Gossip Central

Hamptons Journal: Allman Betts Band at Guild Hall, Tony Oursler, Joel Grey at the Bay Street Theater Gala

Two decades ago, the legendary Allman Brothers Band swept through the Hamptons landing at Montauk’s Deep Hollow Ranch for an unforgettable outdoor concert, the audience poised on haystacks when the crowd wasn’t whooping it up to the great music. It was huge! On Saturday night, their kids, led by Devon Allman and Duane Betts, showed off their talents at Guild Hall. The genes don’t lie. Yes, the concert was part of Guild Hall’s popular guitar series; the rockers gave that big concert feeling inside the intimate East Hampton arts venue, where dancing in the aisles for the “Eat a Peach” classic, “Blue Skies” was irrepressible.

And the thrill of Nashville-based JD Simo joining them for “Purple Rain!” His trio opened the set, bringing down the house with “Mind Trouble,” and his cover of Joe Cocker’s “[High With] A Little Help From My Friends:” “What would you do if I sang out of tune?” he crooned. Trust me, he doesn’t.

Kronos Quartet: A Thousand Thoughts at Guild Hall

A “live documentary” by the filmmaking team Sam Green and Joe Bini, A Thousand Thoughts is a true celebration of collaboration in media ("live documentary") and joyful art-making. At Guild Hall this week, in a production with the Hamptons International Film Festival, Sam Green narrated the Kronos Quartet history in a film, in the presence of the string quartet, performing on violins, viola, cello, and for one selection, water-filled glassware. That’s the live part. The players, David Harrington, John Sherba, Hank Dutt, and Sunny Yang, accompany themselves and the many artists who have worked with them, including Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson, present on this dynamic night.

Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, and More: Allen Ginsberg Never Gets Old

Just before his death in 1997, Allen Ginsberg wrote to President Bill Clinton advising him that just in case he was going to name an American poet laureate, this would be a good time to honor him. As we know, that never happened. But look around: Allen, over 20 years after his death, is everywhere. In Martin Scorsese’s documentary of Bob Dylan’s tour, Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, the poet is named “The Oracle at Delphi,” giving him some classic, other-worldly stature. Seated Buddha-style he lends a religious benediction to a rock and roll tour that features Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Anne Waldman, Ronnie Blakely, and others. Dylan’s great music is of course the star, but Allen exercises his chops. A highlight of the tour that starts in 1975 is a visit to fellow poet Jack Kerouac’s grave, near his birth home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Only recently dead since 1969, Kerouac may have enjoyed Ginsberg and Dylan cavorting and reciting from “Mexico City Blues” and otherwise paying homage to the dead beat.

TONY Awards: Celebrating the New: Network, Rodgers’ & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!

Not so long ago, having dinner with a friend at Café Un Deux Trois, a stone’s throw from the Belasco Theater where Network was doing brisk business, I could see the actor Tony Goldwyn on the street walking pensively. We waved and he waved back. Having not yet seen the show, I did not know that in a minute he would be in a fierce embrace with co-star Tatiana Maslany and that the audience for Network was watching too, thanks to some inventive camera work. The show’s star Bryan Cranston was already dubbed this year’s Best Actor in a Drama, word of mouth, and I was determined to see Network before its closing. Suddenly it was the last week of the show and somehow I snagged the very last ticket for the last week’s Wednesday matinee.

Mary Wilson Reigns Supreme at the Café Carlyle

Photo: David Andrako

Most women are loath to tell their age. Not Mary Wilson, the former Supreme now holding court at the Café Carlyle. When you see her, as you absolutely must, you will understand why 75 is a point of pride. Sassy and smart, sublime and simply gorgeous, she commands the stage, singing songs you know. When she forgets the lyrics to the 1966 hit, “My World is Empty Without You,” she’ll tell you, I was too busy doing my “oohs, ahs, and baby babies” behind Diana Ross (also 75, by the way) to actually say those words. And the audience, eating it up, helps her out, even as she segues into “Fever.” We are all backups for the night.

Patti Smith’s Benediction for Graduates: What to Say at Commencement

Advice for graduating seniors is de rigueur at commencement. Rocker/ poet/ memoirist Patti Smith had much to advise the School of Visual Arts graduating class last week, having composed her speech the day before in a dentist’s chair. Resist the temptation toward materialism, was one thought, as were words from William S. Burroughs: Keep your name clean, when she asked the Naked Lunch author for his wisdom. Mainly she said, follow your vision without compromise.

Abel Ferrara Rocks Out at MoMA

Photo: Regina Weinreich

Celebrating a retrospective at MoMA, cult filmmaker Abel Ferrara showed his music chops. The museum lobby, its platform facing the garden became a stage for Ferrara’s long time friends and collaborators Paul Hipp and Joe Delia, and some surprise vocalists Willem Dafoe, Gretchen Mol among them. Mol’s duet with Ferrara on guitar for “Bebopalula” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” homage to the late great Lou Reed, sent chills through the downtown art crowd including Debbie Harry, Julian Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg, Marla Hanson; many have worked with Ferrara. This wild party, hosted by producers Annie and Ed Pressman, was most certainly a throwback to headier times.

Joel Grey Takes the Stage at Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish

Oy! The Cossacks are coming! In the essential viewing Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish at Stage 42, as we know, the Jews in the fictional town of Anatekva are threatened by pogroms. Eventually the lives of Tevye and Golde, their five daughters, and all town-folk are disrupted; they are forced to take refuge elsewhere. Could the creators of this marvelous 1964 play, Joseph Stein’s book, Jerry Bock’s music, Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics, have realized the extraordinary resonance of this story? Director Joel Grey’s genius, rendering it in the dying language of Yiddish, -- (even the actors don’t know it)-- is to make audiences consider this a blueprint of exile: perhaps, a “heimish” combination of old world sound in sepia tones against a threatening, violent outside world, one’s own family history. And no matter where you were born, it is.

Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything at the Jewish Museum: A Way to Say Goodbye

The Jewish Museum opens a dynamic homage to Canadian poet/ songman/ novelist/ cultural icon Leonard Cohen this week, focused on his art, and work from others inspired by his life and oeuvre. Staring up at an image of myself reclined comfortably, I experienced his “Famous Blue Raincoat” with words projected on the walls as well as images inspired by the song. This was Ari Folman’s contribution, “Depression Chamber,” an installation, like a therapy session, that must be experienced one person at a time. I anticipate lines, even with a timed reservation. It is just one piece from artists such as Christophe Chassol and Tacita Dean occupying three floors of the museum. Taryn Simon’s “New York Times, Friday, November 11, 2016,” the newspaper displayed in plexiglass illustrates the timing of Cohen’s death just a few days before our current president’s election to office. There is some symbolism there, especially in the juxtaposition of Obama and Trump’s first meeting, and an advertisement for Bernie Sanders’ book, Our Revolution.

Aretha Franklin at 29 Stars in Amazing Grace: “She Turned Your Ears into Eyes”

At the New York premiere of the documentary Amazing Grace, the recording session for Aretha Franklin’s historic 1972 gospel album, Clive Davis told an audience of many who knew the iconic singer, she invited him to dinner 40 years ago and asked, Could she be a hit?

From this auspicious beginning, at a screening room near the Freedom Tower, Dr. Amos C. Brown, pastor of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, provided a context for the church concert, backed by the Southern California Community Choir led by Anthony Hamilton, with James Cleveland accompanying Franklin at the apex of her singing chops: “People escaping lynching in Mississippi, at the height of despair, got the gift of music from Aretha Franklin.”