Neil deGrasse Tyson
Feb. 14, 7:30 pm
Winspear Opera House
Tyson has yet to land on a cosmic turn of phrase as simple and elegant as Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot,” but he’s capably taken up the mantle as popular science’s great communicator. In his lectures, he’s the cool, geeky uncle who buys you your first telescope to show just how small and fragile our planet is.
Angel Olsen
Feb. 8, 7 pm
Trees
Olsen, unloading an electrified sound to match her powerhouse voice on the great 2016 album My Woman, has gone from inspired goth-country stylist to one of the best songwriters working today.
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Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings
Feb. 19–Apr. 23
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The New York painter’s dark 1980s series portrays industrial ruins and environmental catastrophe, showing how humanity’s greatest monuments are only one misfortune away from disintegration.
Snap Judgment Live!
Feb. 24, 8 pm
Majestic Theatre
Weekend NPR listeners adjusting to life in a post-Prairie Home world would be well advised to join the Glynn Washington fan club—his storytelling series makes Garrison Keillor seem even more sleepy and outdated.
Comedy Get Down
Feb. 10, 6:30 pm
American Airlines Center
Stand-up is a mostly solitary act, so the supergroup analogy we want to make won’t hold up to scrutiny, but Cedric The Entertainer, George Lopez, Charlie Murphy, Eddie Griffin and D.L. Hughley sure are funny, right?
Avedon in Texas
Feb. 25–Jul. 2
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Decades after the Amon Carter commissioned the esteemed Richard Avedon to capture the American West, his seminal photographs—brilliant portraits of the working class, as opposed to romanticized images of cowboys and sweeping plains—are back on display at the museum.
Twenty One Pilots
Feb. 22, 5:30 pm
American Airlines Center
If you want to know what the kids are listening to these days, it’s Twenty One Pilots, a Macklemore-ish duo that’s generated as many pop hits as it has obnoxious columns about generational listening habits.
Rick Astley
Feb. 1, 7 p.m.
House of Blues
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Richard Serra: Prints
Through Apr. 23
Nasher Sculpture Center
The black and white graphic prints in this exhibition hint at the scale and form of the artist’s famous large steel sculptures, including work in the Nasher’s own garden.
Dr. Bobaganush
Through Feb. 18
Ochre House Theater
This original production is a musical satire about facism (it’s set during the rise of the Nazis), magic (the titular doctor’s traveling show features a “wonderful world of the bizarre and macabre”) and so much more.
Sting
Feb. 20, 6:30 pm
Verizon Theatre
Sting’s new record is his first rock album in more than a decade, which should come as a relief to fans who just want to hear the guitar on “Roxanne” without symphonic accompaniment.
Terry Allen
Feb. 4, 7 pm
Kessler Theater
The greatest musical son of Lubbock not named Buddy Holly, Allen has roamed far and wide while remaining a Texas artist, shirking country music conventions for his own outlaw style.
Craig Ferguson
Feb. 16, 8 pm
Winspear Opera House
The Scottish comedian took a graceful bow from The Late Late Show in 2014, but the curtains are fortunately still up on his hilarious and insightful stand-up act.
Galileo
Feb. 8–Mar. 5
Undermain Theatre
Bertolt Brecht’s classic play about the 17th century astronomer and the Catholic Church’s crusade against scientific fact feels especially resonant in a world of post-truth politics.
TITAS: Doug Varone and Dancers
Feb. 18, 8 pm
Winspear Opera House
Varone’s choreography has appeared in opera, theater, and television, evidence that movement is truly the universal art, and that Varone is one of its foremost practitioners.
A Carlin Home Companion
Feb. 24 & 25
Eisemann Center
Ever wondered what seven words you couldn’t say in George Carlin’s household? The late comedian’s daughter, Kelly, gives the dirt on a life with one of America’s greatest humorists.
Paper Flowers
Feb. 17–Mar. 11
Trinity River Arts Center
A domestic act of charity results in occupation and simmering class warfare in this play from Latin America, which follows a bourgeois divorcee accepting—”welcoming” is too generous—a working class drifter into her home.
Dallas Symphony: Pines of Rome
Feb. 10–12
Meyerson Symphony Center
A performance of Respighi’s rousing tone poem—known in some quarters as the humpback whale music in Fantasia 2000—is featured on a program that includes the great Emanuel Ax on piano.
Invented Worlds of Valton Tyler
Feb. 11–Apr. 30
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
A lifelong Texan who lives in Garland, Tyler might as well be from outer space: the surreal scenes in these paintings come from nowhere but the artist’s mind.
Valerie June
Feb. 27, 7 pm
Granada Theater
A bluesy performer who was once tapped to write a song for the trip hop group Massive Attack, June’s sound reflects a voracious musical appetite.
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Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Feb. 7–12
Winspear Opera House
Two new stars put a fresh face on the modern classic musical about a lovesick East German turned world-conquering genderqueer rock star.
You Blew It!
Feb. 6, 7 pm
Club Dada
The Florida band is making thousands of punk rock fans regret ever using the word “emo” as a pejorative, welding these not dissimilar genres together into a powerful guitar-driven punch.
Alcest
Feb. 11, 7 pm
Curtain Club
The French band makes black metal even darker, droning out dreamgaze lullabies that, considering the aforementioned darkness, could be called nightmare-gaze.
Ryan Bingham
Feb. 3 & 4
Billy Bob’s
Ryan Bingham sounded some more cheerful notes on 2015’s Fear and Saturday Night, but we still favor the country singer-songwriter at his somber, broken-hearted best.
Where Earth Meets Sky
Feb. 10, 7 pm
Latino Cultural Center
Part of Cara Mia Theatre’s new play development reading series, this far-out narrative is set 1,200 years after the apparent end of the world. When spacefaring survivors return home, they find that Earth—and humanity—is not quite done with.
