Compiled by LOUIS LUCERO II

It’s a big city, with plenty to do, see, hear and watch. This guide is a sampling of cultural highlights taking place in New York this weekend and over the week ahead. And there’s much more where these came from.

Regina Spektor performing in January.CreditLarry Hirshowitz

Pop & Rock
A Deeply Human Synthesis
Regina Spektor at Radio City Music Hall

The classically trained pianist Regina Spektor was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated in 1989 to the United States, where she mastered her instrument at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in New York. But since releasing her debut album, “11:11,” in 2001, Ms. Spektor has expanded upon her classical sensibilities to include cabaret stylings, orchestral pop and gorgeous balladry, all of which will be on display in this Saturday night performance. That hybrid sound is most fully realized on her latest album, “Remember Us to Life,” on which Ms. Spektor also shares gripping storytelling with a dark and subversive edge. “Somewhere below the Grand Hotel,” she sings in a beguiling, fluttery voice on the stunning “Grand Hotel,” “there is a tunnel that leads down to hell.” KEVIN O’DO

An interactive installation by the artist Daniel Rozin at ARTech.CreditChildren’s Museum of the Arts

For Children
Science and Creativity, Meeting on Deadline
ARTech: Adventures in Art & Technology at 459 West 14th Street

On March 1, an intriguing new children’s center opened its doors in Manhattan. On April 29, it will shut them, leaving small visitors just seven more weeks to design, construct, experiment and explore. Presented by the Meatpacking Business Improvement District, this 8,000-square-foot pop-up learning hub draws on the resources of both the Children’s Museum of the Arts and the New York Hall of Science. At a Velocity area, for instance, children can create tiny vehicles, then investigate physics by sending them down ramps of different shapes. Other exhibits include a portable planetarium; a station to make the animated images known as GIFs; a Build It area with components from the design kit Rigamajig; and installations featuring artist and scientist collaborations. Admission is free, but requires timed tickets. One consolation: Though ARTech will go away soon, the museums that created it won’t. LAUREL GRAEBER

Mark Morris Dance Group performing “Dido and Aeneas,” with Domingo Estrada Jr. and Laurel Lynch, in the foreground, dancing the title roles.CreditTim Rummelhoff

Dance
Paired Operas to Highlight Musical Choreography
Mark Morris Dance Group at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

The choreographer Mark Morris is distinguished for his exceptional musicality, so it’s a gift that the Brooklyn Academy of Music will host a program, Wednesday through March 19, of two operas: Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” (1989), a now-classic production choreographed by Mr. Morris, and Benjamin Britten’s “Curlew River” (2013), directed by Mr. Morris and based on a Japanese Noh play in which musicians and vocalists from the Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble wear white and appear in an entirely white set. (Both the costumes and décor are designed by Allen Moyer.) For “Dido and Aeneas,” Mr. Morris conducts the chorus and orchestra; Stephanie Blythe sings the role of Dido and the Sorceress, while Laurel Lynch dances both roles. Aeneas is sung by Douglas Williams and performed by the dancer Domingo Estrada Jr. It’s music brought to life. GIA KOURLAS

“Dasiamime” (2016), by the Ghanaian artist Atta Kwami.CreditAtta Kwami

Museums & Galleries
Brilliant Patterns for a Sunset
‘Thami: Atta Kwami Recent Paintings’ at Howard Scott Gallery

The Ghanaian artist Atta Kwami has one of the most flexible abstract vocabularies of any painter today. A loose geometry formed from rectangles of varying dimensions pays homage to the modern grid but refuses its regularity. The brilliant stained-glass palette usually encompasses the entire spectrum but has a special affinity for hot reds. Architecture, woven textiles and patchwork fences are conjured by his new paintings, which are among his best. Their formal inclusiveness and multiplicity send a message of implicit equality. This is the gallery’s last show — it closes on March 18 — as Howard Scott is retiring after 34 years. It is dedicated to the South African artist and activist Thami Mnyele (1948-1985), and a grand finale. ROBERTA SMITH

Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in “The Present.”CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

 

Theater
Chekhov Revived, and Fitfully Reanimated
‘The Present’ at the Barrymore Theater

Andrew Upton’s adaptation of an early Anton Chekhov play about provincial anomie winds down its Broadway run ahead of a March 19 close. Although Ben Brantley described this Sydney Theater Company production as “moribund from the beginning,” he did note that Cate Blanchett and her co-star Richard Roxburgh occasionally bring it to life. ALEXIS SOLOSKI

“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” starring the director William Greaves as himself, plays this weekend at the Metrograph.CreditJanus Films

 

Film Series
Turning His Camera on an Easy Target: Himself
‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ at the Metrograph

In this landmark of self-devouring cinema, the director William Greaves stars as a caricature of himself: He plays William Greaves, a filmmaker shooting a movie in Central Park. But no one seems to know what that movie is about, or how filming should proceed — matters that the (fictional?) Mr. Greaves largely cedes to his cast and to his crew members, who muse about his intentions when he isn’t around. “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm,” showing on Friday and Sunday, is at once a great New York film, a time capsule of the freewheeling spirit of 1968 (when it was shot) and a mind-bending examination of how choices shape movies. BEN KENIGSBERG
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Esa-Pekka Salonen, the New York Philharmonic’s composer in residence, in the apartment of a friend, the architect Frank Gehry.CreditChristopher Gregory for The New York Times

 

Classical Music
Two Stars, and One Writes for the Other
New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall

Perhaps the most anticipated premiere of the year comes next week at the Philharmonic, with the New York debut of a cello concerto by Esa-Pekka Salonen, written for Yo-Yo Ma. In performances Wednesday through March 18, Alan Gilbert conducts that premiere, John Adams’s “The Chairman Dances” and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.” DAVID ALLEN

“Golden Picture” (2014), by Jongsook Kim, featuring Swarovski crystals on canvas, is among the works to be included as part of Asia Week New York.CreditKang Contemporary

 

Around Town
Glimmering Treasures From the Other Side of the World
Asia Week New York

Over the next several days, until March 18, Asian art on view at Manhattan galleries and auction previews will offer some welcome doses of glitter and lightheartedness and unexpected juxtapositions of materials. Kang Collection Korean Art has hung Jongsook Kim’s contemporary canvases, with landscape contours based on traditional paintings and fashioned from Swarovski crystals. Bonhams has a collection of Japanese scepters carved from black coral and hardened mushrooms, and Sotheby’s has brought out a 19th-century diorama of Chinese temples strewn with iridescent kingfisher feathers. EVE M. KAHN

The trumpeter Charles Tolliver will lead his New Music Inc. quintet in sets at Smoke.CreditOmawolie

Jazz
Unswerving, but Updated
Charles Tolliver at Smoke

Mr. Tolliver boasts a strong and tawny trumpet sound, and a way of articulating his ideas with measured conviction. Emerging in the mid-1960s, he largely stuck to straight-ahead jazz at a moment when the style was slipping from public attention. As a result, he never gained the prominence that his talents seemed to promise. But he has continued to make engrossing music, nowadays with a quintet called New Music Inc. (an update of his earlier combo, Music Inc.). This iteration, performing sets through Sunday, includes the guitarist Bruce Edwards, the pianist Theo Hill, the bassist Essiet Okon Essiet and the drummer Darrell Green. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

From left, the improvisers TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Comedy
Creating a Universe in Under an Hour
TJ & Dave at the Town Hall

As they do every few months, the Chicago-based improvisers TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi are returning to New York City, this time for one night only, at 8 on Friday, with music by Ike Reilly. The stars of the 2009 documentary “Trust Us, This Is All Made Up,” Mr. Jagodowski and Mr. Pasquesi are masters at slowly building characters and establishing complete, multilayered universes in 50-minute sets. Unlike most improvisers, they don’t ask for audience suggestions at the beginning, choosing instead to be inspired only by each other and their surroundings. At their finest, the two men examine the minutiae of everyday life with the precision of a keenly observational stand-up set; that they are doing so on the fly makes it all the more exhilarating to watch. ELISE CZAJKOWSKI

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/arts/things-to-do-in-nyc-now-lauryn-hill-carnegie-hall.html