Everything's different now.
A major change of professional focus, a New York Times feature about composer Hannah Kendall, and a plethora of live-music picks for the next seven days.
I’ve mentioned major change a few times recently here. Time now to elaborate.
Late last month, I accepted a full-time job as senior copywriter for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The writing and editing I’m producing now are designed to serve institutional needs, but you’ve possibly seen some of it in your mailboxes, inboxes, and social-media feeds without knowing it. Further creative opportunities are under discussion for the near future.
I’ve been sending out a situation update to friends and colleagues in the music and media communities, in response to pitches and pokes. Since quite a few readers of this newsletter also fall into those categories, I’ll share this passage concerning my current status outside of office hours:
As a result of this new engagement, for the immediate and foreseeable future I will no longer be taking on any freelance work in the media as a reporter, reviewer, or editor.
If you are an artist, presenter, venue, record label, or publicist who sends me information about upcoming new-music events and records for inclusion in Night After Night, my Substack newsletter, I welcome you to continue. I am happy to receive new music via stream or download; physical mailings are not necessary. If you want to invite me to performances, I am grateful, but I don't presume complementary access.
I knew and admired BAM long before my first visit to New York, thanks to the incredible work fostered there for decades: Laurie Anderson’s United States: Parts I–IV, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, John Zorn’s legendary Ennio Morricone tribute, and so much more.
More recent years have brought opportunities to savor performances by Bang on a Can, Beth Morrison Projects, and the late, great Brooklyn Philharmonic, not to mention Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi in different productions of King Lear, Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler—the list goes on and on. It’s a privilege to have a hand in presenting such projects, and I’m also excited about the new initiatives represented in the new Next Wave 2024 & Emerging Visions season.
I’ve mulled for a while what to say about a course change this fundamental, and decided this is sufficient: The world has changed, the media with it, and it simply was time to get on with things.
After 18 years of contributions, my last New York Times feature for the foreseeable future was published on Sunday—here’s a gift link. The article is a profile of Hannah Kendall, a talented, successful British composer commissioned by Lincoln Center to write a new piece for the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, formerly the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. I had an opportunity to hear a very early rehearsal of her new piece, He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing, and am very eager to hear a proper performance.
Kendall was chosen by music director Jonathon Heyward, a personal friend and longtime advocate, and asked to respond in some manner to a connection between music and mental health—and to Robert Schumann, whose Symphony No. 2 is featured in the same concerts this Friday and Saturday in David Geffen Hall. (She was sufficiently adept to do that while also embedding a reference to Mozart, with whose “Jupiter” Symphony her piece shares a program this fall.) The remaining two pieces on the program are by J.S. Bach, to whose music Schumann was known to turn in times of crisis.
I’ve had the privilege of telling stories in the The New York Times this year about eminent artists at major moments in their lives, including Christian Wolff, Jim Staley, and Frank London—and I also know that one should never say never. But I can’t think of a more satisfying way to conclude my brief recent streak with the Times than with words about a vital young artist whose work more people ought to know—the best part of the mission, always. I’m grateful to colleagues old and new for allowing me to complete the assignment.
As for this newsletter, don’t anticipate major change—just more of the same, hopefully with a little more regularity. I’m also working selectively on liner notes and program notes as time allows; if that’s of interest, get in touch.
But enough about me—did y’all see the fabulous review column George Grella wrote for Bandcamp about the late, great composer Noah Creshevsky? If not, click here, then mash that play-arrow button at the top of the page and prepare to be pleasantly dumbfounded. “Hearing Noah Creshevsky’s music is like being pushed off a cliff and discovering that you can fly. There’s the sudden lurch as the ground disappears, and then the magical realization that you’re safe, buoyed aloft by something out of the ordinary.” Now, that is an amazing evocation.
The Night After Night Watch.
August 6–13
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
7
Brandon Ross
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Aug. 7–Saturday, Aug. 10 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com
Guitarist Brandon Ross plies his inimitably gorgeous liquid tone in four disparate combinations of musicians during his Stone series at The New School. He opens on Wednesday with a new version of his trio For Living Lovers with Qasim Naqvi guesting on drums, and closes on Saturday with Breath of Air, in which he plays alongside longtime James Blood Ulmer sideman Charlie Burnham and Warren Benbow; two more projects in between mix acoustic and electronic modes.
8
Kris Davis & Ingrid Laubrock Duo
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th floor, Midtown East
Thursday, Aug. 8 & Friday, Aug. 9 at 7:30 & 9:30pm; $39–$50
Livestream tickets $22
jazzgallery.org
Let’s have some fun with math: when does one plus one equal three? Andrew: when drummer Tom Rainey appears as an unbilled guest, adding to the already imposing prospect of the first IRL meeting of pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, two of the city’s most reliably innovative creative-music composers and improvisers, since before the pandemic. All three of these ace improvisers and bandleaders have logged countless hours in one another’s company, so you can anticipate an eminently agreeable ruckus.
9
Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side
Friday, Aug. 9 and Saturday, Aug. 10 at 7:30pm; choose-what-you-pay
lincolncenter.org
The final program of the Festival Orchestra’s inaugural series probes connections between music and mental health, connecting Bach to Schumann and onward to a new commissioned premiere by Hannah Kendall (see above). The restlessly probing pianist Conrad Tao is featured in Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in A (BWV 1055), and Jonathon Heyward conducts.
JACK Quartet
The Underground at Jaffe Drive, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side
Friday, Aug. 9 at 8pm; free admission
lincolncenter.org
Living Music Underground, a new-music series curated by the enterprising violist, educator, and burgeoning conductor Nadia Sirota, continues with a performance by the JACK Quartet. Just what they’ll play during this 75-minute outing is undisclosed, but you can always rely on illumination and edification where this ensemble is concerned.
Daniel Schlosberg
Bargemusic
Fulton Ferry Landing, Dumbo, Brooklyn
Friday, Aug. 9 at 6pm; $35
bargemusic.org
Framing his recital at New York’s most unique concert venue with canon fodder by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, pianist Daniel Schlosberg presents Juhi Bansal’s Land of Waking Dreams and Lei Liang’s Touching with Sound in their New York premieres. Brian Ferneyhough’s El Rey de Calabria and Stephen Andrew Taylor Green’s Trees Are Bending complete the program.
10
Etchings Festival 2024
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow St., Greenwich Village
Saturday, Aug. 10 at 3 & 6pm, Sunday, Aug. 11 at 3pm; free admission
eccearts.com
Ensemble Ecce hosts three free public concerts as the culmination of this year’s Etchings Festival, an intensive week-long series of lessons, masterclasses, and workshops involving composers Melinda Wagner, David Sanford, John Aylward, and Hassan Anderson. Works by festival fellows are featured in Saturday’s matinee; the evening concert includes Wagner’s Romanza in Faux Variations, Aylward’s Language of Silent Things, Yvette Janine Jackson’s Doubt, and Dominique Schafer’s Anima. Guest duo Popebama teams up with Ensemble Ecce on Sunday to perform Sanford’s Grace Canticles, Christophe Bertrand’s La Chute Du Rouge, and further works by Grace Hughes and festival fellows.
Time:Spans: Ensemble Signal
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St., Midtown West
Saturday, Aug. 10 at 7:30pm; $20
timespans.org
A vital presence in New York City’s contemporary-classical ecosystem since it moved here from Crested Butte in 2017, Time:Spans returns with a dozen choice programs featuring leading local ensembles and select visitors. The festival begins Saturday with a performance by the new-music all-star squadron Ensemble Signal, conducted by Brad Lubman in Fausto Romitelli’s dizzying Professor Bad Trip, Lessons 1–3, and Steve Reich’s seductive Radio Rewrite.
11
Sally Gates, Zoh Amba, Brian Chase + Human Rites Trio
Sisters
900 Fulton St., Brooklyn
Sunday, Aug. 11 at 8:30pm; $20 suggested donation (cash/Venmo at door)
sistersbklyn.com
New Zealand guitar shredder Sally Gates, Tennessee saxophone spiritualist Zoh Amba, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase have been making the scene together for a few years now; fellow NYC musicker Piotr Orlov, in his invaluable Dada Strain newsletter, deems the combo “a loud, free-improv Bklyn Sounds supergroup.” They’ll share the stage at Sisters with another potent three-piece, violinist Jason Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio, with bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Andrew Drury.
Mei Semones
Noguchi Museum
9-01 33rd Rd., Long Island City
Sunday, August 11 at 3:30pm; $16, seniors and students $6, under 12 free
noguchi.org
The monthly Bang on a Can Summer–Fall concert series at the Noguchi Museum continues with a performance by Brooklyn alternative-J pop artist Mei Semones. These shows are ideally intimate and tickets are limited, but they include museum access—a substantial bonus.
Time:Spans: Ning Yu
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St., Midtown West
Sunday, Aug. 11 at 7:30pm; $20
timespans.org
Stellar pianists Ning Yu and Cory Smythe join hands in Trilogie, a complex, visceral extended work for two pianos, tape, and electronics by Brigitta Muntendorf, with Levy Lorenzo managing the plugged-in bits and bytes.
12
Matt Mitchell Trio
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th floor, Midtown East
Monday, Aug. 12 & at 7:30 & 9:30pm; $28–$39
Livestream tickets $22
jazzgallery.org
Pianist Matt Mitchell has a way of playing heady and hearty at the same time, a quality that has brought fascination and appeal to his many ventures on the Pi Recordings label as well as his work as a sideman to leaders like Tim Berne and Dave Douglas. Surprisingly, Zealous Angles, due on Aug. 16, is Mitchell’s first Pi project with his longtime trio with bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dan Weiss—and their familiarity lends cohesion to a set of tunes constructed with asynchronous materials and loads of trust.
13
Time:Spans: Longleash
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St., Midtown West
Tuesday, Aug. 13 at 7:30pm; $20
timespans.org
The superb piano trio Longleash, performing with guest pianist Alexa Stier, presents a world premiere by Igor Santos, alongside the first local performances of works by Jonah Haven and Katherine Balch.
Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.
More NYC contemporary & creative music listings:
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Congrats Steve. A great institution & they're lucky to get ya.
Congrats on the new gig! Hope it proves rewarding and fulfilling.
On another note, what a striking photo of Sally Gates! Really speaks to the power of a bold, imaginative, and well-executed promo shot. Plus points for *not* photoshopping out the ceiling stains.