You can get a jump on the festivities at 92YTribeca with some swing music and beer. On Friday, Jul 3 you can catch JC Hopkins Biggish Band featuring Queen Esther and Todd Londagin. The New Yorker wrote: “Hopkins writes swinging material tailor made for a vacuum-tube radio and it’s delivered with a timeless flair by the lead singer, Queen Esther.” And you know that New Yorkers love their swing music and the Jazz Age. For those who need pointers, swing lessons will be provided before the show.

We hear that the sun we’ll be around this weekend as well, if you can believe it. There is a long list of beers from Lagunitas Brewing Company that we have available that will taste extra good. Particularly our big sharing bottle of Coney Island Sword Swallower, perfect for this weekend. Of course, if Pabst Blue Ribbons is your thing, we’ve got you covered there as well.

On the Fourth of July, there are the fireworks of course. This year, they will be honoring the 400th Anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage here. For the first time since 2000, the display will be exploding over the Hudson River.

Last March in celebration of Los Romero‘s 50th Anniversary, they played a concert at the 92Y. Above is a clip from that concert, as well, we have another one here on our YouTube page.

When the Romeros (then Celedonio and his sons Celin, Pepe, and Angel) first took the stage in 1960, there was no precedent for a professional guitar quartet and no repertory. That guitar quartets now flourish everywhere, with catalogs full of music, original as well as arranged, is the fullest tribute possible to the still-thriving career of this pioneering ensemble.

Program notes from this concert can be viewed below.

Upcoming events

Pianist Bill Charlap is Artistic Director of 92nd Street Y’s Jazz in July Summer Festival talking place this Jul 20-30. The Festival features six concerts celebrating Oscar Peterson, Sondheim & Styne, The Gerry Mulligan Songbook, The Music of Vince Guaraldi, a Saxophone Summit, and New York Jazz.

In honor of Bill’s vision for the festival, we are offering a free copy of his CD, Stardust, to the first commenter who can correctly identify the composer of the music of Charlie Brown.

Leave your answer in the comments below, and remember to include a contact email so we can get your CD to you!

[Jazz in July Summer Festival]

During the 60’s in Israel, an alternative music scene began to develop that was centered in Ramle. At the time, according to Haaretz.com:

Haaretz Magazine produced an article on these bands, writing that the city with “the best steaks and ice cream in the city, and also the best pot - seven liras per 10 grams,” groups with names like Hasha’aftanim, Ha’apachim, Hakochavim and Tziporey Ha’esh competed for the affections of young fans…

[In clubs] on Hamasger Street they used to play Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin,” recalls political commentator and literary critic Prof. Nissim Calderon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “This music trickled in, but it was considered utterly on the fringe. The mainstream did not accept it until Arik Einstein and Shalom Hanoch began to internalize those energies. We were busy developing an ethos of local music.”

On Jul 18 at 92Y, co-sponsored by the Israeli House, come celebrate the the 70th Birthday of Arik Einstein. The evening will be entirely dedicated to his songbook with musicians and singers Sariel, Lilach Koch and Oran Eldor, with the lyrics being projected onto a large screen, turning the event into one big sing-along.

[Erev Shira – Israeli Music Night with Sariel]

Sound confusing? Don’t worry, even our good friends at Time Out New York mixed up the venues when mentioning Comedy Below Canal™ with Andy Borowitz and Friends that is happening at downtown at 92YTribeca on Jul 2.

An easy way to tell the venues apart is by name. 92Y, or the 92nd Street Y as it is known for some, is uptown on 92nd St and Lexington Ave. A place the New York Times called: “the quintessential New York institution.”

And 92YTribeca, named the Best New Comedy Venue in 2008 by TONY, is downtown on Hudson St, in Tribeca.

92Y=Uptown on Lexington.
92YTribeca=Downtown on Hudson.

You could also download and print out the map above, which handily folds into billfold size, just like those cute little subway maps!

Upcoming events at 92YTribeca

Matt Dentler at indieWIRE is quite impressed by the “cool shows” in comedy, music and film, at 92YTribeca, and seems genuinely surprised that this all happens while being located in – gasp! – NOT Brooklyn! Kids these days.

“If you live in Manhattan,” Matt said, “you usually have to make the trip to Williamsburg to get this kind of eclectic, indie-minded programming. Now you just have to head down to Hudson and Canal.”

I’d heard about the 92Y Tribeca as more and more cool shows became booked on their calendar. Impressive comedy lineups featuring Zach Galifinakis and Eugene Mirman, music lineups featuring St. Vincent and Yo La Tengo, and film lineups that include sing-a-long shows and festival favorites.

Matt went on to praise 92YTribeca curator Cristina Cacioppo, who he says, “is on a mission to offer some quality alternatives,” in film screening and series. It is praise well deserved.

You can read the full article here. To see what all the hubbub is about, you can view 92YTribeca listings for Music, Film, Theater, Comedy, and more.

(Pictured in photo: Trinidad director PJ Raval with Cristina Cacioppo/indieWIRE)

You can keep up with all of this via 92YTribeca’s Film Facebook page, their Twitter, or via the eNews list.

Alice McDermott “is a genius of quiet observation,” said the Los Angeles Times. “One of our finest novelists.” McDermott’s books include Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and After This. In January 2008, she appeared at 92Y for our Afternoon Night Table Series hosted by award-winning journalist, essayist and television commentator Roger Rosenblatt. You can listen to the full program above, where they talk about the art of fiction, both writing and teaching it.

You can also download the MP3. [27 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]

Save Now and Become a Subscriber of 92Y's Unterberg Poetry Center: The 2009-2010 season will feature appearances by some of today’s finest authors, among them Adrienne Rich, Annie Proulx, A.S. Byatt, Chinua Achebe, Orhan Pamuk, John Irving, Paul Auster, Rita Dove, Charles Simic, Louise Glück, Philip Levine, Natasha Trethewey, Javier Marías, Peter Esterházy, John Banville, Sam Shepard and Suzan-Lori Parks. Special events include A Celebration of Vladimir Nabokov with Martin Amis; An Evening of Beckett; The Tenth Muse with John Ashbery and much more.

Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.

When Chip Kidd and Neil Gaiman were here last Fall, an audience member drew a sketch of them on stage, and had both men autograph it afterwards.

Neil took to his blog to share his thoughts on the interview, writing:

“Best interview ever—partly because it was the very last thing of the tour (hurrah) and partly because Chip is a brilliant interviewer. He’s funny and smart and makes a comfortable space to talk in—I’m not sure how to explain it beyond that.”

The video above feature the discussion in it’s full hour and 25 minutes glory.

Upcoming events:

Artists Jim Jones, Buckshot, It’s The Real and others joined them, dropping nuggets of information about Tupac, The Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z. They also announced, before it was public knowledge, that they are officially doing the morning show on Hot 97 radio in New York City.

You can listen to the full audio here, courtesy of Rosenberg Radio.

Upcoming events at 92YTribeca:

The Short Slam at 92YTribeca presented their winners last week. Carl Glassman, Editor and Publisher of The Tribeca Trib, won the Audience Award for his documentary Give Us a Picture, which features celebrity photographers in action at the red carpet of the Tribeca Film Festival, and interviews with the photographers as they discuss how the profession has changed over the years and the challenges they face.

After his win we asked some questions of Carl via email, inquiring about his choice of subjects, discoveries he made about them, footage not included in his final cut, and more.

Carl told us he was “quickly disheartened to discover that many of [the photographers] would not speak to me and even were uncomfortable with my presence with a video camera.” He also noted if he makes another film, he would “love to find a way to show the sometimes nasty socioeconomic schism between the newer, younger, wealthier residents of the neighborhood and the older, and more middle class folks whose move here predated the cache.” We would really like to see that film. 

You can read the full interview below:

Tony Blair, Britain’s former Prime Minister and current Special Envoy to the Middle East, was at 92Y on Monday evening for The Business of Giving with Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief for The Economist. The two spoke about Iran, Iraq, global warming, the Middle East, Africa, and much more. “Charming to a tee,” said blogger The Brooklyn Socialite.

The Jewish Week covered Blair’s frank comments on Israel and Palestine. “The Arab world today actually wants the issue [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] resolved,” he said. “That gives us an opportunity.”

According to the Times of London, Blair thought “that it was impossible to predict the outcome of protests in Iran over the landslide presidential election victory claimed by the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” Since then, the government of Iran has made their intentions more clear, with the LA Times reporting that that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be sworn in for a second term by mid-August.

Blair’s most interesting remarks might have been on Globalization and America’s place in it. Vikie Karp at True/Slant wrote:

In his introductory remarks about the future of globalization and achieving justice and equality for all on an international scale, Blair said “We are a global community. And its chief attribute is that no one nation, not even this great nation of America, can do it on its own. In any case, power is shifting East and it is shifting quickly. Countries like India and China will take their rightful place. And it’s galvanizing people, too. Look at Iran today. So that’s my theory, and if I’m right, the countries of the global community must work in alliance with each other, and with equality, and it will work only if there is a feeling of obligation beyond their borders and a real belief that they can share values. If it’s simply a battle of interests, we will fail and the failure will be ugly.

“Tupac would leave us in his mansion and I’d go through Pac sh*t looking for trees.” That was Brooklyn rapper Buckshot (pictured at right with Twitter user mattraz) last night at Cipha Sounds and Peter Rosenberg Present Juan Epstein & Friends LIVE From 92YTribeca, as quoted on Twitter by micseannyc. Also present were artists Jim Jones, Peter Rosenberg, It’s The Real, and others as the show was broadcast live on Rosenberg Radio.

More from micseannyc and mattraz, where you’ll read that: ”Pac loved Sunkist soda,” and other great nuggets of information. As Twitter user MPmakesmusic said: “yo frank this show is dope yo… They are telling some crazy ass stories.”

It seems whenever Peter Rosenberg is at 92YTribeca with guests, amazing things happen. Remember when Q-Tip and ?uestlove played their impromptu jam session?

If you feel like you keep hearing about these events after the fact, but wished you had been there, stay plugged into 92YTribeca’s Twitter, for frequently updated information on what is going on. You can also visit their Facebook, join their eNews, and of course visit the websiteto learn more about any events, and view a complete calendar.

Some events coming up around the corner you might like to attend include:

A passionate and dedicated musician, American violinist Rachel Barton Pine is an inspiration to audiences everywhere. She has received worldwide acclaim for her profound and thoughtful interpretations delivered with tremendous enthusiasm and intensity, which she applies to an extremely diverse repertoire.

Rachel, who has played all over the U.S. and Europe, winning competitions and acclaim from press and institutions along the way, is making her New York City recital debut on Sep 15 with Matthew Hagle for New York Chamber Music Festival at the 92nd Street Y presents. 

And on Sep 14 at 92Y, musicians of the New York Philharmonic will be joined with Alexandros Kapelis on piano and Elmira Darvarova on violin.

Our friends over at Remezcla New York held their summer launch for Remezcla this week at El Museo del Barrio, uptown in Spanish Harlem. Remezcla is an innovative local guide to Latin culture throughout diverse cities in the United States. After the event, many who attended the party continued down to 92YTribeca to enjoy the music of Roberto Rodriguez (in photo at right) who along with Sarah Aroeste, premiered their original Cuban-Sephardic music project.

Roberto was their as part of 92YTribeca’s Cinema Tropical’s Music + Film Series 2009. Up next in the series is Till the Last Drop… My Heart (Hasta el Último Trago Corazón on Jul 15, and is co-presented with the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. Director Beto Gómez will be present for a post-screening Q&A, and a special performance in 92YTribeca’s Cafe follows the screening.

All of that comes with a ticket that only costs $12.

Upcoming film events at 92YTribeca:

Ever since we last wrote about the G.I. Joe Stop Motion Film Festival, we’ve been spending lots of our free time reacquainting ourselves with our beloved hero. And we’ve discovered a whole world of incredible material featuring G.I. Joe.

For example, websites such as General Joes, “A blog about the importance (or unimportance) of little plastic men.” A wide variety of classic G.I. Joe videos on YouTube, and a number of current projects that utilize original G.I. Joe cartoons in new ways. Via BoingBoing, we learned that writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan and Planetary): “has written a new series of GI Joe cartoons, reimagining the infra-dumb 80s toy-sales vehicle as a serious war comic.” (on YouTube here) We’ve even heard that a colleague of ours “does a fine rendtion of the GI Joe theme song,” though he’s being tight-lipped about where we could hear such a song.

To say we’ve been enjoying this would be an understatement. So it was with some reservation that we discovered a listing of The 20 Stupidest GI Joe Vehicles Ever. To our dismay, the listing is of all the toys we thought were great! The Cobra F.A.N.G., Trubble Bubble, these are stupid? Clearly whoever wrote this list doesn’t really understand or appreciate G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero.

We’d like to invite the writer to attend the G.I. Joe Stop Motion Film Festival at 92YTribeca on Jul 25, where he could see these toys in a whole new light. Surely he would change the title of his piece to The 20 Awesomest GI Joe Vehicles Ever.

If you enjoy all things G.I. Joe as much as we do, or even if you only have fond memories, 92YTribeca has a discussion taking place on their Facebook: What’s Your Fondest G.I. Joe Memory?. A number of people have already left comments, and we really want to read your as well!