Antecedent.
A three-night series celebrates Julius Hemphill and his contemporaries, plus more recommended live new-music events April 15–22.
Ideally I’d have given you all more heads-up than just a few hours about a program as certifiably rewarding as Black Composers Upsouth, a three-evening festival presented by Continuum Culture and Arts’s Soup & Sound and Greenwich House Music School, starting tonight. Thing is, I only learned about it myself when an April 9 Facebook post by saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Marty Ehrlich popped up on my feed… on Saturday morning.
Thanks, algorithm!
Nevertheless, this clearly is a special occasion, deeply infused with the multifarious spirit of Julius Hemphill. If you need to bone up on this towering figure in composition, improvisation, and self-determination 20 years departed this month, this Ben Ratliff CD review provides a taut primer. Hemphill’s music, Ratliff writes,
…expands both the jazz and classical traditions, through its rigor and its performance practice. Like many critics, I taught myself long ago to be skeptical around the idea of “originality”: it’s mostly a construct, and not a useful criterion of value. But being confronted by the real thing can be eerie.
Night one of Black Composers Upsouth – meaning tonight – showcases Greenwich House’s Dance Clarinets jazz orchestra, an ensemble of 12 bass clarinets plus rhythm section led by J.D. Parran, playing selections by Hemphill and another late peer, James “Jabbo” Ware, and by Oliver Lake, Hemphill’s longtime collaborator in the World Saxophone Quartet, who will be present to recite his poetry.
The second night belongs to the Hemphill Stringtet, whose newly released album, The Hemphill Stringtet Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill, is a vital document of a canon that demands closer inspection. The series concludes on Friday, when Ehrlich – keeper of the Hemphill archive at NYU and compiler of the magisterial 2021 box set The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony – calls Hemphill tunes with a crack ensemble featuring trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, bassist Jerome Harris, drummer Pheeroan akLaff, and a special guest, pianist Amina Claudine Myers.
It’s a glorious bounty from start to finish, and I’m profoundly sorry to be missing it due to travel—but I hope some of you will check in.
Black Composers Upsouth is at Greenwich House Music School Apr. 15, 16 & 18 at 7:30pm; tickets $20–$25. Read more at continuumculture.org.
The Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
15
Black Composers Upsouth
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow St.; Greenwich Village
Tuesday, Apr. 15, Wednesday, Apr. 16 & Friday, Apr. 18 at 7:30pm; $20–$25
continuumculture.org
See details above.
Wayne Horvitz
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
Tuesday, Apr. 15 at 8pm; $20, advance $15, seniors and students $10
roulette.org
Ahead of tomorrow night’s concert, improvising keyboardist and composer Wayne Horvitz leads a workshop devoted to exploring the art of conduction – essentially, conducted improvisation – as developed by the late cornetist and conductor Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris—with whom Horvitz played in a sui generis trio with drummer Bobby Previte, among other settings. See Apr. 16 for a related event.
Miles Okazaki & Bill Frisell
Miller Theatre, Columbia University
2960 Broadway, Upper West Side
Tuesday, Apr. 15 at 6pm; free admission
millertheatre.com
Insert an appropriate joke here about the joy of finding an excellent free show on Tax Day—and then come grab a seat onstage right up close to two of the finest guitarists in improvised music, veteran Bill Frisell and rising star Miles Okazaki.
16
Wayne Horvitz
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
Wednesday, Apr. 16 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
See also Apr. 15. Following Tuesday night’s workshop, tonight Wayne Horvitz demonstrates conduction in action with two different ensembles packed deep with personality and versatility. The first, Collective Music Ensemble, is a New York version of a Seattle working band that stretches Horvitz’s compositional canon via conduction; the second, Electric Circus, is a groove-oriented unit flexible enough to embrace Sly Stone, The Meters, electric Miles, Captain Beefheart, and the Bangles.
William Parker
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Apr. 16–Saturday, Apr. 19 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com
Bassist, composer, bandleader, multi-hyphenate creator, and peerless scene organizer William Parker never slows down—and he also never coasts, which means this four-night Stone residency at The New School is guaranteed to deliver the unexpected, even when he’s holding forth with decades-long companions like pianist Matthew Shipp and alto saxophonist Rob Brown, who join him on Thursday. An intriguing opening set on Wednesday features pianist Bruce Barth and saxophonist Dave Sewelson; on Friday, drummer William Hooker and vocalist Amirtha Kidambi bring thunder and lightning, and on Saturday Parker locks horns and more with the similarly mercurial Daniel Carter, among others.
S.E.M. Ensemble
Bohemian National Hall, Czech Center New York
321 E. 73rd St.; Upper East Side
Wednesday, Apr. 16 at 7pm; free admission with RSVP
eventbrite.com
Petr Kotik brings S.E.M. Ensemble, his invaluable, long-running new-music group, to the Upper East Side for another concert chock full of works by composers frequently marginalized elsewhere. In addition to a new piece by Kotik, The Gate, the program includes works by Christian Wolff, Lejaren Hiller, Amina Claudine Myers, Charles Ames, and Judith Berkson.
17
Nicole Mitchell
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
Thursday, Apr. 17 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
Flutist, composer, bandleader, and past A.A.C.M. president Nicole Mitchell enlists a first-call trio – pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Rashaan Carter, and drummer Chad Taylor – for a suite of original compositions that pay homage to her godmother, Minneapolis arts activist and educator Jean Ann Durades.
19
Sylvie Courvoisier Amalthea
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th floor; Midtown East
Saturday, Apr. 19 at 7:30 & 9:30pm; $35–$45, livestream tickets $22
jazzgallery.org
Improvising pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier leads Amalthea, a quartet featuring vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Dan Weiss – formerly known as Poppy Seeds, whose Oct. 23, 2024 performance at Roulette can be streamed on that venue’s website – in original material that draws upon Courvoisier’s fusion of compositional rigor and freewheeling creativity.
Aaron Larget-Caplan
Bargemusic at the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse
10 Montague St. at Pier 5; Brooklyn
Saturday, Apr. 19 at 2 & 4pm; free admission
bargemusic.org
The last time I visited Bargemusic in that storied venue’s original floating location – two years ago today, as it happens – Boston-based guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan rocked the boat with an impressively rangy program encompassing Bach, Spanish music, a wide span of contemporary fare, and his own original compositions. The same holds true of this newest visit: at 2pm Larget-Kaplan chiefly focuses on Johann Sebastian Bach and Spaniards, as well as a new piece of his own, and at 4pm he’ll present a New York premiere by Ian Wiese alongside works by John Cage, Tōru Takemitsu, David Liptak, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Nikita Koshkin. This stage will stay put this time around, but you can count on Larget-Kaplan to provide the sway.
21
New York New Music Ensemble
Americas Society
680 Park Ave.; Upper West Side
Monday, Apr. 21 at 7pm; free admission
nynme.org
The New York New Music Ensemble presents a world premiere by Brazilian composer Marcos Balter, co-commissioned by NYNME and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. Also on the program are George Lewis’s Thistledown, Tonia Ko’s Evermore Everyday, and Martine Matalon’s La Rueda. Advanmce registration is recommended, and you can sign up here.
22
Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet
Village Vanguard
178 Seventh Ave. S.; Greenwich Village
Tuesday, Apr. 22–Sunday, Apr. 27 at 8 & 10pm; $40
villagevanguard.com
Last month at Big Ears, trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire brought a string quartet and a rapper/producer to replicate his most recent album, the paradigm-shattering honey from a winter stone. Here in the most hallowed basement in jazzdom with a quartet of pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown, he’ll probably play things a little more straight—but that’s not the same as playing it safe.
More vital directories of new-music destinations:
Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
So utterly sad that I am out of town on Friday. That looks like one of the great events of the season. Props to Andrew Drury!