FRI 12/3: Art, Strings, Soap, Rock

Wow, it's Friday already! Let's hope I get the weekend posts together soon...

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FRI 12/3

6pm to 9pm
Laura "Lola" Baltzell and Team Tolstoy, "The War and Peace Project": Opening Reception
at Atlantic Works Gallery, 80 Border St, East Boston
FREE

At slightly less than halfway through a project to turn every page of an old Russian copy of "War and Peace" into a piece of art, it must have seemed like 300 pages was sufficient for an exhibit.

Each 7" x 5" page is being transform by a small group of artists using various methods. You can view the results on a daily basis on the blog or see a gigantic portion in real life for the next couple weeks.

Doesn't this sound like enough incentive to go to Eastie?

FRI 12/3

7pm
Boston String Players: Open Dress Rehearsal
at First Church in Boston, 66 Marlborough St, Boston (Back Bay)
FREE

Program:

Vivaldi, "Summer"
Chad Gray, "Reddish Blue"
Napravnik, "Melancholy in G Minor"
Bartok, "Rumanian Folk Dances"
Beethoven, "Grosse Fuge, op. 133"

Conducted (and led) by by Motoki Tanaka, the BSP having been doing a few concerts per year at various venues since 2007.

The idea is to take this group of students and grads from many local music schools and expand beyond the usual repertoire into modern pieces, new original compositions, and different genres (a Radiohead tune was on the program when I first saw this gig). They also intend to engage the audience for a better understanding of the music.

You can go to the free dress rehearsal tonight or the actual concert tomorrow night ($10).

FRI 12/3

8pm
"Little Black Topsy and the Magical White Fairy Soap"
at Pozen Center, about 621 Huntington Ave, Boston (MassArt, enter on Evans Way)
FREE

Doors: 7:30pm

Whoa! I had an idea that race would be addressed from the title, and it sounds rather clever. Live performance is blended with video to create a rather twisted fairy tale about a black girl who goes on a quest to find the titular cleansing agent.

Writer-director-star Cori Spencer says, "... it has been my goal to implement a movement vocabulary which not only expresses the tension that I witness between whiteness and blackness, but manifests that tension in the movements of a singular body.

FRI 12/3

9:30pm
The Blizzard of 78, Muy Cansado, The Positronic Rays, Highly Personal Trash
at Rosebud Bar & Grill (behind Diner), 381 Summer St, Somerville (Davis Sq)
$5 / 21+

When I first heard The Blizzard Of 78, they reminded me of U2/Coldplay (in a good way), and this new EP has a Wilco vibe to my ear. So let's say their sound is like U2, The Verve, Coldplay, and Wilco driving towards the same intersection and gracefully crashing into each other.

It's also a double-shot of the wonderful singer-keayboardist Sophie Innerfield who is leading a full-band set of her project, Highly Personal Trash, and a special 'reunion' gig of her "One Night Band" The Positronic Rays. They were one of the two bands that I hoped would continue playing, because they created a cohesive, well-formed mini-space-opera that truly rocked.

I think I read that Muy Cansado may be going on last(?) tonight, but they are far from least. These folks rip it up that places them along the line with many of the great post-punk bands that have come out of Boston.

FRI 12/3

9:30pm
Cocked 'n Loaded, Tijuana Sweetheart, Noble Rot, Give Up
at O'Brien's, 3 Harvard St, Allston
$8 / 21+

Dudes and dudettes, are you ready to rock? I mean, are really ready to rock? Have you ever lifted your hands with the goat horns of rock? Get ready, friends. It's going to be hard, heavy, and awesome at this place tonight.