Trying to control spiritus fermenti (read: alcohol) is like trying to tie a hair ribbon. What reminds us of W. C. Fields’s simile from The Temperance Lecture, is MoMA’s mind-boggling Stephen Prina retrospective A Lick and a Promise, with its chaotic magpie mix of film clips, audio clips, cut-outs, live performance etc. mutating endlessly through the galleries. The bacchanale wraps on December 13 with the Push Comes to Love Fest, a full day’s worth of pop-up love songs, musique concrète, cabaret, and more. For us, the draw is Ursula Oppens, 81, with her signature piece Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Shall Never Be Defeated. Commissioned by Young Concert Artists, Rzewski’s prismatic blockbuster received its premiere in 1976 amid Bicentennial festivities at the Kennedy Center. Oppens, to whom the score is dedicated, was at the keyboard. Consisting of a (revolutionary) theme, 36 variations, cadenza, and a recapitulation of the theme, The People United promptly took its place alongside the 30 Goldberg Variations of J. S. Bach and the 33 Diabelli Variations of Beethoven as the third panel of a monumental triptych. (At this historic juncture in Amerika, Rzewski’s political convictions only amplify the encyclopedic sweep of his musical imagination.) MoMA is being cagy (no pun intended, John) about performance times, but we have it from the horse’s mouth that Oppens goes on “around” one P.M., in the Agnes Gund Garden. Music free with museum admission. Others in the Prina All Stars lineup include David Grubbs; Ken Okiishi and Emily Sundblad; Marina Rosenfeld; TILT Brass; and White People Killed Them, the collective handle of Raven Chacon, John Dieterich, and Marshall Trammell. —Matthew Gurewitsch