Eclipsed.
Back to live-event news and listings picks in and around New York City (after too long a break)—plus, For the Record.
More than a month has passed since I last claimed enough personal time to create and share a list of recommended events. I know more folks are addressing this void now—hello, Emery; greetings, Max. But I genuinely enjoy learning about special gigs and helping to spread the word, and being unable to do so is more profoundly frustrating than you might think.
I’ve written about some very impressive performances recently, but the reviews are behind a paywall. Unless you subscribe to Musical America, or I get picked for the free sampling in that publication’s Friday newsletter, you can’t see them. It bothers me quite a lot, but I haven’t worked out what I can do about it.
Still, those come after the fact, anyway, whereas listings are meant to circulate news in order to facilitate sharing experiences—like the premiere of Vertical Neighbors by Raven Chacon, played by four members of TILT Brass on a positively gorgeous Sunday afternoon, on the roof of Swiss Institute and the street below.
For about an hour on April 7, trumpeters Nate Wooley and Hugo Moreno and trombonists Jen Baker and Chris McIntyre interpreted a score rendered in the form of a painted mural installed on the roof. (You can see a cleaner version of the score, along with a key to its interpretation, on McIntyre’s Facebook page.) The paired players exchanged calls from on high and down low for 15 minutes, traded places during a five-minute pause, then started again, three times in total.
Chacon’s figurations, given utterance by TILT, juxtaposed extremes: the musical rite felt massive and spare, brash and mournful, populous and alienated. The audience, which included multimedia artist Joan Jonas and composers Annie Gosfield, Roger Kleier, and Raphael Mostel, was small but deeply attentive. Passers-by on the sidewalk and across the avenue stopped to gawk and snap photos. Neighbors opened windows, inviting the music inside.
Chacon’s concise, beautiful, and powerful exhibition, A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak, is on view through this Sunday, April 14, at Swiss Institute, located on the southeast corner of St. Mark’s Place at Second Avenue. Admission is free.
This just in.
On Saturday, May 18 at 2pm, two of the city’s most significant new-music groups, Either/Or and International Contemporary Ensemble, join forces to present a program of works by Talib Rasul Hakim in Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Born Stephen Alexander Chambers, Hakim was active from the mid-’60s to the mid-’80s, and the brother of celebrated jazz drummer Joe Chambers. On arriving in New York City, he studied with Morton Feldman, Ornette Coleman, Margaret Bonds, and Chou Wen Chung, among others, and worked as an organizer, teacher, and radio and TV producer.
Quoting the concert’s organizers:
Before his untimely passing, Talib Rasul Hakim (1940-88) was already becoming a widely influential composer, one who suffused his music for chamber and orchestral forces with intense deliberation, considered improvisations, dynamic rhythmic profiles, and purposeful silences. Hakim saw his compositions as more than just music: he saw music performance as the equivalent to an almost religious awakening. In the 1978 book The Black Composer Speaks, Hakim maintained, “It is hoped that whenever [my] music is performed, both performer and listener will experience some degree of inner stirring, that they will experience some philosophical, religious, political, emotional, intellectual experience.”
The concert will include five compositions meant to reflect Hakim’s view of music as “an encounter with the divine.” Afterward, a panel comprising Courtney Bryan, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, Harald Kisiedu, Richard Carrick, and Chris McIntyre will discuss Hakim’s life and work.
Tickets are free, and events in Bruno Walter Auditorium tend to get booked up quickly. Go here to reserve your spot.
The Night After Night Watch.
This newsletter’s regular tally of live-event picks will resume on Tuesday, April 16. In the mean time, here are a few choice goings-on around New York City between now and then—most involving rather a lot of percussion.
All listings are in Eastern Standard Time (EST).
12
Heartbeat Opera
Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Ave., Midtown East
Friday, April 12 at 7pm, Sunday, April 14 at 3pm; $35–$89, students $20
heartbeatopera.org
The crafty, inventive indie company Heartbeat Opera presents the last two performances of its first world premiere: The Extinctionist, by composer Daniel Schlosberg and playwright/librettist Amanda Quaid, directed by Shadi Ghaheri with the composer leading a small ensemble cast and band from the piano.
13
Ensemble Modern
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave., Midtown West
Saturday, April 13 at 7:30pm; $39–$49
carnegiehall.org
Frankfurt’s celebrated Ensemble Modern is in town for a two-night stand, starting on Friday, April 12, with a Weimar Republic mixtape featuring hits by Hindemith, Korngold, Schoenberg, and Weill. But the real new-music deal is Saturday night’s Tania León-curated playlist, which includes two of her own pieces, three Conlon Nancarrow transcriptions, Andile Khumalo’s Invisible Self, and the local premiere of Christopher Trapani’s no window without a wall.
14
Bergamot Quartet + Sō Percussion
Public Records
233 Butler St., Brooklyn
Sunday, April 14 at 7pm; $25.75
dice.fm
Two charismatic foursomes, Bergamot Quartet and Sō Percussion, team up for an evening of recent pieces. Sō plays Olivier Tarpaga’s FēFē, Bergamot plays Ledah Finck’s In the Brink with Sō’s Jason Treuting on drums, and the two groups merge for Dan Trueman’s Songs That Are Hard to Sing and Angélica Negrón’s When the Sun Hits Just Right.
Mantra Percussion
Various locations
Sunday, April 14 at 3, 6, and 8:30pm; free admission
resonant-spaces.org
Mantra Percussion is well known for inducing a space of blissed-out trance with its performances of Timber, an elemental work by Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon. Now, the group takes the piece around town this weekend and next for unique free performances in some of the city’s most sonorous sites. This weekend, you’ll find Mantra at Castle Clinton (3pm) and Federal Hall (6pm) in Lower Manhattan, then under the DUMBO Archway (8:30pm) in Brooklyn; on April 21 the itinerary includes the 7 Train Viaduct at 46th St. in Queens, the Endale Arch in Prospect Park, and the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Memorial in Fort Greene Park. (Go here for specific sites, directions, and maps.)
15
Striped Light
unnamed location
Long Island City, Queens
Monday, April 15 at 8pm; $15
Instagram
For the latest installment in David Watson’s consistently enticing clandestine series, composer and sound artist Tom Hamilton will improvise new music for virtual analog synthesizer, and guitarist Seth Josel partners with Katie Porter on bass clarinet to play Michael Pisaro-Liu’s asleep, street, pipes, tones. Email stripedlight.nyc@gmail.com for proper orientation.
Talujon
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Monday, April 15 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
Free livestream on the Roulette website and YouTube
roulette.org
All-star percussion squadron Talujon presents two auspicious world premieres, Christian Wolff’s Piece for Seven Percussionists and Victoria Cheah’s Pool with two figures, both representing the newest wrinkles in longstanding collaborations with the composers—both of whom will be on hand for a mid-concert chat that I’ll have the privilege to moderate.
16
Chris Williams
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Tuesday, April 16 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
Free livestream on the Roulette website and YouTube
roulette.org
Trumpeter and electroacoustic composer Chris Williams introduces Odu: Vibration II, a new piece that promises to mix “the clash of ambience with the bombastic nature inherent in the front line of the small jazz ensemble.” Joining him are Los Angeles saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, who partnered Williams on two memorable tapes for Astral Spirits, and trombonist Kalia Vandever, an original thinker closely associated with ambient ventures.
Yarn/Wire
Italian Academy at Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Ave., Morningside Heights
Tuesday, April 16 at 7pm; free with registration
italianacademy.columbia.edu
Yarn/Wire, the tireless foursome of pianists Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer and percussionists Russell Greenberg and Sae Hashimoto, present the world premiere of Andrea Agostini’s Simple Music for Complicated Souls and the first in-person live presentation of Zeno Baldi’s Laminar Flow. Admission is free with advance registration.
For the Record: April 12, 2024.
New this week.
[Ahmed] - Giant Beauty (fönstret)
Daniel Bachman - Quaker Run Wildfire (10/24/23–11/17/23) for Fiddle and Guitar (Longform Editions)
Olivia Block - The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle)
Dave Douglas - GIFTS (Greenleaf Music)
Daniel Elms - Collected Works 2018-22 - performances by BBC Concert Orchestra/Robert Ames and Manchester Collective (Bedroom Community)
Ephemeris (Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Carol Liebowitz, Tom Blancarte, John Bernard Wagner) - Ephemeris (Marsken)
Chuck Johnson - Cypress Suite (Longform Editions)
Piotr Kurek - The night we slept under an overhanging cliff (Longform Editions)
Matt Lavelle and the 12 Houses - The Crop Circles Suite, Part One (Mahakala Music)
Paolo Marchettini - Ebony Chants (New Focus)
Chantal Michelle - ℎ− 2− ℎ− − 2 ℎ− (Dinzu Artefacts)
Weston Olencki festuring Jules Reidy - I Went to the Dance (Longform Editions)
Hannah Selin - Dream Journal & The Apocalypse (Gold Bolus)
Ryan Seward & Andrew Weathers - Laminar Interiors (Editions Glomar)
Mike Shiflet - Tetracosa Ensemble, Volumes 1-4 (self-released)
Mike Shiflet - Tetracosa Ensemble, Volumes 5-8 (self-released)
Mike Shiflet - Tetracosa 2024, Volumes 1-4 (self-released)
Mike Shiflet - Tetracosa 2024, Volumes 5-8 (self-released)
Patrick Shiroishi - A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest (Sub Pop)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich - Symphony No. 5 - Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOPsound)
Upcoming releases.
April 19
Patrick Giguère - Intimes exubérances - Cheryl Duvall (Redshift Music)
April 26
James Romig - Ring (Parallax Music Press)
May 2024
Sarah Hennies - Motor Tapes - performances by Ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble/James Baker, and Ensemble Dedalus (New World)
May 3
Andrew Hulse - Fabric of Light (self-released)
May 10
Decoda - Decoda - compositions by Valerie Coleman, William Bolcom, and Reza Vali (Bright Shiny Things)
Du.0 (Aimée Niemann and Charlotte Munn-Wood) - Thoughts from the Future - compositions by Emily Praetorius, Leah Asher, and Scott Wollschleger (Gold Bolus)
May 17
Inna Faliks - Manuscripts Don’t Burn - compositions by Clarice Assad, Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, Veronika Krausas, Maya Miro Johnson, Mike Garson, Fanny Mendelssohn, Fazil Say, and Franz Schubert (Sono Luminus)
David Murray Quartet - Francesca (Intakt)
Weston Olencki - pearls ground down to powder (Full Spectrum)
May 24
Christer Bothén featuring Bolon Bata - Trancedance (Black Truffle; originally released 1984)
Tony Conrad & Jennifer Walshe - In the Merry Month of May (Blue Chopsticks)
June 28
Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist (Drag City)
July 2024
Michael Ranta - Transits, Vol. 1 - Sarah Hennies, Madison Greenstone, Katie Porter, Bard Conservatory Percussion Ensemble (Important)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.