Music
1. Listen to Mayhem
Little Monsters, rejoice.
Streamline/Interscope Records, March 7.
Last year saw Lady Gaga on the not quintessentially Gaga Joker: Folie à Deux soundtrack. Now, the wait for fans aching for a follow-up to 2020’s Chromatica is over. The latest single “Abracadabra” suggests a return to dance-pop form, but “Die With a Smile” offers an alternative. —Craig Jenkins
TV
2. Watch Deli Boys
Chopped cheese mandatory.
Hulu, March 6.
A sort of Guy Ritchie and Succession hybrid, Abdullah Saeed’s series focuses on a pair of spoiled Pakistani American brothers who learn, after their emotionally distant father dies, that his convenience store empire was a front for drug dealing and crime. —Roxana Hadadi
Theater
3. See The Jonathan Larson Project
Roll the tapes!
Orpheum Theatre, in previews, opens March 10.
Jonathan Larson died on the morning of the first preview performance of Rent in 1996. Theater historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper and director John Simpkins stage a collection of underheard (or simply unheard) Larson works, sung by musical theater stars including Adam Chanler-Berat, Taylor Iman Jones, Lauren Marcus, Andy Mientus, and Jason Tam. —Jackson McHenry
Art
4. See Julius Eastman & Glenn Ligon
An immersive and haunting pairing.
52 Walker Street; through March 22.
Curator Ebony L. Haynes gives us the late experimental composer Julius Eastman’s spectral 1979 composition Evil Nigger for three self-playing Yamahas and one silent antique Weber along with black-and-white paintings by Glenn Ligon. Eastman’s music is haunted in similar ways as Ligon’s work, which is built-up layers of increasingly unreadable language. —Jerry Saltz
Books
5. Read Stag Dance
Sincere and mind-bending.
Penguin Random House, March 11.
From the writer whose debut, Detransition, Baby, was dubbed one of the 21st century’s essential books by the New York Times comes a slightly slumpy sophomore effort that’s still more exciting than anything else around. Stag Dance combines three of Torrey Peters’s stories, two previously published, with a new novel, a wild trip into a lumberjack camp where trans feelings emerge, then cause destruction. —Emily Gould
Classical
6. Hear The Vienna Philharmonic
From the city of music itself.
Carnegie Hall, February 28 through March 2.
Riccardo Muti conducts masterpieces including two Schubert symphonies: the tragic Fourth and the great C-major. —Justin Davidson
Movies
7. See Moi-même
A father-son effort.
L’Alliance New York, February 27.
Lee Breuer, an avant-garde theater icon, was living in Paris in the turbulent late ’60s when he started a project about an American teenager trying to make a film. The work was abandoned and taken up decades later by Breuer’s son, Mojo Lorwin, who will be present. —Alison Willmore
TV
8. Watch The 97th Academy Awards
The pinnacle of awards season!
ABC and Hulu, March 2.
The long road to the Oscars ends here. Will the controversial most-nominated movie, Emilia Pérez, win any little gold men? Could there be a surprise upset in the Best Picture category? Will host Conan O’Brien bring back Pimpbot 5000 and the Masturbating Bear during one of his bits? —Jen Chaney
Podcasts
9. Listen to Scratch & Win
A history of feeling lucky.
WGBH.
Ian Coss, who made the excellent audio doc The Big Dig, returns with a project that opens in 1970s Boston and excavates the beginnings of a fabulously lucrative Massachusetts lottery evolution: the scratch-off ticket. —Nicholas Quah
Music
10. Listen to Nothing
You’ll want to move to this.
Matador Records, February 28.
The third album from Darkside, electronic-music whiz Nicolás Jaar and jazz and indie-rock luminary Dave Harrington, is the first to feature drummer Tlacael Esparza as full-time member. The new stuff’s groove-forward, compared to the more ambient Psychic and Spiral, dabbling in everything from free jazz to echo-drenched soul. —C.J.
TV
11. Watch Berlin ER
So you’re hooked on The Pitt …
Apple TV+, February 26.
… Which you should be. But you’re also impatiently waiting each week for a new episode that will help fulfill your desire for a medical drama about competent people doing their best. Berlin ER can also do that! It’s got a gritty look, a fast-moving energy, and a dark sense of humor. —Kathryn VanArendonk
Opera
12. See Moby-Dick
“There she blows!”
Metropolitan Opera, March 3.
Jake Heggie’s 2010 operatic version of Melville’s white whale novel is an almost entirely tenor-and-baritone affair, but at least Karen Kamensek is on the podium to keep the boys in line. The production, by Leonard Foglia, has drifted far and wide before mooring at the Met in a version that promises to be “enlarged and refined.” —J.D.
Theater
13. See Deep Blue Sound
A whale of a time.
Shiva Theater, February 25.
The Public has started hosting longer engagements of works by up-and-coming playwrights from Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks series, like last year’s stunner, Grief Hotel. This time around: Abe Koogler’s play about a community in the Pacific Northwest that has lost its orca pod, featuring the great Maryann Plunkett. —J.M.
TV
14. Watch Dark Winds Season Three
Zahn McClarnon Emmy, when?
AMC, March 9.
Graham Roland’s 1970s-set series has given us two seasons of supernatural-tinged crime fighting and a depiction of Navajo life. In the new one, two boys have gone missing, and it’s up to Zahn McClarnon’s Joe Leaphorn, Kiowa Gordon’s Jim Chee, and the rest of the Navajo Tribal Police to find them. Bruce Greenwood, Jenna Elfman, and Raoul Max Trujillo join the cast. —R.H.
Movies
15. See Wendy and Lucy
Alaskan road trip.
Paris Theater, March 7.
Kelly Reichardt’s third film stars Michelle Williams and the filmmaker’s dog in a tale about a woman traveling with her pet in search of work. It’s a quiet masterpiece of independent cinema to which you should definitely bring tissues. —A.W.
The 60-Second Book Excerpt
Liquid: A Love Story
In truth my dating experience was limited.
As a child I didn’t go running around the playground referring to my “boyfriends” — my mother would’ve slapped me, and she didn’t believe in corporal punishment.
I then spent my teens and early twenties in hijab, as a fuck-you-too to post-9/11 America. Between the Patriot Act and the War on Terror, between tapping Muslim family phones and spying on local mosques, the message was clear: American Muslims were Enemy Number One. My response was to mark myself with a bullseye. Never one to half-ass a project, I prayed at least once, if not actually five, times a day and fasted for enough of Ramadan that I figured God could round up. If I could’ve been one of those brown girls who sands her whiskered baba down to a prom-date-on-the-lawn-photographing American dad, I’ll never know.
Music
16. Hear The London Symphony Orchestra
With its new conductor.
Carnegie Hall, March 5 and 6.
Antonio Pappano recently stepped up to lead one of London’s major orchestras, and he celebrates by bringing it to Carnegie Hall for the first time in 20 years. Two consecutive programs cover varied terrain: a symphony by the English composer William Walton, one each by Mahler and George Walker, plus Bernstein’s Serenade and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. —J.D.
Art
17. See David Risley
For your voyeuristic joys.
A Hug From the Art World, 515 West 19th Street; through March 8.
David Risley makes easygoing, dexterous watercolors of windows with grids of shades, children’s stickers of flowers, lace curtains, or plants. We voyeurs see into a painting, into other people’s private lives, and a way of presenting one’s home to the world. Everything Risley does is more complicated and revelatory than it looks. —J.S.
TV
18. Watch The Righteous Gemstones Season Four
The religious satire begins its end.
HBO, March 9.
Danny McBride’s series wraps with this fourth season, centering on the titular televangelists’ absurdism. After motorcycle ninjas, monster trucks, professional wrestling personalities, and packs of wolves eating their enemies, what’s next? Maybe success for the church with the Gemstone children leading it? The stacked ensemble adds Megan Mullally and Seann William Scott. —R.H.
Theater
19. See All Nighter
The stress lives of college girls.
MCC Theater, previews February 25.
In Natalie Margolin’s play, a clique of roommates try to cram through their final assignments and turn on one another in the process — with a trendy cast of actresses on the rise that includes Kristine Froseth, Kathryn Gallagher, Julia Lester, Havana Rose Liu, and Alyah Chanelle Scott. —J.M.
Music
20. Listen to Foxes in the Snow
Get contemplative.
Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers, March 7.
Following a divorce from collaborator and spouse Amanda Shires and a tour with his band the 400 Unit, Jason Isbell releases his first solo album in a decade. The songs were recorded in the fall and capture the troubadour in reflective quietude, armed with his high-lonesome warble and a delicately picked 1940 Martin acoustic. —C.J.
TV
21. Watch Running Point
Ball out.
Netflix, February 27.
Kate Hudson plays a sports exec and franchise heir trying to steady a glitzy pro-basketball team in this thinly veiled hagiography of Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss. Max Greenfield, Justin Theroux, and Chet Hanks also star. —N.Q.
Music
22. Go to Hello, America: Transatlantic
From all over the continent.
Zankel Hall, March 6.
As part of Nuestros Sonidos, Carnegie Hall’s citywide festival of Latin music, the American Composers Orchestra teams up with jazz harpist Edmar Castañeda and electronics artist Clarice Assad for new music. —J.D.
Movies
23. See CHAOS: The Manson Murders
Helter-skelter.
MoMA, March 6.
You think you’re totally done with true crime and then you see that the latest doc on Charles Manson is directed by Errol Morris and suddenly it seems there’s life in the ghoulish old genre yet. CHAOS dives deep into the conspiracies surrounding the Tate-LaBianca murders. —A.W.
Music
24. Hear Angel Blue and Lang Lang
Voice and keys.
Carnegie Hall, March 8.
Soprano Angel Blue takes a break from Aida at the Met for a recital that jumps back and forth from America (Gershwin and Arlen) to Europe (Strauss and Rachmaninoff), joined by pianist Lang. —J.D.
TV
25. Watch Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney
Praise Saymo!
Netflix, March 12.
One of the best things on television in 2024 was John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., the live nightly talk show Mulaney hosted for six glorious nights on Netflix. Now, he brings the format back as a weekly 12-episode series with the same things we fell in love with: Richard Kind as Mulaney’s sidekick; Saymo, the beverage-serving robot; and more live-TV bedlam. —J.C.