UPDATED WITH CORRECTED TIMES

We want to take special notice this week of a rapidly approaching conference co-organized by our colleague Sukhdev Sandhu, also to be held at NYU: Kiss Me Again: The Life and Legacy of Arthur Russell. The conference will take place primarily at 721 Broadway, Ste. 612 — Tisch Performance Studies — with other events happening at Housing Works Cafe, Public Assembly, and Bar 169.

Russell lived and worked in New York from the early 1970s to his AIDS-related death in 1992. He was instrumental to a range of music scenes downtown, from his work as a curator at the Kitchen, to his recording of underground dance music under the names Loose Joints and Dinosaur L, to his performance with vocals and cello in the ghostly compositions known as the World of Echo. Although his work and influence was far-reaching, only recently has he begun to receive widespread public recognition, including the release of many long-lost songs and new interest in his biography by Matt Wolf, Tim Lawrence, and others.

The daylong conference on Saturday, beginning at 10 am, will feature Mustapha Ahmed, Bob Blank, Joyce Bowden, Ernie Brooks, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Steve Knutson, Elodie Lauten, Tim Lawrence, Tom Lee, Gary
Lucas, Simon Reynolds, Will Socolov, Peter Zummo & others, including a screening of the recent Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination (filmmaker Matt Wolf will be on hand for Q&A). I can’t praise this movie enough and really encourage anyone who hasn’t yet been exposed to Russell to take advantage of this screening. (The movie’s also readily available on DVD.) The prior evening (Friday) at 9 pm Steven Hall and Joyce Bowden will perform Arthur Russell songs at Bar 169.

Saturday evening, from 7 to 10, Housing Works Cafe will host more performances of Russell’s music — by Mira Billotte, Joyce Bowden, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Nick Hallett, Rachel Henry, Alex Waterman, Peter Zummo and others — along with a booklaunch for Tim Lawrence’s  Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92, which will be officially released by Duke University Press next month. From 10 pm to 4 am, Public Assembly (70 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg) will host a dance party, with a $10 donation at the door to benefit the AIDS charity God’s Love We Deliver.

If you can make it to the 4:05 mark in this song and not spend the rest of the day smiling, I’d suggest you’ve got some work to do. Then again, who among us doesn’t?