Music

A soulful, bluesy twang. A psychedelic fever dream. A burst of back-porch finger-picking. Whatever the style, the sound of Gary Lucas—described by The New York Times as a “songwriter with a global guitar”—is unmistakable. Founder of the rock band Gods and Monsters and a former collaborator with Jeff Buckley (Lucas co-wrote the song “Grace”) and Captain Beefheart, among countless others, Lucas continues to provoke and refashion American music while finding its echo in unlikely places.

In The Edge of Heaven, that place is shidaiqu, the alluring jazz-tinged popular music that flourished in 1930s and 40s China (and was used evocatively by Wong Kar-Wai in his 2000 film In the Mood for Love). Accompanied by Shanghai-based vocalists Sally Kwok and Mo Hai Jing, Lucas and his band pay tribute to two icons of this style, Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong. Wistful projections of street scenes of old Shanghai transport us in this evening of lilting romantic melodies filtered through the sonic vistas of American experience.