Don’t miss IAMX at Brighton Music Hall
ASK THE EXPERT
We tapped Boston nightlife vet DJ Chris Ewen (of “Heroes” and “XMortis”) — who’s been emcee-ing dance nights around town for a lot longer than most of their attendees have been of legal drinking age — to let us know what’s good around town this weekend:
“Our fair city always offers up an abundance of nightlife goodness, and this weekend is especially loaded. Here are my picks: Feel like dancing the night away? This Friday serves up the monthly “goth with a wink” event Superstition: Patterns, at An Tua Nua in Boston, with DJs Punketta, AlexXxan & resident Anomaly.As for Saturday, I must mention my weekly dance party “HEROES“, at TT the Bear’s Place. Expect lots of 80s New Wave, Electro, Punk & other underground musical treats for your pleasure.”
MUSIC
Generationals
Tonight, 9 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave., Allston
$10, 18+, 800-745-3000
ticketmaster.com
This New Orleans-based duo’s mix of electronic twee and indie pop is a perfect example of the modern music trend of favoring atmosphere over hooks. Their songs just sort of chill on a groove, never getting dull, but never really climaxing either—you get the sense you’re not supposed to listen to them so much as hang out in them.
IAMX
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Brighton Music Hall
158 Brighton Ave., Allston
$18, 18+, 800-745-3000
ticketmaster.com
IAMX, the gloomy, melodramatic project of Berlin-based British musician Chris Corner, has been surfing the borderline between rock and electronica since 2004. Corner’s theatrical stage persona and outlandish gothic style make him as artist who needs to be seen as much as heard. His all-out rock star charisma, seemingly devoid of irony, seems to belong to another era.
Fernando Brandao Sextet
Friday, 10 p.m.
The Beehive
541 Tremont Street, Boston
Free, 617-623-0069
beehiveboston.com
This band is a new project for Fernando Brandao, featuring vocals, flute, guitar, percussion, bass, and drums. The new repertoire mixes original songs, instrumental compositions, and arrangements of classics by Caetano Veloso, Dorival Caymmi, Gilberto Gil, João Donato, Edu Lobo and Tom Jobim.
Alessio Bax
Tuesday, 8 p.m.
Seully Hall, Boston Conservatory
8 The Fenway, Boston
$15, 617-912-9266
bostonconservatory.edu
This Italian pianist is known for his lyrical, dramatic style, which will be perfectly appropriate for the composers he’ll be playing tonight: Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky. His natural force and passion are at home in emotional extremes—he can make the piano whisper as tenderly as he makes it scream and shout, pulling you right into the piece’s humanity.
Slang
Friday, 8 p.m.
Distler Performance Hall, Tufts University
20 Talbot Ave., Somerville
Free, 617-627-3679
tufts.edu
File this concert by the Tufts New Music Ensemble, featuring New York counterparts Loadbang, under “something completely different.” Just like slang terms pioneer new kinds of linguistic meaning, the composers whose works these ensembles perform are trying to push music into new territory. So if it seems like lunacy coming out of their instruments, that’s just the sound of freshness.
COMEDY
Walsh Brothers Benefit for the Richard Family
Friday, 7 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm Ave, Allston
$20, 617-566-9014
greatscottboston.com
We’re of the mind that, sometimes, things are so bad that all you can do is laugh. And when that laughter benefits a cause as good as this, all the better. The Walsh Brothers, who took their hilarious Boston-bent comedy to the left coast a few years ago are still dedicated to their hometown. This event — in conjunction with Anderson Comedy — will raise money for the family of Martin Richard, the little boy killed in the attack on the Boston Marathon. All proceeds benefit the Richard family.
Craig Gass and Aziz Ansari
Wilbur Theatre
246 Tremont St., Boston
Gass $22, Anzari $47 617-248-9700
ticketmaster.com
The Wilbur is hosting a double-booking of a comedy for a good cause this weekend. On Friday comedian Craig Gass (he of the spot-on Pacino impression) will be donating his percentage of his stand-up show’s proceeds to Boston Marathon victims. Saturday, Aziz Ansari is hosting a just-announced stand-up show of which 100 percent of ticket proceeds (plus an additional $9,500 donation from the Wilbur) will be donated to The One Fund Boston & The Officer Richard Donohue Fund. Laugh on!
THEATER
‘Pericles’
Through May 12
Modern Theatre, Suffolk University
525 Washington St., Boston
$33-$50, 866-811-4111
ovationtix.com
Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s presents a piece of the Shakespeare canon that’s gotten a bit of a bum rap historically, partly because it’s believed that Shakespeare only wrote at most half of the play. The Bard’s contemporary Ben Jonson called it a “mouldy tale,” but it’s also had its fans, such as T.S. Eliot, who praised its larger-than-life humanity as “ultra-dramatic.”
‘Drawin’ on the Walls’
Friday through May 4
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
$21-$26, 866-811-4111
ovationtix.com
Local theatre company FUDGE presents this original musical by Chris Guin, which tells of a young artist who’s retreated into his own private fantasy world. To him, the dragons he draws aren’t just pictures—they come to life. Everything’s fine until a girl from a downer joint called Reality comes to, in her mind, rescue him from a lonely, delusional existence.
ART
Art in Bloom
Saturday through Monday
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Ave., Boston
$23-$25, 800-440-6975
mfa.org
Every spring, the Museum of Fine Arts brings in several garden clubs and floral designers to create flower arrangements that complement the art in their galleries—this year they’ve got more than 50, accompanied by a lecture by the floral arranger for the 2011 Royal Wedding, a floral demonstration, classes on floral arrangement and an “elegant tea.”
Beijing Journal
Through July 12
Multicultural Arts Center
41 Second St., Cambridge
Free, 617-577-1400
multiculturalartscenter.org
This 48-picture photoessay by Joseph Levendusky peeks into the shifting world of China’s capital city, focusing on the oldest, most traditional streets and neighborhoods, known as hutongs, which are still holding out after years of relentless, sometimes violent social change—but who can say for how much longer? It’s a narrative whose echoes can be heard not just in China, but everywhere.
FESTIVALS
Harvard Arts First Festival
Thursday through Sunday
Harvard Square
Cambridge
Free, 617-496-2222
ofa.fas.harvard.edu/arts
This festival features performances and work from hundreds of students at both Harvard and its satellite institutions, in every art form, and we mean everything. Seriously—the program is so extensive it has its own iPhone app! Cambridge homeboy Matt Damon will be honored at a special ceremony, and they’ll be holding outdoor screenings of his movies in the evening.
BOOKS
Evgeny Morozov
Friday, 7 p.m.
Harvard Book Store
1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
Free, 617-661-1515
harvard.com
This author, a writer for the New Republic, will discuss his new book “To Save Everything, Click Here,” which criticizes the idea that technology can and will equalize society, democratize the world, force political accountability, etc. Morozov believes this attitude severely underestimates the complexity of political, moral, and social problems, and, if unchecked, is likely to create more trouble than it solves.
