Results tagged “performingarts”

There are no "garage bands" in New York City. Unlike some of their suburban counterparts, musicians here have to pay the piper for their practice spaces, which can be hard to find in a city where every no-frills square-foot costs something. In fact, to really be a "garage band" in New York, one may end up paying $225K a year.

Known for her smoky voice and role as Bob Newhart's no-nonsense wife in The Bob Newhart Show, Suzanne Pleshette died at age 70 last night. Pleshette had suffered from lung cancer in recent years.

After months and months of delays, the BAM Cultural District may be moving forward. The NY Times is reporting that city officials have chosen Harlem-based developer and Brooklyn resident Carlton Brown to create what the Times' Terry Pristin calls the "cultural district's centerpiece." This is the first Brooklyn project for Brown, who developed the Kalahari and 1400 on Fifth in Harlem and the Solaire, the city's first residential green building, in Battery Park City. The...

NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews Jean Nouvel's future 75-story tower at 53 West 53rd Street, describing it as "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." He compares Nouvel's latest to the Woolworth, Chrysler and Seagram buildings. Filling a 17,000 square-foot vacant lot next to MoMA, the structure will be the future site of a developer Hines' 100-room hotel and 120 "highest-end" (Hines' words) luxury apartments. MoMA, which sold the lot...

BENEFIT: Tonight catch a special performance by Alanis Morissette, while rubbing elbows with Matt Dillon...all for a good cause! The inaugural fundraising benefit for the Adrienne Shelly Foundation will be held this evening, and you can get in with a ticket from $150 to...well, $10,000 bucks. You'll be supporting the late Shelly's foundation which "supports the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors through a series of scholarships and grants." 6pm // Skirball Center...

THEATER: The National Asian American Theatre Company is known for creating adventurous theater with an all-Asian American performing plays that often have little to do with Asian Americans. Their newest production is Blind Mouth Singing by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas; it uses a watery set and live music to tell a story of an “overly strict matriarch; her young son Reiderico who sneaks out of the house to visit his best friend who lives at the bottom of a well; her sister who treats syphilis patients in the open-air market; and her older son who bullies everything within his reach.” Martin Denton writes: “Authentic magic happens only rarely in the theatre… I'm talking about those rare wonderful moments when we see one thing on stage with our eyes, but our hearts tell us we're seeing something entirely different. Blind Mouth Singing is filled with such moments of magic.” John Del Signore

This Sunday Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Opera will hold A Tribute to Beverly Sills. The event is open to the public, free, and will be dedicated to the sopranos life -- which ended in July.

Elected officials, including U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, are speaking out against the proposed expansion of Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus, directly south of the performing arts complex. The school wants to add 1.5 million square feet of building space to the midtown campus, which includes an undergraduate college and its law school, between Columbus and Amsterdam Aves., nearly tripling the complex's size from the current 800,000 square feet. Fordam gets to avoid complicated issues of eminent domain and displacing current residents, since it already owns all the property that it would like to build on.

Last night Beverly Sills lost her battle with lung cancer, she died at her home in Manhattan at the age of 78. While she was a lifelong non-smoker and only found out about the cancer a few weeks ago, this wasn't her first experience with it - she underwent a successful surgery for cancer in 1974.

A story in this week's Crain's suggests that the Visual and Performing Arts Library planned for the BAM Cultural District in Fort Greene may never materialize due to lack of funding. The story ("Library Project in Doubt," p6) is based on an anonymous source, described as "an insider at the Brooklyn Public Library." Unfortunately we cannot post the link because Crain's requires a subscription.

FILM: Who doesn't like a rendez-vous? Tonight come to Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. The event is in its 12th year and will introduce you to what's been playing on Parisian movie screens. Tonight is the first night and Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose plays - the film will educate you on French legend Edith Piaf.

Remember all the excitement surrounding the BAM Cultural District around, oh, 2001? Well, the NY Post is reporting that the previous plan for a theater and arts library has been expanded to include a dance studio, public park, museum and gallery, underground parking garage and residential housing.

Development along the Hudson isn't letting up anytime soon. Now that Hudson River Park construction is well underway (and completed in some parts), proposals are being floated for refurbishing the hulking 14-acre Pier 40 terminal.

READING: The reclusive "Lemony Snicket" (known to grown-ups and non-believers as Daniel Handler) will be showing up - hopefully in a cloak and mustache disguise! - at Barnes and Noble tonight to celebrate the release of The

Walker Fee, Tape Artist Extraordinaire

Happy Cinco de Mayo...while you're not eating guacamole, sipping on frozen margs and taking a whack at a Sparks filled pinata...you may want to do one of the following this weekend:

This week, the film festival that Bobby De Niro and Jane Rosenthal built after September 11th has taken over most of downtown New York and some of uptown with its eclectic programming line-up. But there's more to do in town, movie-watching wise than just at Tribeca. So get out your TFF schedules, some snacks and some comfortable shoes to walk between screening spaces, there's movies to be seen this weekend.

Oh snap! Antique dealers, the Times reports, are in a huff over the fate of the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue and 66th Street. The Armory, which was built between 1877 and 1881, has rooms designed by Louis C. Tiffany and Stanford White and it's interiors have been described by the Landmarks Preservation Committee as "the single most important collection of 19th century interiors in one building." But in recent decades it has fallen into some disrepair. And so many were pleased when it was announced that the Armory will be transformed into an institution for the visual and performing arts after a multi-million dollar renovation. And that sounds like a good thing, right? Not exactly, a number of art and antique dealers are arguing.

"There will be a standby line on the night of the shows and people will be admitted on a first come, first-served basis as seats become available." That's what Wall Street Rising's website says about the next seven days of sold out free shows happening at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Count on some of those people who got their free tickets a month ago not showing up and get there early tonight for the Cat Power show. Hopefully she'll preview some of her dreamy new material. Grammy award-winning blues and gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama share the bill.

This morning a bunch of us Gothamistas went down to the Tribeca Performing Arts Space at BMCC to check out the Moscow Cat Theatre. Some of the tricks were pretty impressive-- especially the one pictured above, where the cat stands on its forepaws and gets swung around. Kind of makes Thompson look like a lazy slacker. More pictures are up at Bluejake.

There's this print only article in the business section of the NY Times about how promoters tried to bring audiences to the Moscow Cats Theatre at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. HHC Marketing decided to target "veterinarians not as mere ringworm treaters, but as cultural power brokers," sending over fifty select Manhattan vets free tickets and fliers to start the word of mouth, not to mention sending tickets to pediatricians. This must be why when Gothamist attempted to order tickets, most of the shows were sold out! Luckily, we persisted and will be seeing the third to last performance on October 29, right next to the kids and their parents (we'll be the big kids); we are, of course, concerned that the cats will be tired. Anyway, in rethinking the paradigm of getting the words out about performing cats for next year, might we suggest that HHC Marketing consider getting the word out to bloggers?

Eager to reassure everyone that things were moving along at Ground Zero, Governor Pataki's World Trade Center flunky chief of staff, said that the PATH Transit Hub designed by Santiago Calatrava would offer 200,000 square feet of space for retailers and bidding will start in a few months. All hell, does this mean there will be an Olive Garden down there, to compete with the Applebee's at the Battery Park Regal Cinemas? The NY Times says the retail corridor plans, which would include another 300,000 square feet along Church Street, might face "same criticism that felled the Freedom Center"; plus Cahill's remarks were to a group of business executives, including those from Wal-Mart (of course, the Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia had to tell the Times, "It's premature, to be frank, but if you think we're planning a big Wal-Mart, the answer is no."). At any rate, if there's one thing Gothamist remembers after September 11, it's that if you don't shop, then the terrorists win! Perhaps the LMDC can build a mall to rival the one uptown...and call it "Freedom to Shop Center."

- Fernando Ferrer holds hands with Anthony Weiner, Gifford Miller and C. Virginia Fields at City Hall and fail to do the Voltron formation

Queen Esther, Unemployed Superstar

Maybe you couldn’t swing the cost of the Black Diamond All Access Pass, or perhaps you got blackballed from the St. Regis Hotel for trying to sneak into Larry David’s suite last year. Whatever your reason may be for not attending this year’s US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, you need not worry, a bit of it is coming to New York throughout the week. Flight of the Conchords, named Best Alternative Comedy Act at this year’s festival, will be performing their show at various venues around the city. Self described as “New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk parody duo”, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie perform their own ingenious brand of acoustic musical comedy. The Guardian described them as having “virtuoso musicality and superbly gormless banter”. If you see one gormless show this week, Gothamist thinks this should be it.