Friday, August 20, 2010 8:00 PM

SummerStage
East River Park Amphitheatre
New York, NY

Celebrated theater company Waterwell, teaming up with rock group Bambi, remakes the New York centric sexually themed, pop culture classic Goodbar.

Reviving the lost art of the live concept album, NYC rock band Bambï teams up with downtown theatre company Waterwell to tackle one of the most controversial pop culture artifacts from the ’70s, Looking For Mr. Goodbar. Taking inspiration from both the film starring Diane Keaton and the novel by Judith Rossner, Bambï and Waterwell explore the timeless themes of sexuality, independence and persona as seen refracted through a disco ball. Join Bambï and Waterwell as they take on this dark classic, celebrating New York in all its grim glamour.

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The news this week was that the Jelly organized Pool Parties are in financial trouble and the two final Sunday parties may be cancelled. According to Jelly, this Sunday’s Pool Party is on 100%. Here’s the word from Jelly’s email update:

“FRET NOT FRIENDOS, THIS SUNDAY’S POOL PARTY IS 100% ON – MORE THAN EVER!!

The sun will be shining, the drinks will be flowing and Chromeo will be playing some brand-new tracks from their next album, so get ready for some epic summer jam time!”

Thursday, August 19, 2010 7:00 PM

Seaside Concert Series
Asser Levy Park, Brooklyn

It has been said that the B-52s are as quintessentially American as the Beach Boys. And twenty-five years and over twenty million albums into their career, the B-52s remain the among the most beloved rock stars ever. Any mystery concerning the longevity and ongoing appeal of the B-52s is immediately solved when exposed to the B-52s unique concert experience.

From the timeless gems of “Rock Lobster,” “Planet Claire” and “Private Idaho” to the more recent classics of “Channel Z,” “Love Shack” and “Roam”, the B-52s unforgettable

dance-rock tunes start a party every time the music begins. Formed on an October night in 1976 following drinks at an Athens, GA, Chinese restaurant, the band played their first gig at a friend’s house on Valentine’s Day 1977.

Naming themselves after Southern slang for exaggerated ‘bouffant” hairdos, the newly-christened B-52s (Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson) began weekend road trips to New York City for gigs at CBGB’s and a handful of other venues.

Before long, their thrift store aesthetic and genre-defying songs were the talk of the post-punk underground. A record deal soon followed and their self-titled debut disc, produced by Chris Blackwell, sold more than 500,000 copies on the strength of their first singles, the garage rock party classic “Rock Lobster,” and “52 Girls.”

The B-52s began to attract fans far beyond the punk clubs of the Lower East Side–galvanizing the pop world with their ’stream-of-consciousness’ approach to songwriting and outrageous performance. They had clearly tapped into a growing audience for new music that was much larger than anyone could have anticipated.

“We always appealed to people outside the mainstream,” says Kate Pierson, “and I think more people feel they’re outside the mainstream these days.”

Hollywood native Belinda Carlisle was and occasionally still is the lead vocalist for the pop rock band The Go-Go’s and is also a phenomenally successful solo artist.

After the initial breakup of The Go-Go’s in 1985, Belinda embarked on a solo career resulting in six internationally successful albums and the chart-topping hit “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” The video for that song was directed by Diane Keaton and included an appearance by Belinda’s husband Morgan Mason, son of actor James Mason. Belinda’s TV appearances include Celebrity Duets, the MTV competition reality show Rock the Cradle and the eighth season of Dancing with the Stars. Her autobiography, Lips Unsealed: A Memoir, was released in June of 2010.

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:00 PM

SummerStage
Jackie Robinson Park‎
89 Bradhurst Avenue
New York, NY

Gospel choir leader Tye Tribbett’s anointed powerhouse of a voice and inspired piano playing have made him a spiritual superstar.

Tye Tribbett learned how to play keyboards before he could even recite the alphabet, and has been making bold declarations with his harmonic and powerful gospel music for years. His choir, Greater Anointing, broke into the popular mainstream after a series of tracks on the soundtrack of the Academy Award-winning film, The Prince of Egypt. Tribette’s album Victory Live! entered the Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart at #1, and generated the #1 Gospel Radio single, “Victory,” further ingraining him as a gospel superstar.

Presented in association with WLIB and Globestar Media.

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:00 PM

Jazzmobile
Grant’s Tomb
122nd Street & Riverside Drive

Hailing from Osaka, Japan, the Hammond Organist, Akiko Tsuruga is in a center stage of New York jazz scene since 2001. This talented young organist began to play organ at the age of three and started off her career right after her graduation from Osaka College of Music. While she was based in Osaka, she had numerous opportunities to play with renowned jazz men from the United States such as Roy Hargrove, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Grady Tate to name a few.(Source)

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Tuesday, August 17, 2010 7:00 PM

SummerStage
Highbridge Park
174 Street & Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY

Alexandra’s charmingly sweet voice adds depth and romance to her bachata songs. Daniel Moncion melds traditional salsa music with bachata inspired guitar sounds to form catchy, move-your-feet tunes.

Alexandra is best known as half of the hugely successful, Monchy y Alexandra, who began singing together in 1999. They have been often credited with being instrumental in popularizing bachata music outside of the Dominican Republic. Alexandra is now embarking on a highly anticipated solo career, and is certain not to disappoint.

Daniel Monción is a singer hailing from the Dominican Republic whose guitar heavy bachata inspired tunes have earned him critical acclaim in the Latin music world. With Monción’s albums Ya Me Cansé and Decidi, which spawned the hit single “Culpable,” have established this up and coming Latin sensation as one to watch.

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Monday, August 16, 2010 7:00 PM

MLK Jr. Concert Series
Wingate Field, Brooklyn
Entrances on Brooklyn Avenue (Rutland Road and Winthrop Street.)

The brother-sister duo of Bebe and Cece Winans carries a great lineage as members of the gospel dynasty The Winans. They have had individual success, but nothing compares to the magic that is sparked by their musical union.

After six studio-recorded projects, their accomplishments included more than five million records worldwide, five Grammy Awards, eight Dove Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, a Soul Train Music Award and more than 12 Stellar Awards.

On their own, they have also been successful. CeCe earned several Grammys, released eight

CDs and became the first African- American woman to receive a Dove Award for best female vocalist.

BeBe earned numerous awards, penned hits for other artists and released six solo projects. He also honed his acting skills, co-starring in the Broadway play The Color Purple and serving as one of the judges of BET’s Sunday Best. Their 2009 album Still is, says Bebe, “Still BeBe and CeCe, still what we believe, still about God’s love, still about the music and not the madness,” he said. “It really says it all in that one word–still.”

The duo recently suffered two tremendous losses–brother Ronald in 2005 and patriarch David “Pop” in 2009. These trials contributed to the strengthening of their faith. Still reached #1 on Billboard’s Gospel chart and #2 on its R&B chart.

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For more than 21 years, gospel listeners around the world have known Fred Hammond as a talented songwriter, bassist and vocalist.

His work with Face to Face Productions Corporation, of which he is both founder and CEO, has earned him the title “The Babyface of Gospel.”

As a solo artist and member of the pioneering urban group Commissioned, he has sold nearly 2 million albums. Since retiring from that group in 1995, his work with Radical for Christ has made him a mainstay on the Billboard Gospel Chart top 10.

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Sunday, August 15, 2010 8:00 PM

The Beach @Governors Island
Governors Island

“There was this feeling inside me going into making this record that we’d never made an album before,” says guitarist/vocalist Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog’s Shame, Shame, their Anti- debut and the first album made outside the safe confines of their home studio.

As a band that has traditionally built their scrappily spirited albums layer by layer in the undisturbed seclusion of their Philadelphia studio, Dr. Dog realized they would need to leave these comforts and work in a professional studio with the help of an outside engineer and producer if they were to continue their album-by-album growth. In Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) they found a producer who had earned his reputation making albums in much the same fashion as Dr. Dog had, eventually moving on to the bigger and better sounds that they now wanted. With his help, the intricate arrangements of Fate were peeled back to reveal the raw immediacy of a tight five-man unit honing their craft.

Despite their loyal hometown following, Dr. Dog could have very well remained a Philadelphia phenomenon had McMicken’s then-girlfriend not slipped a copy of Toothbrush, a collection of home recordings, to Jim James of My Morning Jacket, who would take them on their first tour and prepare the way for the waves of positive press that would greet 2005’s Easy Beat. By 2007, their next album We All Belong was earning the band opening slots for Wilco and the Raconteurs and they were turning up all over late night television. They upped the ante with their sonically ambitious Fate and started headlining their own tours. By the spring of 2009, the treadmill had run them ragged, and their new songs reflected a life spent with the nagging realization that things were out of a balance.

Dr. Dog has created a song cycle of doubt and despair, bookended with the woozily swirling harmonies of Leaman’s lonely opener “Stranger” and the harsh self-critique of the title track, a gnarled admission that sometimes it’s best to admit your mistakes and move on. Their most openly autobiographical release, ranging from McMicken’s exploration of West Philly underlife in “Shadow People” to his account of two soul-bearing late night conversations in “Jackie Wants a Black Eye,” it’s an album whose dark themes are soothed by bright harmonies, taut guitar riffs, and soaring melodies.

“At this point, we’ve set out this buffet for ourselves, but we first had to cook that food and figure out what our tastes are,” McMicken says. “Now it’s time to dig in.”

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