Dear readers.

A tragic loss, a miraculous recovery, a time of transition… plus For the Record, featuring noteworthy new arrivals and future releases.

Susan Alcorn (Photograph courtesy susanalcorn.net)

This morning brings the tragic news that we have lost an extraordinary musician: the improvising pedal-steel guitarist and composer Susan Alcorn.

Just over two weeks ago I recommended the concert of Messiaen and more Alcorn played at Zürcher Gallery, a performance beautifully documented by photographer Peter Gannushkin on downtownmusic.net. Yesterday, she was posting on Facebook. This morning, Baltimore’s High Zero Foundation announced her passing.

Susan has been a friendly acquaintance and an artist I’ve admired deeply for more than 30 years now, from well before I came to New York and she settled in Baltimore. She was a fearless artist and an extraordinary person; it’s not overstating things to say that she played a crucial early role in my musical development. The enormity of this news has not sunk in—at a time as fraught as what we’re living with now, everything can change in an instant, and we all are left to cope with what remains.

Hold your loved ones close.

---

Frank London (Photograph: Anna London)

Earlier this year, I wrote a New York Times article (gift link) about trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Frank London facing what very likely could have been a fatal illness. Since then, however, London has made what friends have told me is a miraculous recovery, and this weekend he’ll prove it by starting a series of concerts, “Music of Love and Resistance,” at Loove Annex, 238 N. 12th St., McCarren Park, in Brooklyn.

The series, jointly produced by HONK NYC!, Barbès, and Loove Labs, starts tomorrow – Saturday, February 1, at 7pm, with an open rehearsal at 6pm – with London’s Conspiracy Brass. Subsequent shows feature Loisaida Fife & Drum Corp (Feb. 8), Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars (Feb. 15), and Polka Loca (Feb. 22). Sliding-scale entry starts at $18, seniors and students $10, and you can find out more here.

---

October 10, 2024.

Longtime readers might recall that I left Substack for another newsletter platform in 2021 because of ethical concerns, only to return because of dissatisfaction with the other service—the one most frequently cited as the major alternative. I held my nose and weathered several more calamities in the name of growing the audience receiving the data I compile and circulate.

With the company’s latest philosophical declaration, however, I don’t know that I feel like carrying on here. So I’m pumping the brake, and taking some time off to consider what’s next. Maybe this, too, will blow over—but I’d already been thinking a lot lately about how and where my surplus time and labor are spent, and this newest concern accelerates that consideration.

Rest assured that if your reading Night After Night isn’t contingent on its being part of Substack, I can promise the work will continue—somewhere.

---

For the Record: January 31, 2025.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

New this week.

Teodora Stepančić (Photograph courtesy of the artist’s Bandcamp page)

January 31.

Ambrose Akinmusire - honey from a winter stone (Nonesuch)

The Ancients (Isaiah Collier, William Parker, William Hooker) - The Ancients (Eremite)

Apartment House - GOMBERT - compositions by Nicolas Gombert and James Weeks (Another Timbre)

Edwin Alexander Buchholz - Cage. Pisaro. Frey. Beuger (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

John Cage - branches - daswirdas (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1999)

Morgan Evans-Weiler & J.P.A. Falzone - Penumbra (Another Timbre)

Jürg Frey - Beuger. Cage (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

Jürg Frey - Longing Landscape - Prague Quiet Music Collective (Another Timbre)

Jürg Frey - Wolff. Lucier. Schlothauer. Frey (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

Pierre Gerard - Full Yellow Cylinder (Eliane Tapes)

Bryn Harrison - Towards a slowing of the past - Mark Knoop & Roderick Chadwick (Another Timbre)

Julia Hülsmann Quartet - Under the Surface (ECM)

Kenny Wheeler Legacy - Some Days Are Better: The Lost Scores (Greenleaf Music)

Joachim Kühn - Échappée (Intakt)

Brandon López & DoYeon Kim - Syzygy, Vol. 1 (577 Records)

Radu Malfatti - die temperatur der bedeutung - Radu Malfati; das profil des schweigens - Wandelweiser String Quartet (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1998)

Chico Mello & Silvia Ocougne - Musica Brasileira De(s)composta (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

Clemens Merkel - Maderna. von Schweinitz. Beuger. Stiegler (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

Peter Rehberg - Liminal States (Editions Mego)

Sarah Belle Reid + Vinny Golia - Accidental Ornithology (Infrequent Seams)

[something’s happening] - Buzz (Flaming Pines)

Teodora Stepančić - OA | FG (Another Timbre)

Stein Urheim - Speilstillevariasjoner (Hubro)

Herman van San - Sextet. Microstructure. Sectionen - Barbara Deleu, Dimitri Baetman, Peter Merckx, Dirk Noyen, Dries Geeraert, Koen Kessels, Götz Hartmann, Rosemarie Keller, Dirk Hegemann, Walter Keller, Wolfram Hertel, Wolfgang Düthorn (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1999)

Wolf Eyes x Anthony Braxton - live at pioneer works, 26 october 2023 (ESP-Disk’)

Christian Wolff - Stones - Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

jeong lim yang - Synchronicity (Sunnyside)

Alfred Zimmerlin - Kammermusik - Marianne Aeschbacher, Marlyse Capt, Jean-Jacques Dünki, Jürg Frey, Susanna Hefti, Tobias Moster (Edition Wandelweiser; originally released 1996)

---

Upcoming releases.

Owls: L-R Ayane Kozasa, Alexi Kenney, Gabriel Cabezas, Paul Wiancko (Photograph courtesy of the artists)

March 7.

Pablo Diáz - son esos ecos (scatterArchive)

March 14.

Owls - Rare Birds (New Amsterdam)

March 28.

Branford Marsalis Quartet - Belonging (Blue Note)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

---

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.