Arts Fuse critics select the best in music, film, theater, visual arts, author readings, and dance that’s coming up in the next week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Rock

Rusted Root
June 25
Rock and Blues Concert Cruise, Boston, MA (ship sails from World Trade Center Pier)

When I was in college, I worked for the athletic department. I had a few different tasks during basketball games and one of them was to play music during timeouts. Before tip-off, I always played “Black Betty” by Ram Jam. Near the end of a tight game, I’d play “Baba O’Riley” by the Who. And when things weren’t quite going the team’s way, and the fans needed a pick me up, I’d always go with “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root. It never failed to lighten the mood and lift spirits. So, if you’re looking to have your spirit lifted, here’s a chance to see the band while cruising off the coast. A unique setting for a unique group.

Jay Z and Beyonce
July 1
Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA

The first family of music bring their joint tour to Gillette. That’s an awfully big room to fill, but if any duo can do it (and keep all the attendees entertained) it’s them.

Upcoming and On Sale…

The Kills (7/8/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Queens of the Stone Age (7/14/2014, Providence Performing Arts Center); Queen + Adam Lambert (7/19/2014, Mohegan Sun Arena); Sidewalk Driver (7/19/2014, The Sinclair); Queen + Adam Lambert (7/22/2014, TD Garden); Nine Inch Nails & Soundgarden (7/29/2014, Xfinity Center); Echo & the Bunnymen (8/14/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Arcade Fire (8/19/2014, Comcast Center); Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (8/30/2014, Fenway Park); Boston Calling Music Festival feat. The National, Lorde, The Replacements (9/5-7/2014, City Hall Plaza); Bombino (9/5/2014, The Sinclair); Justin Townes Earle (9/10/2014, Royale); Bob Mould (9/12/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Jack White (9/17/2014, Fenway Park); Willie Nelson (9/20/2014, Indian Ranch); The Black Keys (9/21/2014, TD Garden); Kasabian (9/26/2014, Paradise Rock Club); The Orwells (10/9/2014, Brighton Music Hall); J Mascis (10/18/2014, The Sinclair); Temples (10/24/2014, Paradise Rock Club); Peter Hook & the Light (11/8/2014, Royale)

— Adam Ellsworth

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Dance

Reject Dance Theatre, 83paperbirds & inFluxdance
June 27
Bank of America Parking Lot
406 Highland Ave
Somerville, MA
Free

The Smith College alumna of Reject Dance Theatre, Boston’s inFluxdance, and 83paperbirds, who were recently in residence at The Dance Complex, present a shared outdoor event that explores limits to our physicality, our beliefs, and our access to social justice. The parking lot show is presented under the auspices of the Somerville Arts Council’s Dancing in the Streets program.

Dances of the Spirit: The Works of Isadora Duncan
June 28
Mount Auburn Cemetery
Cambridge, MA

Isadora Duncan would have loved it. Dances by Isadora, the troupe led by Catherine Gallant, is currently engaged in a project to perform and document the entire extant repertoire of America’s first great dance revolutionary. The group will recreate the mourning dances Duncan composed after her two children drowned in 1913. Duncan’s solos and group works will waft across the verdant cemetery’s natural ampitheatre. Open air, but tickets are required.

and further afield

Trey McIntyre Project Final Farewell Performances
and Unreal Hip-Hop
June 25-29
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Becket, MA

The two programs at the Pillow this week couldn’t offer a greater contrast. Trey McIntyre, who is shuttering his Boise, Idaho company after this set of performances, specializes in an accessible ballet romanticism which will be on display alongside a work inspired by the faux Victoriana of illustrator Edward Gorey at the Ted Shawn Theatre. Unreal Hip Hop offers a curated kaleidoscope of old school and brash new hip hop styles by all-female crew Decadancetheatre performing a hip-hop interpretation of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie turning the tables on James Brown, and Boston poppers Billy and Bobby McClain aka The Wondertwins, about whom there will be more new on the Arts Fuse soon.

The Sound of Movement
June 28
The Dance Hall
Kittery, Maine

The culmination of the four day Portsmouth Percussive Dance Festival features master dancer Brenda Bufalino; Josh Hilberman (swooping into town from his new life in Belgium); Katherine Kramer; and festival director Drika Overton with jazz tunes laid down by the always satisfying pianist Paul Arslanian and bass player Wes Brown.

— Debra Cash

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Visual Arts

Andrew Wyeth: The Linda L. Bean Collection
June 26 through October 31
At the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Oguniquit, ME

Like that other Andy (Warhol), Andy Wyeth’s reputation has gyrated like a NASDAQ IPO. While they lived, critics periodically attacked both artists along roughly the same lines — as publicity-seeking charlatans more concerned with celebrity and sales figures than advancing the true cause of art.

For years, the two Andys, realists less than a decade different in age but worlds apart in most everything else, traded back and forth the title of “most famous American artist.” Since Warhol died in 1987, though, the younger has clearly eclipsed the older painter in fame, glory, and auction records.

Wyeth himself died in 2009, in his nineties. There’s a growing attempt afoot to re-gild his image. Shows on view this summer include Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In, the first major Wyeth exhibition at the National Gallery since the voyeuristic, media-drenched, but critically disastrous, blockbuster, “The Helga Pictures” of 1987. Helga Testorf, in case you forget, was Wyeth’s Chad’s Ford, PA, neighbor and supposedly secret model for years until she was sensationally revealed to the public, landing on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

Andrew Wyeth: The Linda L. Bean Collection is at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art on the coast of Maine, Wyeth’s summer home state. Bean, granddaughter of Maine’s celebrated L.L. and heir to his outfitting fortune, has been collecting Wyeth’s work for some thirty years. This will be the first time, the museum says, her collection has been seen by the public.

It was not known at press time whether Helga will make an appearance.

Stanley Myers: A Modernist Architect
At the BSA (Boston Society of Architects) Space on Congress Street, Boston, MA
June 26 through September 30.

Architect Stanley Myers (1923-2010) graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1953, when Gropius taught there and the Boston International Style was in full swing. Myers’ work, much of it comfortable homes in leafy commuter towns around Boston, is in the relaxed modernist tradition of the great American suburb’s boom years (in 1962, House & Home magazine referred to one of Myers’ domestic designs as “California come to New England”).

Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective
June 28 – October 19
At the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

Born in Rahway in 1941, Richard Tuttle grew up in small town New Jersey but turned to art in Manhattan as a recent college grad. Coming of age at the high water mark of American Minimalism, Tuttle was very much at home in the “less is more” aesthetic of the mid-sixties. Another classic Minimalist, the painter Agnes Martin, was his close friend.

Tuttle made his reputation first in Europe but things came more slowly in the United States, where many still call him an “artist’s artist,” influencing post-war boomers like Kiki Smith and Jim Hodges. Tuttle’s exhibition is billed as the “first-ever comprehensive examination” of his prints, starting with the ‘70s and running up to today. The show promises to be modernist in form but traditional in approach, focusing on Tuttle’s continuous experiments with media, tools, and collaboration, making common cause with artist-print-makers from Rembrandt to Warhol.

— Peter Walsh

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Jazz

Dave Holland/Dominique Eade
June 23, 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston, MA.

New England Conservatory’s “Jazz Lab” week for secondary-school students includes several free faculty concerts. Tonight, esteemed bassist Dave Holland will play a solo set and then join singer Dominique Eade for duets. The week also includes performances by the Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra (June 24, 8 p.m., Brown Hall) and the Ken Schaphorst Ensemble (June 25, 8 p.m. Jordan Hall).

Steve Lantner/Junko Fujiwara
June 24, 8 p.m.
Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA.

Pianist Steve Lantner and cellist Junko Fujiwara make any ensemble they’re part of worth hearing. Tonight it’s just the two of them. Expect spontaneously improvised pieces that bristle with compositional deliberation.

Daniel Rosenthal Quintet
June 26, 8 p.m.
A Far Cry, Jamaica Plain, MA.

The estimable quintet of trumpeter Daniel Rosenthal – with Charlie Kohlhase and Rick Stone on saxophones, Jef Charland on bass, and Luther Gray on drums – takes the stage of the space operated by feisty classical ensemble A Far Cry in Jamaica Plain.

Human Feel
June 25, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The quartet Human Feel was born in Boston (by way of Seattle) in the late ’80s, and its members, though sometimes crossing paths in other projects, have since gone their separate, distinctive ways. But they’re back for this reunion: drummer Jim Black , Andrew D’Angelo on alto sax and bass clarinet, tenor saxophonist and flutist Chris Speed, and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.

Montreal Jazz Festival
June 28-July 6
Montreal, Quebec

There are those who would argue that – with its 10 days of concerts and events, two thirds of them free, on nine outdoor stages and in 10 concert halls – the International Festival de Montréal tops them all: Newport, New Orleans, Monterey, you name it. This 35th anniversary edition includes performances by Diana Ross, Keith Jarrett, Beck, Jack DeJohnette, Earth, Wind & Fire, Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson, the below-mentioned Ginger Baker, and about a million more.

Ginger Baker Jazz Confusion
June 29, 7 p.m.
Wilbur Theatre, Boston, MA.

The former Cream drummer brings his Jazz Confusion – former James Brown saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, bassist Alec Dankworth, and percussionist Abass Dodoo – to the Wilbur Theatre behind their new CD, Why?

Garrison Fewell/Jacob William/Curt Newton
June 30, 8 p.m.
Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA.

Former straightahead guitar master Garrison Fewell continues his exploration of structured free improvisation with bassist Jacob William and drummer Curt Newton.

Mario Castro Quintet with Strings
July 2, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The talented young tenor saxophonist and composer Mario Castro, after recording his debut album on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle Music label, upped the ante by adding strings for Estrella de Mar, his debut on Interrobang Records. He celebrates the CD release with a string quartet as well as trumpeter Aaron Bahr, pianist Meritxell Neddermann, bassist Tamir Shmerling, and a drummer TBA.

— Jon Garelick

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Boston Area Film Schedules – What is playing today, Where and When

Film

Roxbury Film Festival
June 25th – 29
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Boston’s only festival devoted to films by and about people of color. This coming week features 15 films. They include: The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, 
the story of an African American mother and prolific jewel thief, which is opening the festival on Wednesday (see Arts Fuse review); Anita, a needed perspective on the battle fought by Anita Hill in her testimony during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas (Arts Fuse review); Lift, a locally shot film by Khari Streeter and DeMane Davis about a girl who has a fractured relationship with her mother. The daughter, in an attempt to reach out, shoplifts clothing to give to her mother. See schedule for full list of films.

Finsterworld
Sunday, June 22
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, MA

The Goethe-Institut presents Frauke Finsterwalder’s film, which combines a number of individual narratives and a dark sense of humor. The stories include: a police officer in a bear costume; a documentary filmmaker who finds it difficult to find an appropriate approach to his film; a pedicurist who works in an unusual fashion with his older female patient; a wealthy couple who find it difficult to travel in a German built car; a history student whose visit to a concentration camp turns unpleasant; and a wild man training a raven in the woods.

WHITEY: United States Of America V. James J. Bulger
Opens Friday June 27
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, MA, and Kendall Square Cinema, Cambridge, MA

Boston’s favorite crazed criminal gets his own documentary directed by Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills). A screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre earlier this season caused quite an uproar. The film examines last summer’s sensational trial of the infamous local gangster, using the legal proceedings as a spring-board to explore allegations of corruption within the highest levels of law enforcement. Arts Fuse review

— Tim Jackson

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Classical Music

Boston Landmarks Orchestra with James David Christie
Presented by the American Guild of Organists
June 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

The concert portion of the AGO’s 2014 national convention kicks off with a wonderfully varied program of music for organ and orchestra, showcasing the Boston Symphony’s superb regular organist, James David Christie. Music by Alexander Guilmant and Jean Langlais is followed by an all-American second half of Pinkham, Piston, and Barber.

Handel and Haydn Society plays Bach
Presented by the American Guild of Organists
June 24 at 7:30 and 9 p.m.
St. Paul Parish, Cambridge, MA

Also on the docket for these AGO events is this concert featuring the Handel and Haydn Society Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus under the leadership of artistic director Harry Christophers. C.P.E. Bach’s cantata Spiegga, Ammonia fortunata is followed by two short pieces from his father: the motet Komm, Jesu, komm and the Missa brevis.

Steven Tharp plays The Rite of Spring
Presented by the American Guild of Organists
June 27 at 8 p.m.
First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, MA

The AGO’s annual St. Cecilia Recital closes a week of events with quite a bang: Steven Tharp’s performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (adapted from the composer’s version of the piece for piano four-hands). Also on the almost-all-20th-century program is music by Naji Hakim, Nadia Boulanger, Vincent Persichetti, Leo Sowerby, and Max Reger.

BMOP at Guitarfest IX
Presented by Boston Guitarfest IX
June 28 at 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The irreplaceable Boston Modern Orchestra Project is the backing band for two guitar concerto premieres. The first is the world premiere of Anthony Paul De Ritis’s Pop Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which draws on songs by Seal, Alanis Morissette, U2, and Michael Jackson. The other is Robert Beaser’s Guitar Concerto, here receiving its first local performance. Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is also on the program. Eliot Fisk is the soloist for the De Ritis and Beaser works, and Zaira Maneses performs the Rodrigo. As always, Gil Rose conducts.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Two big events take place in Boston this week. The American Guild of Organists National Convention (through Saturday, June 28) and the excellent Chopin Symposium & Institute (June 27 through 29) at the Rivers School Conservatory in Weston, MA.

Pianist Daria Rabotkina
Tuesday, June 24 at 8 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main Street, Rockport MA

The Rockport Chamber Music Festival present Rabotkina in its Rising Star Series. On the program: works of Dowland, Scarlatti, Couperin, Bach, Ravel, Prokofiev, and Rabotkin.

Blue Heron
Wednesday, June 25 at 3:30 p.m.
At St. Cecilia church, 18 Belvidere St., Boston, MA

The American Guild of Organists present Scott Metcalfe and Blue Heron performing Nicholas Ludford’s Ave cujus conceptio, Songs from the Fayrfax MS at Henry Viii’s Songbook, and Robert Jones’s Missa Spes nostra.

“Some Thoughts on Good and Evil”
Friday, June 27 at 8 p.m.
At the Goethe Institut, 170 Beacon St., Boston, MA.

WORDSONG presents violinist Gabriella Diaz, cellist Rafael Popper Keizer, and pianist Elizabeth Schumann. The musicians will perform the world premiere of Adam Jacob Simon’s Piano Trio #1 in B major, Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio no. 2 in C minor, op. 66, and Howard Frazin’s “Some Thoughts on Good and Evil.”

Chopin Symposium — “Chopin and his World”
Saturday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m.
At The Rivers School Conservatory, 333 Winter St., Weston, MA

The performers feature pianists Ya-Fei Chuang, Gila Goldstein, and Andrew Tyson along with the young artists of the Chopin Symposium. The program includes music by Alkan, Chopin, Godowsky, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Scriabin, and Wittgenstein.

— Susan Miron

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Author Events

Kevin Birmingham
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses
Harvard Book Store
Monday June 23 at 7 p.m.
Free

Fresh off this year’s Bloomsday celebrations, literary historian Kevin Birmingham comes to the Harvard Book Store to discuss the inspiration and controversies surrounding Joyce’s ‘blue book of Eccles,’ which took the literary world by storm from the time it was published in 1922 to its landmark trial for obscenity in 1933. Joyce’s masterwork continues to inspire and provoke, and its place in literary history will remain assured. Birmingham will delve into topics such as Joyce’s youth and literary social circle, including the likes of Hemingway and Samuel Beckett, his painstaking creative process and the ardent (and at times lascivious) relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle.

An Evening of Marlon Brando
Susan Mizruchi, author of Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought and Work
and a screening of On The Waterfront
Monday June 23 at 5:30 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, MA

Susan Mizruchi will kick off an evening in celebration of the method in the madness of none other than Marlon Brando. She will be unveiling previously unseen photographs of Brando from her research of her new biography of the man. Mizruchi gets past the biceps, sex appeal and legendary scandals to reveal a sensitive and deeply literate man who collected thousands of books and used his star power to advocate for Native American and Civil Rights. After the discussion, there will be a screening of the Elia Kazan classic On The Waterfront, for which Brando won his Oscar.

Anthony James and Susan Mizruchi in conversation
Acting My Face and Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought and Work
Porter Square Books
Tuesday June 24 at 7 p.m.
Free

You might recognize Anthony James from his face alone. The actor has been in such Oscar-winning films as The Heat of the Night and The Unforgiven, part of a memorable 28 year career in films. He’s best known for playing killers and psychos, but in reality he is actually a thoughtful, approachable fellow whose memoir Acting My Face is recently out in hardcover. James comes to Porter Square Books to discuss the whys and wherefores of the acting life, as well as the legacy of Brando with Susan Mizruchi.

Ben Mezrich Book Signing
Bringing Down the Mouse
Harvard Book Store
Wednesday June 25 at noon
Free

The bestselling author comes to town to sign copies of his new children’s book. The story is based around a young math whiz named Charlie Lewis, whose story parallels Bringing Down the House, which was made into the movie 21 starring Kevin Spacey. Charlie loves math and he’s awesome at it, but his friends want him to help them game the system at the world’s biggest theme park. But how far will Charlie go to put his skills to the test?

Michael Waldman
The Second Amendment: A Biography
Harvard Book Store
Wednesday June 25 at 7 p.m.
Free

For all of today’s hullabaloo about gun rights, the true history of the 2nd Amendment is rarely brought up. Michael Waldman is a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, and has written a “biography” of one of the most controversial Constitutional amendments. Waldman traces the history of the amendment from its origin in colonial America to the four times the Supreme Court ruled against the right to own a gun, after the era of Prohibition and gangsterism. He argues that our view of the 2nd amendment is not, in fact, based on pristine Constitutional text but is instead subject to the push and pull of of political advocacy and social activism.

The Keillor Reader
Thursday June 26 at 8 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith
Free

Garrison Keillor’s reading is sold out, but there will be a standby line forming at the door at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30, which includes a copy of the book. The book signing does not require a ticket; it is scheduled for 8 p.m., after the reading. Keillor will be signing copies of his latest collection, a career-spanning retrospective of his fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and monologues from A Prairie Home Companion and previously unpublished work.

Claire Messud and Susanna Kaysen
The Woman Upstairs and Cambridge
Thursday June 26 at 7 p.m.
Newtonville Books
Free

Claire Messud and Susanna Kaysen will be reading from their respective recent novels. Messud’s The Woman Upstairs revolves around a solitary woman whose life is forever changed by her relationship with a colorful family that awakens her to life’s possibilities. Kaysen’s Cambridge (See Arts Fuse review) examines questions of place and home.

Boston by Foot: Literary Landmark Walking Tour
Saturday June 28 at 10 a.m.
$12 for adults/ $8 for children 6- 12
300 Washington Street, Boston, Mass

This group stroll highlights the homes and meeting places of literary Boston’s eminent nineteenth century writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, the Alcotts and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The tour meets at the Irish Famine Memorial at Washington and School Streets in Boston.

Harvard Book Store Summer Warehouse Sale
Park St in Somerville between Somerville Ave & Beacon St
Accessible by Porter Square T and bus lines #83 and #87
Sat & Sun June 28 & 29
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Time to stock up on your bargain books for the lazy days of summer! Harvard Book Store’s warehouse will be open to sell discounted, used, remaindered and collectible books. Gift cards and Frequent Buyer Discounts are not applicable.

— Matt Hanson

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Theater

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Directed by Tina Packer
Staged by Shakespeare and Company at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA
Through August 30.

“Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer delivers audiences her ‘bare-Bard’ production of Julius Caesar, marking its final leg of a three city tour—Orlando, Florida, Prague in the Czech Republic, and now at home in Lenox.” Shakespeare & Co last staged the play in 1993. The ‘bare-Bard’ approach should bring out the script’s visceral energy, its up close and personal depiction of alpha male loyalty and betrayal. As Packer observes: “The emphasis on Shakespeare’s text makes the language the focus of this production, including the relationships between the actors, and the actors and the audience.”

June Moon
By Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman. Directed by Jessica Stone
Staged by the Williamstown Theatre Festival on the Main Stage, Williamstown, MA
July 2 through July 13.

Lardner fashioned this 1927 comedy about Tin Pan Alley wannabes for Broadway consumption (with Kaufman adding a commercial assist, no doubt supplying the tacked-on happy ending). It ran for 273 performances and was made into a film. Still, there is enough of Lardner’s jaundiced humor and nimbly addled pitter-patter to remind you of his genius. The Library of America recently published a volume of Lardner’s brilliant short stories and novels. I interviewed editor Ian Frazier for The Arts Fuse. (June Moon can be found in the Library of America volume dedicated to the plays of Kaufmann and his collaborators.)

— Bill Marx