For the Record: August 25, 2023.
Words about recent and future events, an album of the week by an electronically enhanced flutist, and listings for dozens of new and upcoming releases.
For the Record 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! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views of any employer.
Working for the weekend
It’s Friday, and yes, that does mean a focus on records. But first, an eventful week began auspiciously with my first concert review edited by someone other than myself since 2016. The review, published by Musical America, covers the second, third, and fourth nights of Time:Spans, the extraordinary new-music festival running through tomorrow night at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, in midtown Manhattan.
The review is behind a paywall, a condition I feel obliged to uphold. So I won’t be sharing it outright… but here are some select passages:
JACK Quartet playing Helmut Lachenmann:
A surprising word came to mind during a concert August 13 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. … charismatic. Perhaps that’s not the first term that comes to mind when you think about the alien rustles, hisses, judders, and croaks that comprise Lachenmann’s vocabulary for stringed instruments. But the JACK players—violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell—handled their work with assurance and authority, lending these uncanny scores a visceral appeal readily defined as charisma.
JACK Quartet playing Farhat, Iannotta, and Ergün:
Seare Farhat’s …ka spoojmai shwa poh hala ke…, identified in the composer’s program note as part of a series of works rooted in self-discovery as a queer Afghan-American, felt luscious and anxious by turns. …
Clara Iannotta’s you crawl over seas of granite… is haunted and hallucinatory: a world you inhabit with sharpened senses, bewitched by its arresting details. … a piece best encountered live, where the distance between players and loudspeakers lends to the sense of dislocation.
[In Cenk Ergün’s Yekpare] slow, meditative passages, in a mathematically derived tuning that evoked Middle Eastern maqam (an impression Ergün confirmed in conversation), surrounded a soulful cello soliloquy and a section of hurtling unison rhythms. … JACK played it all from memory in semi-darkness, colored lights shifting subtly to suit the music’s moods. Demonstrating their expertise in negotiating unconventional intonation with confidence, they produced beauty sufficient to conjure divinity.
Ensemble Signal playing Abbasi, Thomas, Shirazi, and Zubel:
In Faab IV / a femme fatale, for winds, strings and piano, Anahita Abbasi conjures a seductress with a litany of conspiratorial hisses, violent stabs and seductive purrs; David Friend, at the keyboard and inside the piano’s innards, underscored the portrait with thunder and clangor. Aida Shirazi’s The shadow of a leaf in water directs a similarly recondite palette toward moody impressionism, with plummy tones from Amir Farsi’s bass flute and Adrián Sandí’s bass clarinet. …
Augusta Read Thomas packed a lot of business into the 14-odd minutes of Dance Mobile … Set all of that aside, and what remains is a kinetic triptych brilliantly scored and ebulliently played.
Agata Zubel’s zany Chamber Piano Concerto… requires its soloist to play two pianos, one prepared with clothespins, screws, and other distortions. … Ning Yu, familiar to Time:Spans regulars as a former member of the quartet Yarn/Wire, was unflappable in her curious assignment. The superb ensemble, led here and throughout by Brad Lubman, supported her with expertise, expressiveness, and gusto.
Two concerts remain in the Time:Spans schedule, each extremely promising: the International Contemporary Ensemble tonight in pieces by Younghi Pagh-Paan, Andile Khumalo, Aida Shirazi, and Wadada Leo Smith; and Talea Ensemble tomorrow in Enno Poppe’s Speicher I-VI.
There’s one more professionally handled concert review on the near horizon, and likely more to come. Still, in light of the universal contraction of arts and culture coverage dominating our collective conversation lately, it’s hard to envision a future that puts much emphasis on that specific mode of writering in mass-media outlets.
Time will tell.
Regarding that media discourse, I recommend reading Michelangelo Matos, in his warmly commended Substack newsletter Beat Connection, on the topic of “Goings On About Town” being re-imagined by The New Yorker. Matos also links to a subscription-only story on the same topic that appeared in The Fine Print, which Matos describes as “a subscription-based media-watch web publication in New York, a la the old New York Observer.” (Full disclosure: I was invited to participate in the Fine Print story, but at that particular moment was preoccupied by altogether different goings on.)
On the subject of listings – and lack thereof – apologies for failing to get a Tuesday newsletter out this week. (Negotiating present conditions continues to be a time-consuming and unpredictable process.) If you’re in New York this weekend looking for something to do beyond the two Time:Spans events mentioned above, head to Bryant Park tomorrow night, where Roulette Intermedium will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a stellar triple bill of Immanuel Wilkins, the 75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band, and Ka Baird. The show starts at 7pm, free of charge, and if you’re not in NYC, you can watch live online; more details here.
Also for tomorrow, I wrote this elsewhere, and I’ll cite it here, too:
The Rite of Summer Music Festival concludes its summer new-music series with a performance by the bold, innovative string foursome PUBLIQuartet, which plays selections from its 2022 album, “What Is American,” a kaleidoscopic paean to music made in this country. Note: This event has been moved to its rain date of Saturday, Aug. 26 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. at Nolan Park; details here.
You probably can still get in to see one of the remaining sets by Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry, featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi, at the Village Vanguard, tonight through Sunday night. (Their most recent ECM album, Our Daily Bread, is a thing of deep beauty.)
Alas, the latest “Zorn@70” celebration at Roulette, matching John Zorn with Laurie Anderson and Sean Ono Lennon on Sunday night, is entirely sold out.
But speaking of Sunday, there’s good news: Spectrum NYC, a vital new-music venue that’s popped up in a series of locations in just over a decade – most notably in a Ludlow Street loft, and then in a rough-hewn space near the Brooklyn Navy Yard – returns this Sunday in its largest incarnation yet, a space in the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition at 481 Van Brunt St., in Red Hook. In an event billed as the start of Spectrum’s “first fully-functioning post-pandemic season,” Augustus Arnone will play selections from J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier II and Michael Finnissy’s The History of Photography In Sound, while Jacob Rhodebeck offers selections from Luc Ferrari’s Fragments du journal intime and the U.S. premiere of Alex Nante’s Preludios de Luz. The venue website isn’t quite up to speed just yet; best to seek information on this and future events on Instagram.
Album of the week.
l a d y y b i r d d
Tomorrow’s Yesterday
(Innova; CD, DL, streaming)
The album fascinating me most this week isn’t available on Bandcamp, alas…
EDIT: …except yes, despite my search yielding no results, in fact it is on Bandcamp, and thank you to Brad Rose for pointing this out. Sheesh…
… but you’ll find Tomorrow’s Yesterday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and presumably all the other places where music is streamed. (You also can buy a CD, like all the kids are doing these days.) Performing with pianist Erika Dohi in the duo RighteousGIRLS, flutist Gina Izzo more or less played the role of a classical musician—albeit an open-minded one ready to commission works from composers representing an uncommonly wide range of musical styles.
One of those composers, Ambrose Akinmusire, makes a cameo playing trumpet on Tomorrow’s Yesterday, Izzo’s solo debut, released under the project name ladyybirdd. (She styles that moniker with extra spaces; I’ve omitted them here to avoid unwanted line breaks.) Further guests, including Dohi on synthesizer, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, bassist Nick Dunston, and percussionist Ian Rosenbaum, span New York City’s rich contemporary classical and progressive jazz communities.
That range of technical methods and expressive modes suits Izzo’s original electroacoustic music, enhanced by her use of a Moogerfooger, looper, delay unit, and other electronic gadgets. Far from window dressing, the gear proves essential in crafting the dreamy meditations and dancefloor allusions Izzo evokes. And she never coasts; check out her razor-sharp rhythms and luscious melodies on “when we say goodbye,” a Konnakol-gone-New Age reverie.
Wilkins and Akinmusire play with affecting freedom and spirit in their spotlight features; Dohi, Dunston, and Rosenbaum are ideally supportive. One more essential teammate, engineer and producer Joseph Branciforte, keeps each detail and layer in sharp focus. And Izzo makes everything sing.
New This Week
Jessica Ackerley/Kevin Cheli/Gahlord DeWald - Submerging Silently (Cacophonous Revival)
jaimie branch - Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) (International Anthem)
ScottClark - Dawn & Dusk (Out of Your Head)
The Hatch Expansion - Texas Edition (Astral Spirits)
Ed Herrmann - Water Ways (Rural Situationism)
l a d y y b i r d d (Gina Izzo) - Tomorrow’s Yesterday (Innova)
Pascal Le Boeuf - Ritual Being (SoundSpore)
Adam Lion - Gilgul (cmntx)
Mad Myth Science - Mad Myth Science (Infrequent Seams)
Camila Nebbia - Una ofrenda a la ausencia (Relative Pitch)
Awadagin Pratt - Stillpoint - compositions by Jessie Montgomery, Paola Prestini, Alvin Singleton, Pēteris Vasks, Tyshawn Sorey, and Judd Greenstein (New Amsterdam)
Tent Music (Micaela Tobin & Joshua Hill) - Tent Music (Whited Sepulchre)
Benjamin Vergara - The Impossibility of a Single Sound (Relative Pitch)
Fay Victor - Blackity Black Black Is Beautiful (Northern Spy)
Cassie Wieland - “Hymn” (Evan Chapman remix) - Vicky Chow (Cantaloupe Music)
Upcoming Releases
September 1
John Blum - Nine Rivers (ESP-Disk’)
Mark Reboul/Roberta Piket/Billy Mintz - Seven pieces / about an hour / saxophone, piano, drums (ESP-Disk’)
September 8
Alan Courtis & David Grubbs - Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves (Husky Pants)
Matthew Shipp - Circular Temple (ESP-Disk’; originally issued 1992 on Quinton)
September 15
John Luther Adams - Darkness and Scattered Light - Robert Black (Cold Blue)
Piotr Kurek - Smartwoods (Unsound)
David Lang - man made - Sō Percussion, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Louis Langrée (Apple Music)
Nick Norton - Music for Sunsets (people places records)
Christopher Rouse - Symphony No. 6 - Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Louis Langrée (Apple Music)
SLUGish Ensemble - In Solitude (Slow & Steady)
Austin Wulliman - The News from Utopia - Austin Wulliman, Jay Campbell (Bright Shiny Things)
September 22
Matthew Shipp - The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp (Mahakala Music)
September 29
Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden… (Constellation)
October 13
Adam Birnbaum - Preludes (Chelsea Music Festival)
Billy Mohler - Ultraviolet (Contagious Music)
October 20
Ohad Talmor - Back to the Land (Intakt)
Anna Webber - Shimmer Wince (Intakt)
October 27
Quicksails (Ben Baker Billington) - Surface (Hausu Mountain)
November 3
Joe Santa Maria - Echo Deep (Orenda)
November 10
Myra Melford's Fire & Water Quintet - Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt)
Yuhan Su - Liberated Gesture (Sunnyside)
December 1
Ben Goldberg/Todd Sickafoose/Scott Amendola - Here to There (Secret Hatch)
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
The Izzo album is excellent! Perhaps we’ll cross paths at Talea.
Wow, just checking the Izzo album out on Bandcamp. Really really good. Thanks so much for hipping us to her. Subscribing to you!!