Super mellow Cat Power/Low-inspired duo Gem Club is at the subterranean Red Onion Books & Records shop this evening. The Somerville band’s new video premiered on NPR (where else?) last week. This is music for tea-sipping/petting a cat/slowly sinking into the bathtub. The band plays with Holy Spirits and Lands and Peoples. 6 p.m. Free.

Electronic music composer Morton Subotnick, known for his 1967 composition “Silver Apples of the Moon,” is leading a whole day of events on the University of Maryland’s campus. (Subotnick is a 2011-12 artist-in-residence at the university.) Tonight, he and VERGE Ensemble director Steve Antosca will participate in a talk about music composition and the birth of the influential Buchla synthesizers, particularly the Buchla 100 series, which Subotnick commissioned in the ’60s. 5:30 p.m. at the Gildenhorn Recital Hall. Free.

Instrumental Balkan-folk duo A Hawk & A Hacksaw headlines Red Palace. The band doesn’t have a new record—-Cervantine, released last spring, is the latest—-but longtime fans probably don’t mind. 8:30 p.m. $12.

FILM

In Percy Adlon’s film, Mahler on the Couch, the composer Gustav Mahler seeks psychological soothing from Sigmund Freud. Shows at the Goethe-Institut at 6:30 p.m. $4-$7.

The Latin American Film Festival continues at AFI. Check out the schedule on the Silver Theatre’s website.

BOOKS & POETRY

Three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky reads at Folger Shakespeare Library tonight, accompanied by Folger director Michael Witmore. Expect a Biblical theme, in keeping with Folger’s King James Version exhibit. 7:30 p.m. $15.

Stephen Greenblatt talks Renaissance and Roman philosophy at Politics & Prose. 7 p.m. Free.