The interdisciplinary artist Rena Anakwe explores the curative properties of sound design. The first music that she released under the name A Space for Sound collected sound-bath performances from sessions held on Instagram Live, full of the deeply meditative and mellow drones of a tank drum. Her second album, “Sometimes underwater (feels like home),” from 2021, used ambient instruments—the tank drum, along with singing bowls, a multitrack tape machine, an effects pedal, and a synth, plus vocals—to bring a rushing sensation to her euphonic compositions. Anakwe’s live shows pursue a broader sensory balance by mixing music with found-footage visuals and the scents of essential oils. Included on her bill at the fourth edition of the Dweller festival is the experimental R. & B. artist KeiyaA, whose songs also pursue a spiritual cleansing.—Sheldon Pearce (Public Records; Feb. 23.)
Classical Music
Photograph by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
In 2022, Yunchan Lim became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and he comes to New York City for a second lap in his victory tour when he makes his Carnegie Hall début. Last season, a spot opened unexpectedly on the New York Philharmonic’s calendar, and the ensemble snapped up the preternaturally gifted musician for an electric, smoothly confident rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, which didn’t shortchange the work’s stormy passions. Now the nineteen-year-old Lim appears in his first solo recital in New York, playing Chopin’s études, keyboard studies of elegance and dazzle which the composer started writing, precociously enough, when he was Lim’s age.—Oussama Zahr (Carnegie Hall; Feb. 21.)
Art
A pleasant form of meditation would be to glide through Mary Weatherford’s latest exhibition, “Sea and Space,” and try to count all the greens. In new abstract paintings—some Flashe on linen, some ink on paper, none unimpressive—you will find every shade and saturation of the color, from pond scum to Statue of Liberty, spread across the picture plane in gooey waves. The one thing you will not find is neon lighting, probably the most talked-about component of her earlier paintings, though not my favorite. This time around, an air of psychedelic mysticism presides over everything, inspired, Weatherford has suggested, by NASA photography and trips to the Hayden Planetarium. It’s a trade-up.—Jackson Arn (Gagosian; through March 2.)
Off Broadway
In the breakneck camp farce “Oh, Mary!,” Cole Escola—the comedian, Internet filmmaker, playwright, and evil-sprite actor—plays the First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, or, rather, her bitter, alcoholic, narcissist burlesque, complete with big black dress and dangling Civil War-era ringlets. Barging through White House doors and stomping across national sanctities, this catty-scary version of Mary rages at her killjoy husband, Abe (Conrad Ricamora), because he refuses to let her pursue her true love: cabaret. And . . . I can tell you no more. Escola’s jokes, as explosive as musket blasts, depend on surprise, and I wouldn’t dare get between Mary—one part Carol Burnett, two parts Charles Busch—and a punch line. Sam Pinkleton directs with a steady hand, but the audience hangs on for dear life.—Helen Shaw (Lucille Lortel Theatre; through March 24.)
Movies
Before launching her directorial career, Greta Gerwig was a daringly inventive actress, and she gives one of her most furious performances in Mary Bronstein’s ultra-low-budget, ultra-raw 2008 drama, “Yeast,” now streaming on the Criterion Channel. Gerwig plays an art-world beginner named Gen, who goes on a camping trip with a longtime frenemy, a teacher named Rachel (Bronstein), whose roommate, Alice (Amy Judd), abruptly cancels on them. Gen unleashes anarchy on the open road (the streaming service subtitles her first lines of dialogue as “Ahhh! Wahh!”) and chaos in a food court, and she starts physical fights with both of the women and with two guys (Josh and Benny Safdie) whom she meets in the wild. Alice, too, is possessed by an antagonistic demon; Bronstein revels in and shudders at the reckless impulsivity that she finds at the core of creative passion.—Richard Brody
Pick Three
The staff writer Jiayang Fan shares current obsessions.
Illustration by Ricardo Diseño
1. How often have I fantasized about disappearing into another story in order to escape my own paralysis on the page? Maybe that is why I find the generosity and grace of the HBO series “Sort Of” so welcome and absorbing. Centered on Sabi, a job-juggling, gender-fluid millennial of Pakistani heritage, the show is a cousin of personal dramedies like “Girls” or “Fleabag,” but it’s less obsessed with sticking the perfect landing. The mania to solve the complexities of life, or to untangle braided identities, is likely misplaced, the wise Sabi would probably counsel me. Rethink your story.
2. Given my abundance of nervous energy, I would likely rope Sabi into listening to the addictive, nerdy, under-the-radar podcast “The Psychosphere.” The Social Broadcasts show, hosted by the historian and science writer Melanie Challenger, is a cerebral palate cleanser that invites biologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to discuss everything from the nature of consciousness and the origin of intelligent life to the personhood of octopuses and elephants.
3. The Whitney’s “Harold Cohen: AARON” traces the evolution of an artificial-intelligence program for art-making (AARON), begun in 1968, by the British artist Harold Cohen. At its heart, the project is an attempt to get to the core of the creative process by coding the cognitive process into software. How sophisticated does a program’s neural network have to be to produce an image that is indistinguishable from what a human can create? At the Whitney, I wished that I could occasionally substitute my procrastinating brain for AARON’s relentlessly industrious one.
P.S. Good stuff on the Internet:
