Gaga Ball 2021
Saturday: Celebrate the new year with the Flip Phone dance party crew, which is bringing you the music of Lady Gaga to start 2021. Gaga's infectious pop will help glide your New Year's celebration into the weekend. Find an audacious sparkly number or otherwise Gaga-esque outfit to wear for the Zoom party filled with pop-up drag acts and dance music for your living room. Have your Venmo account ready to tip the performers, in addition to the digital cover. (9 p.m. Sat. Pay-what-you-can digital cover via Venmo to @FlipPhone; twitch.tv/FlipPhoneEvents.
Sheila Regan
Charlie Parr + Friends residency
Sundays: Minnesota folk/blues hero Parr's January run at the Turf Club always amounts to some of the warmest gigs of the year, even when he's playing his bone-chilling songs about lost souls or forgotten tragedies. The comfort level should still prevail and be especially welcome this month, even as the shows move to the livestreaming realm due to the pandemic, and to First Avenue due to riot damage at the Turf. Parr and his band and other friends will play five Sundays in a row, with a trove of old tunes to mix things up and new songs to mix in from an upcoming double album for the Smithsonian Folkways label. (8 p.m. Sundays in January. Virtual donations accepted, First Ave's Facebook and YouTube pages.)
Chris Riemenschneider
Happy Birthday, Libby Larsen!
Thursday: Larsen has won a Grammy and a Peabody and received honorary doctorates from two universities. She has composed more than 500 works, including operas, orchestral and choral pieces, songs and even multimedia projects. Since Larsen turned 70 on Dec. 24, the Schubert Club will honor one of Minnesota's finest and most prolific composers with performances of seven Larsen pieces by the likes of the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, the piano duo of Sonja Thompson & Mary Jo Gothmann, organist Philip Brunelle and mezzo soprano Clara Osowski. (Noon Thu., schubert.org and YouTube.)
Jon Bream
