“Jazz Turned Inside Out” Tonight in New York

As New York jazz fanatics will discover tonight, whether burning through lucid deconstructions of ABBA and Nirvana, complex thickets of improvisation, or simply relishing a beautiful melody, powerhouse trio “The Bad Plus” never played a lick that wasn’t madly enticing or entirely original.

For their debut as part of the French Institute/Alliance Francaise’s Second Annual “Crossing the Line” festival, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King pair their wildly eclectic sound with another like-minded artist — the brilliant French pianist Benoît Delbecq — for an evening of jazz turned inside-out. Tickets are $25 for the 8:30 p.m. performance and are available through Ticketmaster. Florence Gould Hall is at 55 E. 59th St.

“Crossing the Line” has been hailed by the New York Times as “one of the fall’s most exciting and thought provoking performance events.” Returning for its second year, the festival once again presents three weeks of inter-disciplinary contemporary works by artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. The Festival runs from Sept. 16 to October 5, with dozens of cultural performances in the fields of art, theater and dance held at venues throughout the city. A full schedule of events can be found at www.fiaf.org.

“Our festival performances to date have been playing to sold-out houses,” says festival co-curator Lili Chopra. “And when you are playing to sold-out houses in New York, one of the cultural capitols of the world, you know you are doing something right.”

Adds co-curator Simon Dove: “New Yorkers truly crave the new and the innovative. They are voracious audiences. It is crazy and gratifying.”

New this year, the French Institute/Alliance Francaise (FIAF) and “Crossing the Line” have co-produced and commissioned a number of new pieces for the festival, including one that debuts tonight: a new work by The Bad Plus based on a song by French icon Serge Gainsbourg.

Next week, a new dance piece commissioned by the festival from acclaimed French choreographer Christian Rizzo will have its New York premiere at Brooklyn’s Center for Performance Research on September 25-27.

And another commissioned piece is by Paris-based performance artist Ivana Müller, who has created a special video work for the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop which will run throughout the festival.

“Food Futures,” a weekend of culinary-based programs hosted by French television personality and chef Julie Andrieu is also new to this year’s festival and will explore new techniques in the culinary arts with top innovative chefs from New York and France on September 27 and 28.

In his performance tonight, Delbecq begins with a solo set, followed by a duet with Bad Plus drummer David King before the full trio converges to perform a set that will include the special FIAF commission based on “Ballade de Melody Nelson,” by French singer/songwriter, actor, and provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.

Called “a pianist who deserves attention” in a wild understatement by the Village Voice, Delbecq, perhaps the most innovative French pianist of this generation, creates his own music using ideas and techniques from contemporary, classical, jazz, Pygmy polyphony, European improv, and other sources. For his concerts, he prepares the piano with various materials such as eraser bits and carved wooden twigs; the result is a complex, spacious sound that hardly seems to be emanating from a single instrument.

"Delbecq teases fascinating timbral qualities out of the keyboard, making it sound variously like a music box, a log drum, or a gamelan orchestra," according to Jazziz magazine. On his latest album “Nu-turn,” Delbecq stretches out a solo on a Steinway D in 8 astonishing structured improvisations; the final, 12-minute composition is a computer-created ambient "remix" that completely transforms the solo material. Recorded in a small concert hall directly to 6 channel DSD, the piano sound is remarkably realistic, and the music beguiling in its rhythmic-melodic-timbral meldings. Dexterous, brainy, evanescent and strangely moving, “Nu-turn” has intrigued audiophiles ready for new experiences and appealed to fans of new music beyond category.

Highly acclaimed in Europe, Delbecq leads or co-leads a number of bands (The Recyclers, Karket, Ambitronix, PianoBook) and has releases on Naive, Plush, Deux Z and other labels. He has three previous releases on Songlines: two duos with Vancouver clarinetist Francois Houle Nancali, SGL 1519, and Dice Thrown, SGL 1538), and one leading the Delbecq 5 (Pursuit, SGL 1529), about which Popmatters.com said: "...in the best sense, the newest in the new. It manages to push boundaries, sound fresh and smart, and be thoroughly and thoughtfully entertaining." Both Pursuit and Dice Thrown received “Chocs de l’Annee” (accorded the 12 best French jazz releases of the year) from the influential magazine Jazzman, “Pursuit” was selected by Jazzman's critics as one of the 50 outstanding records of the 1990s, and “Nu-turn” has already garnered a Choc (5 star) review from Jazzman's editor.

The Bad Plus are a jazz trio from the United States, consisting of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer Dave King. Iverson, Anderson and King first played together in 1989, establishing The Bad Plus in 2000. The band recorded their first album, a self-titled effort released on Fresh Sound, after playing only three gigs together. A live performance at the Village Vanguard was heard by Columbia Records representative Yves Beauvais, and the band was signed to Columbia in 2002. Their major label debut album, These Are the Vistas (2003), was followed by Give in 2004 and Suspicious Activity? in 2005. After parting ways with Columbia, the group signed to Heads Up Records (a division of Telarc), and released the album Prog on May 8, 2007. In early Spring of 2008 they finished recording their next studio album, which they expect to be released in Fall of 2008. It is expected to feature a classical feel on some tracks on behalf of the pianist Ethan Iverson, who is classically trained.

The trio's music combines elements of modern Avant-garde jazz with rock and pop influences. The band have recorded versions of songs by Nirvana, Aphex Twin, Blondie, Ornette Coleman, Pixies, Rush, Tears for Fears, Neil Young, David Bowie, Interpol, and Black Sabbath. Blunt Object: Live in Tokyo includes a cover of Queen's "We Are the Champions" along with the jazz standard "My Funny Valentine". “Suspicious Activity?” contains a cover of the theme from "Chariots of Fire", while a version of "Karma Police" by Radiohead appeared on the 2006 album Exit Music: Songs with Radio Heads.

The remaining events of the “Crossing the Line” festival are as follows:

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U.S. Premiere
Marie Losier’s Film Portraits
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 7pm
Co-presented by the Luxe Gallery
Q&A with Tony Conrad following the screening

A woman gives birth to a pair of hands. An animated figure tries in vain to eat her fist. Twenty people climb out of a 280-pound pot of spaghetti—all indelible moments in the work of celebrated underground filmmaker Marie Losier, from her remarkable set of short films.

Exuding an infectious love for the medium, these bizarre, beautiful portraits combine a whimsical nostalgia for cinema’s past with a surrealist touch.

Each film focuses on a specific artist, including Richard Foreman, George Kuchor, Guy Maddin, Genesis P-Orridge and Tony Conrad, reverently immortalizing—in celluloid—creativity and eccentricity at its most endearing. The multifaceted concept artist and minimalist Tony Conrad will join Ms. Losier in presenting these films, including Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist (N.Y. Premiere), followed by a Q&A session. An indisputable force behind the American Avant-Garde film and music movements, Mr. Conrad’s works underscore the overarching themes of multi-disciplinary talent and curiosity that permeate Ms. Losier’s films.

In English
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street

Ticket Price
Members Free ($2 advance)
Non-Members $10
Students w/ID $7

Buy Tickets
Ticketmaster.com
Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere
Thinking of Each Other
Like Good Friends Would
Ivana Müller
Opens Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Co-presented by Dance Theater Workshop
To complement While We Were Holding It Together, Crossing the Line has commissioned a new video work by Ivana Müller specifically for the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop. This piece will run continuously 24/7 throughout the festival.

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street Between 7th and 8th aves.

Mon-Sun, 24 hours a day

Free and open to the public
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U.S. Premiere
While We Were
Holding It Together
Ivana Müller
Wednesday–Friday, September 24–26, 2008 at 8pm
Co-presented by Dance Theater Workshop
Post-performance discussion on Wed, Sept 24
From Paris and Amsterdam-based choreographer Ivana Müller comes the multiple prize-winning While We Were Holding It Together, a mind-bending theatrical excursion into the richly interpersonal nature of perception. Five actors strike motionless poses on stage, frozen like monuments. “We are statues in a museum,” one muses, “soldiers in a mine field,” another asserts, as this tableau vivant quietly begins to interpret itself. While We Were Holding It Together offers a profound and genuinely funny testament to the unspoken conversations that transpire between art and interpreter.

Wednesday evening’s performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion with choreographer Ivana Müller and Crossing the Line co-curator, Simon Dove.

While We Were Holding It Together is produced by LISA in co-production with Sophiensaele Berlin, Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), Dubbelspel (30CC and STUK Kunstencentrum Leuven), and financially supported by the Dutch Funds of the Performing Arts, the Goethe Institute, and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Thinking of Each Other Like Good Friends Would: To complement While We Were Holding It Together, Crossing the Line has commissioned a new video work by Ivana Müller. This piece, Thinking of Each Other Like Good Friends Would, will run continuously 24/7 throughout the festival in the lobby of Dance Theater Workshop.

Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street

Ticket Price
FIAF Members $15
Non-Members $25

Buy Tickets
Ticketmaster.com
Call 212 307 4100

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U.S. Premiere
100% Polyester
& Fantômes et vanités n. 4
Christian Rizzo
Thursday–Saturday, September 25–27, 2008
12-9pm

Co-presented by CPR-Center for Performance Research @ Greenbelt

In conjunction with the U.S. Premiere of his untitled dance work, artist and choreographer Christian Rizzo brings two beautiful installation pieces to CPR: the haunting installation / performance 100% Polyester and, Fantômes et vanités nº4.

100% Polyester elevates the absence of the human body into an indelible image of ghostly beauty. Gently lit twin dresses float melifluously above swirling currents of air, swaddled in an electronic soundscape.

Fantômes et vanités nº4 is an explosive self portrait of an artist shedding light on his unique creativity that at once is both spectacular and melancholic. At the crossroads of performance and art, Christian Rizzo has developed a body of work of unexpected contours that can be glimpsed through this kaleidoscopic montage of punk performances, sequences from collaborative film fantasies, moments of dance, and portraits of artists interpreting his work and his fashion.

CPR-Center for Performance Research @ Greenbelt
361 Manhattan Avenue
Unit 1 at Jackson Avenue
Brooklyn

Free admission by
reservation only.
Tickets are not available
through FIAF.

RSVP at cprrsvp@aol.com

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U.S. Premiere
I-Fang Lin / Christian Rizzo
Thursday–Saturday, September 25–27, 2008 at 7:30pm
Co-presented by CPR-Center for Performance Research @ Greenbelt

Exploring stints as a rock musician and a fashion designer before examining the visual arts, French choreographer and multidisciplinary artist Christian Rizzo uses an outsider’s invigorating perspective to translate the ineffable into art.
Examining the dynamic between the interpreter and the maker, the Sujets à Vif project inverts the usual relationship by inviting powerful performers to select their choreographer. Taiwan born I-Fang Lin, currently with the Mathilde Monnier Company in Montpellier, commissioned Christian Rizzo to create this richly layered, poignant human portrait of a rapidly evolving culture.

100% Polyester and Fantômes et vanités n. 4 In conjunction with the dance work above, Christian Rizzo brings two beautiful installation pieces to CPR: the haunting installation/performance 100% Polyester and, Fantômes et vanités nº4, an explosive self-portrait of an artist shedding light on his unique creativity that at once is both spectacular and melancholic.

CPR-Center for Performance Research @ Greenbelt
361 Manhattan Avenue
Unit 1 at Jackson Avenue Brooklyn

Free admission by
reservation only.
Tickets are not available
through FIAF

RSVP at cprrsvp@aol.com
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World Premiere
Food Futures
With Julie Andrieu,
Wylie Dufresne,
and David Zuddas
Saturday & Sunday, September 27 & 28, 2008
4–6pm

Whether you eat to live or live to eat, nowhere is culture more inextricably bound to our vitality than in the kitchen. To celebrate this delectable intersection of art and appetite, Crossing the Line presents Food Futures, a two-day forum for talking, teaching, and eating food with celebrated French TV personality Julie Andrieu and friends.

Day One - September 27
Ms. Andrieu hosts two chefs on the culinary cutting-edge: Wylie Dufresne of wd~50 in New York and David Zuddas of France’s professional culinary movement Générations C. Together, they will engage in an animated conversation with multidisciplinary artist and self-described “foodie” Christian Rizzo.

Day Two - September 28
David Zuddas, accompanied by Julie Andrieu, will lead a hands-on, food-filled workshop exploring some of chef Zuddas’ innovative and personal approaches to engaging the senses in the culinary experience. A tasting will follow.

In English
Le Skyroom
22 East 60th Street

One Event
FIAF Members $15
Non-Members $25
Both Events
FIAF Members $20
Non-Members $40

World Premiere: Outtakes by Marie Losier
Opens Sun, Sept 7 through October 8, 2008
Co-presented by the Luxe Gallery

A celluloid portrait-in-progress is transformed into a riotous playground for cinema’s past in Outtakes, beloved underground filmmaker Marie Losier’s endlessly creative, hands-on installation at the Lower East Side’s Luxe Gallery devoted to industrial rock pioneer Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle).

Constructed almost entirely of unused clips and sound bites from Losier’s upcoming feature, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Outtakes puts the forlorn footage to work in the service of a whimsical retelling of film history—one in which the transformative Genesis is its unlikely star. Peephole boxes, antique lenses, a campy music video machine from the early 60s (called a Scopitone)—each historical device brings film off the big screen and down to eye level, providing the audience with an incredibly intimate encounter with their cinematic and musical past.

Presented at the Luxe Gallery in conjunction with Crossing the Line, Outtakes defamiliarizes and recontextualizes its way to an astounding personal tribute—all the while returning the obsolete and abandoned to center stage.
Special thanks to collaborators Nathalie Angles, Stephan Stoyanov, Jean Barberis, Sebastien Santamaria, and Bernard Yenelouis.

Luxe Gallery
53 Stanton Street
Between Forsyth and
Eldridge Streets

Other top jazz artists past and present include:

1. Louis Armstrong
2. Duke Ellington
3. Miles Davis
4. Charlie Parker
5. John Coltrane
6. Dizzy Gillespie
7. Billie Holiday
8. Thelonious Monk
9. Charles Mingus
10. Count Basie
11. Lester Young
12. Ella Fitzgerald
13. Coleman Hawkins
14. Sonny Rollins
15. Sidney Bechet
16. Art Blakey
17. Ornette Coleman
18. Bill Evans
19. Art Tatum
20. Benny Goodman
21. Clifford Brown
22. Stan Getz
23. Jelly Roll Morton
24. Sarah Vaughan
25. Herbie Hancock26. Bud Powell
27. Wayne Shorter
28. Fletcher Henderson
29. Django Reinhardt
30. Horace Silver
31. Dave Brubeck
32. Rahsaan Roland Kirk
33. Cecil Taylor
34. King Oliver
35. Sun Ra
36. Gil Evans
37. Lionel Hampton
38. Art Pepper
39. Eric Dolphy
40. Oscar Peterson
41. Charlie Christian
42. Ben Webster
43. Fats Waller
44. Earl Hines
45. Woody Herman
46. Wes Montgomery
47. J. J. Johnson
48. John McLaughlin
49. Artie Shaw
50. Lee Morgan
51. David Murray
52. Chick Corea
53. Modern Jazz Quartet / Blue Note
54. Max Roach
55. Anthony Braxton
56. Bix Beiderbecke
57. Cannonball Adderley
58. Dexter Gordon
59. Keith Jarrett
60. Lee Sedaris Konitz
61. Stan Kenton
62. Chet Baker
63. Roy Eldridge
64. Joe Henderson
65. McCoy Tyner
66. Gerry Mulligan
67. Benny Carter
68. Teddy Wilson
69. Lennie Tristano
70. Freddie Hubbard
71. Jimmy Smith
72. Mary Lou Williams
73. George Russell
74. Fats Navarro
75. Albert Ayler76. Bennie Moten
77. Jimmie Lunceford
78. Wynton Marsalis
79. Charlie Haden
80. Erroll Garner
81. Billy Strayhorn
82. Meade Lux Lewis
83. Pat Metheny
84. Jack Teagarden
85. Johnny Hodges
86. Chick Webb
87. Jimmy Giuffre
88. Jaco Pastorius
89. Hank Mobley
90. Elvin Jones
91. Evan Parker
92. Paul Chambers
93. Ron Carter
94. Philly Joe Jones
95. Carla Bley
96. Bennie Golson
97. James Carter
98. Donald Byrd
99. Johnny Dodds
100. Glenn Miller