March 5, 2004

Pop and Jazz Listings

selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy pop and jazz concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert.

CLAUDIA ACUÑA QUARTET, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, below Spring Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063. Ms. Acuña, a young jazz singer from Chile, is committed to the idea of a jazz singer as an inseparable part of the band — or, better, as a bandleader. She is working with a great crop of New York musicians, and they play around with mambos, Middle Eastern scales and improvising that goes far beyond mere accompaniment. Tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 10:30; admission is $15 a set (Ben Ratliff).

* ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, the Hook, 18 Commerce Street, between Richards and Columbia Streets, Red Hook, Brooklyn, (718) 797-3007. The Animal Collective, featuring Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken, has been making whimsical, convoluted studio albums full of odd electronic noises and childlike delight. Onstage things get a lot more raucous. Tonight at 8, with Blood on the Wall and Bona Roba. Admission is $8 (Jon Pareles).

PETER APFELBAUM AND DEAN BOWMAN, MAT MANERI, TOM ABBS AND NED ROTHENBERG, BRIC Studio, 647 Fulton Street, at Rockwell Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 855-7882. It's part of the continuing Possible Fireworks series, in which improvisers who haven't ever encountered one another work together and see what happens. (The larger idea is watching little micro-scenes of New York music collide.) Mr. Apfelbaum, the saxophonist, has a background with Don Cherry and various ideas of multicultural jazz; Mr. Bowman is an entirely untraditional jazz and pop singer (and whistler). Mr. Maneri, the violinist, Mr. Abbs, the bassist, and Mr. Rothenberg, the saxophonist, look like a good combination too — all strong, all wide-ranging. Tonight at 8; admission is $10, $8 for students (Ratliff).

ASOBI SEKSU, Sin-e, 148 Attorney Street, Lower East Side, (212) 388-0077. What was once called shoegazer rock — blaring, shimmering, multilayered guitars enfolding confessions of longing and ambiguity — is back in Asobi Seksu, a New York band that wraps its guitars and keyboard around well-made pop melodies and the girlish ache of Yuki Chikudate's voices. Its debut album, "Asobi Seksu" (Friendly Fire), is being released this week. Tonight at 11, topping a bill with Dirty on Purpose at 8, the Hong Kong at 9 and Dennis Cahlo at 10; admission is $8 (Pareles).

* ERYKAH BADU, Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, at 50th Street, (212) 247-4777. Ms. Badu's sublime, idiosyncratic soul music has grown braver and more mysterious over the years. Her current album, "Worldwide Underground," (Motown/Pgd) sounds a bit like one long song, with understated funk grooves and lyrics that are, by turns, dreamy and paranoid: it may or may not be a concept album about love as a form of spirit possession. At this concert, expect a stageful of quick-witted musicians, a few puzzling gimmicks (including, perhaps, an afro wig and a motion-sensitive synthesizer) and — of course — one extraordinary voice. Tonight at 7, with Floetry; tickets are $39.50 to $64.50 (Kelefa Sanneh).

DAN BERN, Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 539-8778 or (212) 239-6200. Dan Bern has the Dust Bowl nasality of the young Bob Dylan, a mobile face, a slyly quizzical demeanor and a gift for transforming off-center observations into telling insights. Some of his songs are topical numbers that will evaporate before the next show; others will linger. Sunday night at 9:30; admission is $20 (Pareles).

THE BIG 3 PALLADIUM ORCHESTRA, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592. A retro salsa-mambo band led by descendents of Latin music gods: Tito Puente Jr., Tito Rodriguez Jr. and Machito Jr. Tonight through Sunday night at 8 and 10:30; cover charge is $30, with a $5 minimum at the tables, $20 and a one-drink minimum at the bar (Ratliff).

IGOR BUTMAN, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-3080. Mr. Butman, the saxophonist, occupies a position in Russia roughly comparable to that of Wynton Marsalis here: besides the fact that the two musicians were both born in 1961, he's an adaptable, highly skilled practitioner and jazz's most appealing popularizer there. And his brawny post-bop improvisations are crowd-pleasers. Tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 11; cover charge is $30 and there is a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

GEORGE COLEMAN QUARTET, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. Mr. Coleman, the tenor saxophonist probably best known for the great couple of years he spent with Miles Davis's quintet in the early 1960's, often plays around town with the pianist Harold Mabern. These two men, adept at the post-bop rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, are from Memphis and have a lot of history between them, and it shows. Mr. Mabern is on hand in this group, along with the bassist John Webber and the drummer Joe Farnsworth. Tonight through Sunday night at 7:30 and 9:30, with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $25 and $20 on Sunday (Ratliff).

THE COOPER TEMPLE CLAUSE, CALLA, Maxwell's, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703. Seeking the mantle of the "new Radiohead," the Cooper Temple Clause looks in a lot of the right places: not just the haggard ballads but the distortion, dissonance and ominous ambiance that keep songs from getting too pretty. Calla makes its musical home in the after-hours New York of the Velvet Underground, the haggard despair of Joy Division and the California retreats of Neil Young. Its songs brood amid tolling, inexorable guitar riffs haunted by the blues. Sunday night at 9; admission is $12 (Pareles).

* DERVISH, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. Dervish, a seven-member band from County Sligo, Ireland, plays traditional Irish tunes in arrangements like finely worked lace. It can sprint through dance tunes or delicately accompany Cathy Joran as she sings ballads in Gaelic or English. Sunday night at 7; tickets are $18 in advance, $20 Sunday (Pareles).

* KEVIN DEVINE, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. On his appealing recent solo album, "Make the Clocks Move" (Triple Crown), Kevin Devine, leader of the emo band Miracle of '86, wears his anxiety lightly. Each sigh is accompanied by a shrug ("I think that I was wrong, but I guess I don't know/I figure that I'll wait until you tell me so"), and the carefully written songs are even more effective because they're sung so casually. Sunday night at 7, with Pablo, the Amber Smith and Mason Dixon; tickets are $8 (Sanneh).

LEE FELDMAN, Parkside Lounge, 317 East Houston Street, between Avenues B and C, Lower East Side, (212) 673-6270. Lee Feldman is a piano-playing songwriter with an earnest tenor voice, but he's closer to Randy Newman than to Billy Joel. He uses a Tin Pan Alley bounce to make twisted or troubled situations sound like parlor songs. Tomorrow night at 8, followed by Ian Cane and Love Camp 7; admission is $5 (Pareles).

* WYCLIFFE GORDON, Up Over Jazz Cafe, 351 Flatbush Avenue, at Sterling Place, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, (718) 398-5413. Even through all his compression and control, the trombonist Wycliffe Gordon can outperform nearly anyone playing jazz. He's masterful with mutes, so it's great to watch him work, but on the deeper levels of music-making, he has an amazing capacity for playing bravura passages quietly. Tonight and tomorrow night at 9, 11 and 12:30; cover charge is $18 and there is a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

GROOVE COLLECTIVE, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503. Brooklyn's long-runnning acid-jazz band looks back to the smoothly percolating funk-jazz of the 1970's and adds touches of hip-hop, making easygoing party music for a broad coalition of listeners. Tonight at midnight; admission is $10 (Pareles).

* ROY HARGROVE QUINTET, ROBERTA GAMBARINI QUARTET, Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824. Mr. Hargrove, the trumpeter, has been playing around New York for about 15 years, since he was fresh out of music school. But his investigations in ballads and bop and expressive melodic improvisation keep sounding better, and he has been active in promoting the talents of burgeoning talents on the New York jazz scene, of which the singer Roberta Gambarini is one. Tonight at 8; tickets are $30 and $35 (Ratliff).

JOE HURLEY'S FIFTH ANNUAL ALL-STAR IRISH ROCK REVUE, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. Joe Hurley's bands mix traditional Irish instruments with the rowdiness of a rock band. He has started his own St. Patrick's tradition: the All-Star Irish Rock Revue, a little early this year. With more than two dozen guests, including Mary Lee Kortes (of Mary Lee's Corvette), Laura Cantrell, James Chance, Tony Visconti, Patti Rothberg, Susan McKeown, Willie Nile and Annie Golden, they perform music by Irish rockers from Thin Lizzy to Van Morrison to the Undertones to Sinead O'Connor. Tomorrow night at; tickets are $15 in advance, $18 tomorrow (Pareles).

VIJAY IYER QUARTET, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, above Bleecker Street, West Village, (212) 255-3626. Mr. Iyer is a hard-driving vamp pianist with high concepts uniting funk, Indian rhythmic structures and free jazz; he plays tough, challenging music, inspired in an overall way by Steve Coleman and his Brooklyn-based collectives of the last 20 years. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, 10 and midnight; cover charge is $20 and there is a $10 minimum (Ratliff).

* LAKE TROUT, RUNNER AND THE THERMODYNAMICS, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. The lean, largely instrumental songs of Lake Trout pull together an unlikely constellation of minimalist guitar patterns, floating saxophone phrases and jittery breakbeats for progressive rock that doesn't spurn dancers. Runner and the Thermodynamics reaches back to the late 1960's and early 1970's to recharge a legacy of garage-rock riffs, power-trio improvisation and bursts of unkempt frenzy. Tonight at 8, with Alaska and the Mobius Band opening; admission is $10 (Pareles).

LUNASA, Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 539-8778 or (212) 239-6200. Lunasa is a five-piece traditional band from Ireland that can be feisty or gentle, with neatly detailed arrangements that deploy spirited fiddle and uileann pipes or the dulcet counterpoint of up to three whistles at once. Their repertory spans reels, jigs, airs, flings, gavottes and even a Celticized klezmer tune. Tonight at 9:30; admission is $20 (Pareles).

"NO PLACE TO FALL: A TRIBUTE TO TOWNES VAN ZANDT," Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, above Houston Street, East Village, (212) 614-0505. The Texan songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who would have turned 60 this year, explored love, loyalty, despair and dread in his quiet, plainspoken songs. This tribute brings together Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group, Syd Straw, David Amram and Van Zandt's son JT Van Zandt, in a benefit for the Bowery Mission for the Homeless. Tomorrow night at 8; admission is $25 (Pareles).

* KATE McGARRY, 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 929-9883. A lot of jazz singers are good at a few devices and punch them out song after song; Ms. McGarry, who is slowly becoming known around New York, has a deeper supply. You'll find shades of folk-pop singers like Suzanne Vega and Rickie Lee Jones in her voice; you'll also find some of the highest refinements of great jazz singing. She also has a breadth of material — an essential quality these days — that runs from jazz standards to traditional Irish ballads to a version of the Kinks' "(So) Tired of Waiting for You." Tomorrow night at 6; no cover charge (Ratliff).

JOE McPHEE TRIO X, JOSEPH JARMAN DUO, St. Nicholas of Myra Church, 288 10th Street, Lower East Side, (212) 696-6681. Mr. McPhee, a saxophonist and trumpeter with his roots in free and European experimental jazz, is a concept player: his various groups and solo performances have always been underpinned by strong ideas that extend outside of the music. Mr. Jarman, the saxophonist who is a longstanding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, will perform a duo with the percussionist Ken Yamazaki. Tomorrow night at 8 (Joseph Jarman Duo) and 10 (Trio X); admission is $10 per set (Ratliff).

* WES MONTGOMERY TRIBUTE WITH JIMMY SMITH TRIO, Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street, Manhattan, (212) 582-2121. Mr. Montgomery set an example that several generations of guitarists in jazz have been trying to emulate ever since: he was a tough, dogged improviser, a master blues player and a developer of several techniques (fingerpicking lines with the thumb, playing lines in octaves) that have entered jazz's lingua franca. Jimmy Smith, the first organist to break through in the era of organ-saxophone-guitar jazz groups, will lead the tribute with guest guitarists: Rodney Jones tonight and Larry Coryell tomorrow and Sunday. Sets are at 8 and 10 p.m., cover charge is $35 tonight and Sunday, $37.50 tomorrow, with a $10 minimum all nights (Ratliff).

DAVID FATHEAD NEWMAN QUARTET, Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. Mr. Newman, the saxophonist, is one of the figures who led jazz toward pop in the 1960's, as Ray Charles's right-hand man in that band's greatest years and a maker of consistent solo records for Atlantic. He has maintained his smoothness, and he is also a master of the blues. Tonight and tomorrow night at 9, 11 and 12:30; cover charge is $20 (Ratliff).

CHARLES OWENS QUARTET, Kavehaz, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 343-0612. A fluid young tenor saxophone player who cut his teeth at Smalls, playing alongside saxophonists like Greg Tardy and Myron Walden; he is an engaging improviser with a great sound, and his band includes the pianist Jeremy Manasia, the bassist Barak Mori and the drummer Daniel Freedman. Tonight and tomorrow night at 10; no cover charge, $10 minimum (Ratliff).

GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS, DAVID BERKELEY, Northsix, 66 North Sixth Street, Williamsburg, (718) 599-5103. Grant-Lee Phillips harks back to the earnest ambitions and expansive melodies of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, singing with the conviction that rock can still be heroic. David Berkeley has a lustrous, melancholy voice akin to Tim Buckley and Nick Drake, and his songs offer both misgivings and consolation. Tomorrow night at 9; admission is $15 (Pareles).

* ERIC REED QUINTET, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037. Mr. Reed, a fast-thinking pianist, writes precise arrangements and collides styles ranging from ragtime to gospel to uptempo swing; his original work is worth checking out. But this week's engagement is devoted to the music of Fats Waller, whose centennial year is 2004. It looks promising: Mr. Reed has been playing Fats Waller's music for years, and Mr. Reed's last exercise in homage, a presentation of Eric Dolphy's music six months ago at Iridium, was astonishingly well conceived. Tonight through Sunday night at 9 and 11, with a 12:30 set tomorrow; cover charge is $30 (Ratliff).

SHOOGLENIFTY, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. A decidedly untraditional Scottish band, Shooglenifty places old tunes atop dance grooves that might come from reggae, salsa or electronica. Tonight at 8; admission is $15 (Pareles).

* SIMON AND THE BAR SINISTERS, Rodeo Bar, 375 Third Avenue, at 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 683-6500. Simon Chardiet is the kind of guitarist that bar-band fans dream of finding: a one-man twang meltdown who knows where surf meets blues, rockabilly meets klezmer, country meets punk. His songs are wryly frustrated; his guitar solos assuage his troubles with the grand sweep of American music. Tonight at 10; free (Pareles).

* STRANGE BREW 2004, Filter 14, 432 West 14th Street, West Village, (212) 366-5680 or www.keepalive.org. A techno party starring a pair of glitch-obsessed Canadian DJs, Jake Fairley and Pan/Tone; it should be fun to hear their minimalist beats rattle around the appealingly shabby club. Tonight at 10; tickets are $10 (Sanneh).

* TABOU COMBO, EMELINE MICHEL, S.O.B.'s (Sounds of Brazil), 204 Varick Street, at Houston Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940. Haiti's music rises above the country's political turmoil. Tabou Combo has been around since the 1960's; it transferred the lilt of the Haitian compas from big bands to a small group with guitars and keyboards, and it suavely segues funk and salsa back to the gentle bounce of the compas. Emeline Michel's sets can be like tours of her country, drawing on local styles from across Haiti; her voice can be sweetly sensual or almost operatic as she soars above the beat. Tonight at midnight and 2 a.m.; tickets are $25 (Pareles).

THE UNDERTONES, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. The Undertones were Ireland's standard-bearers for 1970's punk-rock, hurtling through songs that held on to pop melody and reveling in teenage kicks. They have reunited without Feargal Sharkey, their original lead singer. Tonight at 9, with the Prodigals and Joe Hurley and the Gents opening; tickets are $25 (Pareles).

JAMES WILLIAMS'S BIRTHDAY BASH, Le Jazz au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, Manhattan, (212) 308-9455. Once a pianist with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Mr. Williams has a powerful grip on the whole postwar jazz tradition, and as a longtime jazz teacher and producer in New York, he has plenty of friends ready to stop by and celebrate him, including the singer Vanessa Rubin, the vibraphonist Stefon Harris and the bassist Ray Drummond. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8 and 10 and Sunday at 8 p.m.; cover charge is $50, $35 on Sunday (Ratliff).