Great Music Events Next Week - Pacific Music, and Whales With Music

Once again in a bit of a scramble mode at work (what else is new, right?) that's not leaving me much time for blogging, but I did want to toss up a quick mention of two terrific musical events that are coming up next week. 

Doodle du jour - an illustration for a music music and whales post.*,**

First one is on Monday the 27th and the timing is going to be rough for most of us working stiffs but if you're retired, have flexible hours, or maybe detect a touch of the sniffles coming on that you, considerate soul that you are, don't want to pass on to your colleagues...well, this is about as Only In New York as it gets and in fact this is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing here - whalewatching with musical performances by the cast of the off-off-Broadway concert play The SeaWife, now in its last days at the Herman Melville Theater at the South Street Seaport Museum. Join the cast and Gotham Whale aboard the American Princess for an afternoon of excerpts from a nautical ghost story in modern folk music, and (knock wood) whales! The tale is of a whaler, but Gotham Whale promises that the whales will be shot with cameras only. Trip launches at noon at Riis Dock on the Rockaway Peninsula on 7/27, at noon sharp. Click here for more details and reservations.

Second one is on Wednesday, July 29th, and this is another musical fundraiser for the 2016 visit of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūle'a that I'm so looking forward to these days (click on the Hōkūle'a NYC label below for more posts on the subject if you missed 'em!). Click here for more details on Hālāwai Presents A Night of Pacific Music. I can't make this one either (plans for next week have been set in stone for a while now) but I went to the first fundraising showcase for the visit that Hālāwai put together back in May and it was really amazing - not just Hawaiian, but music and dance from all over the Pacific, an amazing variety and all beautifully performed. This will be well worth the very reasonable $20 ticket price!

And as long as I'm talking about theatrical events, I'm also going to mention something cool that will quite likely be coming to a (now publicly accessible, Huzzah!) tanker Mary A. Whalen near you (or at least not too far if you're in or near NYC) at some point in the not-too-distant future. I should've posted about this back when the Whalen started posting on Facebook (yes, the tanker has a great Facebook page) about the Threadbare Theater Production's Kickstarter campaign for Or, The Whale, a staged production of Moby Dick  - fortunately they made their goal and then a little bit more, so with that in place, and a magnificent potential venue at Red Hook's Atlantic Basin, they're well underway. Click here for more info and their Kickstarter video. I don't know when this will be staged, but it's something to look forward to and I'll certainly post updates if I hear anything new.

*This really was a doodle, only took a few minutes once I got the whim to draw something for this, but I kind of liked how it came out. I dedicate this doodle to one of my open-water swimming friends, Brooklyn's most awesome mermaid, Patricia Sener, who spent the day swimming seventeen miles, from Sandy Hook to Atlantic Beach, Long Island, crossing the New York Bight to raise fund for Clean Ocean Action and Gotham Whale. What a Wednesday! Congratulations Patricia! Click here to read more about it.

**And although the doodle is not not entirely plagiarized, I probably should give a hat tip to Gary Larsen, who I'm pretty sure did a much funnier singing whale cartoon a long long time ago.