SEXMOB, globetrotting stalwarts of NYC’s downtown jazz scene, “make the most avant-garde jazz breezily easy to grasp.” (New Yorker) Led by trumpeter Steven Bernstein, the GRAMMY-nominated quartet has had their music featured on MTV, Saturday Night Live and NPR. Here they perform their original score to Maciste All’inferno, a seminal work of the Italian silent era. Directed by Guido Brignone, the film stars the great Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste, a Herculean strongman whose physical prowess and matching virtue are tested when the Devil and his minions capture him and drag him to hell. Maciste All’inferno was cited by Fellini as one of the films that inspired him to a life in cinema, and this sweeping jazz score brings it to life anew in Prospect Park.
REVEREND BILLY & THE STOP SHOPPING CHOIR is a radical performance collective and a group of self-described “wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth-loving urban activists.” William Talen, a.k.a. Reverend Billy, and his associates target banks and corporations of their choosing that represent societal ills, and stage performance art pieces that disrupt their daily operations. Time will tell what antics they bring to the bandshell, but it is not to be missed.