T here’s a lot of looking back to look forward to this week in New Haven. A famed film director discusses WWII-era history with a couple of professors, days before the New Haven Museum invites us to dust off and screen our old amateur home movie reels. In the meantime, the Shubert Theater, celebrating its hundredth anniversary this season, hosts its first show following months of renovations.
Monday, October 13
The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and HackYale are sponsoring “Changing the World from Silicon Valley,” a tech talk today featuring Scott Cook, founder of big software company Intuit (responsible for TurboTax), and Richard Levin, CEO of education startup Coursera and recently departed president of Yale. The free event gets started at 4 p.m. in the President’s Room within Woolsey Hall (500 College St, New Haven); to attend, be sure to register in advance, before 3 p.m.
Tuesday, October 14
Fans have been waiting for a new Bishop Allen record since 2009’s Grrr…. They now have it in Lights Out, and the band seems pleased to be back, sounding persistently jaunty throughout an otherwise wide-ranging album. On track three, “Crows,” velvety doubled vocals, clean happy guitars, a prominent bass line and an afro-groove inhabiting a clear, open mix recall any number of songs from Paul Simon’s classic Graceland. Track 10, “Bread Crumbs,” on the other end, offers a straight-ahead midtempo dance-rock beat, simple anthemic call-and-answer vocals and a chorus featuring an ever-innocent ’50s-pop progression. There’s a record’s worth of other tracks to be surprised by during tonight’s 8:30, $12 headlining show in The Ballroom at The Outer Space (295 Treadwell St, Hamden; 203-288-6400). Second act The Shivers—determinedly DIY and skipping between folk, blues, rock and electro, throwing instrumental meditations in, too—is bound to surprise as well. Opener Roses is much younger than the others, with just one record, Roses EP, to its name. But one of its members invites special note: guitarist and vocalist Andrew Tobiassen was the lead guitarist in Deer Tick for a couple of years.
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Wednesday, October 15
The films that secured Oliver Stone’s legend as a director—like Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989)—not only told riveting stories, they also said something. Tonight in the Whitney Humanities Center (53 Wall St, New Haven; 203-432-0670), watch Stone say things in person during a talk surrounding his Showtime series The Untold History of the United States. Joining him in a discussion of Untold’s third episode, titled “The Bomb”—as in, the atomic bombing technology the U.S. developed during World War II—are history professors Peter Kuznick (American University) and Matthew Jacobson (Yale). 7 p.m.; free.
Thursday, October 16
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra is about 9 times older than 13-year-old piano virtuoso Emily Bear, who’s about 8 times younger than the Shubert Theater, which is about 10 years older than George Gershwin’s famous sonic cityscape Rhapsody in Blue. All four feature heavily in “American Rhapsody,” the season-opener at the Shubert meant to “celebrate American music” with works by Gershwin and Aaron Copland, as well as an original song by Bear. Regularly priced tickets range from $15 to $74, with discounts for students and kids. 247 College Street, New Haven; (203) 562-5666. 7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 17
Approaching its eighth annual iteration in mid-November, the “Forgot to Laugh: Sideshow and Animation Festival” draws together animators and offbeat entertainers like sword swallowers, contortionists and jugglers. Tonight at Anna Liffey’s (17 Whitney Ave, New Haven; 203-773-1776), organizers are putting on a pre-festival of sorts, screening animations shown at main events past and inviting lo-fi husband-and-wife duo The Sawtelles to provide the soundtrack. The cover is $5, with “contests and prizes” promised. Doors open at 9.
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Saturday, October 18
In concert with 50+ other cities around the world, New Haven celebrates Home Movie Day today with an event intended to help locals maintain and appreciate old family movies captured on 8mm, Super 8 and 16mm film. Hosted by the New Haven Museum (114 Whitney Ave, New Haven; 203-562-4183) from noon to 4 p.m., the first two hours of the occasion offer the chance to get your old movies “assessed” by an expert while learning how to preserve them on your own. The second half of the schedule screens a selection of the films, which, even when they aren’t yours, seem sure to bring back distant memories if you were alive at the time or, if you weren’t, offer fascinating insights into the ways previous generations lived. The occasion is free and open to anyone, by the way, regardless of whether you have reels to contribute.
Sunday, October 19
Artspace’s City-Wide Open Studios charged out of the gate this past Saturday and Sunday during its “Alternative Space Weekend,” with artists setting up temporary installations throughout the massive, exquisitely decaying Goffe Street Armory. (Check out our photos here.) Yesterday and today between noon and 6 p.m., it’s CWOS’s “Transported Weekend,” when artists based in New Haven, West Haven, North Haven and Hamden open up their private studios to the public. To get the “official map and guide” to the weekend, make Artspace (50 Orange St, New Haven; 203-772-2709) your first stop. Or plan out your own route using this simple online map.
Either way, bon voyage.
Written by Dan Mims.
