Wednesday @ Symphony Hall

To those of you who didn’t know that comic legend Steve Martin is also an accomplished banjo player (like, really accomplished, some people have too much talent for their own good): where have y’all been? Martin is an avid bluegrass aficionado, and has been more focused on his music career than his cinematic one lately. He comes through town to perform with the Steep Canyon Rangers and our own Boston Pops in “An Evening Of Bluegrass And Comedy” for not one but two shows that showcase all of Martin’s considerable talents. Read more

Wednesday @ Paradise Rock Club

Rappers love weed. They love it. Smoking it, rapping about it, smoking more of it, rapping about it while smoking it. But few — with the exception, perhaps, of Snoop Dogg — so much as Curren$y. The N’awlins rapper proved as much on his critically acclaimed last album Weekend at Burnie’s on which he shouted out his drug of choice often . . . and well. A confident emcee with swagger that comes naturally, Curren$y is joined tonight by a crew that includes Styles P, the Jets, Smoke DZA, Fiend 4 Da Money, Corner Boy P, Trademark, and Young Roddy. Read more

Wednesday @ Middlesex Lounge

Come on down and check out the inaugural night of SM, a new mid-week dance night at Middlesex that seeks to incorporate not one but all “fringe and non-mainstream cultures.” And yes, that might even include #seapunk. Opening night features BMP-nominee Earthquake Party! and Thunders, and DJ sets by Branden Paillant and EL Poser . Adam Anslan (The IOA, ACKA Fun Factory) hosts the new dance night that’s all about diversity and exploration at Middlesex. Read more

Thursday @ Savin Bar & Kitchen

Do you love cooking, but just wish a crazed chef with a foul temper and flair for the dramatic would hover over your shoulder and scream while you saute? Boy, are you in luck, because Gordon Ramsay wants you. If you want him, show up with your resume (and pictures/video of you workin' it in the kitch if you'd like) to Savin Bar & Kitchen. You've got to be at least 21, which makes sense, since you'll probably need a few shots when Ramsay's done with you. Read more

Thursday @ Johnny D's

Boston-by-way-of-Idaho folk princess Eilen Jewell has come a long way from her unassuming beginning busking on the streets of Santa Fe. Jewell has set some high bars for herself, consistently wowing critics with her deft melding of rock, folk, blues, and gospel stylings . . . and then limberly hopping over those bars. Catch Jewell, whose music has been featured on hit shows including the suitably atmospheric True Blood, tonight when she plays a club where she enjoyed some of her earliest success, Johnny D’s. Read more

Thursday @ Ryles

Some of the most adept, insightful, and swinging Brazilian jazz-and-pop practitioners in town get together to pay tribute to one of the kings of the genre in the Sergio Mendes Project: To Sergio With Love. That would include singers Evelyn Rosenthal and Linda Roberts, pianist Molly Flannery, guitarist Steve Kirby, flutist Hiro Honshuku, bassist Jason Davis, drummer Steve Rose, and percussionist Marcus Santos. Read more

Friday @ USS Salem

Whenever we watch Ghost Hunters or Paranormal State, or any of the other spooky-as-shit “real life” ghost shows on TV, there’s a part of us that thinks that participating in a ghost hunt would be freaking awesome . . . and then another part that worries we might crap our pants if we ever actually saw a ghost. Today, we have a chance to find out. Members of the Paranormal Research Association of Boston will take willing participants on a live, real-life investigation of the reputably haunted ship USS Salem. They’ll be using — and allowing participants to try out — their “professional paranormal research equipment” as they delve into the spirit world. We’re sort of crapping our pants already. Read more

Friday @ Bank of America Pavilion

It takes a lot of gravitas and style to headline a venue as expansive as the Pavilion for a big summer show . . . especially for a band that, while indisputably awesome, is perhaps not quite as much a household name as other big groups that have graced the stage. Luckily, we’re more than sure that flamboyant gypsy punks Gogol Bordello are more than qualified. Touring off 2010’s Trans-Continental Hustle, the eight-piece outfit come packing zany stage antics aplenty, on a stop amid a busy festival circuit, at the Bank of America Pavilion. Read more

Friday @ Paradise Rock Club

The last time Jonathan Coulton swung through town, we waited too long to get tickets. The show sold out, but we weren’t worried, because someone always needs to scalp an extra the night of the show, right? People get sick, they can’t make it — we figured we’d be able to pick up a spare. Wrong. We waited for hours outside the ’Dise, but not a single person had a ticket to sell. Apparently, no one in Boston misses a JoCo concert for any reason whatsoever. So get your tickets early or you’ll be singing along to “Skullcrusher Mountain” all alone in your bedroom. Again. Read more

Saturday @ Steven Zevitas Gallery

In an age where crazies keep calling for the end of days, perhaps Alex Lukas‘s work is quite timely. Lukas makes large-scale, compellingly dystopic pieces, created from a mixture of water and media on appropriated book pages and heavy paper. His pieces show cities in ruin, half submerged in flood or reduced to various states of rubble. And yet, the works in the young Cambridge-born artist’s exhibit Alex Lukas: Recent Works are strangely beautiful. Read more

Saturday @ Charles River Esplanade

Rain or shine, the 33rd Annual Cambridge River Festival is on. The multi-cultural arts festival along the banks of the Charles is one of the city’s first big outdoor fests of summer, heralding the season with vibrant live music, dance, and theater performances, parades, arts & crafts, demos, food, and more — free — fun. This year’s entertainers include BMP nom Kingsley Flood, José Mateo Ballet Theatre, the A.R.T., and many more. Let’s hope for sun! Read more

Saturday @ Jordan Hall

New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall is one of the world’s great concert halls. It’s a warm wood-and-gilt womb whose perfect acoustics are matched by the visual richness of the elaborately carved pipe organ that serves as a backdrop to the stage. You want to hear that hall filled with a glorious wall of sound, which is what you’ll get when Chorus Pro Musica and the Boston Philharmonic perform Joseph Haydn’s The Creation. But this concert will be enhanced by unique visuals from 22-year-old British video artist Joss Sessions, who will be projecting light and images onto the hall’s stately architecture. Think like a Pink Floyd laser show, but even classier. Read more

Saturday @ Copley Square

Cultural Survival is a Cambridge-based organization that agitates for the rights of indigenous societies the world over, opposing government exploitation and land grabs from Cambodia to Kenya. Which is awesome. But for us ordinary Americans, we like to change the world through buying things, which is where the Cultural Survival Bazaar, a traveling craft fair run by CS, comes in. The Bazaar touches down at Copley Square this weekend, giving you the chance to get really awesome stuff directly from the indigenous artists who make it — satisfying your acquisitive capitalistic urges while doing good. Read more

Saturday @ Harvard Art Museums

Feininger is best known as a cubist and German Expressionist painter, or a major early-20th-century newspaper cartoonist. This show delves into the artists’ photography archive, now owned by Harvard, to consider his avant-garde experiments with the camera. The rhythmic modern design of a Bauhaus building’s balconies, a double-exposed street scene, a New York rooftop vista, and a street reflected in a store window show his development between the Bauhaus — the famed German art and design school where he took up photography in 1928 — and New York, where he settled permanently in 1937. Read more

Saturday @ Bank of America Pavilion

If there’s a better song to soundtrack the feel-good days of summer than Steve Winwood’s ’80s smash hit “Higher Love,” we’d really like to hear it. We can’t spin that track without wanting to throw on a pair of cut-off jean shorts and go for a drive with the top down in an old hot-rod with some bodacious babe by our side and the sun on our face. Some things never get old. Winwood plays the Pavilion tonight for a start-of-summer show with comparably sunny beat makers Michael Franti & Spearhead. Read more

Sunday @ Boston Center for Adult Education

Remember the amateurish still-life paintings of bowls of oranges and bananas we all used to make in art class? Well, “Create: Six Artists, Six Chefs, One Canvas,” an event fusing food and art this afternoon at the BCAE, is absolutely nothing like that. Instead, it’s a unique discipline-straddling concept presented by Gilt City Boston that pairs local artists like !ND!V!DUALS, Josh Falk, and Emily Lombardo with chefs including Jason Cheek of KO Prime, Suzi Maitland of Trina’s Starlite Lounge, and Mark Sheehan of Brass Tacks Boston. The chefs are then challenged to create a signature dish, on the spot, inspired by their one of their artist partner’s works. It’s like Top Chef meets the — far less popular — Bravo show Work of Art, but without any commercial breaks or annoying guest judges. The evening will also include live art creation, an art auction, and more. Partial proceeds benefit Lovin’ Spoonfuls. Read more

Sunday @ Paradise Rock Club

The last time we saw Dengue Fever was at the MFA, where this California psychedelic rock band who play Cambodian pop music were eventually joined onstage by a large contingent of Cambodian ex-pats from Lowell, to whom singer Chhom Nimol gladly passed the mic. It was one of the most exhilarating concerts we’ve attended. They celebrate the release of their new Cannibal Courtship (Concord) with unlikely Syrian superstar vocalist Omar Souleyman. Read more

Sunday @ Boston Children's Museum

"Oddanimalogist Jef Czekajkids" (an alterego created for this exhibit) worked with local kids to invent weird creatures a/k/a/ Oddanimal, then interpreted them as the art on display in this unique exhibit at the Boston Children's Museum (adults will like it too) that includes fake books, fake records, fake radio programs, and more... all based upon the artist's invented character. Should be odd, all right. Opening party Friday, March 16 at 5:30 pm Read more

Monday @ Brighton Music Hall

The influential underground kiwi punks known as the Clean formed in 1978, later created the excellent Flying Nun label, made a name for their signature Dunedin Sound, and then . . . basically changed indie rock forever. Tonight, their current US tour — a rarity for the band — stops in Boston, for what’s sure to be the sweetest lo-fi psych-pop dance party in town. They’ll likely play from their most recent effort, 2009’s Mister Pop, plus classics from their discography with Rough Trade, Matador, Merge, and more. Their tourmates Times New Viking will bring scuzzy high-energy punk to open the night. Read more