Arts Planner: An under the radar art exhibition, "A Strange Loop" hits Broadway and Ornette Coleman reimagined

There are always so many arts events happening in New York City, it's impossible to take it all in. But WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor, Steve Smith gives it his best shot. He joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview of some upcoming events.


1. Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line

Blockbuster shows tend to suck up a lot of oxygen, but there's a lot to be said for a succinct little exhibition that serves its purpose well – and "Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line" is a great example. Miyamoto was born in Tokyo in 1942, and arrived on the Lower East Side in 1964, where she melded her Japanese cultural inheritance with her adopted New York City culture. She made paintings, fiber sculptures that seem to shimmer and ripple as you move around them, performance pieces, and, from the late 1960s onward, a series of kimonos fashioned from fabric, newspaper, and other common material. The Japan Society show is her first solo exhibition at an institution. It's smartly designed, elegantly organized, manageable in scope, and dramatic in impact – one of those shows that makes you feel like you’ve learned something fresh and important.

"A Strange Loop" on Broadway

Michael R. Jackson introduced his flamboyant musical – about a fat Black gay man named Usher, who works as an usher at "The Lion King," while trying to write a Broadway musical possibly about being a fat Black gay man who's trying to write a musical. The show was a super-hyped hit off Broadway in 2019, won a handful of huge awards including the Pulitzer Prize, and finally – after several COVID-delays – opened on Broadway this month.

It's a wildly subversive show about guilt, desire, longing and self-loathing, in which Usher interacts continuously with a campy chorus of his own doubts and inhibitions personified. It's howlingly funny, unapologetically raunchy, and deeply, deeply moving – and Broadway newcomer Jaquel Spivey is brilliant as Usher.

3. "The Shape of Jazz to Come"

The composers collective Bang on a Can has been bringing together all kinds of contemporary music -- jazz, classical music, indie rock, electronica, you name it -- in its annual marathons since 1987. Even before the pandemic, Bang on a Can started imagining a big multi-venue festival that would be something like Big Ears down in Knoxville – and this weekend it's finally happening. The festival is called Long Play and it's crammed with musical adventures around the clock – but the finale is something extra special: a re-imagining of "The Shape of Jazz to Come," a watershed album from 1959 by jazz iconoclast Ornette Coleman, Sunday night, May 1st, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music:

Assembled by Coleman's son, drummer Denardo Coleman, the concert features a new Bang on a Can Orchestra with special guests who worked with Coleman, playing the six cuts from Coleman's album in new arrangements by six leading Black composers: Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford, and Pamela Z.