pianist Dongfeng Liu leads his trio through a mix of Chinese and latin-tinged originals  at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 cover plus $10 minimum. Followed by the Bryan Landrus Orchestra playing the album release show for their new lush, resonant new one, separate adm and min. Landrus is also here on 7/29

7/28, 6 PM popular salsa songstress La India at St. Mary’s Park, St Mary’s St bet. St Ann’s Ave and Jackson Ave in the Bronx, 2/5 to Jackson Ave

7/28, 7 PM Eljuri play their ferocious, brilliantly guitar-driven, fearlessly populist rock en Espanol at the park at 125th St. and the Hudson

7/28, 7 PM darkly intense ex-Band of Susans guitarist/songwriter Anne Husick solo followed by noir-tinged crooner/guitarslinger  Phil Gammage leading his four-piece band at Sidewalk

7/28, 7 PM International Contemporary Ensemble plays Pauline Oliveros’ Applebox Double, Heart of Tones and One Hundred Meeting Places  on the plaza at Lincoln Center

7/28, 7:30 PM popular jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding and band followed by chamber pop/lit-rock icon Andrew Bird at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/28, 7:30 PM charming oldtime swing harmony trio Duchess – Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou – sing Andrews Sisters tunes to accompany a dance performance at Damrosch Park

7/28, 7:30/9:30 PM a rare appearance by Cuban son legends Septeto Santiaguero at Joe’s Pub, $15 adv tix rec

7/28, 8ish irresistibly named, darkly sizzling psychedelic garage punk rockers Anderson Council  at  Hank’s

7/28, 8:30 PM Chicago improvisational sax icon Ken Vandermark leads his group at the New School’s Glass Box Performance Space, 55 W 13th St, $20

7/28, 10 PM intense frontwoman Hannah Fairchild’s searingly lyrical punk/art-rock/noir cabaret band Hannah vs. the Many – this blog’s current favorite group – at the Way Station

7/29, 6 PM Taiwanese bands in reverse order: catchy pop-punks Fire Ex, low-key folksinger Dadado Huang + Berry j and Sangpuy at Central Park Summerstage

7/29, 7:30 PM would you sit (or, more likely, snooze) through a set by a British pop moppet at Damrosch Park just to see Dionne Warwick play a handful of songs? Maybe we should call the psychic hotline and find out!

7/29, 8 PM harrowing Palestinian oud ensemble Le Trio Joubran play the US premiere of their elegaic suite of settings of Mahmoud Darwish poems on themes of exile and resistance at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St, $30 seats avail

7/29,9 PM deviously lyrical cult favorite Americana soul/punk songwriter Marcellus Hall at Pete’s. Last time he was there he had Ambrosia Parsley on harmonies, a great band, and he slayed. 

7/29, 9:30 PM catchy, fun indie soul band Sunshine Nights at Freddy’s

7/30, 5ish pioneering golden-age female hip-hop star MC Lyte at Central Park Summerstage

7/30, 7 PM La Mecanica Popular play their original, psychedelic update on classic 70s Nuyorican salsa dura at Pier One on the upper west side

7/31, 8 PM bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone plays new solo works by Rebecca Saunders, Martin Bauck and Lauri Supponen at Scholes st. Studios 

8/1, 7:30 PM the East Coast Chamber Orchestra play works by Holst, Shostakovich and Bach at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

8/1, 9ish haunting string soundscapes and noir Americana from all-female harmony band Little Mazarn at Troost 

 8/1, 10 PM the original cello rockers, Rasputina, as fearless and funny and relevant as ever,  at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $17 adv rix rec

8/2, noon upbeat original ska with the Brown Rice Family at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7 PM all-female Americana harmony trio the Wild Reeds at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7:30 PM Ibibio Sound Machine play EDM with hints of Afrobeat followed by Angelique Kidjo and band covering a crappy Talking Heads album at Damrosch Park

8/3, 7:30 PM newschool cabaret agitator Nellie McKay followed by perennially fun, psychedelic banjo jamband leader Bela Fleck at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/3, 7;30 PM dance sequences from Bollywood film set to live music by a group TBA at Damrosch Park. Followed at 10:30 PM by a “silent screening” of The Big Lebowski where everybody wears headphones, supplied by the venue. Guess this means we have to text our buddies to share a laugh or two during the film.

8/4, 7;30 PM orchestral hip-hop: violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson leads a chamber orchestra playing a J Dilla tribute at Damrosch Park

8/5, 3ish Orquesta Criolla Nacional de Puerto Rico on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/5, 7:30 PM second-wave surf rock icons Los Straitjackets and British roots-rock maven Nick Lowe at Damrosch Park

8/5, 8:30 PM pantheonic, eclectic guitar hero Nels Cline leads his big pastoral jazz band at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/5 fiery, eclectic, purposeful pianist Helen Sung leads her poetic, powerfully relevant, vivid Sung With Words project at Bryant Park

8/6, 1 PM Albanian superstar vocal/accordion duo Merita Halili & Raif Hyseni and the Cheres Ukrainian Folk Ensemble on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/6, 5 PM hardcore late 90s hip-hop nostalgia with Jadakiss at Crotona Park North to South, Fulton Ave to Southern Blvd and Crotona Park East in the Bronx, 3 to Freeman St. 

8/9, 7:30 PM spectacular, fiery Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda followed by the swinging salsa dura sounds of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at Damrosch Park

8/9, 8:30 PM alto sax icon Kenny Garrett and his band at Madison Square Park, free

8/10, 7  PM lush improvising orchestra Burnt Sugar at East River Park

8/10, 7:30 PM the Brooklyn United Marching Band followed by jazz piano star Jason Moran and the Wordless Music Orchestra playing a live score to the film Selma at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/11, 6 PM Andy Montanez,  El Godfather de la Salsa, Puerto Rican bolero singer/songwriter legend at East River Park

8/12, 1/3  PM indie classical ensemble Contemporaneous plays music by Ian Gottlieb, Emma O’Halloran and Finnegan Shanahan in Nolan Park in the middle of Governors Island, free

8/16, 7 PM hard-driving, often noir-tinged swing pianist/singer Davina & the Vagabonds at Madison Square Park, free

8/19, 6 PM hypnotic, intricate, eclectically virtuosic fingerstyle guitar instrumentalist RD King – Fahey meets Kottke meets Dave Miller? – at the small room at the Rockwood

8/20, 5 PM  in reverse order: the year’s best outdoor show with ageless Ethiopian jazz composer Mulatu Astatke, fiery Tunisian art-rocker Emel Mathlouthi and slinky Middle Eastern/Nile Delta band Alsarah & the Nubatones at Central Park Summerstage

 8/25, 7 PM the lavish, sax/clarinet-fueled Anat Cohen Tentet at Marcus Garvey Park

8/25, 10 PM 60s janglerock/psych-pop legends the Flamin Groovies at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $20 adv tix rec

8/26, 3 PM in reverse order:  cool jazz legends the Lee Konitz Quartet, dynamic drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, postbop drummer Louis Hayes and his group, and powerful belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor –  Charenee Wade at Marcus Garvey Park

8/27, 4 PM in reverse order: state-of-the-art alto postbop with the Joshua Redman Quartet, oldschool soul-jazz man Lou Donaldson, and the ferociously intense, charismatic Tia Fuller at Tompkins Square Park

8/29, 7 PM Inkarayku play Peruvian psychedelic folk at Gantry Plaza State Park

Miklos Lukacs’ Bewitching Cimbalom Unlimited Play an Epic Album Release Show at Drom

The mysterious, bewitchingly rippling cimbalom is the national instrument of Hungary, more or less. While it’s best known to American audiences as a staple of Romany music, rock acts from Judy Henske to Hazmat Modine have used it. It looks like a harpsichord without the keys; like its oldest descendant, the Egyptian kanun, it’s played with mallets. Miklos Lukacs is the Jimi Hendrix of the instrument. In his hands, it doesn’t just ring and resonate: it whirs and purrs, and flickers, and sometimes roars. Last night at Drom, Lukacs took the cimbalom to places it’s never gone before, in a magical album release show for his new one, Cimbalom Unlimited, joined by Harish Raghavan on bass and Eric Harland on drums.

Lukacs’ stately, spaciously suspenseful, allusively modal intro set the tone for the night: after awhile, his epic songs became part of an even more epic tapestry that stretched from India, to the Middle East, to Harlem in the 1950s. As the rhythm crept in, the trio built to a pulsing, leapfrogging, relentlessly pouncing drive, Lukacs waves’ of melody shifting toward the blues rather than the Middle East, but again, not going there directly. Raghavan added the first of more than one bubbling cauldron of a solo as Harland deftly syncopated the torrents of beats. Lukacs’ axe is a percussion instrument, so it was no surprise to see his rapidfire attack on the strings echoed by his bandmates. The only surprise was the cold ending. a playfully recurrent trope all night.

Raghavan began the next number just as the bandleader had opened the first one, Lukacs lurking on the perimeter with an icy glimmer. Slowly and enigmatically, the two exchanged places as Lukacs developed a plaintive, elegaic theme, Harland spicing the swaying rhythm with the occasional snowshower of cymbals or ominous snare hit. Spaciously clustered spirals rippled and pinged against Harland’s increasingly propulsive, circular phrases as momentum grew, up to a deceptively simple Kashmiri-inflected theme. Each instrument pulled against the center, seemingly hoping to break completely free, then Lukacs picked one of the eeriest chromatic phrases of the night to loop unwaveringly, for what seemed minutes on end as Harland navigated a vortex of his own.

A bass solo over Lukacs’ lingering, menacing tritones opened the next number, the cimbalom edging toward melancholy ballad territory and then pouncing but never quite hitting it head-on: the suspense was unrelenting. Lukacs doesn’t just use mallets; he uses his hands for a muted inside-the-piano-style approach, at one point using the handles instead when he wanted to get really spiky. From its starry, solo cimbalom intro, the third song of the night was arguably the best, a twisted, labyrinthine Balkan jazz lounge theme – a Black Lodge of Sarajevo.

From there, menacing tritone-laced pavanes alternated with long, majestic Harland crescendos, Raghavan alternating between mournful, low bowed washes and ominously percolating cadenzas. Along the way, Lukacs alluded to the moody maqams of the Middle East, the hypnotic hooks of India and the occasional flicker of postbop piano jazz but never completely let any of those ideas coalesce and define the music. Clearly, he’s invented something the world has never heard before and wants to keep it that way.

Lukacs’ next gig is in Athens at the Technopolis Jazz Festival on May 27 at 10. Another enticingly syncretic, esoteric show a little closer to home – the kind that Drom specializes in – is happening there on June 9. It’s a benefit for Drom’s Brooklyn soulmate venue, Barbes featuring an unbeatable lineup including mystical Moroccan trance-dance band Innov Gnawa, allstar brass pickup group Fanfare Barbès, (with members of Red Baraat, Slavic Soul Party and Banda de los Muertos), elegantly  menacing film noir instrumental icons Big Lazy, Colombian folk reinventors Bulla en el Barrio and torrential Bahian drum orchestra Maracatu NY, Who plays when is still up in the air, but it really doesn’t matter since all of these acts are a lot of fun. Advance tix are a bargain at $20 and still available as of today.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for May and June 2017

Constant updates. May is when most of the free summer concerts are announced – the Prospect Park Bandshell series is looking better than it has in years, while Central Park Summerstage is pretty much dead in the water. Considering how Trump and his minions are hell-bent on slashing funding for the arts, this might be the last good season of free summer shows here for awhile. So you might want to bookmark this page and check back every so often – and then go out! If there was ever a summer in New York to check out some cool free live music, this is it!

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 here, something for everyone

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

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. Up next: Bartok, Haydn, Brahms and Chopin. Sugg don $10 (pay what you can), delicious gluten-free refreshments, beverages and lively conversation included! email for info/location. Upcoming dates: Wednesdays at 7: May 17,  June 21, and Sundays at 4: May 21,  June 25.

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

Mondays 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 in June, 8 PM erudite, fascinating jazz guitar maven,Matt Munisteri plays “guitar for lovers” at the Jalopy Tavern, free

Mondays in June at 8/10:30 PM irrepressibly fun, female-fronted, brassy cosmopolitan swing band the Hot Sardines at the Blue Note, $15 standing room avail

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

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

Mondays at 9 PM erudite, purist torchy jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the Delancey 5 at the Back Room, 102 Norfolk St just north of Delancey St, free

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

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

Mondays in May at midnight wild noir piano jazz with the Dred Scott Trio back at their old spot, the small room at the Rockwood.

Tuesdays in June, 7 PM the great unsung hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin leads his Zebtet  at the Fat Cat

Tuesdays in May , 8:30 PM the George Gee Swing Orchestra play surprising new arrangements of old big band standards at Swing 46, 349 W 46th St,  $15

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

Tuesdays in June, 9 PM Niko Kerilo’s psychedelic latin soul/bomba/plena jamband at Salzy Bar (the old Fifth Estate) in south Park Slope, free 

Wednesdays at 8-ish, amazing, psychedelic instrumentalists Sandcatchers – who blend cinematic, pastoral Americana and Middle Eastern themes – at Cheryl’s Restaurant, 236 Underhill Ave. (Eastern Pkwy/Lincoln Pl.) in Ft. Greene. Closest train is actually the 2/3 to Brooklyn Museum.

Wednesdays at 8 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 Art Cafe, 884 Pacific St.(at Washington Ave) in Brooklyn, $15; closest train is the 2 to Bergen St.

Wednesdays at 9 PM Feral Foster’s Roots & Ruckus takes over the Jalopy, a reliably excellent weekly mix of oldtimey acts: blues, bluegrass, country and swing.

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 around 9:30 PM Bulgarian Romany sax legend Yuri Yunakov with his wild but haunting band at Mehanata

Fridays in June, 10:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django, $10 at the bar. 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. 

Saturdays in June, 11:30 AM (in the morning) til 3, individualistic guitarist Assaf Kehati plays jazz and bossa nova with a series of bassists: Steve LaSpina, Harvie S, Dave Baron, Rick Rosato, Michael O’Brien and maybe more at Il Gattopardo, 13-15 W 54th St, free. He’s got some funk, some surf and lots of classic postbop in him. 

Saturdays at 4 PM at Bargemusic there are impromptu free classical concerts, usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles: if you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Saturdays in June at Barbes, 6 PM guitarist Sean Cronin“raised on country, trained in classical, steeped in punk, and brought to maturity as a jazz musician, leads the band Very Good which is actually quite good.” No joke. Expect reinvented Leonard Cohen, menacing offcenter downtown skronk, cello jazz maybe. Something to really look forward to.

Saturdays in July, 6 PM Book of J – Sway Machinery frontman/guitarslinger Jeremiah Lockwood and Jewlia Eisenberg of Charming Hostess – “take inspiration from the intersection of the sacred and the radical to create hit songs from the depths of American psalmody, Yiddish folklore, and international Jewish liturgical traditions” at Barbes. i.e. sacred and possibly profane.

Saturdays eclectic compelling Brazilian jazz chanteuse Marianni and her excellent band at Zinc Bar, three sets starting at 10 PM.

Sundays there’s a klezmer brunch at City Winery, show starts around 11:30 AM – 2 PM, $10 cover, no minimum, lots of good bands

Sundays in May at sometime past noon at Hank’s, Nashville gothic crooner Sean Kershaw‘s legendary honkytonk brunch is back! It’s just like 1999 again!

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

5/1, 7 PM Finnish murder ballad singer Pekko Käppi leads his haunting, austere folk trio at the CUNY Grad Center, 365 5th Ave north of 34th, $25/$20 stud

5/1, 7 PM vibraphonist Chris Graham & pianist Taka Kigawa play music of John Luther Adams at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

5/1, 8 PM this era’s most erudite, exhilarating purist swing jazz guitarist, Matt Munisteri with Seth Cronin on bass at the Jalopy Tavern, free. He’s also here on 6/12

5/1. 8 PM inventive oldtime Americana/swing/New England folk songwriter Caroline Cotter at the small room at the Rockwood

5/1, 10 PM “an hour-long exploration of protest songs from a variety of cultures. With sopranos Chelsea Shephard and Mikaela Bennett; mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms; tenor Joshua Blue, baritones Dimitri Katotakis and Jacob Scharfman; and bass Andrew Munn, with instrumentalists Chris Reynolds and Jack Gulielmetti, and Steven Blier as pianist” at Henry’s Restaurant, 2745 Broadway at 105th St, $20

5/1, 8 PM the DaCapo Chamber Players perform an edgy Italian-themed program of works by Berio, Sciarrino, Biscardi, Rakowskii, Zallman and more at Merkin Concert Hall, $20

5/1, 9 PM Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play haunting underground Greek  revolutionary anthems andhash-smoking songs from the 20s and 30s at Sisters Restaurant, 900 Fulton St.  (near Washington Ave.), C to Clinton-Washington. 5/2 they’re at Troost in Greenpoint, same time.

5/1, 9 PM fun, assaultive Little Rock noiserock band Junkbomb – who are surprisingly tuneful and evoke early PiL sometimes – at the Silent Barn, $8

5/1, 10 PM explosive, theatrical, phantasmagorical indie/metal trio A Deer A Horse at St. Vitus, free. They’re at he Silent Barn on 5/17 at 11 for $8

5/2, 7 PM trumpeter Ben Holmes and accordionist Patrick Farrell play their new, creepily cinematic Conqueror Worm Suite (based on the Edgar Allen Poe tale) with animations by Natalie C. Sousa followed at 9 by ten-piece Balkan/Duke Ellington brass band Slavic Soul Party at Barbes.

5/2-7, 8/10:30 PM iconic bassist Ron Carter celebrates his 80th birthday with a week at the Blue Note, $30 standing room avail. Choice pick: 5/6 with Javon Jackson and Roy Hargrove on trumpets, Donald Vega on piano and Lewis Nash on drums

5/2-7, 8;30/10:30 PM pyrotechnic alto saxophonist David Murray & Class Struggle with Hugh Ragin (trumpet Fri & Sat only) Craig Harris (trombone Fri & Sat) ; Mingus Murray (guitar) D. D. Jackson (piano) Rashaan Carter (bass) Russell Carter (drums) at the Vanguard , $30

5/2, 9 PM popular post-Velvets slowcore/psych band the Black Angels at Brooklyn Steel, $25

 5/2, 10:30 PM quirky, fun swing-infused songwriter Orly Bendavid & the Mona Dahls at Pete’s. 5/13 at 8 they’re at Caffe Vivaldi

5/3, 7 PM pianists Tamas Gomori, Kyle Kildale and Szu-Chun Wang play works by Schubert, Beethoven, Scarlatti, Haydn and Chopin at Septodont Auditorium, 345 E 24th St at 1st Ave, free

5/3, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

5/3, 8 PM pianist Michael Brown plays works by Mendelssohn and Beethoven at the 92nd St. Y, $25

5/3, 8/9:30 PM bassist Javier Moreno leads a quartet with Tony Malaby, saxophones; Ernesto Jodos, piano;,Gerald Cleaver, drums playing individualistic jazz inspired by Mompou, Granados and Mediterranean sounds at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum

5/3, midnight, fun, catchy, noisy girlpunk band Sharkmuffin at Sunnyvale, $10

5/4, 1 PM cleverly acerbic, charismatic avant garde singer/pianist/atmospheric sound artist Bora Yoon revels in the spacious sonics at St. Paul’s Chapel downtown, free

5/4, 6 PM one of the year’s best triplebills features sounds from across the Middle East: the hauntingly rustic, eclectic NY Andalus Ensemble, 1950s-60s Egyptian film music revivalists Zikrayat and enigmatic Iranian folk-rockers Vatan at Brooklyn Music School; 126 Saint Felix St, $15/$10 stud 

5/4, 7  PM a rare reunion of Raquel Bell’s tunefully enigmatic psychedelic/indie band Mesiko at Olly Oxen Free Vintage (137 Montrose Ave, Bushwick), L to Montrose Ave 5/6, 4 PM they’re at the People’s Garden,at the People’s Garden, 1221 Broadway at Greene Ave in Bushwick, J/M to Kosciusko St., and then at the Gateway across the street at 11.

5/4, 7 PM an Annie Gosfield retrospective performed by Duo Cortona (singer Rachel Calloway, violinist Ari Streisfeld), guitarist Roger Kleier, percussionist Brian Chase, pianist Kathleen Supové, and Gosfield herself on keyboard, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th, $15/$10 stud/srs. The program explores immigration, LES artistic milieux and possibly spy themes. 

5/4, 7 PM Japan’s Safari Chamber Orchestra play works ranging from Beethoven to Dvorak, concluding with a contemporary piece by Yasushi Akutagawa at the DiMenna Center, free, reception to follow

5/4, 7 PM eclectic jazz/blues resonator guitarist Elizabeth Wise at Caffe Vivaldi

5/4, 7:30 PM soulful, erudite jazz pianist Marc Cary does his electric piano funkmeister thing  at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

5/4, 7:30 PM this era’s most interesting voice in retro Britrock and glam-inspired art-rock,Edward Rogers and his killer band open for 70s art-rocker Terry Reid & the Cosmic American Derelicts at the Cutting Room, $20 adv tix rec

5/4, 8 PM  dark, charismatic, mischievously witty, lyrically ferocious keyboardist/chanteuse Rachelle Garniez  at Barbes

5/4, 8 PM fiery fun violinist Chloe Swantner leads a Roger Miller cover night with a whole bunch of Americana peeps at a house concert at 169 Spencer at Willoughby, free

5/4, 8 PM torchy, riveting, erudite countrypolitan songwriter Drina Seay at 11th St. Bar; Certain General’s noir crooner/guitarslinger Phil Gammage plays at 11

5/4, 8/9:30 PM ethereal, raptly haunting singer Sara Serpa  leads an unorthodox trio with Ingrid Laubrock, tenor sax;  Erik Friedlander, cello at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

5/4, 8 PM the NY Scandia Symphony with violin soloist Stephanie Chase play a rare all Neils Gade program featuring the Echoes of Ossian Overture, Symphony no. 2 and the Violin Concerto at Symphony Space, $25

5/4, 8:30 PM the wild, wickedly tuneful Avi Fox-Rosen Electric Klezmer Trio with Zoe Guigeno on bass and Dave Licht on drums at the Jalopy, $15. Imagine Jim Campilongo playing classic klezmer tunes – this guy is amazing.

5/4, 8:30 PM artsy goth/art-rock/metal band Tempest City at the Delancey, $10

5/4, 9 PM inimitable, distantly ominous Japanese psychedelic folk/art-rock band Kikagaku Moyo at Rough Trade, $15

5/4, 9 PM 9 PM smart, cleverly lyrical original swing chanteuse/songwriter/trombonist Emily Asher’s Garden Party at Radegast Hall

5/4, 9:30 PM the darkly kinetic Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet at Club Bonafide, $20 adv tix rec

 5/4, 10 PMfiery retro rock/60s soul/noir rockabilly band Blaire Alise and the Bombshells  at Trans-Pecos

5/4, 10;30 PM fiery state-of-the-art postbox alto saxophonist Carl Bartlett Jr. leads his quartet at Smalls

5/5, 5:30 PM charming all-female klezmer group Freydele at the American Folk Art Museum, free

5/5, 7 PM baroque harpsichordist Catalina Vicens plays a program TBA at Spectrum, $15 

5/5, 7 PM lapsteel visionary Myk Freedman (of Sandcatchers) plays the album release show for his new one at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery

5/7, 7 PM a free performance of traditional Colombian dance and folk tunes with dance leader Karla Flórez, Rafael Leal, Johanna Castaneda, Nestor Gomez Jr. at the New School auditorium at 66 W 12th St, free, early arrival advised

 5/5, 7 PM eclectic Honduran-born jazz singer Eva Cortes leads a septet including Marvin Sewell on guitar and Luques Curtis on bass at Shapeshifter Lab, $13

5/5, 7:30/9;30 PM trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson‘s Sicilian Defense with Matt Mitchell on piano at the Jazz Gallery, $22

5/5, 7:30 PM a “multi-disciplinary performance fusing music, dance, video, and documentary, Mind Crossing tells the story of one family’s heartbreaking loss and struggle to emigrate during the Holocaust. Based on a collection of letters which saxophonist Tal Gur‘s grandfather wrote after World War II, the piece features Hebrew songs translated to English, alongside free improvisation and progressive jazz,” at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, $15

5/5, 8 PM saxophonist/singer Stephanie Chou and her band blend classical and Chinese influences with jazz; Jamaican artist Owen Romeo plays with his group Tribal Legacy at Flushing Town Hall, $16

5/5, 8 PMunfailingly tuneful tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his quintet at the Django, $10

5/5, 8 PM an adventurous  improvisational twinbill with adventurious singer Amirtha Kidambi and Elder Ones, and the Ras Unit at Alwan for the Arts, $20/$15 stud/srs

5/5, 8 PM Mar Salá plays her acoustic flamenco rock followed eventually at 10 by wild, noisy, genuinely Hendrixian virtuoso lead guitarist Viva DeConcini and her band at the Way Station. Viva’s also here on 5/27 at 8.

5/5, 8 PM pianist Don Militello plays solo improvisations and jazz classics at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20/$15 stud/srs, reception to follow

5/5, 8 PM delta blues/oldtime hillbilly music maven Mamie Minch followed at 10 by this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes

5/5, 8:30 PM Penguin Cafe play music of legendary kitchen-sink jazz/cinematic ensemble the Penguin Cafe Orchestra at the Poisson Rouge, $25 adv tix rec 

5/5, 10 PM ageless, filthy oldschool punk/powerpop band Custard Wally – sort of the Blowfly of NYC punk rock – at Hank’s

5/5, 10 PM guitarist Demir Demirkan‘s Anatolian Knights throw a wild live Turkish psychedelic rock party at Drom, $25 adv tix rec

5/5, 10 PM purist, guitarishly excellent oldschool soul band Miss Tess & the Talkbacks at Sunny’s

5/6, 3 PM Italian tarantella rock composer/pianist Emanuele Tozzi at Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Boadway (25/26) near Madison Square Park, free

5/6, 5 PM the Bang on a Can Marathon of indie classical and esoterica returns at the Brooklyn Museum, free: the highlight is at 8 PM with Amir ElSaffar’s 2 Rivers Ensemble doing their lush, haunting largescale Middle Eastern jazz soundscapes. Get there close to 5 or you may miss it. 

5/6, 7 PM explosive electric blues guitarist/songwriter Jackie Venson – arguably the best thing happening in Texas blues right now – at at Silvana. 5/7 she’s at LIC Bar at 5

5/6, 7/9:30 PM perennially lyrical, prolific tenor postbop tenor saxophonist/composer Tom Tallitsch and his group at Minton’s, free, two-item minimum per person at tables

5/6, 7:30 PM Pam Jam I : theremin sorceress Pamelia Stickney teams up with irrepressible classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein at the Owl, $10. They’re also here on the 26th and 27th.

5/6, 7:30 PM Ba Ban Chinese Music Society play rarely heard, jazzy 1930s Shanghai film music themes at Flushing Town Hall, $16, kids 13-19 free w/id

5/6, 8 PM John Zorn’s Cobra and Xu Feng Game Pieces performed by a dozen-piece ensemble including guitarist Eyal Maoz, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, drummer Kenny Wollesen and more at Roulette, $25 adv tix avail

5/6, 8 PM psychedelic hard funk band Afroskull at the Parkside

5/6, 8:30 PM intense, charismatic Tunisian art-rock songwriter – and Arab Spring heroine – Emel Mathlouthi at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

5/6, 8:30 PM rising star pianists Florian Noack, Benedek Horváth and Klara Min with cellist Borislav Strulev and violinist Eric Silberger play concertos by Richard Strauss, Beethoven (the Triple Concerto) and Liszt with orchestral backing at Merkin Concert Hall, $30 tix avail

5/6, 9/10:30 PM fiery free jazz tenor sax icon George Garzone’s Boston Collecdtive with Phil Grenadier, trumpet; John Lockwood, bass; Luther Grey, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum

5/6. 9 PM jazz violinist Lucine Yeghiazaryan and her group at Bar Thalia adjacent to Symphony Space, frees

5/6, 4 PM composer/accordionist Michael Hearst’s Songs About Extraordinary People  – including the Iceman found more or less intact after 5300 years entombed in ice, and Marie Curie, whose radioactive notebooks are still lethal – followed at 8 by jangly, spiky, guitarishly brilliant Afrobeat band Timbila and then the blustery firepower of Sinaloa-style Mexican mariachi/ranchera brass group Banda de los Muertos at 10 at Barbes

5/6, 9 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

5/6, 9 PM pianist Kelly Green leads her sextet at the Cell Theatre, $15/$10 stud/srs

5/6, 10 PM witchy tarantella jams with Alessandra Belloni & I Giullari dii Piazza at Mehanata, $10

5/6, 10:30 PM erudite, purist, torchy jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the Delancey 5  “swing into spring” at the Django, $10

5/7, 11 AM pianist Dénes Várjon  plays works by Beethoven, Bartok and Liszt at the Walter Reade Theatre, 165 W 65th St, $22, reception to follow

5/7. 2 PM the Dover String Quartet with Richard Stoltzman, clarinet play Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 plus works by Brahms and Haydn at the Town Hall, $15

5/7, 3 PM a loopmusic twinbill in Fort Greene: cinematic Japanese artist Shizuka (ex-Sendai and Kanuma ) in her only US appearance this year followed by the pastiches of Jib Kidder at Mayflower Bar 

5/7, 3 PM a Cinco de Mayo  celebration with songs and music from Mexico and the Americas by Rafael Aponte-Ledeé, Manuel Enríquez, Marta García-Renart,Alberto Ginastera, Max Lifchitz, William Ortiz, Manuel M. Ponce, Silvestre Revueltas & Lilia Vázquez-Kuntze at Christ & St Stephen’s Church, 120 W 69th St, free 

 5/7, 4 PM a-cappella ensemble the Johnson Girls sing old-time harmony and seafaring songs at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $10

5/7, 4:30 PM electically kinetic klezmer/cumbia/cinematic jamband Metropolitan Klezmer outside the Abrons Arts Center, free

5/7, 5 PM Triple Paste play hot 20s jazz and parse the Lennie Tristano’s songbook, featuring Eric Pakula, Matt Darriau, Katie Down, Rafe D’Lugoff, Arthur Kell and Vinnie Sperazza followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes. Triple Paste are also here at 5 on 5/14

5/7, 7 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band at Radegast Hall

5/7, 7 PM pianist Meral Guneyman explores the music of jazz legends Billie Holiday, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington—at Symphony Space, $15

5/7, 7 PM Marie Incontrera’s Eco-Music Big Band play their reimagining of Igor Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale plus works by David Taylor and Louis Andriessen at National Sawdust, $29 adv tix rec

5/7, 7 PM edgy guitarist Ava Mendoza plays solo opening for the album release show by bassist Stuart Popejoy with a killer lineup – Kenny Wollesen, Steve Swell, Avram Fefer and Sarah Bernstein at the Knockdown Center, $15

5/7, 7;30 PM crystalline Americana rock singer Rebecca Turner and her lushly jangly band at Hifi Bar

5/7, 9 PM Chartwell Dutiro plays Zimbabwean mbira music at Troost. He’s also playing the album release show for his new one at Hifi Bar at 8ish on 5/16 and then at Shrine on 5/18 at 9. 

5/7, 10 PM hauntingly kinetic loopmusic violinist Frederika  Krier at Silvana 

5/8, 6 PM tuneful third-stream jazz pianist/singer Laila Biali leads her trio at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum. Followed at  8:30 PM (separate $10 admission) by tenor saxophonist Lena Bloch & Featery with Russ Lossing, piano; Cameron Brown, bass; Billy Mintz, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum

5/8, 7:30 PM the Verona Quartet play works by Shostakovich, Mozart, and Beethoven at Alice Tully Hall, $20

5/8, 8 PM Courtney Marie Andrews – who’s gone in a refreshingly purist Melba Montgomery-ish 70s C&W/soul direction – at the Mercury, $10

5/8, 8 PM the NYU Symphony play Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” plus new works by Kyle Tieman-Strauss and Shelley Washington at the NYU Loewe Theatre, 35 W 4th St, free

5/8, 9:30 PM Los Cumpleanos – new wave synths & retro organ sounds with effect-laden trombone and trumpet as well as a three piece percussion section – at Barbes 

5/8, 10:30 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 Club Bonafide, $10 

5/9, half past noon organist Thomas Fielding plays a program TBA at Central Synagogue, 54th/Lex, free .

5/9,  7 PM intense Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, traditional Turkish band Dolunay followed at 9 by ten-piece funky Balkan brass jazz monsters Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

5/9, 7:30 PM the Israeli Chamber Project with harp soloist Sivan Magen play music by Schumann, Ibert, Martinu, Mozart and more at Merkin Concert Hall $30

5/9, 7:30 PM charismatic, adventurous postbop/avant garde trombonist/crooner Frank Lacy leads his quintet at Smalls

5/9, 8 PM darkly jangly, catchy, new wave-ish rockers Melissa & the Mannequins at the Way Station

 5/9, 8 PM Carolyn Leonhart with Christian Sands – lush jazz chanteuse with simpatico pianist – at Mezzrow, $20

5/9, 8:30/1030 PM arguably the most individualistic, compelling pianist in jazz right now, Vijay Iyer leads his trio at the Vanguard, $30

5/9, 9 PM vivid, well-liked Boston folk noir songwriter Tara Jane O’Neil at Union Pool, $10

5/9, 9 PM ageless stoner dub inventor Lee Scratch Perry at SOB’s, $25 adv tix rec

5/9. 10 PM darkly minimalist, atmospheric chamber pop/art-rock chanteuse Nico Turner at C’Mon Everybody, $10

5/9, 9:30 PM the Bronx Conexion play their mighty salsa big band jazz at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

5/10, 7 PM the hauntingly kinetic NY Crimean Tatar Ensemble featuring violin powerhouse Nariman Asanov with sensational accordionist Patrick Farrell and percussionist Lennur Mamudov at the Ukrainian Museum, 222 E 6th St. (bet. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), $10

5/10, 7:30 PM in reverse order at the Owl: eclectic, tuneful accordionist/songwriter Ali Dineen, purist, straightforward, warmly tuneful front-porch folk songwriter Joanna Sternberg and Eleonore Weil & Jake Shulman-Ment presumably playing sizzling klezmer string music, $10

5/10, 7:30 PM ambitious, smart, noir-inclined tenor saxophonist Patrick Cornelius  leads his band at Smalls

5/10, 8 PM innovative, tuneful Indian-influenced drone-raga band Arranged Marriage NP at Art Cafe, 884 Pacific St.(at Washington Ave) in Brooklyn, $15

5/10, 8 PM kotoist/singer Miya Masaoka performs her new noh chamber opera piece A Line Becomes a Circle, based on the work of her ancestor, the poet Shiki Masaoka at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

5/10, 8 PM Karla Bonoff – the blue-eyed soul singer who was NYC’s counterpart to Linda Ronstadt back in the day – at City winery, $28 standing room avail

5/10, 8 PM a free screening of Purple Rain at Brooklyn Bazaar, rsvp reqd 

5/10, 8 PM tenth-wave post-Stooges proto-punk band Beechwood followed by the Brass Knuckle Evangelists playing fuzz bass/organ-driven psychedelic soul at the Delancey, $10 

5/10. 8 PM tenor saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff, leads an improvisational trio with Mark Helias, bass; Dan Weiss, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum

5/10, 9 MP tooo funny – boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic crooner Jack Grace at the small room at the Rockwood followed by a, um, act who would like to be him. Grace is also at at the Jalopy Tavern on 5/14 at 9 and on 5/20 at 10 at 68 Jay St. Bar

5/10, 9:30 PM a killer female-fronted jazz twinbill: charmingly torchy vocal trio the Ladybugs followed by the New York Chillharmonic – singer/keyboardist Sara McDonald’s lush 17-piece art-rock/chamber pop band with string quartet and big band jazz orchestration – at Joe’s Pub, $15

5/11, 6 PM Racquel Borromeo, piano; David Bridges, clarinet; Rina Haruki, soprano; Dominique Donnarumma, soprano play works by Piazzolla, Ravel, Schubert, Mozart, Handel, Weill “and many surprises” at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum. Followed at  8.9:30 PM by guitarist Lage Lund playing a rare solo show, separate $10 adm

5/11, 7 PM eclectic New Orleans soul/C&W/noir Americana songwriter Shannon McNally at the big room at the Rockwood, $18

5/11, 7 PM first-call indie classical pianist Lisa Moore plays works by John Luther Adams, David Mahler, Michael Byron and other s at Symphony Space, $15

5/11, 8 PM hauntingly jangly Canadian gothic Americana rockers the Sadies at Webster Hall, $25. Be aware that there are opening and headlining acts and that the Sadies may not get as much time onstage as they need

5/11, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by formidable, reliably tuneful guitarist Tom Csatari‘s large-ensemble Americana jazz project Uncivilized playing John Fahey tunes. Their careening set of Chico Hamilton numbers last time here was pretty amazing. 

5/11, 8 PM guitar god Kurt Neumann’s version of iconic anthemic Milwaukee rockers the BoDeans at City Winery, $32 standing room avail, yikes

5/11, 8 PM irrepressible accordion innovator Guy Klucevsek leads an accordion orchestra playing a Pauline Oliveros tribute at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

5/11, 8 PM “for her Issue Project Room debut, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ka Baird presents Espylacopa (A Reversal In Three Acts), an interdisciplinary collaborative work that incorporates organic and processed sounds, human voice, projected and ambient lighting with performance art, sculpture and movement. Espylacopa, the reverse of apocalypse, takes the form of a ritual contextualized as a performance conjured to reverse current, unwanted processes or trends to flow in an intended direction,” $15/$12 stud/srs

5/11, 8:30 PM wild klezmer/Balkan tunes with the Jim Guttman Bessarabian Breakdown at the Jalopy, $15

5/11, 9 PM hot 20s swing with trumpeter Jason Prover and his Sneak Thievery Orchestra at Radegast Hall

 5/11. 9:30 PM charismatic, eclectic cellist/songwriter Meaghan Burke plays the album release show for her new one at Joe’s Pub, $16

5/11, 9:30 PM catchy, anthemic New Orleans blues guitar jamband the Delta Saints at the Mercury, $12 adv tix rec

5/11, 10 PM King Isto’s Tropical String Band play awesomely fun, catchy Hawaiian slack-key guitar music at Sunny’s

/12, 10:30 AM Wynton Marsalis joins a marching band of hundreds of high school students from across the country to protest cuts to education and music programs. The procession marches from Columbus Circle Park to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall

5/12, 6 PM baroque chamber ensemble Quicksilver play works from Moravia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and beyond TBA at the King Manor Museum, 150-03 Jamaica Ave, Jamaica, Queens, $15/$10 stud/srs

 5/12, 6:30 PM haunting folk noir duo the Whispering Tree at the American Folk Art Museum, free

 5/12, 7 PM intense, politically fearless, frequently hilarious gothic Americana songwriter Rachael Kilgour at the Commons Cafe, 388 Atlantic Ave. in Cobble Hill, any train to Atlantic Ave; 5/13 she’s at Caffe Vivaldi at 8.

5/12, 7 PM fearless indie classical chamber ensemble Exceptet play premieres by Scott Wollschleger and Finola Merivale, plus recent works by Fay Wang, Brooks Fredrickson, and Brian Petuch at the Metropolis Space , 1 Rivington St / 2nd floor (buzzer #1), $15/$5 stud 

 5/12, 7:30 PM sitar virtuoso Shujaat Khan (son of the great Vilayat Khan) with tabla player Samir Chaterjee at the Miller Theatre, $15 tix avail

5/12. 8 PM awesomely cool duos at Alwan for the Arts: singer Merita Halili and accordionist Raif Hyseni put their exhilarating spin on Albanian sounds followed by singer Arooj Aftab and sax player Charlotte Greve reworking classical Pakistani and North Indian themes, $20/$15 stud/srs

5/12, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow –followed at 10 by awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra  at Barbes. Anbessa Orchestra are also at the small room at the Rockwood at 10 on 5/22.

5/12, 8 PM darkly playful, epic piano-based art-rock singer Eve Lesov followed at 9 by torchy, lyrically smashing original female-fronted oldtimey swing crew the Fascinators at Sidewalk 

5/12, 8 PM ferociously lyrical new wave band Lazy Lions – the closest thing to classic early Elvis Costello or Graham Parker that NYC has right now – at C’Mon Everybody, $10

5/12, 8 PM Middle Eastern-flavored psychedelic jams with Spaghetti Eastern Music at Silvana

5/12, 8 PM Cantata Profana perform indie classical works by  Daniel Tacke, Jody Rockmaker, Sunbin Kim, Matthew Welch, Junyi Chow, Doug Harbin at the DiMenna Center, $10

5/12, 8 PM pianist Jason Hardink plauys Olivier Messiaen’s “Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus” at Spectrum, $!5

5/12-13, 8 PM lyrical jazz pianist Kenny Werner with Billy Drewes on alto sax at Mezzrow, $20

5/12, 8:30 PM eclectic lit-rock songwriters’ collective the Bushwick Book Club play new songs inspired by Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at City Winery, $10

5/12, 9 PM the jazzy NYC Ska Orchestra followed by dark 90s ska-punk favorites Mephiskapheles at the Bell House ,$15

 5/12, 9 PM searing, theatrical Romany/Balkan punk rockers Bad Buka acoustic at Radegast Hall. 5/20 at 10 they’re at Mehanata, electric, for $10

5/12, 9 PM exotic surf rock band the Vibro-jets – a Sea Devils spinoff – at Troost

5/12. 10 PM Access Contemporary Music play their annual Sound of Silent Film Festival featuring new soundtracks to rare films by Martin Scorsese and others – animation, shorts, documentaries – at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

 5/12, 10ish hilarious 70s metal parody band Mighty High at t Hank’s

5/12, 10 PM Delsonido’s trippy tropical jazz/downtempo grooves at Shrine 

5/12, 11 PM Rebet Asker play classic 1920s and 1930s Greek resistance, gangster and drug underworld songs at Drom, free

 5/12, midnight intense, brilliant conscious hip-hop lyricist Decora and his psychedelic funk band at the Blue Note, $10 standing room avail

5/13-14 Midnight Oil at Webster Hall is sold out

5/13, 3:30ish lustrous, hypnotically atmospheric vibraphonist/composer Sam Sowyrda plays the album release show for his aptly titled, new Luminous Horizons followed by wild avant garde marching band Ashcan Orchestra and then eventually a closing set by Sowyrda at around 5:30 at Trans-Pecos, $10

5/13, 6 PM short sets bynew, exciting Turkish band Seyvah with Jenny Luna, voice; Kane Mathis, oud; Marandi Hostetter, violin; Greg Squared, clarinet; Shane Shanahan and Philip Mayer, percussion, the Navatman Music Collective, one of the world’s only Carnatic choirs. and singer Michela Musolino‘s Sicilian band Rosa Tatuata at Barbes

5/13, 6 PM edgy, lyrical, darkly kaleidoscopic original jazz pianist/singer/composer Alina Engibaryan at Shrine

5/13, 7 PM dark psychedelic acoustic blues/klezmer/reggae/soca jamband Hazmat Modine at Terra Blues. They’re also here on 5/27

5/13, 7 PM in reverse order:trash-garage guitar maven Palmyra Delran, CBs style female-fronted punks the Carvels NYC, the more powerpop-oriented Vicky & the Vengents and ferocious garage-punk-psychedelic Radio Birdman soundalikes the Electric Mess, at Bowery Electric, $10

5/13, 7:30 PM Jeeyoung Kim and Janine Joseph’s new chamber opera From My Mother’s Mother “deals with love and reconciliation through one mother providing something to help her daughter, only to face rejection,” in English with Korean and English subtitles at Flushing Town Hall, $10, moms and kids free

5/13, 7:30 PM classical chamber ensemble Counter)Induction play new music by Ross Bauer, Barbara Jazwinski, Elizabeth Bell, Matthew Greenbaum, Martin Boykan, and Robert Carl at Symphony Space, $10

5/13, 8 PM Hollywood’s Dan Finnerty leads his savagely hilarious top 40 parody group the Dan Band at Jt Highline Ballroom, $25 adv tix rec

5/13, 8 PM the Canticum Novum Singers perform the 6 Bach Motets at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, 552 West End Ave at 87th St, $25/$20 stud/srs, 1 to 86th St.. They’re also here on 5/21, 3 PM

5/13, 8 PM iconic largescale free jazz pianist Karl Berger leads an improvisational string quintet with flute at Greenwich House Music School, $20

5/13, 8 PM the Delphi Chamber Orchestra play works by Mozart, Haydn and André Grétry’s Overture to Le Huron at the DiMenna Center, $20

5/13, 8 PM quirky, fun swing-infused songwriter Orly Bendavid & the Mona Dahls open for powerful, fearlessly political, poignant Nashville gothic/Americana songwriter Rachael Kilgour at Caffe Vivaldi

5/13, 9 PM oldschool psychedelic soul/groove band Empire Beats followed by hard-hitting bassist Dawn Drake & Zapote playing hot Afrobeat-tinged funk grooves at the Way Station

5/13, 9 PM swirly, hypnotic, totally 80s 4AD dreampop/shoegazers Dead Leaf Echo – who if they let their frontwoman sing fulltime would be one of NYC’s best bands – play the album release show for their new one at Alphaville, $12

5/13, 9 PM witty Microscopic Septet pianist Joel Forrester  at Spectrum, $15

5/13. 9/10:30 PM drummer Dan Weiss leads a tuneful trio with Jacob Sacks, piano; Ben Street, bass at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum

5/13, 9 PM Abraham’s River fka Mac McCarty & the Kidd Twist Band play their fiery, sometimes unexpectedly poignant Pogues-ish punk and folk noir at Sidewalk

5/13, 10 PM intense charismatic danceable metal cumbia/skaragga/latin rockers Escarioka at Mehanata, $10

5/13, 10 PM cellist Joshua Roman leads a quartet playing Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at National Sawdust, $29 adv tix rec

5/13, 10:30 PM Sweet Tits – the “punk lesbian Spinal Tap” – at Freddy’s

 5/14, 2 PM fiery agitator Rev. Billy & the Church of  Stop Shopping Choir – sort of the Dead Kennedys or Public Enemy of original, politically spot-on original gospel music – plays a mother of a Mother’s Day show at Joe’s Pub, $15

5/14, 3 PM Alan Pierson conducts new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound in the NY premiere of John Luther Adams’ avian-inspired symphonic work Ten Thousand Birds in Morningside Park, free, follow the sound

5/14, 4 PM the Ritz Chamber Players perform a program of works by African-American composers TBA at National Sawdust, $20 adv tix rec.

5/14, 6 PM Lee Feldman leads a 4-piece band playing his deadpan desperate lyrical chamber pop at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

5/14, 6 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at 55 Bar

5/14, 7 PM saxophonist Niko Siebold’s 17-piece big band at Shapeshifter Lab, $8 

5/14, 7:30 PM trumpeter Kate Amrine and her group premiere over 20 short works for brass; plus duos by Ronen Shai, Josh Oxford, Sam Reiling and Jake Elkin at Scholes St. Studios, $10

5/14, 8 PM eclectic acoustic Afro-Cuban punk band the Battle of Santiago at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, free

5/14, 8 PM hauntingly phantasmagorical art-rock/noir cabaret pianist/singer Anana Kaye at the small room at the Rockwood

5/14, 8 PM cinematic postrock/psychedelic guitarist/songwriter Ora Coogan with her band at Union Pool 

 5/14. 10:30 PM noir-inspired alto saxophonist/composer Nick Hempton leads his group at Smalls

5/15, 5:30 PM drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM Michael Riesman and Ensemble Signal celebrate the music of Philip Glass at the Miller Theatre, free

5/15, 7 PM Jurij Fedynskyj and the Ukrainian Village Voices sing striking polyphonic songs of freedom and defiance from the remote village of Kryachkivka at Playwrights Rehearsal Studios, White Box Room, 3rd floor, 440 Lafayette St. (bet. Astor Pl. & E 4th St.$15/$10 stud/srs

5/15, 8:30 PM deviously lyrical cult favorite Americana soul/punk songwriter Marcellus Hall at Pete’s

5/15, 8:30 PM luminous, astonishingly eclectic, wickedly tuneful cello-rock badass Serena Jost at the third room at the Rockwood, $10.

5/15, 9 PM cellist Malcolm Parson plays pieces by Bach, Lucio Amanti, Eugene Friesen, Erik Friedlander, and original compositions for solo cello at Pine Box Rock Shop

5/15, 9 PM Swiss improvisers Trio Elgar: Florian Stoffner – guitar, Hans Koch – baritone saxophone, Lionel Freidl – drums, + guest Leila Bordreuil – cello, followed at 10 by trumpeter  Stephanie Richards‘ Trio with Stomu Takeshi- bass, Kenny Wollesen- drums at 65 Fenimore St, at Flatbush, Lefferts Gardens, B/Q to Prospect Park

5/15, 9:30 PM Yotoco play psychedelic cumbias at Barbes

5/15, 10 PM menacing punk-Americana legends the Legendary Shack Shakers at the Bell House, $15 adv tix rec

5/15, 10 PM explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas at LIC Bar

5/16. 6ish cinematic Chinese ambient music by Lemon Guo followed byenigmatically careening,wickedly tuneful, intense female-fronted power trio Castle Black in Riverside Park at 95th St. 

5/16, 8 PM roaring 20s hot jazz with Sweet Megg & the Wayfarers at Radegast Hall

5/16, 8 PM a pretty wild duo set of sax/trumpet improvisations by Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

5/16, 8;30 PM pianist Charles Nedich and a string section play works by Bassi, Weber and Mendelssohn at the Tenri Institute,43A W 13th St, $25/$15 stud/srs, reception to follow

 5/16-21, 8:30/1030 PM progressive jazz icons Steve Coleman & Five Elements at the Vanguard, $30

5/16-21, 8:30 PM eclectic percussionist Satoshi Takeishi plays with a series of groups at the Stone, $20. Choice pick: opening night, a duo with oudist Gordon Grdina

5/16, 9 PM saxophonist Kazemde George leads his quartet at Parkside Pizza, 705 Flatbush Ave (Parkside/Winthrop), Q to Parkside Ave.

5/16, 11 PM cheery Northampton girlpunks Dump Him at the Silent Barn, $8 

5/17, 1 PM tuneful, witty trombonist/pianist Art Baron leads his group at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex

 5/17, 7:30 PM violinist Sheng-Ching Hsu leads a chamber sextet performing Sirota: My Yiddishe Momme; Chen: The Silent Flame; Esmail: Piano Quintet; Brahms: Piano Quintets at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, 59 E 2nd St, sugg don

5/17, 7:30 PM star cellist Clarice Jensen plays a program of entrancing loopmusic including her collaboration with composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, plus Michael Harrison’s Cello Constellations for multitracked cello and sine tones, plus creepy projections by Jonathan Turner at the Kitchen, $15

5/17, 8 PM Middle Eastern-flavored psychedelic jams with Spaghetti Eastern Music at the Bushwick Public House

5/17, 8/9:30 PM the Istmo Trio with haunting, nuanced Mexican jazz singer Magos Herrera, plus Vitor Gonçalves, accordion; Rogerio Boccato, percussion; Gilal Hekselman, guitar at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum. 5/21 at 2 (two) PM they’re at the Queens Library in Flushing, 41-17 Main St(at 41st Av), close to the 7 train at Main St/Flushing, for free

5/17, 8 PM the Aaron Burnett Quartet play their postbop sounds at Westbury Inn, 673 Flatbush Ave at Winthrop, Lefferts Gardens, Q to Parkside Ave.

5/17, 8:30 PM iconic noir NYC saxophonist/raconteur and Jazz Passenger Roy Nathanson plays a bday bash at Bar Lunatico

5/17, 9 PM20s hot jazz revivalists Cait and the Critters at Radegast Hall.

 5/17, 9ish well-loved noiserock guitar shredder Ty Segall at Warsaw is sold out. But there are still tix for rthe 5/18 and 5/19 shows available at the Knitting Factory box ofc, $25

5/17, 9:30ish haunting psychedelic Middle Eastern/southwestern gothic songwriter Sir Richard Bishop at the Park Church Coop in Greenpoint, all ages, $12

 5/17, 9:30 PM the Space Merchants – the missing link between the Stooges and X – followed at 11ish by Joe Jack Talcum of 80s punk-pop faves the Dead Milkmen at Hank’s

5/17, 10 PM creepy, swirly, jangly Laurel Canyon psychedelic band the Mystic Braves at Union Pool, $15

5/18, 1 PM Novus NY play John Luther Adams: Become Ocean; Luna Pearl Woolf: After the Wave; and a Jessica Meyer world premiere at St. Paul’s Chapel downtown, free

 5/18, 7 PM classical guitar luminary Sharon Isbin, and three of her protégés, who collectively represent three continents: Alberta Khoury from Australia, Tengyue Zhang from China, and America’s Colin Davin  at the Greene Space, $15

 5/18-21, 7:30/9:30 PM Regina Carter reinvents Ella Firzgerald for the jazz violin with a killer quintet: Xavier Davis – piano; Marvin Sewell – guitar; Chris Lightcap – bass; Alvester Garnett – drums at the Jazz Standard, $30

5/18, 7:30 PM exhilarating North Indian sarod virtuoso Rajeev Taranath at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

5/18, 8 PM opening night of this year’s Look & Listen Festival with word/sound artist Ione from the late, great Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening Institute, violinist Miranda Cuckson, indie classical septet yMusic, and kinetically hypnotic tenor sax quartet Battle Trance at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 Wt 14th St, 2nd fl, free, rsvp reqd 

5/18, 8 PM a cool twinbill at Brooklyn Bazaar – careeningly intense gutter blues bandleader Breanna Barbara and her band and eventually tuneful, diverse retro 60s psychedelic garage rockers the Mystery Lights at around 10, $15 

5/18, 8 PM sensational rising star trumpeter Adam O’Farrill leads his group at KD’s Bar and Lounge, 408 Rogers Ave off Sterling, 2 to Sterling St.

5/18, 8:30 PM haunting early Jewish music ensemble Asefa Music’s multi-instrumentalist maven Samuel Thomas & pianist Alon Nechushtan‘s duo explore radically different, similarly interesting Jewish diasporic sounds at the Jalopy, $15

5/18, 9/10:30 PM intense, fearlessly relevant Middle Eastern clarinetist Kinan Azmeh‘s kinetic, picturesque City Band at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

5/18, 9 PM Mimi Oz – a real kitchen-sink songwriter with soul and rock and darker sounds and an omnipresent sense of humor – at Pete’s

5/18, 10 PM accordionist/sitarist Kamala Sankaram’s hot surfy Bollywood/cumbia/psychedelic rock project Bombay Rickey – a launching pad for her spellbinding four-octave voice – at Barbes

5/18, 11 PM creepy Laurel Canyon art-rock/psych-folk/dark Americana band Quicksilver Daydream at the small room at the Rockwood 

5/18 creepy, cinematic twin-guitar pastoral jazz trio the Royal Arctic Institute at Pine Box Rock Shop

5/19, 8 AM (in the morning) ragas all day at the Worl;d Financial Center, free, starting with  slide guitar genius Debashish Bhattacharya & tabla player Samir Chatterjee playing a morning raga at 8 sharp. They’ll return at 7 PM, presumably after a nap. At noon Anupam Shobhakar plays the sarod; at 5 PM it’s guitarist Gyan Riley, sitarist Krishna Bhatt, & drummer Dan Weiss. At 8:30 PM tuneful, individualistic Afghani-born jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi  and his Quartet play a live score to the 1929 silent film A Throw of Dice: A Romance of India. 

5/19, 5:30 PM drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM New York Polyphony “illuminate Bach and Luther’s German roots” at the Miller Theatre, free

5/19, 7 PM sitar virtuoso Ikhlaq Hussain at the Rubin Museum of Art, $25

5/19, 7 PM kitchen-sink band the Four Bags take a detour toward Persian music and death metal followed by Anti-Social Music playing new works for accordion ensemble by Max Duykers, David Durst, Nathan Koci, Andrea La Rose, Dan Lasaga, and Pat Muchmore. Featuring: Hubert Chen, Domenica Fossati, Will Holshouser, Jeff Hudgins, Paul Kerekes, Nate Koci, Pat Muchmore, Franz Nicolay, Theresa Rosas, Kamala Sankaram, and Hannah Temple at Shapeshifter Lab, $15. Followed at 9:30 (separate $10 admission) by the Noah Kaplan Quartet playing the album release show for their new microtonally-infused release Cluster Swerve with Joe Morris (guitar), Giacomo Merega (electric bass), Jason Nazary (drums & electronics)

5/19, 7:30 PM darkly atmospheric, eclectic Hungarian jazz singer Nikolett Pankovits performs her haunting Sad But True Hungarian folk project featuring literary excerpts and poems performed by actor Ádám Boncz at Club Bonafide, $15

5/19, 7:30 PM oldschool Cuban style salasa band Charansalsa at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

 5/19, 7:30 PM Olabelle keyboard maven Glenn Patscha with drummer Ben Perowsky and guitar mastermind Oren Bloedow at the Owl, $10

5/19, 8 PM the year’s best triplebill so far: explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas, ; epic, original, intense original Balkan monsters Raya Brass Band; and the irrepressible Ellia Bisker’s explosive Balkan/New Orleans flavored Funkrust Brass Band at Matchless, $10

5/19, 8 PM  Deum Band play traditional and contemporary dance music from Thailand; Josh Cho and Le Bandu Barracud perform Tahitian sounds at Flushing Town Hall, $16, ages 13-19 free w/ID

5/19-20, 8 PM Novus NY play Philip Glass’ Indian-influenced Symphony No. 5 at Trinity Church, free

5/19, 8 PM four of NYC’s funnest indie classical bands, in reverse order: percussion group Yarn/Wire, their colleaagues Sō Percussion, hauntingly atmospheric pan-Asian chanteuse/composer Jen Shyu and Ensemble Échappé at Bric Arts, free, rsvp reqd 

5/19, 8 PM brilliantly lyrical guitarist/singer Camila Meza followed at 9 by tuneful up-and-coming alto saxophonist Caroline Davis leading a trio at KD’s Bar and Lounge, 408 Rogers Ave off Sterling, 2 to Sterling St. 5/30, 7:30/9:30 PM Meza leads her Nectar Orchestra, comprising keys, string quartet and rhythm section at the Jazz Gallery, $15

5/19. 8 PM artsy, unpredictable, funky jamband the Pimps of Joytime  at South House in Jersey City

5/19, 8 PM a potentially phenomenal night of Middle Eastern-inspired improvisations: Kuwaiti singer/guitarist Yousif Yaseen, on vocals and guitar plusethereal, raptly haunting singer Sara Serpa with Ingrid Laubrock, tenor and soprano saxophone; Erik Friedlander, cello at Alwan for the Arts, $20/$15 stud/srs

5/19-20, 8 PM Repast Baroque plays rarely heard works by Rafael Antonio Castellanos (1725–1791); Sebastián Durón (1660–1716), Jose de Orejón y Aparicio (1706–1765), Francisco Manalt and Scarlatti’s Fandango for solo harpsichord at First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn Heights. The 5/20 show is at Advent Lutheran Church, 2504 Broadway at 93rd St., $30/$20 stud/srs  

5/19. 9 PM intense female-fronted psychedelic/funk band Imunuri at Bar Chord

5/19, 9:30 PM slinky psychedelic Americana rockers American String Conspiracy at Freddy’s

5/19, 10 PM oldschool danceable Colombian tunes with Chia’s Dance Party  at Barbes

5/19, 10 PM cellist Mariel Roberts plays new solo works by Davi∂ Brynjar Franzson, Cenk Ergün, George Lewis, and Eric Wubbels (who guests on piano)  at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

5/19, 10 PM the Robin Electric  play their catchy, deliciously Rickenbacker-fueled powerpop and glamrock followed by wickedly tuneful, jangly 60s style psychedelic band Otherworldly Things at Littlefield, $ 10 

5/19, 10:30 PM Box of Birds – who veer between energetic highway rock and more enigmatic indie sounds – at Pine Box Rock Shop

5/19, 11:30 PM wild, theatrical, fun female-fronted barrelhouse piano blues band the Claudettes at Joe’s Pub, $15

5/19, 1 AM (technically morning of 5/20) the feral, frenetic NY Gypsy Allstars play their electric originals at Drom, free

5/20, 2 PM trumpeter Rachel Therrien‘s Latin Jazz Quartet at Parkside Plaza, Parkside and Ocean Aves., Lefferts Gardens, free, Q to Parkside Ave.

5/20, 3 PM the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra play a world premiere by Music Director Chris Whittaker and close with Mendelssohn’s exuberant “Italian” Symphony, at Fort Washington Collegiate Church, 729 W. 181st St.,free, reception to follow  

5/20, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical pianist Matt Mitchell’s Phalanx Trio with Kim Cass on bass and Kate Gentile on drums at the Jazz Gallery, $22

 5/20, 7:30 PM guitar savagery X2: the Nels Cline Four feat. Julian Lage, Scott Colley & Tom Rainey w/Ava Mendoza at the Poisson Rouge, $25 adv rtix rec

5/20, 8 PM sultry retro Franco-American torch jazz/chamber pop/ukulele swing band les Chauds Lapins at Barbes

5/20, 8 PM in the absence of leader Liberté-Anne Lymberiou – kicked out of the US by Trump’s Migra -drummer Zack O’Farrill leads the 17-piece Liberté Big Band at KD’s Bar and Lounge, 408 Rogers Ave off Sterling, 2 to Sterling St.

5/20, 8 PM the NY Virtuoso  Singers perform  world premiere commissions by recent ASCAP Young Composer Award winners Anahita Abbasi, Emily Bear, David Biedenbender, Will Cooper, Elizabeth Kelly, Emily Koh, Michael Lee, Alexander Liebermann, Jared Miller & Eric Nathan  at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, 552 West End Ave at 87th St, 1 to 86th St.,  $25/$20 stud/srs

5/20. 8:30 PM Electric Diamond – Stuart Diamond and Don Slepian – play their wild multimedia version of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at Spectrum, $15

5/20, 8:30 PM Brooklyn jamband legends Plastic Beef and their many spinoffs/side projects – who hasn’t been a member of Plastic Beef at some point? – at Freddy’s 

5/20, 8:30ish brilliantly cinematic, kinetic violinist Dana Lyn ‘s pssychedelic, ecolotically themed Mother Octopus quartet at at the Owl, $10

5/20, 9 PM mighty, massive thirty-piece original gospel rock band Jesus on the Mainline at the Mercury, $15 adv tix rec

5/20, 9 PM catchy reverbtoned janglerockers the Growlers at Terminal 5, $27.50 adv tix rec. Good to see a band this good get big enough to fill this space. 

5/20, 10 PM the Thurston Moore Group at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, $20 adv tix rec. You know him, right? 

5/21, 11 AM Esther Yoo, violin and pianist Robert Koenig play works by Mendelssohn, Debussy, Tschaikovsky and Glazunov at the Walter Reade Theatre, 165 W 65th St, $22, reception to follow

5/21, 2 PM composer Tidtaya Sinutoke’s Hart Island Requiem, “an experimental, immersive, investigative theater piece that highlights stories of those who have died and are buried in Hart Island,” NYC’s longtime potter’s field, at Flushing Town Hall, free

5/21, 2 PM Leon Botstein and the Orchestra Now play Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England, celebrating the art of Marsden Hartley at the Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $30 tix avail

5/21, 3 PM this year’s Look & Listen Festival concludes with trombonist Craig Harris and the Saints and Aint’s Brass Choir along with Carman Moore’s Skymusic Ensemble performing several of his own works, including the gospel themed Think in a New Way at the Studio Museum in Harlem,144 W 125th St east of ACP Blvd., free 

5/21, 3 PM Blythe Gruda sings her enigmatic art-rock and parlor pop at Pete’s

5/21, 4 PM the Desoff Choirs sing  The New Amorous World (2014), the utopian cantata by Estonian-American Fourierist composer Lembit Beecher, a Sufi work by Shireen Abu-Khader,  Hebrew songs arranged by Ellen Broad-Ginsberg and other multicultural works at Holy Trinity Church, 3 W 65th St, $15 tix avail

5/21, 7ish saxophonist  Charlotte Greve leads a trio followed by the Rhythm Method String Quartet playing a program TBA at the Owl, $10

5/21, 8 PM  jazz pianist Misha Piatigorsky’s haunting, cinematic, deviously clever thirteen-piece Sketchy Orkestra with the soul vocals of Emily Braden plus Rahj Mason’s hip-hop beats alongside an eight-piece chamber string section at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv tix rec

5/22, 7 PM Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland’s intense folk noir band Whitehorse at the Mercury ,$15 adv tix rec

5/21, 8/9:30 PM lyrical pianist Ben Rosenblum leads a trio with Curtis Lundy on bass and Billy Hart on drums at Mezzrow, $20 

5/21, 10 PM  Lusterlit play their ominous, noirish literary chamber pop followed by wry 70s style kraurtock disco band Automaatio at Sunnyvale. 5/25 at 11:30 Lusterlit are at Sidewalk, preceded at 9:30 by cleverly lyrical, murderously witty murder ballad/chamber pop allstars Charming Disaster. Avoid the fey fop act playing in between those two bands at all costs

5/22, 8 PM music for strings and piano from across the Americas by Edmund Cionek, Julian Fueyo,Max Lifchitz, Ivan Enrique Rodriguez & Hilary Tann performed by the North/South Trio: Lifchitz on piano with Claudia Schaer, violin Marisol Espada, celloat Christ & St Stephen’s Church, 120 W 69th St,,free 

 5/22, 8:30 PM powerful soul belter Sarah Wise (of explosive gospel-rock ensemble Lizzie & the Sinners) at Pete’s

5/23, 6 PM pianist Michael Lewin plays  music by Beethoven, Liszt, Lecuona, Nazareth, Villa-lobos and Ginastera at the Yamaha Piano Salon, $6 

5/23, 7 PM violinist Eleonore Biezunski and Ukrainian tsimbl (hammered dulciimer) player Pete Rushefsky’s darkly rustic klezmer band the Klezmographers with special guest, haunting chanteuse Zhenya Lopatnik, followed at 9 by ten-piece funky Balkan brass jazz monsters Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

5/23, 7:30 PM pyrotechnic cimbalom virtuoso Miklos Lukacs plays the album release show for his new one, Cimbalom Unlimited with drummer Eric Harland & bassist Harish Raghavan at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

5/23, 7:30/9:30 PM Mingus Band pianist David Kikoski leads his trio at the Jazz Standard, $25

5/23, 7:30/9:30 PM a rare bass-fronted large jazz ensemble (just like Mingus), the Ross Kratter Jazz Orchestra at Club Bonafide, , $20

5/23-28, 8:30 PMcleverly tuneful, understatedly haunting composer and piano improviser Anthony Coleman leads a series of groups at the Stone, $20. Choice pick: opening night, a trio set with Marty Ehrlich (reeds) Kim Cass (bass)

5/23, 8:30 PM bassist Bruno Råberg’s Triloka string quintet at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

5/23-28, 8:30/10:30 PM intense pianist Gerald Clayton  leads a trio at the Vanguard, $30

5/23, 9 PM lead guitarist to the stars of the NYC underground, Homeboy Steve Antonakos plays a rare solo show featuring songs off his new powerpop album Bodega Rock at Bar Chord

5/23, 10 PM brilliant drummer/percussionist Willie Martinez & La Familia Sextet play classic salsa grooves at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

5/24. 7 PM violinist Mari Kimura is the soloist in a new Tania Leon electroacoustic work; a wind/string chamber ensemble plays new works by Richard Brooks’, Hubert Howe, José Beviá’, David Mecionis, Robert S. Cohen’ and Raoul Pleskow, Dana Dimitri Richardson’ at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, $20 sugg don 

5/24, 8 PM captivating Afro-Peruvian singer/pianist Chi-Chi Glass at Barbes

5/24, 8 PM Joan LaBarbara leads a vocal quartet plus chamber sextet including  harpist Shelley Burgon and Miguel Frasconi on glass bells, playing a Joseph Cornell-inspired program at  Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

5/24, 7:30 PM eclectic mostly-female klezmer/cumbia/tango jamband Isle of Klezbos’ all-gal sextet ensemble (including mesmerizing vocalist Melissa Fogarty), plus clips from bandleader Eve Sicular’s cinema history project, The Celluloid Closet of Yiddish Film at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St. $25 adv tix req

5/24, 8 PM creepy Americana hellraiser duo the Tall Pines at Hifi Bar

5/24, 9 PM soaring, purist, darkly lyrical Americana songstress Karen Hudson at Silvana

 5/24, 9 PM 90s dancehall reggae nostalgia with Capleton at B.B. King’s, $25 adv tix rec

5/24, 10:30 PM trombonist Jimmy O’Connell leads his colorful, kick-ass sextet at Smalls

5/25, 6 PM wryly retro, period-perfect classic 60s style female-fronted honkytonk band the Bourbon Express at at the small room at the Rockwood

5/25, 7:30 PM hauntingly epic, eclectic oudist/composer Rahim AlHaj with Iranian santour virtuoso Sourena Sefati, and Palestinian-American percussionist Issa Malluf. at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival very strongly advised

5/25, 7:30 PM, repeating on 5/27 at 8 the NY Phil with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich play Dvorak’s Violin Concerto and Slavonic Dances plus Janacek’s Taras Bulba at Avery Fisher Hall, $31 tiix avail

5/25-28, 7:30/9:30 PM Gil Evans scholar/archivist/conductor Ryan Truesdell leads the Gil Evans Project celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Gil/Miles classic Miles Ahead at the Jazz Standard, $35 but worth it.

5/25, 7:30 PM trippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa – the original drum-and-bass – at Bric Arts, free

5/25, 7:30 PM the Orchestra of the League of Composers perform a Sheree Clement world premiere,  a NY premiere by Fred Lerdahl and works by Lisa Bielawa and Arvo Pärt at the Milller Theatre, $25/$15 stud/srs

5/25, 8 PM deviously theatrical oldschool C&W/rockabilly parodists Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co at Otto’s

5/25, 8ish the All-Stars of Exotica with Ismail Butera on accordion, George Stathos on clarinet, Scott Wilson on oud, George Sempepos on guitar and vocals and more play haunting, hypnotic, classic Greek gangster tunes from the 20s and 30s at Aiyos, 2 St. Marks Place off Bowery, free

5/25, 8 PM darkly tuneful bassist Pedro Giraudo leads his tango quartet at Barbes

 5/25, 8 PM “Antenes opens her 2017 residency at Issue Project Room with new work incorporating research on the unique audio terrain of early, analog telephone pioneers and hackers. The performance features found field recordings threaded into the electro-acoustic qualities and electronic signals from her handmade switchboard synths, made from repurposed, vintage/obsolete equipment,” $10 sugg don

5/25, 8 PM hard-hitting original Balkan rockers Tipsy Oxcart at at Shrine

 5/25, 8 PM the Fair Trade Trio and pianist Taisiya Pushkar play Molly Herron’s “Nelson,” Ernő Dohnanyi’s Serenade for string trio, and Johannes Brahms’  first piano quartet. at the DiMenna Center, $25/$15 stud/srs

5/25-27, 8/10:30 PM salsa dura piano icon Larry Harlow & the Latin Legends at the Blue Note, $20 standing room avail.

5/25, 9 PM Alice Lee – the missing link between Fiona  Apple and Nina Simone -at Pete’s. Her new album is unbelievably good. 

5/25, 9 PM jazz singer Kate Chaston sings material from her Pedro Project -songs from (and inspired by) Pedro Almodóvar films at Bar Thalia, free

 5/25, 10 PM a great kick-ass lyrical rock twinbill: hilarious, smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes followed by grimly witty folk noir/Nashville gothic band Thee Shambels at Hank’s

5/25, 10:30 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece leads his quintet at Smalls

5/26, 7 PM  epic, exhilarating original Balkan brass music with alto saxophonist/clarinetist Greg Squared’s Great Circles, haunting oud/clarinet band Dunham Shoe Factory, psychedelic instrumentalists Sandcatchers – who blend cinematic, pastoral Americana and Middle Eastern themes and exciting Turkish band Seyvah with Jenny Luna, voice; Kane Mathis, oud; Marandi Hostetter, violin; Greg Squared, clarinet; Shane Shanahan and Philip Mayer, percussion at the Jalopy, $10

5/26, 7/9 PM celebrate World Lindy Hop Day and the birthday of the godfather of lindy hop, Frankie Manning, with David Berger‘s mighty retro Sultans of Swing big band featuring Australian vocal sensation Hetty Kate in a rare US appearance at Drom, $20

5/26, 8 PM rustic accordion-driven Brazilian jungle sounds with Regional de NY followed at 10 by Felipe Fournier‘s Supermambo vibraphone band playing a  Tito Puente tribute at Barbes

5/26, 8:30 PM Directors feat. Jordan McLean and Amir Ziv play these two film composers’ more kinetic works at Bar Lunatico

5/26, 9/10:30 PM by powerful, erudite, elegantly tuneful tenor saxman/composer Noah Preminger makes yet another live album, this time leading a trio with Kim Cass, bass; Dan Weiss, drums at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 plus $10 minimum. Your voice can be on a piece of history! 

5/26, 10 PM intense frontwoman Hannah Fairchild’s searingly lyrical punk/art-rock/noir cabaret band Hannah vs. the Many – this blog’s current favorite group -at the Way Station

5/26, 10 PM long-running, wickedly jangly, tuneful Americana rockers the Sloe Guns at  the Bitter End

5/26-27, 10:30 PM lyrical trombonist/composer Michael Dease leads his sextet at Smalls

5/26, 10 PM haphazardly fun stoner soul band Needle Points at Alphaville, $10

5/27, 3:30 PM Chai Found Music Workshop play enveloping, richly tuneful Taiwanese chamber music at the Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St, 7 to Flushing/Main St., $6

5/27, 8 PM  eclectic, electric C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts followed at 10 by psychedelic latin bandleader Zemog El Galle Bueno at Barbes

5/27, 9 PM energetic acoustic Veracruz-style folk-punk band Radio Jarocho at Espresso 77 in Queens

5/27, 9ish brilliant pastoral jazz violinist Skye Steele leads his More Light Band + Strings playing the album release show for his new one at C’Mon Everybody

5/27, 9:30 PM wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers at Hill Country

 5/27, 10 PM edgy lefty guitarist Damian Quinones and his psychedelic latin soul band at Silvana

5/27, 11 PM River Cult play their ferocious, feral, cinematically psychedelic doom metal/postrock at the Cobra Club, $10 

5/27, 10 PM intense charismatic danceable metal cumbia/skaragga/latin rockers Escarioka at Bar Chord, free

5/28, 7 PM artsy, ornate, Iron Maiden-influenced doom metal with Imminent Sonic Destruction at Drom, $13 adv tix rec 

5/28, 7:30 PM rising star Yiddish songbird Nikitov sings material from across the Jewish diaspora at Joe’s Pub, $20

5/28, 7:30 PM the Queensboro Symphony Orchestra perform Bruckner’s “Te Deum” , in the debut of the Queensboro Symphonic Choir, plus  Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” featuring violin soloist Kae Nakano, and also cinematic composer-in-residence Paul Joseph’s “Cry of a Butterfly” and “First Tears of Spring” at Mary’s Nativity Church, 46-02 Parsons Blvd. (at Holly Ave.), Flushing,7 train to Flushing-Main St. and a comfortable 10-minute walk, or take the Q65 bus which stops 2 blocks away

5/28, 9 PM haunting, witchy art-rock songwriter/pianist Lorrie Doriza at Footlight Bar

5/29, 8 PM alto saxophonist and Bach scholar Jon DeLucia leads his octet playing fugues by Dave Van Kriedt, for the Brubeck Octet, along with new arrangements from De Lucia, Bill Holman, and Alec Wilder at Tea Lounge, 837 Union St. Park Slope, R to Union St. and walk uphill 

 5/29, 8 PM Matkot play their torchy Mediterranean vocal jazz at Silvana. 5/30, same time they’re at Shrine 

5/30, 7  PM purist, straightforward, warmly tuneful front-porch folk songwriter Joanna Sternberg at Terra Blues

5/30-31, 8/10 PM  ageless, perennially hard-hitting jazz piano sage and ex-Coltrane bandmate McCoy Tyner at the Blue Note, $30 standing room avail

5/30, 7:30 PM fiery alto saxophonist Lucas Pino’s twin-guitar No No Nonet at Smalls

5/30, 7:30/9?30 PM lyrical, lyrically-driven rising star jazz pianist Helen Sung’s Sung with Words with Ingrid Jensen – trumpet; John Ellis – tenor sax; Boris Kozlov – bass; Kendrick Scott – drums; Samuel Torres – percussion at the Jazz Standard, $25

5/30, 8 PM goth/industrial/art-rock legend JG Thirlwell presents Cholera Nocebo, a 50 minute electro-acoustic surround sound immersive cinematic tour de force at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec.

5/30, 8 PM the Dover Quartet play selections from Daniel Schlosberg’s Twin Peak Fantasy – a mashup of Angelo Badalamenti’s score  plus David Ludwig’s interstellar Pale Blue Dot, Caroline Shaw’s Plan & Elevation, and music from Angelo Badalamenti’s original score to Twin Peaks at the Poisson Rouge, $15 adv rtix rec

5/31, 1 PM the hard-hitting, vivid Cecilia Coleman Big Band at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex

5/31. 6 PM sensational Indian classical violinist/improviser Arun Ramamurthy with Bala Skandan on mridangam at the Rubin Museum of Art, free w/museum adm

5/31, 7 PM good twinbill, bad segue: darkly minimalist, atmospheric chamber pop/art-rock chanteuse Nico Turner followed by retro blue-eyed soul singer Janet LaBelle at the Mercury, $10

5/31, 7 PM psychedelic salsa and dub tropicalia from the Bay Area with Yellow House Orchestra at Hifi Bar

5/31, 7 PM terse, purposeful rising star postbop saxophonist Melissa Aldana leads her quintet at Smalls 

5/31, 7:30/9:30 PM adventurous pianist Glenn Zaleski leads his postbop trio at the Jazz Standard, $25

5/31, 8 PM rare Meredith Monk works performed by a vocal/piano/cello octet including singer Emily Eagen and cellist Clarice Jensen at Roulette, $20 adv tix rec

5/31, 8:30 PM Antibalas spinoff Armo play newschool Afrobeat at Bar Lunatico

5/31. 9 PM guitarist Alyse Lamb’s fiery, subtly witty tightly psychedelic jazz-inspired postpunk band Parlor Walls at C’Mon Everybody

5/31, 9ish brooding rainy-day Celtic-tinged songs of desperation and intrigue from Adam Masterson at 11th St Bar

5/31, 9:15 PM smart, creepy noir cabaret/circus rock band Orphan Jane followed by powerpopsters Gamblers at the Knitting Factory

5/31, 10 PM New York’s only Farsi funk group,haunting, psychedelic retro 60s/70s Iranian revivalists Mitra Sumara at Bar Chord

6/1, 7 PM  the LA Percussion Quartet play Andrew McIntosh’s epic 40-minute I Hold the Lion’s Paw, and Anna Thorsvaldsdottir’s earthy/unearthly Aura. They’ll also be premiering a virtual reality video from Chris Cerrone’s Memory Palace, at National Sawdust, $30

6/1-4, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical purist postbop trumpeter Sean Jones leads a killer, purist quartet with Orrin Evans – piano; Luques Curtis – bass; Obed Calvaire – drums at the Jazz Standard, $30

6/1, 7:30/9:30 PM the king of extended-technique trumpet, Peter Evans solo, then with a trio with Joel Ross – vibraphone; Max Jhin Jaffe – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $15

6/1, 8 PM dark urbane Romany song maven (and Berthold Brecht descendant) Sanda Weigl and her band with irrepressible trombonist Curtis Hasselbring at Barbes

6/1, 8 PM purist, soulful Chicago-style blues guitar shredder Ana Popovic and band at Highline Ballroom, $20

6/1, 8 PM Digital Diaspora play their trippy Afrobeat-influenced downtempo jams followed by bass goddess Felice Rosser’s ageless reggae-rock-groove band Faith at the Delancey, $10

6/1. 9 PM astonishingly kaleidoscopic art-rock/postrock band Bent Knee – like early Genesis meets Radiohead, on steroids – at Rough Trade, $12

6/1, 10 PM the Dojo Trio with bandoneon powerhouse Martin Sued, cellist Augustin Uriburu and drummer Damian Allegretti play smart, original tango and tropical themes at Caffe Vivaldi

6/1, 10ish trippy downtempo/Balkan-tinged groove instrumentalists Filtron M play the album release show for their new one at Nublu 151 (presumably reopened by that time)

6/1, 10 PM careeningly bluesy post-Stooges psych/garage rockers Acid Dad at Baby’s All Right, $12

6/1, 11 PM keyboardist and occasional Karla Rose collaborator Frank LoCrasto‘s cinematic organ sounds at Pete’s

6/2, 5:30 PM 19th century string band maven (and Four O’Clock Flower) Eli Smith at the American Folk Art Museum

6/2-3, 7:30/9:30 PM bassist Alexis Cuadrado leads a killer band with Claudia Acuña – voice; Miguel Zenón – alto saxophone; Robert Rodriguez – piano Mark Ferber – drums at the Jazz Gallery, $22

6/2, 7:30 PM former Dizzy Gillespie guitarist Ed Cherry with a killer trio:  Kyle Kohler on organ and Anwar Marshall on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12

6/2, 8 PM two of the individualistic voices from John Zorn’s Mycale vocal ensemble: the rapturous Sara Serpa and the playfully soaring Sofia Rei in a rare duo show at the Neighborhood Church, 269 Bleecker St. at Morton St., free

6/2. 8 PM alternately unhinged and trippy postrock instrumentalists Kleptocrat followed e eventually at 10 by psychedelic soul-rockers Madam West and then exhilarating Balkan/Romany/dub groove band Tipsy Oxcart  at C’Mon Everybody, $10 

6/2, 8 PM solo and duo improvisations from saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and koto paradigm-shifter Miya Masaoka at Issue Project Room, $15

6/2-3, 8 PM lyrical, noir-tinged pianist Frank Kimbrough with Jay Anderson & Jeff Hirshfield at Mezzrow, $20 at the bar

6/2, 9:30 PM a trancey triplebill with Tigue Percussion followed b ytrippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa , then a second Tigue set and finally Afrobeat band Underground System at National Sawdust, $20 adv tix rec

6/2, 9:30 PMe nigmatic female-fronted psychedelic pop/new wave band the New Tarot at American Beauty, $10

6/2, 10 PM this era’s most chillingly cinematic, shadowy reverbtoned noir guitar instrumentalists, Big Lazy at Barbes

6/2, 10 PM baritone crooner Sean Kershaw‘s Serpentones play “hi octane Brooklyn honkytonk” followed by noir-tinged fellow baritone singer/guitarslinger  Phil Gammage leading his four-piece band at Otto’s

6/2. 10:30 PM dazzlingly eclectic purist jazz singer Brianna Thomas and her band at the Django, $10 at the bar. 6/9, 7:30/9:30 PM she’s at Ginny’s Supper Club for twice that

6/2, 11 PM what the rest of the country is listening to – twangy highway rock and honkytonk with the Whiskey Gentry at Hill Country, $15

6/3, 6  PM guitarist Sean Cronin“s edgy, bracing Very Good project followed at 8 by Brooklyn’s funnest new band, psychedelic organ-driven Middle Eastern-tinged surf rock trio Hearing Things and at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

6/3, 8 PM the reliably entertaining, adventurous Chelsea Symphony play “Ms. Rubinstein’s Beauty,” a world premiere by Seth Bedford; plus Michael Blancaflor performs Frank Picarazzi’s Vibraphone Concertina; Melissa Kritzer performs Fernade Breilh Decruck’s Scherzo for bassoon; and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and Vocalise for orchestra at the DiMenna Center, $25. There’s another performance on 2/4 at 2 PM featuring Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano and Trumpet along with the Rachmaninoff.

6/3, 9 PM a killer, cheap triplebill at Bowery Electric: female-fronted power trio Castle Black – who veer between acidic Bush Tetras postpunk, stoner metal and more straight-up, sardonic punk, followed by careening, charismatic, lyrically-fueled soul-rockers No Ice – arguably Brooklyn’s best band – and Television lead guitar legend Richard Lloyd, $10. No Ice are also  playing the annual Northside Festival on June 9 at Main Drag Music and on the 10th at the Gutter; both of those shows at 11.

6/3, 9 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

6/3, 10 PM New York’s only Farsi funk group,haunting, psychedelic retro 60s/70s Iranian revivalists Mitra Sumara at Pete’s

6/4, 11:30 AM/1:30 PM erudite, purist torchy cosmopolitan jazz chanteuse Svetlana & the Delancey 5 play a Ella Fitzgerald centennial celebration tribute with special guest vocalist Charles Turner at the Blue Note for brunch, $35 prix fixe

6/4, the allday Mafrika Festival at Marcus Garvey Park

6/4, 3 PM the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York play mighty arrangements of ancient themes at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

6/4, 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

6/4, 7 PM individualistic, John Fahey-esque acoustic guitar instrumentalist David Rogers plays a mix of “Spanish, flamenco, uptempo Latin, Leonard Cohen, Rolling Stones, Tim Buckley, Roxy Music, Beatles, J.S. Bach and original compositions” at the third stage at the Rockwood, $10 

6/5, 9:30 PM Carolina Oliveros’ trippy tropicalia band Combo Chimbita, who mash up cumbia, salsa, champeta and a whole bunch of other south of the border styles at Barbes

6/6, drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM indie classical globetrotters International Contemporary Ensemble play animal behavior-inspired works at the Miller Theatre, free

6/6,  7 PM the Bushwick Book Club – a collective of incredibly diverse, typically excellent songwriters including irrepressibly fun ringleader Susan Hwang, the haunting Jessie Kilguss, and Ellia Bisker, of parlor pop mavens Sweet Soubrette – followed at 9ish by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party  at Barbes

6/7, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

6/7, 9:30 PM creepy, jangly, swirly retro 60s Laurel Canyon psychedelia with the Mystic Braves at the Mercury, $14 adv tix rec

6/7, 10 PM haunting, epic, tunefully individualistic pianist/composer Fabian Almazan performs his latest work, Alcanza (“Reach”), a nine movement suite written for his Rhizome large ensemble (voice, guitar, strings, piano, bass, drums and electronics) at National Sawdust

6/8, noon Ramsey Lewis – the now-octogenarian pianist who basically invented soul jazz all by himself at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/8, 7 PM  pianist Klara Min performs preludes by Scriabin and Chopin alongside Sean Hickey’s meditative Birds of Barclay Street, dedicated to the memory of those murdered on September 11, 2001, at Symphony Space, $15

6/8, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by formidable, reliably tuneful guitarist Tom Csatari‘s large-ensemble Americana jazz project Uncivilized playing Zappa tunes. Their Chico Hamilton tribute was out of character (tunewise anyway) but off the hook nonetheless. Missed them doing John Fahey, which is closer to home for them. How they’ll do this is a mystery.

6/8, 8 PM night one of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15: Evan Mazunik and Zaha followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and then at 10 by iconic klezmer trumpeter Frank London & Co.

6/8, 8:30 PM ethereally enchanting art-folk autoharpist/singer Elizabeth Devlin,at at Pete’s

6/8, 8 :30 PM haunting tsimbl (Ukraininan Jewish zither) player Zev Feldman and band at the Jalopy, $15

6/8, 9:30 PM reliably unpredictable, assaultively tuneful guitarist Brandon Seabrook and his large ensemble play the album release show for his new one Die Trommel Fatale  at Joe’s Pub, $15

6/8, 10 PM fiery garage rock band the NY Fowl Harmonic – a Gato Loco spinoff – at Hank’s

6/9, 6 PM Lusterlit play their ominous, noirish literary chamber pop followed by up-and-coming paisley underground band Moji Abiola – who add soulful vocals to the psychedelic mix – at the American Folk Art Museum

6/9, 7 PM a benefit at Drom for Brooklyn’s best venue, Barbes featuring an unbeatable lineup including mystical Moroccan trance-dance band Innov Gnawa, allstar brass pickup group Fanfare Barbès, (with members of Red Baraat, Slavic Soul Party and Banda de los Muertos), elegantly  menacing film noir instrumental icons Big Lazy, Colombian folk reinventors Bulla en el Barrio and torrential Bahian drum orchestra Maracatu NY; advance tix a bargain at $20.

6/9, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar – guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow –followed at 10 by awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra  at Barbes.

6/9, 8 PM fearlessly haunting, dynamic, charismatic Romany/Balkan chanteuse Eva Salina with pyrotechnic accordionist Peter Stan followed at by by Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra celebrating their 10 year anniversary playing rare noir jazz and cinematic themes at the Jalopy, $12 adv tix available at the venue

6/9, 8ish the New Students play their fun, lyrically amusing, newschool trad brlugrass at Hometown BBQ in Red Hook. 6/25 they’re playing the album release show for their excellent new one at the big room at the Rockwood

6/9-10, 8 PM iconic avant garde composer Meredith Monk sings works in progress with her vocal ensemble including Ellen Fisher, Katie Geissinger, Allison Sniffin, Jo Stewart at Queenslab, 1618 Decatur St, Ridgewood, L to Halsey St

6/9, 8 PM night two of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15:: Mob Job and Walter Thompson followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and at 10 by Matt Lavelle’s 12 Houses (Extended Unit) with Gil Selinger

6/9, 8:30 PM epically tuneful, anthemic, sometimes pastorally -inclined jazz guitarist Chris Jentsch leads his quartet playing the album release show for his new one Fractured Pop at I-Beam, $15

6/9, 10 PM hilarious, sardonically careening glam/party band Haley Bowery & the Manimals at Hanks, be aware of $8 cover

6/10, 3 PM violinist Marshall Coid, clarinetist Justin Vance and pianist Mimi Stern-Wolfe play trios by Milhaud and Kachaturian plus Stravinsky’s L’Histoire Du Soldat at St Marks Church, 10th St/2nd Ave, $15 sugg don

6/10, 4 PM trumpeter Ben Holmes and accordionist Patrick Farrell – two thirds of the fiery Yiddish Art Trio – followed at 6 by edgy jazz guitarist Sean Cronin“s bracing Very Good project at Barbes

6/10, 7:30 PM the NY Festival Orchestra play works by Mozart, Bach, Sibelius, Grieg, and premieres by Hampson Sisler and Takeichiro Hirai with gradeschool prodigy violinist sisters Fiona and Hina Khuong-Huu  at  Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church,152 W 66 St,$10

6/10, 8 PM creepy Laurel Canyon art-rock/psych-folk/dark Americana band Quicksilver Daydream followed at 9 by wryly surreal prozac rock  duo the Dream Eaters at Pete’s . The Dream Eaters are also here on 6/16 at 9.

6/10, 8 PM Romany guitar legend Stephane Wrembel airs out material from his wildly eclectic, psychedelic new double album The Django Experiment at Drom, $15 adv tix rec. At 11 (separate $15 adv tix adm) Brooklyn Balkan brass faves Slavic Soul Party featuring sensational Serbian trumpeter Demirhan Cerimovic, first-prize winner at the prestigious Guca Trumpet Festival

6/10, 8 PM night three of a three-night series of Butch Morris-influenced largescale improvisations at the original Nublu, 62 Ave. C, $15: cornetist Kirk Knuffke‘s “For Butch”followed at 9 by the Walter Thompson Orchestra and at 10 by iconic drummer Kenny Wollesen & the Stone Clouds

6/10, 9 PM one of the great saxophonists in the history of ska, Dave Hillyard & the Rocksteady 7 at Hank’s

6/10, 10 PM Random Test bring their roots reggae back to their home base, Shrine

6/11, 4 PM ish fiery electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at the Hoboken Arts & Music Festival, Washington St. bet. 8th & 14th St.

6/11, 7 PM funk legend and golden age hip-hop: Main Source and George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, hosted by the realest of all Roxannes, Roxanne Shante at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Grand Central Pkwy., Whitestone Exwy. bet. 111 St. & College Point Blvd., Park Drive E. in Queens

6/12, 9:30 PM Los Cumpleanos play psychedelic cumbias with new wave synths & retro organ, effect-laden trombone and trumpet as well as a three piece percussion section – at Barbes

6/13, drinks at 5:30, music at 6 PM the Mivos Quartet play a program TBA at the Miller Theatre, free

6/13, 7 PM reliably unpredictable, assaultively tuneful guitarist Brandon Seabrook leads his trio followed at 9 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party  at Barbes

6/13, 7:30 PM cantors Ida Rae Cahana, Elizabeth Shammash, Raphael Frieder, and Alberto Mizrahi backed by pianist Yehudi Wyner sing popular and obscure Yiddish works from both western and eastern Europe by Mordecai Gebirtig – inventor of the crime rhyme – plus elegant art songs by Lazar Weiner, theatre music by Moses Milner, the brooding Solomon Rosowsky,the fiery Janot Roskin, plus songs by Solomon Golub, Mikhl Gelbart, Joel Engel, and Maurice Rauch at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W 16th St., $15

6/13, 7:30 PM the Havana Lyceum Orchestra with pianist Simone Dinnerstein play works by Mozart and Carlos Fariñas at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

6/13, 8 PM the NY Phil play Dvorak’s New World Symphony, selections from Bernstein’s West Side Story and Gershwin’s An American in Paris at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, free, enter the park from Broadway, near W 251st St, concert site is north of the baseball fields. The program repeats on 6/15 at 8 in Cunningham Park in Queens

6/13, 8:30 PM popular newschool blue-eyed soul/Motown/swing band Lake Street Dive at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/14, 7 PM in reverse order: klezmer icons the Klezmatics, Hasidic ngunim soul band Zusha, wry a-cappella ensemble the Maccabeats with special guest cantors Chaim David Berson and Yanky Lemmer at Central Park Summerstage

6/14, 8 PM the NY Phil play Dvorak’s Carnival Overture and New World Symphony plus works by Ravel, Masssenet, and Saint-Saens at the great lawn in Central Park, free, enter at 72nd St. and Central Park West. The program repeats on 6/16 at 8 at Prospect Park

6/14, 8:30 PM the wildfire NY Gypsy All-Stars  joined by brilliant guest oudist Ara Dinkjian at Drom, $10 advance tix rec

6/15, 8:30 PM edgy, funny Russian-French klezmer band Dobranotch at the Jalopy, $15

6/15, 9 PM quirky, smartly lyrical avant chamber pop with the Icebergs – Jane LeCroy – vox; Tom Abbs – cello; David Rogers-Berry – drums – at Pete’s

6/16, 5:30 PM

6/16, 8 PM keyboardist Dave Kadden’s Drunken Foreigner Band – sort of a Brooklyn counterpart to Dengue Fever, or a Thai Chicha Libre – followed at by the self-explanatory Zozo Afrobeat at Barbes

6/16, 6 PM haunting trumpeter/santoorist Amir ElSaffar Rivers of Sound orchestra plays the album release show for their new stormy, darkly relevant new one, Not Two, on the Plaza at 28 Liberty St. (William/Broad) in the financial district, free

6/16, 6 PM sardonic acoustic punks Norwood at the American Folk Art Museum

6/16, 8 PM night one of the Jalopy’s annual International Music Festival with Zong Li Lu playing ethereal, hypnotic Chinese monochord fook, at 9 haunting flamenco chanteuse Julia Patinella, at 10 high-voltage son jarocho folk-punks Radio Jarocho  and at 10 Sharq Attack with Marandi Hostetter, 5 string violin; Brian Prunka, oud; John Murchison, double bass and Philip Mayer, percussion jamming out classic Middle Eastern themes, $20

6/17, 7 PM night two of the Jalopy’s annual International Music Festival with Sangita Mukhiya Chhochoon with Nhuchhe Fangol on tabla & Bimal Dangi on harmonium playing Nepali songs, followed at 8 by Zikrayat playing cinematic classics from the golden age of Arabic song, at 9 by Bomba y Plena with Jorge Vazquez -doing bouncy Puerto Rican grooves, at 10 African dance band Akoko Nante and at 11 wild, spiraling, rare rustic minor-key Polesian klezmer dances and grooves with Litvakus, $20

6/17, 8 PM catchy oldtimey all-female string band the Calamity Janes followed at 10 by Oxygen Box playing Haitian-inspired roots reggae

6/18, 3 PM Blythe Gruda sings her enigmatic art-rock and parlor pop at Pete’s

6/18, 4 PM Angel Lam’s moody, mysterious musical theatre piece Lost in Shanghai, with a score spanning from classical to Chinese to art-rock at Flushing Town Hall, $10

6/18. 10 PM eclectic Florida roots reggae band the Ellameno Beat at Shrine

6/20, noon New Orleans’ darkly shuffling, explosively funky Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/20, 8 PM Red Gretchen play their slowly undulating, doomy psychedelic/art-rock grooves at Shrine

6/21, 3:15 PM hilarious, fearlessly political performance artist/satirist/loopmusic singer Killy Dwyer followed at 6 by funky, lyrically intense dark folk jamband the Sometime Boys– with the riveting Sarah Mucho on vocals – and eventually at 8 by smartly political faux-French retro 60s psych-pop band les Sans Culottes outdoors at Freddy’s

6/21, 6 PM psychedelic funk and Afrobeat with the People’s Champs at the corner of Pearl and Willoughby St, downtown Brooklyn, free

6/21, 7 PM charming psychedelic 90s hip-hop nostalgia: Digable Planets at Coffey Park, Verona St. bet. Richard St. and Dwight St. in Red Hook

6/21, 8 PM one of the year’s hottest jazz lineups: the Rolling Stones’ Tim Ries on sax, leading a quintet with Randy Brecker, the great Chano Dominguez on piano, with James Genus on bass and Clarence Penn on drums, for real, at Drom, $15 adv tix rec.

6/22, noon Gulf Coast soul band the Suffers play their horn-infused sounds at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

6/22, 8 PM stark, banjo-fueled North Carolina noir Americana string band the Resonant Rogues at Shrine

6/23, 5:30 PM charming oldtime C&W/front-porch folk harmony band Holler at the American Folk Art Museum

6/23, 7:30 PM 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 a John Coltrane tribute followed by tenor sax legend Pharaoh Sanders and his group at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/24, 5 PM newschool fado star Sofia Ribeiro, assaultive goth/Stooges punk duo Dead Combo with special guest Marc Ribot and Portuguese band the Gift at Central Park Summerstage 

6/24, 9 PM hip-hop brass: New Orleans  ensemble the Soul Rebels with special guests Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch and Kirk Knight at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/25, 4 PM the guy who built the Temple of Hip-Hop, KRS-1 at at Coffey Park Verona St. bet. Richard St. and Dwight St. in Red Hook

6/25, 6 PM in reverse order: a site-specific performance by the epically stygian Eli Keszler, cumulo-nimbus vocal experimentalist Stine Motland, enigmatically ambient reedwoman Lea Bertucci, the reliably fun Tilt Brass and avant garde marching band Ashcan Orchestra at the Knockdown Center, $15

6/25, 8:30 PM an excellent Americana twinbill album release show: purist retro rock and C&W bandleader Monica Passin and her rockabilly outfit, Li’l Mo and the Monicats, followed by haunting DC songwriter Mary Battista & Little Pink at the Treehouse at 2A 

6/25, 9:30 PM Navin Chettri‘s band makes jazz out of rarely heard Nepali themes at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

6/26, 5 PM riveting, theatrical, amazingly eclectic Korean psychedelic folk band Coreyah, theatrical, high-voltage Korean disco band Ssing Ssing and Korean rappers Year of the Ox at Central Park Summerstage

6/26, 8:30 PM thoughtful, often riveting violinist Sarah Bernstein leads her microtonal improvising quartet – Ron Stabinsky – piano; Stuart Popejoy – electric bass; Satoshi Takeishi – drums – at Cornelia St. Cafe, $10 + $10 min

6/26, 8:30 PM eclectic Celtic/baroque pop harpist/singer Kristin Rebecca at the big room at the Rockwood, $10 

6/27, noon Cuban son legends Septeto Santiaguero at Metrotech Park in downtown Brooklyn

 6/27, 7:30 PM violinist Lara St. John leads a chamber ensemble performing works by Britten, Vaughan Williams and Jessie Montgomery at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

6/27. 9:30  PM Indian-inspired, ex-Sharon Jones organist Colin Brown leads his trio at Freddy’s

6/28, 5 PM Yotoco play psychedelic cumbia and boleros at the corner of Pearl and Willoughby St, downtown Brooklyn, free

6/28, 7 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue followed by Rare Essence at Betsy Head Park, Dumont Ave. & Strauss St., in Brownsville, 3 to Saratoga Ave. 

6/29, 7:30 PM noir mambo powerhouse Orkesta Mendoza followed by Mexican-American folk song reinventor Lila Downs at Prospect Park Bandshell

6/30, 7 PM St Lenox play their insightfully lyrical, fearlessly populist soul and parlor pop at the park at 125th St. and the Hudson

6/30, 10 PM slinky original rocksteady with Osekre & the Lucky Bastards at Shrine

6/30, 11 PM edgy, guitar-fueled peak era King Crimson-ish art-rockers Woodhead at Hank’s

7/1, 5 PM in reverse order: NYC’s arguably finest oldtime swing band Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the charming, female-fronted cosmopolitan swing crew Avalon Jazz Band and 20s jazz chanteuse Aurora Nealand at Central Park Summerstage

7/7, 7:30 PM psychedelic funk and Afrobeat with the People’s Champs at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/8, 5 PM the Jimmy Heath Big Band at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/8, 6 PM the haunting, eclectic, harmonically rich all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache and legendary Colombian Caribbean singer Totó La Momposina at Central Park Summerstage

7/8, 7 PM spot-on Fela cover band Chop & Quench followed by Jamaican dancehall hitmaker Chronixx at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/9, 5 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue followed by 70s disco hitmakers the Ohio Players at Springfield Park, 184th St. & 146th Terrace  in Springfield Gardens, Queens

7/9, 7 PM Lyla Cante play their fiery, kinetic blend of flamenco and Sephardic sounds at Pier One on the upper west side 

7/11, 7:30 PM popular indie classical orchestra the Knights play works by Mozart (Symphony No. 40), Purcell and John Adams at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/14-15, 8 PM Gong Linna and the Bang on a Can All-Stars play her new Chinese mythology-themed art-rock suite Cloud River Mountain at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St,, $25 seats avail

7/15, 2 PM in reverse order: popular 80s Argentine janglerockers Los Pericos, LA psychedelic latin soul stars Chicano Batman and La Vida Bohéme at Central Park Summerstage 

7/16, 4ish in reverse order: cinematic vibraphone soul legend Roy Ayers, Afrobeat dance band Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and Brooklyn’s Underground System at Central Park Summerstage

7/16, 7 PM the intoxicatingly clattering, sintir bass lute fueled Moroccan trance grooves of Innov Gnawa  at Pier One on the upper west side

7/17, 7:30 PM the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play Bach Brandenburg Concertos at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

7/17, 8ish 90s noiserock/janglerock icons Yo La Tengo – as vital as ever – at Central Park Summerstage

7/21, 6 PM vintage soul band Felix Hernandez’s Rhythm Revue and ageless boogaloo bandleader Joe Bataan at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/21, 7:30 PM trippy, otherworldly, ancient North African dance percussion ensemble Innov Gnawa  open for intense, psychedelic Malian microtonal guitar-and-vocal band Amadou & Mariam at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/22, 5 PM trippy Afrobeat group Budos Band on their  home tuft at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/22, 7:30 PM psychedelic, relentlessly kinetic piano-driven dancefloor postrockers Dawn of Midi followed by Beirut Middle Eastern/postrock band Mashrou’ Leila at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/23, 5 PM the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA at Corporal Thompson Park, Broadway btwn Markham Rd. & Wayne St., Staten Island

7/23, 7 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 Pier One on the upper west side

7/26, noon high-voltage accordion-and-microtonal sax-fueled original Balkan tunes with Tipsy Oxcart at Madison Square Park, free

7/26, 7 PM intoxicatingly fun, bouncy Colombian coastal dance grooves with Tribu Baharu at Madison Square Park, free

7/27, 7 PM in reverse order at Damrosch Park: fearlessly populist LA folk-punks Las Cafeteras, our own Alynda Segarra aka Hurray For the Riff Raff,, trippy downtempo guy Helado Negro and fiery, dramatic belter Xenia Rubinos

7/27, 7:30 PM fiery agitator Rev. Billy & the Church of  Stop Shopping Choir – sort of the Dead Kennedys or Public Enemy of original, politically spot-on original gospel music –  followed bytrumpeter Steven Bernstein’s legendary noir jazz outfit Sexmob playing a live score to the 1926 silent film Maciste All’Inferno at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/28, 6 PM popular salsa songstress La India at St. Mary’s Park, St Mary’s St bet. St Ann’s Ave and Jackson Ave in the Bronx, 2/5 to Jackson Ave

7/28, 7 PM Eljuri play their ferocious, brilliantly guitar-driven, fearlessly populist rock en Espanol at the park at 125th St. and the Hudson

7/28, 7 PM International Contemporary Ensemble plays Pauline Oliveros’ Applebox Double, Heart of Tones and One Hundred Meeting Places  on the plaza at Lincoln Center

7/28, 7:30 PM popular jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding and band followed by chamber pop/lit-rock icon Andrew Bird at Prospect Park Bandshell

7/28, 7:30 PM charming oldtime swing harmony trio Duchess – Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou – sing Andrews Sisters tunes to accompany a dance performance at Damrosch Park

7/29, 6 PM Taiwanese bands in reverse order: catchy pop-punks Fire Ex, low-key folksinger Dadado Huang + Berry j and Sangpuy at Central Park Summerstage

7/29, 7:30 PM would you sit (or, more likely, snooze) through a set by a British pop moppet at Damrosch Park just to see Dionne Warwick play a handful of songs? Maybe we should call the psychic hotline and find out!

7/29, 8 PM harrowing Palestinian oud ensemble Le Trio Joubran play the US premiere of their elegaic suite of settings of Mahmoud Darwish poems on themes of exile and resistance at the Lynch Theater at John Jay College,524 W 59th St, $30 seats avail

7/30, 5ish pioneering golden-age female hip-hop star MC Lyte at Central Park Summerstage

7/30, 7 PM La Mecanica Popular play their original, psychedelic update on classic 70s Nuyorican salsa dura at Pier One on the upper west side

8/1, 7:30 PM the East Coast Chamber Orchestra play works by Holst, Shostakovich and Bach at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, free

8/2, noon upbeat original ska with the Brown Rice Family at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7 PM all-female Americana harmony trio the Wild Reeds at Madison Square Park, free

8/2, 7:30 PM Ibibio Sound Machine play EDM with hints of Afrobeat followed by Angelique Kidjo and band covering a crappy Talking Heads album at Damrosch Park

8/3, 7:30 PM newschool cabaret agitator Nellie McKay followed by perennially fun, psychedelic banjo jamband leader Bela Fleck at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/3, 7;30 PM dance sequences from Bollywood film set to live music by a group TBA at Damrosch Park. Followed at 10:30 PM by a “silent screening” of The Big Lebowski where everybody wears headphones, supplied by the venue. Guess this means we have to text our buddies to share a laugh or two during the film.

8/4, 7;30 PM orchestral hip-hop: violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson leads a chamber orchestra playing a J Dilla tribute at Damrosch Park

8/5, 3ish Orquesta Criolla Nacional de Puerto Rico on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/5, 7:30 PM second-wave surf rock icons Los Straitjackets and British roots-rock maven Nick Lowe at Damrosch Park

8/5, 8:30 PM pantheonic, eclectic guitar hero Nels Cline leads his big pastoral jazz band at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/6, 1 PM Albanian superstar vocal/accordion duo Merita Halili & Raif Hyseni and the Cheres Ukrainian Folk Ensemble on the plaza at Lincoln Center

8/6, 5 PM hardcore late 90s hip-hop nostalgia with Jadakiss at Crotona Park North to South, Fulton Ave to Southern Blvd and Crotona Park East in the Bronx, 3 to Freeman St. 

8/9, 7:30 PM spectacular, fiery Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda followed by the swinging salsa dura sounds of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at Damrosch Park

8/9, 8:30 PM alto sax icon Kenny Garrett and his band at Madison Square Park, free

8/10, 7  PM lush improvising orchestra Burnt Sugar at East River Park

8/10, 7:30 PM the Brooklyn United Marching Band followed by jazz piano star Jason Moran and the Wordless Music Orchestra playing a live score to the film Selma at Prospect Park Bandshell

8/11, 6 PM Andy Montanez,  El Godfather de la Salsa, Puerto Rican bolero singer/songwriter legend at East River Park

8/16, 7 PM hard-driving, often noir-tinged swing pianist/singer Davina & the Vagabonds at Madison Square Park, free

8/20, 5 PM  in reverse order: the year’s best outdoor show with ageless Ethiopian jazz composer Mulatu Astatke, fiery Tunisian art-rocker Emel Mathlouthi and slinky Middle Eastern/Nile Delta band Alsarah & the Nubatones at Central Park Summerstage

 8/25, 7 PM the lavish, sax/clarinet-fueled Anat Cohen Tentet at Marcus Garvey Park

8/26, 3 PM in reverse order:  cool jazz legends the Lee Konitz Quartet, dynamic drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, postbop drummer Louis Hayes and his group, and powerful belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor –  Charenee Wade at Marcus Garvey Park

8/27, 4 PM in reverse order: state-of-the-art alto postbop with the Joshua Redman Quartet, oldschool soul-jazz man Lou Donaldson, and the ferociously intense, charismatic Tia Fuller at Tompkins Square Park