Celebrate Brooklyn! Upcoming This Week

Thursday, June 16, 2011 7:00pm

Hal Willner’s Freedom Rides Project

Music of the Civil Rights Movement
Featuring Geri Allen, Art Baron, Steve Bernstein, Steve Cardenas, James Carter, Rosanne Cash, Helga Davis, Curtis Fowlkes, Brad Jones, Briggan Krauss, Eric Mingus, JD Parran, Toshi Reagon, Lou Reed, Tao Seeger, Jason Walker, Kenny Wollesen
The maverick music producer HAL WILLNER brings his golden Rolodex and singular genius for curating multi-artist concept shows to the music of the Civil Rights Movement. Commissioned for Celebrate Brooklyn!, this concert celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, which integrated the interstate bus system and helped bring America’s and the world’s attention to the deprivations of the segregated South. In what promises to be an unforgettable event, Willner will convene his usual surprising and eclectic array of musicians, actors, and other artists—established and emerging, famous and infamous—to perform songs that inspired, illuminated, and sprang from the tumultuous aftermath of the Movement. The evening begins with a pre-performance artists discussion. Performers subject to change.

Friday, June 17, 2011 7:00 pm

The Books, Junip, Doveman

With their dizzying folktronica—a mix of innovative instrumentation and songwriting with obscure found sound and speech samples—and perfectly calibrated, hallucinatory quick-cut video collages, THE BOOKS “remain more or less a genre of one… the flotsam and jetsam of American culture aren’t a cheap joke to the Books, but a source of endless discovery and joy.” (Pitchfork) JUNIP, the band that predates Swedish-Argentine singer José González’s solo stardom, conjures an expansive and mesmerizing take on his songs in which “González’s classical guitar and weightless tenor float over soul jazz, Afrobeat, Ethiopian funk and krautrock.” (Rolling Stone) With the “haunting, ethereal, and beautifully melodic” (Paper Magazine) bedroom pop of in-demand pianist and composer Thomas Bartlett’s DOVEMAN. Sponsored locally by Aguayo Realty Group.

Saturday, June 18, 2011 7:30pm

Larry Harlow Latin Legends Band: Battle of the Salsa Violins
La Excelencia

LARRY HARLOW, “El Judio Maravilloso,” revolutionized modern salsa as both a musician and producer in his work with the storied Fania label. Here he brings his all-star band to back a violin throwdown of epic dimensions: the great Cuban ALFREDO DE LA FE vs. Brooklyn’s own LEWIS KAHN. Among the young torchbearers of the sound Harlow helped create, few are as electrifying as the Bronx-based LA EXCELENCIA, a group of young hotshots that’s taking the music to new levels but still “emphasizes hard-driving brass and percussion, just like a Fania Records band from salsa’s heyday in the 1970s.” (The New York Times)