A concert sponsored by The Onion — so expect to be amused, Wednesday July 30, starting at 6:30 pm, free in a tent by the Brooklyn waterfront:Â
- John Zorn’s “Cobra” — an intricate musical game performed best by quick-witted improvisers with a handle of tactics governing the Avalon Hill board wargames of the ’60s — is being performed by an internation cast of a dozen such specialists (Zorn will be prompter, something between a card dealer and referee) –Â
- Followed by The Theremin Society, three specialists in the no-touch sound controller invented in the 1920s and used ever since mostly for eerie soundtrack effects –Â
- Finally Jonathan Kane, here being promoted as a bluesman with his band February, but I remember a performance piece in which he tap danced amplified big beats, and the hype is he’s also a montrous loud punk/minimalist drummer.
I don’t know precisely where the historic Tobacco Warehouse of the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park section of the Brooklyn Bridge Park is, and since the concert there is free, starting early, standing room only and limited space at that, I might not tell you if I did, ’cause there could be no room left for my little party. Maybe the jazz-beyond-jazz club members will run into each other looking for this unique lineup. Nice to see such avant-garde programming offered on a midsummer’s eve, as produced by the Issue Project Room, a “raw performance space” in the funky Gowanus neighhborhood that specializes in the new and innovative.Â
Be there or be square — or go to Barbes for Stochastic Brooklyn, a performance series curated by WFMU radio host Bethany Ryker, at 10 p.m. featuring violist Jessica Pavone, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, principles of The 13th Assembly  musical collective I hope to produce an NPR segment about (stay tuned for details on that).