Philadelphia Weekly

>>Jazz you like it
Marina Rosenfeld
Wed., Dec. 5, 5:30pm. $3-$6 (free with Penn ID). Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St. 215.898.7108. www.icaphila.orgMarina Rosenfeld is an avant-garde jazz turntablist in the coolest sense--meaning she messes with the delicate sensibilities of the oh-so-precious dance cognescenti just as much as she tweaks the noses of the turgid jazz snobs who want the genre to stay dry, dusty and dead. As such she walks in the footsteps of John Zorn, the dude who ripped jazz a score of fresh assholes in the '90s by mixing John Coltrane's be-bop with Napalm Death's extreme thrash metal (causing outrage and at least one riot). While in college Rosenfeld invented the Sheer Frost Orchestra, consisting of 17 women playing floor-bound electric guitars with nail polish bottles. In short, like all cool artists, Rosenfeld delights in screwing with heads. Through her vinyl, Rosenfeld quotes everyone from Trane to Marclay to Sonic Youth. Just as DJ Shadow ensures that backpackers are schooled in the Stax back catalog, Rosenfeld lets jazzbos and disco dollies alike know what it's like to hear the world through John Zorn's ragged, elephantine and permanently bleeding ears. (Joshua Valocchi)

Sir Simon Rattle

Sir Simon Rattle--the British conductor famous for his championing of new music, energetic performances and poofy hair--returns. Since his 1993 Philadelphia premiere, Rattle has kept up his long relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra, even after taking up the baton at the great Berlin Philharmonic in 2002. On this visit, his only professional engagement in the U.S. in the 2007-2008 season, Rattle will bring his enthusiasm to Schumann's Mahler-scale oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri. In this often-overlooked work, the titular Peri, a Persian demigoddess, decides she wants to go to heaven. However, since she's the daughter of a fallen angel and a mortal, the gatekeeper won't let her in. She instead sends the Peri on a scavenger hunt to do good deeds that might overcome her heritage, setting the scene for a musical journey over multiple continents that should make for an interesting night at the Kimmel. (Emily Guendelsberger)

>>Skin head
Michael Grecco
Fri., Nov. 30, 6:30pm. $20. Robin's Bookstore, 108 S. 13th St. 215.735.9600. www.robinsbookstore.com

What happens in Las Vegas rarely stays there. Take the Adult Video News Awards. In Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated Industry, celebrity portrait photographer Michael Grecco presents a genital-warts-and-all pictorial expose of the porn industry's equivalent of the Oscars. Featuring forewords from Larry Flynt and Dave Navarro, the coffee-table book examines the inner workings of the annual AVN ceremony while also managing to humanize fantasy icons Tera Patrick, Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy through Grecco's shutterbuggery and commentary from journalists Lonn Friend and Rob Hill. Although the straight porn world takes center stage, Grecco also profiles gay porn stars and offers up museum-quality photos of sex toys. With a companion documentary also in the works, Grecco seems determined to prove pornography can be a valid art form. (Chris Cummins)

>>Greenaway in a manger
The Draughtsman's Contract/A Zed and Two Noughts
Thurs., Nov. 29 (The Draughtsman's Contract) and Fri., Nov. 30 (A Zed and Two Noughts), 7pm. $5-$7. International House, 3701 Chestnut St. 215.387.5125. www.ihousephilly.org

The story says Peter Greenaway sold his soul. An acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker obsessed with OCD-level organization and rituals, Greenaway unexpectedly earned art house success with his 1983 period piece The Draughtsman's Contract, which laced his shtick with real actors, an actual plot, and some good old-fashioned sex and death. Greenaway's semi-commercial streak continued, to the scorn of avant-garde-ists everywhere, with The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and The Pillow Book. I mean, did Stan Brakhage ever score a Miramax deal? But by 1999's woebegone 8 1/2 Women, the public hated him, and no one seemed to care about his magnum opus The Tulse Luper Suitcases. And yet word that people actually enjoy Nightwatching, with The Office's Martin Freeman as Rembrandt, hints that a Greenaway comeback might be on the horizon. Good. International House is screening The Draughtsman's Contract and A Zed and Two Noughts--a pure bugfuck featuring brooding twins, amputation, killer swans and animals decaying in time lapse. Ho ho ho. (Matt Prigge)