The police have released a sketch of the suspect who attacked and robbed a man of $149,000 in cash on West 56th Street on Friday. The incident, which occurred around 2PM, scared Midtown pedestrians as a shot was fired. But in spite of the number of witnesses, the suspect got away. The victim, 50-year-old Seton Ijams, had withdrawn the money from a Chase bank on Sixth Avenue and West 56th Street. According to the Daily......

Alex Ross has worked as the music critic of The New Yorker for over a decade. Somehow he still had time to churn out a book though, his first, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, hit shelves late last year. The tome delves into the cultural history of music since 1900, and even has Björk touting: "Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Tonight he'll step away from......

MUSIC: The Stone has been bringing out the big names lately. Tonight Marc Ribot brings his solo act to the 8pm set, then follows himself up by delivering his experimental sounds with none other than Laurie Anderson. Avant-garde all the way. 8 and 10pm // The Stone [Ave C at E 2nd St] // $10 THEATER: In her multimedia musical theater piece North, Heather Christian, daughter of a go-go dancer and a blues musician, is......

Salt & Samovar are a Brooklyn band that sound more like they're just visiting here from Upstate...or a Coen brothers film. Their live shows are described as "pentecostal revival-like performances that evoke the musical and spiritual heirlooms of a cherished American past." A simpler and simply transporting sound that'll have you pining for the past. Come check out their revival-rock this Friday at Mercury Lounge -- get your tickets here. Where did your band name......

These pictures may look like serious tail-gaters, people waiting for the latest gaming console or indie rock fans desperate for Sujan Stevens tickets, but, alas, no - these are actually taken from the parking lot of PS 236 in Mill Basin. Why? Parents are very eager to sign up their children for coveted pre-kindergarten places. Inside Schools describes PS 236 thusly:PS 236 is a well-run, well-equipped school in a neighborhood with lots of stay-at-home......

If you haven't heard about Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake's Southern Gothic exploitation movie, Black Snake Moan, you may have been living under a movie-free rock. Ricci plays a bad, bad girl who must learn to mend her ways under the racially and sexually fraught tutelage of jazz musician Jackson. How shall he do that? Why chain her to the radiator until she repents of course. One of this movie's key words......

Pela Rocks the Merc, V-Mars Last Friday night, after snagging a standby ticket to the Arcade Fire proved impossible, the second best place to be was at the Mercury Lounge for the sold out headlining set by one of the most promising local bands we've got in this here town, Pela. We got in right before the band started up and are pleased to say that they continue to live up to every expectation......

The NY Sun had a fun article about the different kids of music played at various transit hubs in the area. For instance, the Port Authority plays Handel and Bach and the area airports play "light classical." At Penn Station, there's "string quartets and flute piccolos" at Amtrak but top 40 music at the LIRR area. Why?sic, composed to serve as background music, best soothes the preoccupied, traveling mind. "There's an organization and structure behind......

New Yorkers rate their critics in this weeks Time Out New York issue. The somewhat figure skating like rating system was based on "K=Knowledge S=Style T=Taste A=Accessibility I=Influence AVG=Average score". Some of the winners: • Sasha Frere-Jones took first place in music criticism for his work in the The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Village Voice and others. We like his blog, too. • Jerry Saltz of the Village Voice took the gold......

Some study from some university in some UK town, name ending in -ester or -ilshire or something, finds that fans of hip-hop music have more sex than other music fans. 38% of hip-hop fans in the study had had sex with multiple people in the past five years while only 1.5% of country music listeners had had more than one square dance partner. Also (we can see the angry comments now), more than 50% of......

Next up in our Tourist series, is The Parker String Quartet, a young classical string quartet that performs in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and Wynn Walent. Walent is a New York singer songwriter who recently released his debut album. These two acts recently joined together for a weeklong tour (co-presented by Concert Artists Guild and Kitchen Sink Music). The tour brought classical music into bars and clubs, pairing it up with......

Bruce Levingston, Clasical Pianist...

So you are the Related Companies. You have a nice plot o' land over on 42nd and 10th, the former sites of the 286-seat Houseman and 199-seat Fairbanks theaters. Thanks to some goverment tricks, if you build some nice theaters on the site you can also build an extra-tall tower to boot. So, What do you do? Well, if you're anything like the real Related Companies, first you'd make a deal to build a classical......

The Parks Department's - and City's - decision to attempt to limit the number of large gatherings, aka rallies, held in Central Park is prompting a rally this Thursday on the Great Lawn, the night before the Parks Department holds a public hearing about the bill. The bill would limit the number of gatherings of over 50,000 to six per year, with four of them already slated for classical music events. Opposition groups claim that......

Dale Peck, Writer...

Few people walk in to a situation like Steve Hurst... literally. While working at The Weather Channel, he walked into his producer's office for something, and walked out, with the job of choosing the music for the local forecasts. That may not seem like that big of a deal, but for a lot of people it is. Gothamist has mentioned to several friends that we got the opportunity to speak to Steve, and the......