Fuse Coming Attractions: What Will Light Your Fire This Week (Updated)

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

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Morton Downey

Morton Downey Jr. — a documentary about the rise and fall of a sociopathic star of the late ’80s.

Film

UNBOUND: Scenes from the Life of Mary Shelley
Friday, September 27
 at 7:00 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

Abigail Child is a media artist and writer whose unique montage films push sound-image relations to explore gesture as language and employ radical strategies to rewrite narrative. This recent work, filmed in Italy with amateur actors, uses imaginary home movies, to tell the story of the teenage author of Frankenstein and her husband, the romantic poet Percy Bysse Shelley. The result is an experimental feature on writing, free-love, death and memory.

Evocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie
October 1 7:00 pm
Bright Family Screening Room 
in the Paramount Center, Washington Street, Boston, MA

An interesting look into the rise and fall of the late ‘80s, sociopathic star: Morton Downey Jr. He tore apart the traditional talk format by turning debate of current issues into a gladiator pit. His blow-smoke-in-your-face style drew a rabid cult following, and also the title “Father of Trash Television.” This is a free screening! The director will be in attendance. Review to come.

Good Old Freda
September 27 – October 6
Brattle Theater Cambridge

Recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning, Freda Kelly, former and sole fan club president to the Beatles is irresistibly modest with her recollections and rare insights into the Fab Four. Boomers with fond memories of the years when the Beatles became the most beloved band in history will adore this film. But Freda herself is full of heart, a warm and wonderful subject.

The Exquisite Corpse Project
Friday, October 4 at 7:00 pm
Collins Cinema, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

Using the strategy of the notorious Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse) a Surrealist game, five writers from Olde English (a group that has published over 100 comedy shorts on the Internet) developed a unique comedy/drama/documentary/thriller/action movie. It was named one of the top films of 2012 by Film Threat and won both the Best Documentary and Best Director awards at the LA New Wave film festival. The director, the producer and three of the writers and stars, will be present for a Q and A.

— Tim Jackson


Dance

Liz Roncka

Dancer Liz Roncka

Dance Showcase 2013
September 27 and September 28
Boston University Dance Theater, 915 Commonwealth Avenue (entrance on Buick Street), Boston, MA

Consider this a tasting menu: one performance spanning five decades of work by performing artists with BU connections. The performances include a commedia dell’arte style piece by Judith Chaffee, a structured improvisation by Jeremy Finch & Liz Roncka, Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works’ meditation on aphasia and synesthesia, Marin Orlosky-Randow’s aerial silks, Dance Visions/Margot Parsons’ work based on the physics of flight, and group works by KAIROS Dance Theater/DeAnna Pellecchia & Ingrid Schatz, Lynn Modell, plus the local premier of New York-based Amalgamate/Alana Marie Urda & Aubrey A. Daval.

AUGUR: The Rite of Spring, an interdisciplinary installation
October 2
Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA

Stop by anytime between 7:15 and 10 p.m. to check out the projection-mapped video, dance, and live music created by a team that includes Ryan Edwards, Jörn Bielfeldt, Aaron Edwards and Yo-el Cassell as part of Berklee’s “Sacre-Centennial” Stravinsky Movable Feast. Free.

Shadows Fleeting
Oct 2-Oct 27
The Sanctuary Theatre, Cambridge, MA

As the days grow shorter, Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre opens its 2013-2014 season with a new work by Mateo joining the Halloween-appropriate repertory works Covens and Dark Profiles.

— Debra Cash


Classical

Boston Artists Ensemble Sharan Leventhal, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello; Randall Hodgkinson, piano
Friday, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m.
Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, Salem, MA
Sept. 29 at 3 p.m.
Trinity Church, Homer St., Newton, MA

This celebrated piano trio plays two concerts. Works of Judith Weir (Piano Trio, 1998), Turina (Piano Quartet), Beethoven (Archduke Trio). With Lila Brown, violist.

Charlie Albright
Sept. 29 at 1:30 p.m
Gardner Museum, The Fenway, Boston, MA

Pianist Charlie Albright performs the second installment in his examination of works by Franz Schubert. The program includes Moments Musicaux and the Sonata in a minor. An extraordinary young musician, well-worth hearing.

Parker String Quartet
Sept. 29 at 3 p.m.
Concord Academy Performing Arts Center, Concord, MA

The Concord Chamber Music Society presents the PSQ, which will perform quartets by Mozart, Schulhoff, Beethoven. Pre-concert lecture at 2 p.m.

Russell Sherman
September 29 at 8 p.m.
NEC Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

The pianist will play Schoenberg (Drei Klavierstuecke, Op. 11), Debussy (Estampes), Chopin (24 Preludes), Scriabin (Sonata No.4). Free.

— Susan Miron


Roots and World Music

The Howlin’ Brothers
Sept. 27
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

This energetic string trio hoots and hollers through a range of old-time styles. It was enough to impress long-time Jack White collaborator Brendan Benson, who signed them to his label and produced their LP Howl.

Uhuru Afrika
Sept. 27
Arc Nightclub, Boston, MA

This long-running African dance party moves to new Kenmore Square digs, and celebrates by hosting forward-thinking Angolan DJ Djeff Afrozila.

Ernie Smith
Sept. 28, 2 pm.
Small Ax Café, Charlestown, RI

Country and western music is huge across the Caribbean, and no artist embodies that more than Ernie Smith. He first made inroads into the rocksteady reggae scene with hits like the playful “Duppy or Gunman” before getting banned thanks to the politically charged “Power and the Glory.” Smith is an icon throughout the Caribbean and the diaspora where he regularly headlines big-ticket concerts. This is an informal acoustic show arranged while he was in the area seeing family, and it should be the perfect setting for his gems like “Pitta Pata” and “I Can’t Take It” – two of the greatest slices of country-soul recorded in any country.

DakhaBrakha
Oct. 3
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

Even though this four-piece group is from Ukraine, their trance-inducing vocals are so unique that their clips on YouTube pull up recommended videos of Tuvan throat singers. One experienced world music promoter reports that they stole the show at a recent festival.

— Noah Schaffer


Rock

The Flaming Lips (with Tame Impala)
September 30
Agganis Arena, Boston, MA

Here’s how long the Flaming Lips have been around: they had a guest spot on Beverly Hills, 90210. And not the 2008 reboot either. The original. It was back in 1993, by which point the band had already been together for ten years. They’re still here, and touring behind their acclaimed 2013 release, The Terror. If the Flaming Lips aren’t your thing, you still might want to head to the show as Tame Impala, the Ausie psych-rockers behind one of 2012’s finest albums, are the opening act.

Foxygen
October 3
Brighton Music Hall, Boston, MA

Foxygen’s 2013 release We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is a wonderfully quirky, 60s inflected album filled with such lyrics like, “There’s no need to be an asshole, you’re not in Brooklyn anymore.” But that’s not the only reason I’m recommending them. In addition to that fun new album, I’m recommending them because they’ve gained a reputation for being a pretty wild live act. I’ve never seen them myself, but from what I understand it isn’t always pretty. It is, however, always memorable.

Upcoming

X (10/5/2013, House of Blues); Bill Callahan (10/5/2013, The Sinclair); NIN (10/11/2013, TD Garden); The Meat Puppets (10/13/2013, Brighton Music Hall); Pearl Jam (10/15/2013, DCU Center); Savages (10/15/2013, Paradise Rock Club); Pearl Jam (10/16/2013, DCU Center); Pearl Jam (10/25/2013, XL Center); My Bloody Valentine (11/7/2013, House of Blues); Kanye West (11/17/2013, TD Garden); MGMT (12/5/2013, Orpheum Theatre); Queens of the Stone Age (12/13/2013, Agganis Arena); Jay Z (1/18/2014, TD Garden)

— Adam Ellsworth

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