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Saturday, November 22, 2008

ONE SINGULARITY SENSATION: GAMELAN GALAK TIKA + ENSEMBLE ROBOT

Broad Institute Auditorium

 

What made Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira the future-dread masterpiece it was? The punky animation style and epic story line are obvious answers, but perhaps just as important is the pulse-pounding gamelan soundtrack: reedy, jackhammering rhythms not much younger than civilization itself, yet capable of conjuring the seedy neon streets of 21st-century Neo-Tokyo. In that same spirit of fusing technology and tradition, MIT’s ENSEMBLE ROBOT and GAMELAN GALAK TIKA come together to bring us another evening of Balinese music performed by both machines — including Heliphon, a double-helix-shaped xylophone droid — and “carbon-based musicians” (i.e., humans). Sci gets a little less fi at MIT’s Broad Institute Auditorium, 7 Cambridge Center, Cambridge | 4 pm | $15; $10 students and seniors; $5 MIT/Harvard students and children under 12 | http://www.galaktika.org or http://www.ensemblerobot.org.
 

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

YEAR OF THE DANCE COMPLEX

Dance Complex


Actually it’s the 17th year of the DANCE COMPLEX, and in these tough times, that’s reason enough to call your birthday concert of faculty choreography “It Was a Very Good Year.” Wendy Jehlen, Danny McCusker, Rozann Kraus, Danny Swain, Margot Parsons, Diane Arvanites-Noya, Tommy Neblett, Ricardo Foster, and Anna Myer will be on the bill at 536 Mass Ave, Cambridge | November 22 @ 8 pm; November 23 @ 7 pm | $17 | 617.547.9363 or http://www.dancecomplex.org.
 

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

YEAR OF THE SERPENT: BOSTON CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA

Faneuil Hall


The next Chinese Year of the Snake doesn’t roll around till 2013, but 2008 is looking like the Year of the Serpent, that old-fashioned bass wind instrument with the brass mouthpiece and the deep blat. It’ll be featured in next month’s Christmas Revels, which this year has a Thomas Hardy theme. But you can get an idea of what it sounds like this weekend as BSO bass-trombonist DOUGLAS YEO joins STEVEN LIPSITT and the BOSTON CLASSICAL ORCHESTRA for Gordon Bowie’s Concerto for Serpent (Old Dances in New Shoes) and, on the ophicleide (another ancestor of the tuba), Handel’s “O Ruddier Than the Cherry.” Bookending the program will be Haydn’s Symphony No. 10 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, at Faneuil Hall, Boston | November 22 @ 8 pm; November 23 @ 3 pm | $32-$57; $18 students | 617.423.3883 or http://www.bostonclassicalorchestra.org.
 

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

STEPPE IT UP: HUUN-HUUR-TU

Somerville Theatre


It’s hard not to marvel at the mind-boggling feat that is Tuvan throat singing (in which a performer achieves a harmonic sound with a single voice), even if its somewhat insectile drone creeps you out a little. And few Tuvans are as accomplished at the human didgeridoo act as HUUN-HUUR-TU, whose cosmic name — “sun propeller,” a reference to the kind of sunlight refraction observed at dusk and dawn — is all but a dead-on description of their manifold sound. Remember, this singing style is known for being able to carry across the Siberian plains, so just imagine the kind of sonic shiatsu your cochlea will be receiving at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq, Somerville | 8 pm | $28 | 617.876.4275 or http://worldmusic.org.
 

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

CLASSICAL GAS I: DONAL FOX

Regattabar


The source material and the piano/vibes front line might recall a revered jazz “chamber” group, but DONAL FOX’s “Scarlatti Project” ain’t your daddy’s Modern Jazz Quartet. With vibist Warren Wolf, bassist John Lockwood, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, pianist Fox’s mash-up of blues, Baroque, funky grooves, jazz, and improvisation whips up a storm. They’re at the Regattabar, in the Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St, Cambridge | 7:30 pm: $25; 10 pm: $22 | 617.395.7757 or http://www. regattabarjazz.com.
 

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

CLASSICAL GAS II: LUDOVICO EINAUDI

David Friend Recital Hall


The Neapolitan composer/pianist LUDOVICO EINAUDI is a superstar in Europe, and his Divenire (Decca) has been on Billboard’s “Classical Crossover” chart since its June release. Yes, it’s cinematic (his next big release is the soundtrack to The Reader, with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes), and yes, there’s a bit of Philip-Glass-meets-George-Winston in his slow-moving harmonies and pretty melodies, but there’s an appealing pulse and minor-key tug in his electronically enhanced canvases. Anyway, he’s playing only five US dates on this tour, one of them tonight at David Friend Recital Hall, in Berklee’s Uchida Building, 921 Boylston St, Boston | 8 pm | $45 | 617.931.2000 or http://ticketmaster.com.
 

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

ANGUISH REVISITED: WARCHILD

Coolidge Corner Theatre


With all the conflict and catastrophe that have taken place in the interim, the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s seem like ancient history. Not so for the young Bosnian mother who is the heroine of German director Christian Wagner’s WARCHILD [Stille Sehnsucht] (2006). Her brutalization in rape camps does not equal the anguish she suffers at being separated from her two-year-old daughter, and she spends 10 years trying to find the girl, an ordeal made that much more poignant by Labina Mitevska’s lacerating performance. It screens at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | 1 pm | 617.734.2501 or http://www.coolidge.org.
 

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

SWEET TENOR: BOZ SCAGGS

Wilbur Theatre


Seventies blue-eyed soul crooner BOZ SCAGGS is back with Speak Low (Decca), a convincing set of “jazz standards, blues, and ballads” arranged by the gifted jazz keyboardist and composer Gil Goldstein. Scaggs’s gravelly purr and incisive phrasing seem pre-ordained for this kind of late-career move — but you can see for yourself when he comes to the Wilbur Theatre for two shows with a superb jazz line-up that includes Goldstein, bassist Steve Rodby, reedmen Bob Sheppard and Paul McCandless, drummer/percussionist Jason Lewis, and back-up vocalist Miss Mone’t | 246 Tremont St, Boston | 4 + 7:30 pm | $50 | 617.931.2000 or http://www.ticketmaster.com.
 

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

LAST CHANCE DEP’T: BORROMEO STRING QUARTET + BOSTON CECILIA

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum


To get in some serious classical music before Thanksgiving, that is. The BORROMEO STRING QUARTET concludes its series of the complete Shostakovich string quartets with Nos. 13-15, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 the Fenway, Boston | 1:30 pm | $23; $18 seniors; $10 students; $5 ages 5-17 | 617.278.5156 or http://www.gardnermuseum.org. And DONALD TEETERS leads the BOSTON CECILIA in Bach’s B-minor Mass, with soprano Jessica Cooper, mezzo-soprano Krista River, countertenor Martin Near, tenor Thomas Cooley, baritone Jeffrey Gall, and the Cecilia Chorus and Period Orchestra, at Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough St, Boston | 3 pm | $15-$62 | 617.232.4540 or http://www.bostoncecilia.org.
 

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Monday, November 24, 2008

GIRL ANACHRONISM GOES SOLO: AMANDA PALMER

Paradise Rock Club

 

Dresden Dolls cracked crooner AMANDA PALMER graces the Paradise for two nights in support of her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer?, joined by the BUILDERS AND THE BUTCHERS and VERMILLION LIES. Watch the Brigade attempt to mosh to ballads about school shootings at 967 Comm Ave, Boston | November 24-25 | 8 pm | $25 | 617.931.2000 or http://www.ticketmaster.com.
 

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Monday, November 24, 2008

AVANT-O-RAMA!: DAVID BRYANT + JAMES KAMAL JONES + JAMES MERENDA + MIKE RIVARD

Outpost 186

 

There should be some Ornette-quality heat generated when two former Coleman sidemen, keyboardist DAVID BRYANT and drummer JAMES KAMAL JONES, get together with fearless alto-sax terrorist JAMES MERENDA and Club d’Elf main man/bassist MIKE RIVARD at Outpost 186, 186-1/2 Hampshire St, Cambridge | 8 pm | $10 | 617.876.0860 or http://www.zeitgeist-outpost.org.
 

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

MODEL BEHAVIOR: MORLEY

Regattabar

 

Singer-songwriter MORLEY got her career lift as a fashion model, and she sang in the TV commercials for Ralph Lauren’s My Romance fragrance early this year, but don’t hold that against her — the 33-year-old chanteuse seems never to have shaken the Queens funk out of her feet. On her debut, Seen (Wrasse), which is out today, she matches sure phrasing and a plummy voice (with a bit of grit in the honey and an especially fetching lower register) with sharp, bluesy, groove-infused songwriting. Hey: hooks, grooves, pipes, and smart, often politically charged, lyrics. What’s not to like? She’s at the Regattabar, in the Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St, Cambridge | 7:30 pm | $12 | 617.395.7757 or http://www.regattabarjazz.com.
 

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

TRYPTOPHANTASTIC: THANKSGIVING DAY DINNER AT THE BEEHIVE

Beehive

 

Come Turkey Day, should you find yourself stranded in Boston without a family or, say, a working oven to rely on, THANKSGIVING DAY DINNER AT THE BEEHIVE’s got you covered. Pitch that Hungry Man gray-meat platter in the trash and instead revel in the art-plastered subterranean confines of the Beehive, where you’ll be treated to such artisanal belly busters as sweet-potato gnocchi, wild-mushroom brioche stuffing, cranberry chutney, and of course, plenty of roasted gobbler, all with a side of live bluegrass music. Prix-fixe menu options $25; RSVPs strongly encouraged | 541 Tremont St, Boston | 2 pm–1 am | 617.423.0069 or http://www.beehiveboston.com.
 

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

STINK, STANK, STUNK: DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL

Wang Theatre

 

He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch, and he’s bringing his Advent antagonism our way: tonight Boston gets its first look at DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! THE MUSICAL, which has broken holiday box-office records for the past two years on Broadway. Stefán Karl Stefánsson, who’s best known for playing Robbie Rotten on Nickelodeon’s LazyTown, should have no trouble getting into character as the cross-eyed critter with the heart “two sizes too small” who’s out to ruin Christmas for the citizens of Whoville in this Seuss-inspired extravaganza. Drawing on lyrics by Timothy Mason and additional music by Mel Marvin, Matt August duplicates the direction of three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien, who — emulating Horton — hatched the idea for the show. Work off your roast-beast coma at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St, Boston | November 26–December 28 | $28-$78 | 866.348.9738 or http://www.citicenter.org.
 

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

ROCKABILLY AND GIBLETS: CRANK-TONES + COACHMEN

Midway Cafe

 

Those of you who don’t have to jump into a plane, a train, or an automobile tonight and scurry off to see the family should feel free to kick back with a tumbler of Maker’s Mark and have yourself a merry little white-trash evening with local rockabilly stalwarts the CRANK-TONES and the COACHMEN at the Midway, 3496 Washington St, Jamaica Plain | 9 pm | 617.524.9038 or http://midwaycafe.com.