Events in the Neighborhood, January 21–27

     Join the Center for Adults Living Well to celebrate victory of the human spirit through speeches, music, discussion, writing, and painting.

     The group will honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at this special event. Refreshments chosen for the day will be served.

     Free. Monday afternoon starting at 1 at the YM & YWHA of Inwood and Washington Heights, in Fort George on Nagle Avenue.

      If you like outdoor geometry, get on the street for sunrise and sunset when the shadows line up with the streets.

      The “Manhattanhenge” effect works Uptown on days different from the rest of the island’s.

      To see the sun line up with the streets in Hudson Heights (on 181st Street in the photo), where the street grid is aligned differently from most of the borough, get out on April 18; it’s also on August 26 in Hudson Heights Henge (Fort George Henge is on the same dates as Manhattan, and Inwood Henge is on January 23 — the grid there is so katy-wompus that the sun aligns when it is due “south”). In the spring, the date for Hudson Heights is April 18.

     The effect works below 174th and above 174th if you go east of Broadway (for sunrise: sunset views may be blocked by buildings to the west). So if you want to see Manhattanhenge, as it’s dubbed, hope for clear skies on May 30 and June 12.

     Wednesday at dawn and dusk in Inwood.

     You can look for the dates in all the city’s neighborhoods on this map from Carto.

     Los mejores comediantes en NYC haciendo stand-up en español.

     Risas con J es el único show de comedia en español en toda la ciudad.

     Con Brian Gossi y Carmen Lynch.

     Donación sugerida: $5. Jueves 7:30 a 9 p.m., Librería Comunitaria, Amsterdam Ave. @ Calle 165.

     Are you getting enough exercise? You don’t have to be an amateur athlete to want to stay in shape. Here’s a one-day class to show adults, and seniors in particular, how to keep active.

     Lessons will show you how to start your day with an early morning stretch. Then slowly work each body part with low impact step aerobics. End you day with a circuit challenge and cool down with soothing stretch and meditation.

     Appropriate for all fitness levels, with modifications provided upon request. Seniors will learn how low-impact exercises, strength training, and aerobics all benefit their health.

     Free. Friday from 11 to 2 at the Recreation Center in Highbridge Park in Lower WaHi on Amsterdam Avenue at 173rd Street.

     If you’re into track & field — and we know you’re out there — you won’t want to miss NCAA athletes competing in the Columbia Challenge.

     Friday and Saturday at the Armory in Lower WaHi on Fort Washington Avenue at 168th Street.

     Take in a short concert by musicians from the Manhattan School of Music—if you’re old enough!

     Music fans 60 years old and up are welcome to join the  Center for Adults Living Well at the monthly concerts. January’s performance features jazz and Latin jazz.

     Free. Sunday afternoon at 1:15 at the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood, in Fort George on Nagle Avenue between Broadway and Ellwood Street. Also on February 24: Mixed Genres, and March 31: Mixed Genres.

     With winter setting in, it’s hard to leave home for the evening when darkness falls at 4.

     The UP Theater Company wants to ease yourself out on a cold night for some hot plays. They selected four and have performed them each weekend this month. Now it’s time for the final production.

     The shows are worth your watching: one of last year’s winter plays qualified for the New York Fringe Festival in October.

     Earlier this month: Princess Clara of Loisada, by Mattew Barbot, The Ineterminable Life of Perennial Peones, by Margaret Boschini, and Does Your Dick Work? by Susan Middaugh.

     This week: Arab Spring, by Robert Kornhiser. A rebellious grad student is on the front lines of the upheavals in Egypt, but her concerned family may pose for her an even larger threat.

     Free. Sunday night at 7 at Holy Trinity Church in Inwood at 20 Cumming Street, near Dyckman Street.

     The High Bridge—New York City’s oldest standing bridge—is a landmark that connects walkers and cyclists from Manhattan and the Bronx.
     The High Bridge is a path from the neighborhoods of Washington Heights to Highbridge in the Bronx, and is accessible from both boroughs.
     Free. Daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Enter from Highbridge Park, in Lower WaHi on Amsterdam Avenue in the 170s.

     Famous and up-and-coming artists perform at Eliot’s weekly sessions and her free concerts are legendary among jazz aficionados.

     Free. Sunday afternoons at 4 at 555 Edgecombe Avenue, Apt. 3F, in Lower WaHi.

     Clean out your closets and recycle at the same time.
     Bring clean and dry textiles like clothing, paired shoes, towels, sheets, scarves, hats, bags and belts for reuse or recycling. Sponsored by Grow NYC.
     Free. Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Inwood Greenmarket (in Inwood Hill Park) on Isham Street between Seaman Avenue and Cooper Street.

     A New York farmers’ market is open Thursdays on 175th Street between Wadsworth Avenue and  Broadway.

    The Inwood greenmarket is a year-round neighborhood favorite.
    People of all ages, backgrounds, and tastes gather each Saturday to meet and greet their friends and neighbors and do their weekly shopping. Even on the coldest, darkest winter Saturdays, loyal Inwood shoppers come out because they know they can’t get products like this anywhere else.
     A core group of 15 farmers attends every week of the year, and during the peak of the season, five more join to round out the offerings with the summer’s bounty.
     Saturdays from 8 to 3 on Isham Street between Seaman Avenue and Cooper Street.

     From late spring through the late autumn, a greenmarket in Lower WaHi offers Mexican herbs, peppers, and greens, honey, cheese, juice pressed from ripe orchard fruit, produce grown in the rich soil of Orange County’s “Black Dirt” region, pastries and fresh bread. You can also take your food scraps for composting and used textiles for recycling.

     You can also take your food scraps for composting and used textiles for recycling.

     Saturdays in the spring and summer on Fort Washington Avenue at 168th Street. On hiatus until spring.

      The No Name theater troupe pops up around the neighborhood.

      This time it’s a mid-winter performance.

      Tuesday night, January 29, at 7 at the Word Up Community Bookshop in Lower WaHi on Amsterdam Avenue at 165th Street.

     Skyline League action resumes when the Macs host Mount Saint Mary College.

     Tuesday night, January 29, at 8 in the Max Stern Athletic Center on the campus in Fort George.

     The Washington Heights Music Fest in collaboration with W.H.A.M. hosts a monthly open mic for artists, poets, singers, writers and performers. Refreshments will be provided.

     All ages are welcome, so the acts should be appropriate for everyone. Hosted by Jason Rosario.

     $5. Friday night, February 1, from 6 to 9 at the Word Up Community Book Shop in Lower WaHi on Amsterdam Avenue at 165th Street. On the first Friday of the month.

     Stop by Manhattan’s oldest house for the opening of an exhibition focusing on the practice of infusing pigment into a medium intended to enhance or decorate structural surfaces.

      Roots of such practices are found throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and with specific references found at the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Light refreshments will be served.

     $15; members and students, $10. Friday night, February 1, from 7 to 9 and the mansion in Lower WaHi on Jumel Terrace.

     Nick Kozak’s installation Opposition Position challenges viewers to examine the education system and to stage an educational interaction in this classroom in the park in a workshop led by local students. 

     The workshops will cover a variety of topics related to personal narratives and educational systems. For more information about this month’s session, click here.

     Free. Saturday, February 2, from 11 to 2 in Inwood Hill Park on Pat’s Lawn, near 218th Street and Indian Road. Also on March 2 (rain date on the second Saturday of the month).

     Sonnambula teams up with acclaimed author and photographer Teju Cole in a dynamic performance of music, spoken word, and photo installation that celebrates the work of Leonora Duarte, the only known woman composer of viol music in the 17th century.

     $55; children $1. Saturday night, February 2, at 7 in the Fuentidueña Chapel of the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     The first concert of the Fourth Season of The Crypt Sessions is Oliver Messiaen’s towering, otherworldly Quartet for the End of Time, performed by a the prominent ensemble of Stefan Jackiw (violin), Jay Campbell (cello), Orion Weiss (piano) and Yoonah Kim (clarinet).

     Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was composed in a Nazi prison camp, where it had its premiered in the pouring rain by starving inmates playing on broken instruments. To this day, it stands as one of the most utterly profound and transcendent meditations on mortality and eternity – music steeped in mystery, born out of a deep faith unshaken by the horrors surrounding it. It expresses a vision of immorality that lies in songs of the birds, the trills in the trees, shimmering rainbows, and a single cello line reaching toward the divine.

     $80. Tuesday night, February 5, at 8 in the Crypt Chapel of the Church of the Intercession in Lower WaHi on Broadway at 155th Street.

     The College at Old Westbury rolls into WaHi to play the Macs in more Skyline League action.

     Tuesday night, February 5, at 8 in the Max Stern Athletic Center on the campus in Fort George.

     We think of the medieval world as a closed one — the Dark Ages. But many minds were connected more far afield than the eye could see.

     A special presentation looks at the global and local in the middle ages.

     Free with museum admission. Saturday afternoon, February 9, at noon at 2 at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     In recognition of Black History Month, a lecture presented by Morris-Jumel Mansion docent and local historian, Karen Sprowal, will focus on exceptional and prominent African-Americans who lived in and around Washington Heights and the neighborhood surrounding what is now Roger Morris Park.

     $10; members and students, $5. Saturday evening, February 9, at 5 at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Lower WaHi on Jumel Terrace.

     You’ve heard about it but you can’t quite imagine how this architectural confection came to be in WaHi.

     So here’s your chance to explore this stunning 3,400-seat theater, its mezzanine, grand foyer, balcony, exterior and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to go up on stage.
     Reservation is required here.

     The history of United Palace, Manhattan’s fourth-largest theater and now a landmarked building, began in 1930, when it was then one of five Loew’s “Wonder Theatres” across the boroughs and New Jersey. Designed by noted architect Thomas Lamb (Cort Theatre, the former Ziegfeld Theatre) with interiors overseen by decorative specialist Harold Rambusch (Waldorf Astoria, Radio City Music Hall), it was one of the region’s premier vaudeville and movie houses.

     Free. Sunday morning, February 10, at 10 at the theater in Lower WaHi on Broadway at 175th Street. On the second Sunday of the month.

     Each month Uptown writers get together to workshop some prose based on the theme for the gathering.

     Join neighborhood authors who reflect on the theme’s meaning. For February, it’s love, sex, and passion.

     $5. Monday night, February 11, at 8 at Le Cheile in Hudson Heights just off Lafayette Plaza on 181st Street and Pinehurst Avenue.

     Purchase College visits Yeshiva for a night of intra-league hoops.

     Tuesday, February 12, at 8 in the Max Stern Athletic Center on the campus in Fort George.

     The Macs close out the regular season with a home game against Skyline rivals, Farmingdale State College.     

     Saturday night, February 16, at 8:30 in the Max Stern Athletic Center on the campus in Fort George.

     The reading series Bloom presents a variety of authors and genres.

     Bloom’s literary readings and discussions will get you to shake off your assumptions and think hard about everything. The evening includes wine and light fare. Pleasant as a tea party, but with booze and cutting-edge writing. More information at www.bloomreadings.org.

    $7 suggested donation. Sunday evening, February 17, at 5 in The Lounge of Hudson View Gardens, in Hudson Heights on Pinehurst Avenue at 183rd Street. Monthly on the third Sunday, September through May.

     Intersections, Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company’s 20th Anniversary New York season, marks a continuum of two decades of innovative and celebrated virtuosity, accessibility and charisma.

     In addition to twenty years of repertory, Intersections, the premiere, pushes dancers to the extreme, challenging speed and stamina.

     The troupe calls Hudson Heights its home, but the performance is on the Upper East Side.

     $25 and $29 in advance. Friday and Saturday nights, February 22 and 23, at 8 at the 92nd Street Y in Carnegie Hill on Lexington Avenue between 91st and 92nd Streets.

     The strings of the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra perform music inspired by Japan and Japanese-American composers.

     The concert features works by Kenji Bunch: Supermaximum, Toru Takemitsu: Requiem, Karen Tanaka: Dreamscape, and Christopher Theofanidis: A Thousand Cranes.

     After the concert, friends of orchestra enjoy a food and saké tasting courtesy of Tampopo Ramen.

     Saturday afternoon, February 23, at 3 at the Fort Washington Collegiate Church in Hudson Heights on 181st Street at Col. Robt. McGaw Place.

     Drawing on the writings of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sun Ra, Lordship and Bondage: The Birth of the Negro Superman is a staged song cycle with spoken text, synthesizing classical opera, Negro spiritual, Afrofuturism, and doom metal to bring to light the African American experience of enslaved and liberated consciousness.

     The work is composed and performed by M. Lamar and The Living Earth Show, from San Francisco.

     Saturday night, February 23, at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     This captivating male vocal sextet is named in honor of Queen Elizabeth I.

     Based at Windsor Castle, Queen’s Six sing together every day for services and both private and state occasions, frequently before members of the royal family.

     Enjoy the royal treatment yourself as they perform everything from early chant, to vivid Renaissance polyphony, to racy madrigals.

     $55; take the kids for $1. Sunday afternoon, February 24, at 1 and 3 in the Fuentidueña Chapel of The Cloisters in Fort Tron Park.

     Onward & Upward, the annual benefit of UP Theater Company, honors Veronica Liu, the troupe’s UPstanding Person of the Year, in a gala celebration.

     Details to come, but you can save the date: Thursday night, February 28.

     There’s more to the unicorn tapestries than a fantasic creature.

     Find out about the plants and landscapes depicted in these famous scenes during a special tour.

     Free with museum admission. Saturday, March 2, at noon and 2 at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     The sacred and the secular, the pleasure and the sublime.

     These balances are the topic of a special gallery tour, Thinking and Feeling through Medieval Art.

     Free with museum admission. Saturday, March 9, at noon and 2 at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     The Inwood Film Festival showcases the sights, sounds, people, and talents of Inwood.

     Every film screend at the event is made in Upper Manhattan or made by current or past Inwood  filmmakers.

      Awards are given in categories including documentary, short, feature, and student work.

     Want to enter? The deadline is January 15.

     Festival: Thursday through Saturday, March 14 through 16 at the Campbell Sports Center at the Columbia Athletic Complex at 218th and Broadway,

      Hot Chip founder Alexis Taylor presents an intimate electro-acoustic concert featuring special guests including visual artist Nick Relph, Beastie Boys keyboard player Money Mark on the Echolodeon, an invention inspired by the player-piano, Annie Hart, and Jonny Lam.

     Expect modern-day secular "spirituals," playing with your expectations of artificiality and authenticity, responding to The Met Cloisters' space and history.

     $25; children ages 6 to 16, $1 (<—not a typo). Friday night, March 15, in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     Mike and Roma say they don't regret not having children, but when a baby is left on their doorstep they begin to sing a different tune. The only question now is what song will they sing?

     The drama unfolds in St. Peter’s Foot, by Anna Maria Cascio, in this production by the UP Theater Company.

     Wednesday, March 20, through April 6, with details to follow.

     The strings of Washington Heights Camber Orchestra perform music by Michael Torke, Anna Clyne, as well as Benjamin Britten’s famous Simple Symphony and the beautifully rich Symphonic Serenade by Erich Korngold.

     Saturday afternoon, March 23, at 3 at the Fort Washington Collegiate Church in Hudson Heights on 181st Street at Col. Robt. McGaw Place.

     Architecture and the artifacts around them are the subject of this special tour of the Cloisters.

     Collecting Pieces of the Past: The Acquisition and Display of Architectural Fragments is for amateurs and specialists alike.

     Free with museum admission. Sunday, April 7, at noon and 2 at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     The Lions host the Columbia Open for teams around the region, though you’ll have to jump on the GWB or PATH to get there.

     Saturday morning, April 13, at 8 at the Montclair, N.J., Country Club.

     ModernMedieval Trio of Voices was created by Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, a former member of the vocal quartet Anonymous 4, with Martha Cluver and Eliza Bagg (from the celebrated ensemble Roomful of Teeth) rounding out the trio.

     Following their triumphant debut at The Met in 2016, they return with a fresh repertoire of medieval and contemporary works in a program designed specifically for The Fuentidueña Chapel.

     $55; children, $1. Saturday afternoon, April 13, at 1 and 3 at The Cloisters Museum in Fort Tryon Park.

     The concert by Christian Nodal, the Mexican mariachi singer, has been reschedule from its original date last September.

     Finally, you can hear “Adiós, Amor” in person.

     $100 to $400. Saturday night, April 27, at 7 at the United Palace Theatre in Lower WaHi on Broadway at 175th Street.

     See New York City like never before in the Shorewalker’s epic urban hike, The Great Saunter, covering 32 miles of beautiful waterfront and more than 20 parks along Manhattan’s incredible shorelines.

     Enjoy fabulous skyline views and natural landscapes rarely appreciated from within the city, all the while raising awareness to protect our parks, maintain the Westside promenades, restore the Eastside Greenway, redevelop the Harlem River, and connect the Greenway into a continuous path around the world’s most fascinating island.

     Sign up here to join the more than 1,500 hikers for a journey you will always remember.

     Saturday morning, May 4, at 7:30; meet at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan and take your lunch.

     Only in New York ...
     One day late in most springs, The Great and Glorious Grand Army of The Bronx comes together to claim the neighborhood of Marble Hill which, the group suggests, belongs to the only borough on the mainland on the basis that it was annexed by Bronx Borough President James Lyons in the 1930s.
     Care to fight back? Everyone is welcome, even hecklers.
     Free. A Saturday morning in early May, beginning with pre-invasion cocktails; the battle of Marble Hill commences soon thereafter.

     In collaboration with Suite Française and Dr. Philip Lasser, the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra presents a special salon: a lecture-concert on the profound and lasting influence of one of the greatest musical pedagogues of the 20th century, Nadia Boulanger.

     The strings of orchestra will journey inside works by Bach, Ravel, David Diamond, Philip Lasser, and more.

     Saturday afternoon, May 18, at 3 at the Fort Washington Collegiate Church in Hudson Heights on 181st Streeet at Col. Robt. McGaw Place.

     The swimmers of New York Open Water get wet in the rivers around the island. Care to take a dip?

     This summer, the group offers four chances to swim under the 20 bridges of Manhattan. You’ll get to circumnavigate the island on a 28.5-mile swim.

     Each event will have up to 15 swimmers and is scheduled on a Saturday with Sunday reserved as a rain date. Swimmers and their support teams will need to make themselves available on both days.

     Sign up here.

     Saturday, June 1, at a time determined later, starting, it appears, in Fort Washington Park under the GWB. Also on July 13, August 17 and 31.

     Rarely heard live, Praetorius's dances from Terpsichore, named for the Greek muse of the dance, display uncommon composition.

      In this landmark program, Sonnambula brings together the nation’s leading interpreters of Renaissance repertoire for an evening of unforgettable phantasmagoric splendor.

     Saturday, June 1, at 3 in the Fuentidueña Chapel of The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park.

     The annual Drums Along the Hudson began in 2002 as a traditional Pow Wow to celebrate Native American heritage and culture, and also to commemorate the Lenape people who first inhabited Inwood Hill Park, or Shorakapok (“edge of the water”).

     The event features dancers and drummers from around the world, combining Native American heritage, culture and art with the diversity of New York City. Activities include a Tree of Peace planting, international cuisine, Native American storytelling, a Pow Wow and crafts.
     The event has attracted a growing audience, numbering from 400 in the first year to over 8,000 in recent years.
     Free. A Sunday in early June in Inwood Hill Park at Indian Road and 218th Street.

     It’s not a dip for beginners.

     New York Open Water hosts a 120-mile swim—over a week—from the peaceful Catskills to the dramatic Narrows at the throat of the New York Harbor.

     For one week, each day’s marathon swim begins with the ebb tide at one bridge and ends at the next, covering distances ranging from 13.2 miles to 19.8 miles. Swimmers can participate as solos or relays  in one to all of the seven stages.

     The swim strings together the Rip Van Winkle, Kingston-Rhinecliff, Mid-Hudson, Newburgh-Beacon, Bear Mountain, Tappan Zee, George Washington, and Verrazano Narrows Bridges.

     Up for it? Sign up here.

     Saturday, June 8, through Sunday, June 15, on the Hudson River.

     The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra’s season concludes with Robert Schumann’s 2nd Symphony, Angélica Negron’s “What Keeps Me Awake,” and a new violin concerto by Chris Whittaker.

     Followed by a post-concert reception for friends of the orchestra.

     Saturday afternoon, June 15, at 3 at the Fort Washington Collegiate Church in Hudson Heights on 181st Street at Col. Robt. McGaw Place.

     Come swim the mighty Hudson! 

     The Spuyten Duyvil 10K is an event hosted by New York Open Water. It starts at Yonkers and finishes in Inwood, with the current assisting the intrepid souls  through tumultuous and storied Spuyten Duyvil, where the Harlem River meets the Hudson.

     The route, which actually covers 6.5 miles despite the name, offers scenic views of Yonkers, Riverdale, Spuyten Duyval Bridge, and the George Washington Bridge.

     Sign up here. If you’re a land lubber, you can watch the finish in Uptown.

     A Sunday in September, with the course’s end at La Marina in Inwood where Dyckman Street meets the Hudson.