Arts Fuse critics select the best in music, theater, and film that’s coming up this week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff.

Roots and World Music

Beres Hammond
August 9
Wonderland Ballroom, Revere, MA

With the tragic deaths of Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown, there’s no question that Beres Hammond is the most popular “lover’s rock” reggae singer still performing. In fact, while Isaacs and Brown’s substance abuse led to long periods of creative decline, the raspy-voiced Hammond has never stopped producing hits. His soulful, mature sound guarantees that a cadre of classily dressed “big people” will show up for his annual visit.

Anthony B
August 9
Middle East, Cambridge, MA
August 10
Newport Reggae Festival, Newport, MA

It’s puzzling that any reggae promoter would want to “keep a dance” that competes with a Beres performance. Perhaps they figure that firebrand Anthony B will appeal to a different audience: one that loves to get riled up as he spouts his Rastafarian-brand of dancehall. It’s equally puzzling that a community-minded venue like the Middle East is booking a performer with a rather checkered history of comments about gays and lesbians. The next day he’s part of the annual Newport Reggae Festival, which, surprisingly, boasts a far more authentic lineup of current Jamaican stars than one might expect. Also on the bill is Morgan Heritage, Chuck Fenda, and Bushman, who put on a memorably exciting performance when he appeared at the festival two years ago.

The Art of the Oud
August 11
Touch Art & Craft Gallery, Cambridge, MA

Last week a promising new series called Adventures in Sound debuted at this roomy and appealing, Cambridge art gallery. It returns with a unique gathering of local masters of the oud who will both discuss and demonstrate their instrument. Host Dr. Mehmet Ali Sanlikol will present the classical Ottoman Turkish style; Mal Barsamian is a mainstay of bands in the Armenian community; Jussi Reijonen will show the instrument’s surprising ties to Finland; and Nima Janmohammadi will demonstrate Iranian oud traditions.

Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge
August 15
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

The collaboration by Punch Brothers mandolinst Chris Thile and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau proved to be one of the spring’s best concerts. (Arts Fuse review) Now comes this brand-new duo featuring another Punch Brother, guitarist Chris Eldridge, along with jazz wiz Julian Lage. Lage is capable of everything, from contemplative be-bop—like what he played with Jim Hall at the Newport Jazz Festival last weekend—to hot gypsy picking. Eldridge has mostly been heard in bluegrass and old-time configurations, so it’ll be interesting to hear what the two come up with together.

— Noah Schaffer

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Rock

Boston Fuzzstival 
Featuring Ghost Box Orchestra, the New Highway Hymnal, and others.
August 10
Middle East-Downstairs, Cambridge, MA

Ah, the warm sound of fuzz. Like a fat, fury bumblebee, buzz, buzz, buzzing right into your cochlea. “Fuzz” is just another word for “distortion,” but doesn’t “fuzz” sound so much more inviting? Steve Albini once said that Nirvana were just “R.E.M. with a fuzzbox.” He meant it as an insult, but is that really what it was? Regardless, Ghost Box Orchestra and New Highway Hymnal are two of Boston’s fuzziest bands, and that’s no put-down. Keep Boston fuzzy!

— Adam Ellsworth

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Classical Music

Stravinsky at Bard
Presented by Bard Music Festival
August 9, 8 p.m. (pre-concert talk at 7:30 p.m.)
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Igor Stravinsky is the focus of this year’s Bard Music Festival, which includes a series of discussions and concerts featuring the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), soloists, and various chamber ensembles. This opening concert features a wide range of repertoire beginning with Les Noces and continuing through to the Serial Abraham and Isaac. Leon Botstein conducts the ASO and the Bard Festival Chorale.

George Benjamin’s Written on Skin
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 12, 8 p.m.
Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is the curator of this summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, and it’s (unsurprisingly) a strongly Euro-centric affair (a couple pieces by Elliott Carter notwithstanding). One of the high points will probably be this concert, the U.S. premiere of Benjamin’s opera, Written on Skin, a critical and popular triumph in its European debut last summer.

— Jon Blumhofer

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Film

In the Fog
August 9–11
The Brattle Theater, Cambridge, MA

The area premier of this highly praised film, which takes place in 1942 in Nazi-occupied Belarus, runs only four days. The critic for Sight and Sound magazine notes that “the intellectual range is vast, and the images and performances stirring beyond the customary standard. In its thorough meditation on man’s moral place, and its beautiful depiction of one version of life’s trial, lies this film’s joy.”

Le Pont du Nord
August 9–18
The Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA

French director’s Jacques Rivette films, such Va Savoir (Who Knows?) La belle Noiseuse (with Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, Emmanuelle Béart), and his best-known film, Celine and Julie Go Boating, still confound and amaze. 1981’s Le Pont du Nord never received American distribution. The Harvard Film Archive describes the movie as managing to “distill many of his [Rivette’s] recurring themes and tropes into 129 minutes: chance encounters, secret conspiracies, urban labyrinths, female friendship, magic and myth, and a porous membrane between fantasy and reality.” (Arts Fuse review)

Sunset Blvd
August 12
The Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, MA

This Billy Wilder film from 1950 proffers a masterful satire of the Hollywood studio system, celebrity, stardom, and screenwriting. It features one of the screen’s greatest creations—Norma Desmond, brought to life through the astounding performance of Gloria Swanson. The film also stars William Holden and a stone-faced Erich von Stroheim as Norma’s butler.

The Shining and Room 237
August 14–15
The Brattle Theater, Cambridge, MA

Here is an ace double feature just waiting to happen, the kind of kismet that the Brattle Theater arranges so well. First up is Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of domestic horror, loosely based on the Stephen King novel. It is followed by Room 237, which investigates five different theories about the hidden meanings to be found in that film. Was The Shining a veiled confession by the director about his involvement in staging the moon landing, a rumination on the Holocaust, or a meditation on the fate of the American Indian? Finally, you may find out.

— Tim Wallace

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Theater

This is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan.
Directed by Lewis D. Wheeler.
Through August 25
Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester, MA

A really impressive local cast—Amanda Collins, Alex Pollock, and Jimi Stanton—tackles a sensitive coming-of-age story that explores the connections between affluence and lovelessness.

— Bill Marx