Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Books

Jeffrey W. Cupchik, an ethnomusicologist whose wide-ranging publications I have long admired, has just published an authoritative study of an important set of Tibetan Buddhist ritual-music practices associated with a 12th-century female ascetic.

Entering The Sound of Vultures’ Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Ritual Practice of the Female Buddha Machik Labdrön (SUNY Press) is an intriguing adventure. Cupchik takes care to do some explaining about principles and practices of Tibetan Buddhism. But the book is emphatically also about music, since the practice known as Chöd involves the chanting of different melodies, enhanced by slow rhythmic accompaniment on the large hand-held, two-sided, symbolically significant damaru drum.

Chöd, Cupchik explains, is spelled gCod (in Tibetan transliteration) and pronounced Chö, with the d silent. The religious practices involve visualizing all beings in the universe who are suffering mentally, emotionally, and physically, and imagining that one’s own body is transformed into all that those other beings need and desire.

Cupchik is ideally placed to guide us. He trained for two years under James Kippen at the University of Toronto (student of the renowned ethnomusicologist John Blacking, of How Musical Is Man?), holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from York University (in Ontario), and has taught numerous college and university courses on music and well-being.

As Cupchik’s website explains, he also carried out “a long-time apprenticeship under the tutelage of Chöd master pedagogue Venerable Pencho (Phuntsok) Rabgey MSC.” The book derives from ethnographic research that he carried out in several sites in North America and Asia, including Sera Monastic University in India.

Cupchik’s book, written with a delicate combination of care and flair, is a timely reminder that there are more ways in which humans make music, carry out ritual, and ponder the universe than we in the West normally consider.

A fascinating journey, highly recommended, and the paperback costs only $36.95!

— Ralph P. Locke

Penalties of June (McSweeney’s, $28), John Brandon’s fifth novel, opens as its protagonist, 30-ish Pratt Zimmer, is released from prison in Florida. He has just completed a short sentence for running stolen cars to a chop shop for local businessman and crime boss Arthur Bonne. Pratt wants badly to extricate himself from this criminal enterprise. But soon after his release, Bonne asks Pratt to “do this one thing” for him: to murder an accountant, Malloy, who’s been stealing from Bonne in order to fund a gambling addiction. Pratt was orphaned as an adolescent and harbors feelings of filial piety toward the elderly Bonne. Moreover, he feels responsible for the death of Bonne’s son, Matty, who had been his best friend. Pratt can’t bring himself to say no.

Soon, Pratt is following the accountant through his highly predictable daily routines, hoping to keep Bonne and his men off his back until he can find a way out. Brandon skillfully uses Pratt’s restricted and repetitive movements to dramatize a character who is trapped by his environment. There are the kinds of twists and turns one expects in a crime novel, but Brandon keeps his plotline relatively straightforward, allowing us to focus on Pratt and his moral dilemma.

Along the way, Brandon treats us to his own sharply drawn portrait of Florida’s seamier side — the semiabandoned strip malls and anonymous apartment buildings, the short-lived businesses. While there are touches of satire here and there, we’re not in Carl Hiaasen territory — the tone of Penalties of June never descends to farce. There’s simply too much at stake.

Stylistically, Brandon’s prose is lean and unfussy, with moments of unexpected beauty. He has a knack for writing arresting prose within the verbal resources of his characters.

Penalties of June shouldn’t be categorized as a crime novel. It’s a beautifully achieved and affecting meditation on loyalty, duty, and what constitutes family in late 20th-century American society.

— Clark Bouwman

In times like these hearts and minds turn to the pleasures of fascist-bashing guerilla filmmakers. For that purpose I highly recommend the wide-ranging and well-written collection of essays Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960-1990 (PM Press, $29.95)

Today such agitprop moviemaking might be a dying art form, though one wonders what the editors Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan might have made of, say, Radu Jude’s recent anarchic provocation, Do Not Expect Much from the End of the World, or Daniel Goldhaber’s explosive anti-oil caper How to Blow Up a Pipeline.The former’s laid-back and perverse manifesto is a bit reminiscent of madcap Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev’s jolly, assaultive WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971), which does get a shoutout in the book.

The period covered reflects the tumult of revolt and oppression that occurred, according to the editors’ introduction, “between the Algerian War in the late ’50s and the fall of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s.” They describe their purpose as “an examination of how filmmakers around the world reacted to the political violence and resistance movements of the period and how this was expressed on-screen primarily in arthouse and cult films.” As such it is an eclectic if not exhaustive compendium covering topics ranging from canonical auteurs such as Gillo Pontecorvo, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Jean-Luc Godard to more obscure and less esteemed artists as Brazil’s José Mojica Marins (aka Coffin Joe) and the Italian directors of Mondo Cane (1962).

Any work of this kind can be criticized for omissions (where are Roger Corman or Sam Fuller?) and praised for its surprise inclusions (Come and See! If…! Born in Flames!). But its seemingly random, roughly chronological structure is more than compensated for by its zine-like graphics and design. Not to mention the emphasis on feminist and queer filmmaking in the latter chapters. All in all, a perfect holiday gift for your radical and/or cinephilic friends, along with a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book (1971).

–Peter Keough

Tim Hayes’s Horses, Humans, and Love (Trafalgar Square Books) is an indispensable coaching guide for those with equines. I board my pony with 20 other horses, and working with these animals can generate frustration and backsliding. This book is helpful because of its specificity and humane approach.

The author draws on natural horsemanship principles. Readers are reminded that creating relationships of mutual trust, respect, and kindness are far more beneficial than turning to the tactics of force, fear, and intimidation. For Hayes, the most effective way to make horses change their behavior is for us to change ours first. Relaxation and recalibration, rather than tension and anxiety, smooth out problematic habits and improve human/animal interactions.

A previous book, Riding Home: The Power of Horses to Heal (St. Martin’s Press), contains several equine therapeutic practices, exploring how establishing relationships with horses has proven to help troubled teenagers, war veterans with PTSD, those struggling with addiction and eating disorders, survivors of sexual trauma, and people on the autism spectrum.

In this new book, Hayes draws from his own story of leaving the film industry to work with equines and the welcome impact that decision had on his self-acceptance, marriages, and sobriety. He and his students learned that the issues they encountered with horses “turned out to be the same difficulties they experienced in other areas of their life.” Connecting to horses physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually nurtured healing compassion for themselves and created empathy for others.

A central point in Horses, Humans, and Love is understanding the herd mentality of the animal. Once a hierarchy is established, the horses care about and protect each other. The author’s hope is that “If we can learn from horses … maybe we can learn how to love ourselves, each other, and the herd of eight billion we call humanity.” Pertinent lessons from the barn for our fractious times.

— John R. Killacky

Initially, it is tempting to read French Rwandan writer Scholastique Mukasonga’s novella Sister Deborah (Archipelago Books, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, 135 pages, $19) as a celebration of the magical power of Black women, a salute to the perennial belief that distaff wizardry will subvert repressive patriarchy (in this case, centered in Africa). There are scenes here, reminiscent of Lysistrata, in which Rwandan men, deprived of sex and mad at having to do domestic chores, stand “stunned and impotent before this female fury.” But, for me, this narrative about apocalyptic cults (Christian and non-Christian variety duking it out with Catholicism) in mid-20th-century Rwanda is a brilliant seriocomic fable, a critique of religious delusions and how they feed self-destructive fantasies about guaranteed instant paradise to come, including a Black Jesus (or female spirit) who will return to earth at the end of days and turn Black people white or preserve a Black remnant from the fires of Hell.

The book’s narrator is Ikirezi, a Rwandan American feminist scholar who was a sickly adolescent until she was healed by the mystical Sister Deborah, who had been carted off from America to Rwanda by male evangelicals after they heard her speak in tongues. She is brought in to start a charismatic church (at the behest of an aging chieftain) that will undercut the dominant Catholic/colonialist status quo. Soon, however, the magus begins to undermine male prerogatives across the spiritual and ideological board — she enlists only women followers. Ikirezi recounts her return to Africa to interview the healer, who has become a threat (“a pathogen”) to the powers-that-be, as part of her dissertation. The result is an amusingly wild yarn: Ikirezi ends up turning down an offer she shouldn’t (?) refuse and the oft rumored-to-be-dead Sister Deborah delivers the final word about Armageddon: “I’m here to tell you, we must continue to wait, to proclaim its coming, while knowing it will never come. Its eternity depends on this illusion.”

— Bill Marx

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Jazz

Island Hopping – Gabriel Evan Orchestra (self-released)

Oh man, I needed that. In the middle of a long day of listening to a playlist of recent ambitious, complicated, and progressive improvised music, “Bar Cor De Zailes” from the Gabriel Evan Orchestra’s Island Hopping somehow floated in. Sure, it isn’t going to win a Pulitzer, but it sounded just like an unexpected shoulder rub feels.

Evan’s sextet plays Carribean, Cuban, and Venezuelan folk music in an early jazz style. Think Sidney Bechet, Jack Teagarden, Jelly Roll Morton, and Django Reinhardt in big Bermuda shorts, slightly tipsy from fruity drinks in the Bahamas. There’s just something timelessly joyful about hearing some Dixieland-style collective improvisation played with such tasteful restraint and supreme confidence. When done over a calypso shuffle, and maybe with just a sprinkle of klezmer, it’s irresistible. I know, I know, there are lots of serious new ECM records that need attention, but it hit me in the sweet spot to hear melodies where things just go right where they’re supposed to go. You can whistle along with these songs even when you hear them for the first time. There’s something refreshingly normal about these beautiful, lilting, and reassuringly logical tunes. When the melodies go up, they’re going to come back down right where you expect them to, and no one is going to try and dazzle you with some clever Charlie Parker lick, moody dissonance, or glitzy technique.

— Allen Michie

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Rock

George Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes 1973’s Living in the Material World, the follow-up to the 1970 opus All Things Must Pass, as “a forgotten blockbuster.” He has a point: the album spent five weeks charting at number one in the US. The album’s lovely single, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth),” was a smash as well. The newly released 50th-anniversary edition of Living, remastered and remixed by Paul Hicks and Dhani Harrison (George’s son), is a sonic treasure, an invaluable reminder of Harrison’s many gifts as a musician, composer, and producer.

This version of Living sparkles with a jewel-like clarity, doing away with the murky sound of earlier editions. Harrison’s guitar-playing, on both acoustic and slide, is some of the most accomplished of his career, funky on “The Lord Loves the One (The Loves the Lord),” gossamer-like on the trance-like “Be Here Now,” and brightly ringing on “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long,” the almost-follow single to “Give Me Love.” He plays a snarling, Delta-bluesy dobro on “Sue Me, Sue You Blues,” and his sitar is an effective feature on a couple of tracks. Nicky Hopkins’s piano-playing is exquisite, like droplets of diamonds sprinkled about. The rest of the album’s core band features Gary Wright on organ and harpsichord, Klaus Voormann on bass, Jim Keltner on drums, Jim Horn on (of course) trumpet, with Ringo Starr and tabla player Zakir Hussain both featured on the rollicking title track.

Harrison’s singing is some of the best and most moving of his career, reaching an emotional peak on “Who Can See It” and “The Day the World Gets Round.” The outtake of the latter track is one of the highlights on the second disc. Another standout is a faster, funkier version of the title tune that digs into Harrison’s deep love of rhythm & blues. “I use my body like a car,” he sings, “Taking me both near and far.”

The two CD or two LP package includes the original album and a carefully selected collection of studio outtakes plus the B-side to “Give Me Love” and the charming “Miss O’Dell.” The music comes in a box with a booklet and mini-poster that features an iconic picture of Harrison with an outstretched palm. The limited version tosses in a lavish book, two LPs and two CDs, a Blu-Ray disc, and a 45 featuring Harrison and The Band performing “Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond),” George’s contribution to Ringo Starr’s 1973 smash Ringo album.

A long-awaited opportunity to revisit one of the finest Beatles solo albums of the ’70s.

— Mark Hänser

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Classical Music

What’s up with Franz Welser-Möst’s recent recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with the Cleveland Orchestra? Coming, as it does, from one of the country’s best orchestras, the album, which somehow manages to drain most of the tension, drama, and adventure from one of the canon’s most visionary scores, is a surprise — and not of the good kind.

At the heart of the interpretation’s problems is a focus on lyricism and swift tempos at the expense of character and mystery. In a piece like the Symphonie, with its over-the-top program of an artist’s obsession gone awry, that’s problematic.

True, Welser-Möst’s approach does serve to highlight the refinement and sophistication of Berlioz’s writing for orchestra. The results are particularly impressive in the opening “Reveries – Passions.”

But the tack doesn’t translate to the waltz, whose driving phrasings give the impression of rushing to catch a train, or the “Scene in the Fields,” which comes over as two-dimensional. Nor does it serve the “March to the Scaffold” or “Witches’ Sabbath” well.

In the former, conductor and orchestra don’t lean into the main subject’s syncopations anywhere near hard enough. What’s more, they take the lack of other articulation markings in that theme as an indication to play a broad legato. What emerges is a placid ramble through some weirdly shadowed countryside rather than a hellish, edge-of-your-seat ride to the guillotine.

The finale’s similarly blasé, though Welser-Möst and friends make a feint at redemption with a mad dash through the coda. The effect, though, is on par with the rest of the performance: too little, too late. Better to stick with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony — or any of Colin Davis’s traversals from London — in this fare; here, all we’ve got is an epic Berlioz misfire.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah has come back home. Then again, maybe it never left.

Premiered in Birmingham in 1846, the score has been a staple of the choral repertory ever since, even as the composer’s posthumous fortunes have fluctuated wildly. Given the music’s rich English legacy, it’s fitting that Sir Antonio Pappano, currently in his first season as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra, should lead that ensemble, plus the LSO Chorus and soloists, in a new recording of Elijah.

One of the work’s biggest challenges is its duration. Cast in two parts, the oratorio usually runs about two hours and 10 minutes; often enough, it can drag. Pappano and his forces largely get around this thanks to lively tempos, with a performance that comes in at a relatively crisp 121 minutes.

At times things actually feel a bit rushed: it would have been nice for all hands to have stepped back to enjoy the view on the final chorus’s thrilling “Amen” coda, for instance. (Then again, Wolfgang Sawallisch is even pushier in this moment.) Regardless, the larger impression of Pappano’s Elijah is one of a work of vital drama that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Certainly, much of that also owes to the casting. Bass-baritone Gerald Finley is an inspired title character, singing with commanding warmth and majesty. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly’s contributions are likewise robust, as are those of soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and tenor Allan Clayton. Treble Ewan Christian’s brief appearances are similarly radiant.

The LSO Chorus acquits itself admirably both in moments devotional and vigorous (especially the Baal scene). Their enunciation of the text is, throughout, impressively incisive, nowhere more so than in the final chorus of Part 1, whose iterations of the phrase “he reviveth the thirsty land” proves unexpectedly thrilling.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Design

Most college campuses are built over many decades; some, like Harvard, over centuries. Depending on their wealth (and/or prestige?), an educational institution’s master plans are conceived of and implemented according to the conventions of the times. This is not always detrimental. In recent years, for example, Boston area college campuses have become architectural laboratories showcasing what are believed to be premier examples of technologically-enhanced and sustainable buildings for higher education and research. A stunning new addition to the Northeastern University campus exemplifies this — the EXP Building.

With 38,000+ students, Northeastern is the largest university by enrollment in Massachusetts. It was founded in 1898 by Boston’s YMCA as an all-male commuter night school institute before being incorporated as Northeastern College in 1916. Since it was designated as a university in 1922, it has transformed itself into a highly respected major education and research institution.

With its façade elegantly wrapped in a solar veil made of metal strips and featuring a rooftop garden, the EXP Building was designed by Boston-based Payette architects. The structure is located on what had been a brownfield site: it is the latest addition to Northeastern’s science and engineering campus “precinct.” Payette’s EXP gracefully marries form to function.

Linked to another earlier Payette-designed building via a pedestrian bridge, EXP is part of a mix of educational and research spaces that radiate, like a pinwheel, outward from a central core. The lower building portion hosts flexible classrooms, maker spaces, and a cafe. A two-story robotics space fills a prominent corner spot. A sky garden — with impressive views of downtown — sits on the eighth floor. As for its environmental merits, EXP uses special fume hoods that help ventilate the air while they reduce energy usage. (In fact, this building boasts the largest installation in the world of filtered fume hoods.)

Other recent university campus signature structures include the Boston University Center for Computing & Data Science (Jenga Building), MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing, and Harvard University’s John A. Paulson Science and Applied Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) Building. Each, like EXP, offers cutting-edge advantages in sustainability. They are also visually appealing. If only other contemporary structures (the majority) could be as smart and compelling.

— Mark Favermann