The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
ElSaffar, Kaki King mark busy Week 2
Meadows Brothers at ‘Altar’d Spaces’ venue
NEW HAVEN — Week 2 of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas begins with an Iraqi-American trumpeter, vocalist and composer headlining the New Haven Green concert today and finishes with a flourish of dramatic theater along with Ideas sessions on the future of art and culture.
The last big, free Green concert of the festival is today at 4 p.m. (note the time) when Amir ElSaffar and the Rivers of Sound Orchestra liven up the summer Green scene with Middle Eastern sounds and music and the special presence of 13 members of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Should be quite an aural statement for musical variety. ⏩ Exploring the creation myth in five-finger-guitar style, Kaki King will take the Morse Recital Hall stage in Sprague Hall on College Street (near Woolsey Hall) with her musical show “The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body” at 8 p.m. Wednesday
($55-$35).
“Total guitar goddess,” said Arts & Ideas programming official Chad Herzog before the festival, “this woman who, the guitar really becomes an extension of her. And her playing is just on fire . ... This piece is cool though because the guitar is stationary, mounted on a stand, and projection happens on the guitar itself and behind her. So it’s a total visual and auditory trip that goes on as you’re watching it.”
Herzog said Arts & Ideas is also commissioning King’s next piece, so you’ll see her name again in the future.
⏩ The Altar’d Spaces series of A&I concerts that began last year has evolved, Herzog said, as the local churches collaborated on who would work best in which venue. This week, it means presenting nine-piece jazz/R&B band The Recess Bureau at 7 p.m. Tuesday in First and Summerfield United Methodist Church (425 College St.); the improvised musical conversation Carte Noire at 8 p.m. the same night at United Church on the Green on Temple Street; solid rock/ folk/roots duo The Meadows Brothers at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at United Church on the Green; and folk-rock’s The Kenn Morr Band at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at United Church on the Green.
“They (church venue officials) all really got what their spaces really required and what their spaces could do for the arts,” said Herzog, “but (also) really what the city could do for the arts . ... (Admission is) extremely accessible, $10 tickets. To be able to see a ticketed performance for $10; it’s hard to do that at any of the local bars on a Thursday night.”
A dozen or so arts groups commissioned the dance-to-Beatles-music piece “Pepperland,” which will make its East Coast premiere at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday at the Shubert Theatre ($125-$20). After 50 years of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Mark Morris Dance Group performs Pepperinspired dance pieces with fresh arrangements of Beatles songs.
⏩ Compagnia de’ Colombari’s new production of “The Merchant of Venice” (Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.) brings back memories of the old A&I concerts held in Yale courtyards that were a little too weather-dependent. The five performances of the Shakespeare play will be held in the Yale Law School Courtyard (127 Wall St., $65-$45) at 8 p.m.
“So it’s the first time ... we’ve attempted to be in the courtyard since 2012, and that was something I’ve been hearing about since I arrived,” said Herzog, “how great those concerts were.”
⏩ For more theater drama, there’s “Requiem for an Electric Chair” at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Herzog knew of Toto Kisaku’s work two years ago and was interested in it. Then one day he got a call from the building’s security desk and found out “there’s this guy Toto in the building here to see me. He came up to my office and we started talking and I realized then he was this same person ...,” said Herzog. Kisaku’s compelling story, including watching as two other men were executed in front of him in the Congo, led to this Arts & Ideas production at the Iseman Theater.
⏩ The Ideas portion of the festival explores a worthy topic today at 1:30 p.m. with “How to Make Your Town Somewhere Everyone Wants to Live” at the Yale University Art Gallery on Chapel Street (free). Singer-songwriter Dar Williams talks about her new book, “What I Found in a Thousand Towns,” and what small cities like New Haven can do to capitalize on resources and draw people together.
Other Ideas sessions: “Risk, Anxiety, and Generosity: Defining the Culture of Money from Shakespeare to Today” at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Yale Center for British Art; “The Act You’ve Known for All These Years: Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the same place; “Curation and the Democracy of Arts” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Yale Art Gallery; “New Haven 2040: Looking Toward the Next Twenty Years of Art and Culture” with outgoing gallery director Jock Reynolds at 1:30 p.m. Friday at YUAG; and “The Art of Crossing Cultures: Women in the Arts from Hong Kong” at 1 p.m. Saturday at the art gallery.