Jenny Scheinman is a catalyst of beautiful moments. Once, while recording an album with Lucinda Williams she coaxed the whole crew up to the roof for a candlelight dinner. Magical. Another time, she brought Paul Motian and Jason Moran together for a trio concert at the Village Vanguard. Superb. And one night, she invited banjo master Danny Barnes to join her at Barbes. The result: a space jammed with banjo players. Terrific. Last month the... [continue]

Composer Adam Mirza, and saxophonist Michael Ibrahim both lead their own groups. One's called Amp, the other Riot. Judging by titles, one might expect death metal, or by appearance, chamber music. But like many ensembles in New York today, these two groups fall under the category "new music," a term used to denote a genre that employs a vast lexicon of extended techniques to coax sounds from instruments generally deemed classical. Like the technology that... [continue]

Jazz in New York is lingering in a precarious state. It’s certainly not for lack of musicians, or audiences -- but it’s something that has been plaguing New York for decades: there just aren’t enough venues. Last summer, Adam Schatz, a jazz studies student at NYU, and organist in the band The Teenage Prayers, started a rock series in Brooklyn called Zombieville. After a successful first few months, some of his buddies suggested he start... [continue]

New York's about to get a lot shadier. According to the NY Times, the City Planning Commission just approved a new section of the Zoning Resolution, that requires developers to plant trees. For every 25-feet of street, one tree must be planted. This new rule goes hand in hand with MillionTreesNYC, an initiative of the Parks Department and New York Restoration Project that aims to plant one million new trees in the next ten years... [continue]

Hotelier Jason Pomeranc is creating posh microcosms of gentility all over the city. Since his luxury boutique hotel brand launched seven years ago with the opening of 60 Thompson, Pomeranc has opened two more New York properties, 6 Columbus and Gild Hall. Now, everybody's wondering when his next venture, Thompson LES, at 200 Allen Street will swing open its doors to what The Observer says has become "a no-man’s land of rats, dirty streets and... [continue]

Three years ago, Adam Mansbach shook up the world of fiction with his debut novel Angry Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, a satire about "race, whiteness and hip hop." Dubbed "a remarkably successful remix of the traditional race novel," the book was hailed as the 21st century's answer to Native Son. Not bad for a guy who at the time was barely 30. With his latest novel, The End of the... [continue]

A new PBS show called A Little Bit of Brooklyn, that presents the borough's cultural nuggets, premieres today on WLIW. Hosted by Cobble Hill foodie Terry Corraro, the first episode features the Gubernats, a Polish family from Greenpoint, who keep their cultural traditions alive each Easter by carving a lamb out of butter, baking a lamb-shaped cake, making intricate paintings on eggs with wax, and cooking up a fine feast of white borscht. Greenpoint is... [continue]

Nearly three decades ago, Andy Warhol's dealer made a list of 100 prominent 20th century Jews. Warhol created silkscreen paintings of ten of them. The show, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, premiered at The Jewish Museum in 1980. It was met with both admiration and criticism, and turned a pretty penny for the painter. Back then, The NY Times criticized, remarking, "the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution... [continue]

As one half of “New York’s bravest and bawdiest” somersaulting, trapeze-swinging, burlesque duo The Wau Wau Sisters, Adrienne Truscott has wreaked her fair share of mayhem around the world. As a choreographer, she’s slightly more tethered, but still terrifically entertaining. In her latest work genesis, no! Truscott explores the concept of the museum, and wonders why we as a society preserve the things we do. In anticipation of a four-night run at Dance Theater Workshop... [continue]

New Yorkers like to go out. A lot. A website aptly called Outalot allows fast and easy browsing of three nightlife basics: restaurants, bars, and movies (Gridskipper calls it "menupages-meets-yelp"). The Google Map based-site lists restaurants by cuisine, bars by type, and provides local cinemas' showtimes. You can bookmark your favorites (and check out your friends') and green thumbs up/down symbols quickly signify how others' feel about an establishment. Though many New Yorkers pride themselves... [continue]

We all know that on St. Patrick's Day, everybody's Irish. But this rings especially true for the kids of Keltic Dreams, an Irish dance troupe from PS 59 in the Bronx, featured in today's New York Times. When Dublin-born music teacher Caroline Duggan's mostly black and Hispanic students started asking questions about her funny accent and Riverdance poster, she started teaching them about Irish culture, and step dancing. Soon, dozens of her seven- to... [continue]

This advertisement for an Urban Outfitters store opening tomorrow among the antique shops and Middle Eastern markets of Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn, is rather befuddling. The mystifying amalgam of images, placed in some sort of elementary collage layout is presumably a representation of the borough. Many of the images look like they were cut out of a TV Guide circa 1984, and others, like the shot of Jay-Z has us wondering about legal repercussions. Or... [continue]

Twenty years before thinking up the "I want my MTV" campaign, advertising genius George Lois saved Esquire magazine from a swift sink into bankruptcy by transforming it into one of the most visually provocative publications of the last half century. From Lois' first cover for the magazine, which featured an image of boxing favorite Floyd Patterson knocked out in an empty arena, and broke Esquire newsstand sales records, to a 1970 cover depicting a marquee... [continue]

Top photograph of the NYPL main branch's reading room by wallyg on Flickr; lower photograph of Schwarzman by Jori Klein In the late 1990s, a plan to name a Yale dining hall after Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman fell through. Oh well, now the Wall Street kingpin is getting a library named after him – and not just any library. Thanks to a $100 million donation, the main branch of the New York Public Library,... [continue]

AP Photo/Jason DeCrow Oh, to be a confused, sweaty fly on the wall at the Waldorf Astoria last night, when Iggy Pop sang Madonna songs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Pop and the Stooges covered "Burning Up" and "Ray of Light" in a tribute to the pop queen, who was inducted along with Leonard Cohen, John Mellencamp, The Ventures, and The Dave Clark Five. Introduced by Justin Timberlake, who... [continue]

Italian pianist Stefano Bollani has been known to play everything from Pet Sounds to Prokofiev. As a kid he could keep up with Scott Joplin recordings sped up from 33 to 45 rpms, and even today the 35-year-old, classically trained, composer is nothing less than rousing (Check out Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR.org). Twelve years ago Bollani was touring with Italian pop star Jovanotti when he caught the ear of famed trumpet player Enrico... [continue]

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