We Kindle the Light

If you are in search of an adventurous, thematically based musical program, this utterly eclectic evening of song is for you. We Kindle the Light, featuring soprano Mimi O’Neill, tenor John Garafalo and pianist Lincoln Mayorga, is a selection of songs from around the world and across the centuries. There will be Italian opera arias, German cabaret songs, Sufi music, and American pop standards from an array of genres, including jazz, Tin Pan Alley, soul and gospel. According to O’Neill, the purpose of the concert is to celebrate the human journey “toward love, beauty, longing and truth; and through loss, death, suffering, joy and hope.” By bringing together work as disparate as Hidayat Khan and Curtis Mayfield, or Johnny Mercer and Francesco Cilea, We Kindle the Light aspires to highlight the universality of music as a means to express the deepest human feelings. O’Neill, who is also director of the vocal group Albany Ensemble, and Garafalo, a native of Hudson, toured Germany and Poland with this program earlier this year.

We Kindle the Light will be presented Saturday (Nov. 23) at 8 PM at the Cohoes Music Hall (58 Remsen St., Cohoes). Tickets are $20 adults, $15 seniors and students. Call 432-0849 for reservations and information.

Worlds in Our Eyes

Dance imitates art, or rather, dance interprets art when dancer Judy Trupin teams up with artist Israel Tsvaygenbaum for a unique performance on Saturday at Temple Israel in Albany. The show begins with a viewing of Tsvaygenbaum’s paintings, followed by an interpretive performance of the works by Trupin, titled Voices: A Response to Paintings by Israel Tsvaygenbaum, which involves dance, original stories, world music and slides.

Russian-born artist Tsvaygenbaum has been an area resident for eight years, and his work is featured in the collection of the Museum of Imitative Arts in Derbent, Dagestan, as well as in private collections all over the world. This will be the first time the artist has worked with a dancer. “I am fascinated with how one art form can inspire another,” the artist says. “We use such different media, yet we are able to reach the same places.”

Capital Region choreographer, writer and performing artist Trupin founded Extrapolating Theaterworks in New York City in 1981, and the company has performed many of her works at home and abroad. She interviewed Tsvaygenbaum about the subjects of his paintings, and researched via library and Internet, before creating the dances. “The result is an interweaving of fact and my imagination,” she says.

Worlds in Our Eyes will take place Saturday (Nov. 23) at 8 PM at Temple Israel (600 New Scotland Ave., Albany) and again on Dec. 15 at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy. Paintings will be on view for an hour prior to each show. Tickets for Saturday’s show are $10, $8 seniors and students. Call 489-6392 for reservations and information.

Sonic Youth

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Sonic Youth are the Beatles of underground rock. Without going into silly comparisons (Does Sister hold the same place in the SY canon that Revolver does in the Fab Four’s? Is Daydream Nation the postpunk equivalent of Sgt. Pepper?), we can say that Sonic Youth have had nearly as profound an impact on indie rock as the Fab Four did on the mainstream. As the online All-Music Guide says, “their dissonance, feedback, and alternate tunings created a new sonic landscape, one that redefined what rock guitar could do.” Of course, since this is indie rock, Sonic Youth didn’t become filthy rich geezers. They did make a series of stellar albums, however, in which they continued to explore the many facets of guitar noise. Also, very unlike the fabled moptops, Sonic Youth have continued to tour—and will be coming to the Calvin Theatre tomorrow (Friday).

Rapturous praise has greeted their latest effort, Murray Street, from most quarters. The chief naysayer was critic and former Sonic Youth fanatic Amy Phillips who, in the pages of the Village Voice, pleaded: “Sonic Youth, please break up.” A more typical comment came from Entertainment Weekly’s Will Hermes, who called Murray Street “a near perfect, guitar-shaped phoenix.”

Also on the bill are a couple of highly regarded newcomers. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are winning fans with their garage-rock revivalism; according to Pitchfork online, singer Karen O is “a self-described female Iggy Pop whose nutty performances and beer-soaked minidresses” are winning fans wherever they go. Liars are most frequently described as “intense.”

Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Liars will perform tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 22) at the Calvin Theatre (Northampton, Mass.) at 8 PM. Tickets are $20. Call (800) THE-TICK for reservations and information.