Chris Farrell - Bklyner

Randy Weston Way: Lafayette Avenue Block Co-Named In Honor Of Late Jazz Musician

CLINTON HILL – As hundreds gathered on Sunday to celebrate to co-naming of part of Lafayette Avenue in honor of Brooklyn-born jazz musician Randy Weston, NYS Attorney General Letitia James took advantage of the occasion to call for a “permanent home to promote jazz” in the borough that would equal Manhattan’

Arts & Culture

Kane Street Synagogue Presents 15th Annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival

[UPDATED: Friday, January 11, 2019 at 9:30am] Festival organizers have informed Bklyner that Dominic Fumusa’s interview with Gila Almagor has been cancelled. Fumusa will be joined by Film Professor Stuart Weinstock instead, for a post-film roundtable discussion. COBBLE HILL – Dominic Fumusa of the Showtime series Homeland will interview

Arts & Culture

Apartment Sessions: 80 Musicians Perform in Close Quarters

BED-STUY – Once you’ve shoehorned 80 musicians into a Brooklyn flat for a live recording of an imaginatively arranged cover of a radio-friendly pop song, where do you go next? If you said, “Iceland, obviously,” you’re on the same page as the Apartment Sessions, the “multimedia collective trying to

Arts & Culture

Rent Party For Weeksville Heritage Center’s Hunterfly Road Houses

CROWN HEIGHTS – Thanksgiving celebrations haven’t yet stretched to match the twelve days of Christmas, but in the last decade the holiday has been headed in that direction. First, with “doorbuster” sales designed to lure shoppers early on the morning after the Thursday feasting, retailers declared a Black Friday to

Arts & Culture

‘Mask’: David Dominique’s “Instantly Familiar And Wildly Unpredictable” New Work

PROSPECT HEIGHTS – A musician with deep roots in Brooklyn returns to New York City on Thursday (November 15) to celebrate the release of his latest album Mask. David Dominique was born in Queens and spent time in Long Island growing up, but his father taught at Clara Caldwell Middle School

Arts & Culture

Katra Film Festival Sidebar Edition: Showcasing Work By Underrepresented Communities

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN – Several years ago, when the novelty of streaming videos and movies made “Netflix and chill” the ascendant option for socializing, filmmaker Geoffrey Guerrero decided to kick back against the zeitgeist. “I grew up in an age where you go out and chill, meet people and consume culture in

Arts & Culture

Contemporary Artists In Victorian Flatbush: Tour Ditmas Park Artists’ Studios This Weekend

DITMAS PARK – Since its inception eight years ago, the Flatbush Artists Open Studios Tour has become an important weekend in the calendar of creative events in New York City. On October 27-28, forty painters, photographers, sculptors and other artists will welcome visitors on a free self-guided tour. The growth of

Boerum Hill

Eastville Comedy Club Moves The Laughs To Brooklyn

BOERUM HILL – With the lease expiring on their subterranean Eastville Comedy Club, owners Marko and Tia Elgart knew it was time for a change. “Dive basement venues like our old location were cool 10 years ago when we opened, but that has completely dissipated,” Marko explained. They originally intended to

Boerum Hill

Eastville Comedy Club Moves The Laughs To Brooklyn

BOERUM HILL – With the lease expiring on their subterranean Eastville Comedy Club, owners Marko and Tia Elgart knew it was time for a change. “Dive basement venues like our old location were cool 10 years ago when we opened, but that has completely dissipated,” Marko explained. They originally intended to

Arts & Culture

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead: “As Much About Theater As It Is About Shakespeare”

RED HOOK – The Cave Theater Company wasn’t planning a site-specific production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead when they arranged to perform Tom Stoppard’s 1966 comedy at the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook. But the venue, a rescued barge docked at 290 Conover Street, certainly lends a frisson

history

Name The Brooklyn Public Library Eagle

PROSPECT HEIGHTS – The eagle has landed—permanently, one hopes—at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch. The Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) has made a gift of a cast-copper eagle sculpture that debuted at the Washington Street headquarters of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1892, the largest of four birds

Arts & Culture

Schtick Or Treat: Brooklyn Music School’s Musical Haunted House Returns

FORT GREENE – Christmas has been the inspiration for hundreds of memorable songs and scores of pop hits since “Silent Night” was composed in 1818. Halloween has been left to make do with endless replays of 1962’s “The Monster Mash,” but for the last seven years, the Brooklyn Music School

Arts & Culture

Endangered Heart Quartet: A Paradoxical Chamber Music Group

DITMAS PARK – In an age when digital distribution renders the avant garde just another playlist on Spotify, the Endangered Heart Quartet is making unique music not by going further out but by finding spaces in between. As violinist Jesse Mills explained, somewhat elliptically, “We’re not in there, and we’

Arts & Culture

New Album ‘Heart Of Hearing’ Features Theremin & Eclectic Covers

PROSPECT HEIGHTS – A Prospect Heights musician uses an instrument often associated with weird and spooky sounds to create a plaintive and evocative version of Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” on his new album, scheduled for release Friday. Rob Schwimmer plays theremin, as well as keyboards and another unusual

Arts & Culture

Shakers n’ Bakers Reinterpret Albert Ayler’s ‘New Grass’ For Today’s Audience

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT – Fifty years ago, Albert Ayler attempted a musical experiment—recording an album combining the spontaneity and iconoclasm of free jazz with more traditional song structures and a strong R&B groove. New Grass was a notorious flop, savaged by Ayler’s avant-garde fans as a sell-out and ignored

Arts & Culture

Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema’s First Graduating Class Produces Films As Varied And Diverse As Its Students

BROOKLYN NAVY YARD – Works created by the first graduating class of the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema will be screened for an invitation-only audience of industry professionals at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday (May 23). The school’s founding director, Jonathan Wacks, expects the students whose work is

Arts & Culture

Erasmus Hall’s Cameo Appearance In ‘Flatbush Luck’

FLATBUSH – If you watch the credits roll at the close of Flatbush Luck, you’ll see actors Tanner Novlan and Robby Stahl listed in the leading roles. But anyone who has seen the film can tell you that the Brooklyn neighborhood that lends its name to the 2016 Coney Island

Arts & Culture

Brooklyn Poet & Performer Ashley August Featured In BAM’s ‘Word. Sound. Power.’

FLATBUSH – Growing up as the daughter of immigrants in Flatbush, Ashley August hid her dreams of being a performer from her parents using the duffle bag she carried her high school volleyball uniform in. Ashley August (Photo courtesy of the artist)“My parents are immigrants and there’s only about

Announcements

That’s All Folk! The 10th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival (April 6-8)

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS – “Everybody always wants to look forward to the next thing,” said Eli Smith. “For me, I prefer to turn the other way and look as far backwards as I can, try to get at something elemental.” For the next couple of weeks, at least, Smith, a banjo player

Arts & Culture

‘The Guide To Getting What’s Yours’: Weeksville Presents Story Of Famed Jewel Thief

CROWN HEIGHTS – A one-woman show inspired by the exploits of an octogenarian jewel thief is one of the plays the Onstage@Weeksville theater series has scheduled for the Weeksville Heritage Center. Doris Payne, already the subject of a fascinating documentary, prompted playwright Chelsea D. Harrison to create The Guide to

Announcements

Boxing Comes To Kings Theatre

FLATBUSH – Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal promotion company will stage the first of a series of boxing matches at the Kings Theatre on Saturday, March 10. According to Real Deal COO Eric Bentley, the partnership with the venue will bring at least four events to the historic Brooklyn site in

Arts & Culture

The Way Station Celebrates Brooklyn Museum’s ‘David Bowie Is’ Exhibition

PROSPECT HEIGHTS – As the final stop on a world tour that began at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum five years ago, the David Bowie Is exhibition will make its home at the Brooklyn Museum from March 2 to July 15. Prospect Heights bar The Way Station will celebrate the

Announcements

“She Stands Alone”: Irondale Presents Pair Of Solo Shows Celebrating Female Resilience

Via FacebookFORT GREENE – With Oprah Winfrey’s galvanizing speech at the Golden Globes demonstrating the power for change that can live within a single woman’s voice, the program scheduled this month at the Irondale Theater seems particularly timely. Each performance features two solo performances by women who grew up

Arts & Culture

Gold, Frankincense And Myrrh: Arturo O’Farrill Performs Father’s Seasonal Composition on Christmas Eve

Pianist and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill will present his father’s rarely performed seasonal composition “Oro, Incienso y Mirra” (“Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh”) in a free performance on Christmas Eve at All Saints’ Church. The piece was commissioned more than 40 years ago for a holiday performance featuring Dizzy Gillespie

Central Brooklyn

Save BKLYNER: An Appeal From A Contributor And Subscriber

The death of local outlets for journalism is no longer a news story—we watched for years, as outlets for reporting city and neighborhood stories dwindled across the country. There is a more recent twist to the stories, however—online sources, which were often cited as the cause in the