Bang on a Can All-Stars with Don Byron

Bang on a Can All-Stars, the premier concert ensemble dedicated to performing the work of contemporary composers, comes to the area this week for two days of collaboration and performance with clarinetist-composer Don Byron. Byron has spent the last several months as a visiting professor at the University at Albany, so he should know his way around by now—a good thing, as this collaboration is one of many projects the multitasking virtuoso has running concurrently. Bang on a Can are making what will likely be their last trip north before returning to the Berkshires for their yearly MASS MoCA residency in July. This week’s performances will highlight music from the recent Byron-Bang on a Can recording A Ballad for Many, and will also feature violinist-vocalist Iva Bittova.

Bang on a Can All-Stars with Don Byron and Iva Bittova will present an “Informance” tonight (Thursday, Jan. 25) at Skidmore College’s Filene Recital Hall (580 Broadway, Saratoga Springs). The 7:30 PM event is free, and will include a discussion with the musicians. For more info, call 580-5000.

Tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 26), they’ll perform a live radio performance from 11:20 AM to noon at the WAMC Performing Arts Studio (339 Central Ave., Albany) for on-air broadcast. For more information, call 465-5233.

And the pièce de rèsistance: Friday evening, they’ll turn in a full concert at the Egg (Empire State Plaza, Albany). Tickets for the 8 PM concert are $24, and can be purchased by calling 473-1845.

Hamburg Symphony

The acclaimed Hamburg Symphony will come to Troy on Sunday night, under the venerable auspices of Troy Chromatic Concerts. Under the baton of Andrey Boreyko, the symphony will perform Schubert’s Overture to Rosamunde and Brahms’ monumental—emotionally, anyway—Symphony No. 1.

Also, violinist Robert McDuffie (pictured) will bring his 1735 Guarneri del Gesu instrument—it’s considered by some to be superior to a Strad—and join the symphony on Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1.

Troy Chromatic Concerts will present the Hamburg Symphony at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (2nd and State streets, Troy) on Sunday (Jan. 28) at 7 PM. Tickets are $55 and $50. For reservations and information, call 273-0038.

 

 

Man Push Cart

Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s film Man Push Cart is about a longstanding job for immigrants to New York City: food vendor. This fiction film stars Ahmad Razvi—a former cart-pushing vendor himself—as a Pakistani immigrant selling coffee and donuts on the sidewalks of New York.

The grueling work is balanced with the man’s attempts to make a social life for himself in a strange land. Dennis Lim wrote, in The New York Times, that Man Push Cart is “among the most striking American independent movies of the past year [2006].”

Man Push Cart will be screened on Saturday (Jan. 27) at 7:30 PM and Sunday (Jan. 28) at 5 PM at Time & Space Limited (434 Columbia St., Hudson). Tickets are $7, $5 members and students. For more info, call 822-8448.