Get out.
Gabriel Zucker rises to the occasion for an intimately grandiloquent new album, and more recommended new-music performances Dec. 10–16, 2025.
The Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
10
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave.; Midtown East
Through Dec. 14, times vary; $75–$155
armoryonpark.org
Composer Philip Venables and writer-director Ted Huffman (newly named General Director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival) have honed an extraordinary capacity for creating music-theater works that shock and beguile in roughly equal measure, seen in previous collaborations like 4.48 Psychosis (memorably staged by PROTOTYPE in 2019) and Denis & Katya (staged by Opera Philadelphia later the same year). In this timely production, based on Larry Mitchell’s 1977 novel, queers and feminists rise up to save the world from capitalist patriarchy. A 2023 preview by Ben Miller, published by The New York Times (gift link) ahead of the work’s Manchester International Festival premiere, offers evidence of an unmissable show.
Ikue Mori
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Dec. 10–Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com
The final Stone series of the calendar year belongs to Ikue Mori, a MacArthur Fellow whose career trajectory has run from No Wave drummer in DNA via groundbreaking drum-machine music to her present status as a notebook-computer composer and improviser of painterly inclination. She’s working this week with colleagues old and new, including wind player Ned Rothenberg, saxophonist Ken Vandermark, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and harpist Zeena Parkins; on Friday, she and pianist Craig Taborn (speaking of MacArthur geniuses) reconvene their Highsmith partnership, joined by special guest Jim Staley on trombone.
Elliott Sharp
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
Everyone knows what a dynamic, versatile, and uncompromising composer and improviser Elliott Sharp is, but unless you’re following IrRational Musings, his Substack newsletter, you might not know what a prolific, persuasive writer he is. Tonight at Roulette, Sharp celebrates his new book, Feedback (out now via Wesleyan University Press) with readings punctuated with solos, as well as a duo performance with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis.
Tropos
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 7:30 & 9pm; $20
closeupnyc.com
Tropos has been prone to showcase its resident composers right from the start, when three members of the fledgling group stacked their original tunes next to a pile of twisty Anthony Braxton charts on debut album Axioms // 75ab (discussed at length here). The band sports an entirely new lineup now, pianist and co-founder Phillip Golub joined by Bergamot Quartet violinist Ledah Finck, clarinetist Yuma Uesaka, and percussionist Aaron Edgcomb—and all four prove themselves composers of craft and character on Switches, issued in June on Kevin Sun’s must-watch label, endectomorph music.
11
Claire Chase
The Kitchen at Westbeth
163B Bank St., 4th Fl..; West Village
Thursday, Dec. 11 & Friday, Dec. 12 at 6. & 8pm; $10–$30 sliding scale
thekitchen.org
For the 12th annual installment of her celebrated commissioning series Density 2036, flute-wielding superhero Claire Chase presents an evening-length premiere by groundbreaking composer Annea Lockwood. Titled Elwha!, the new piece matches Chase (on no fewer than seven flutes) with a surround-sound mix Lockwood fashioned from field recordings of the Elwha River in Washington.
A Concert to Benefit Roulette
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Thursday, Dec. 11 at 8pm; $25–$75
roulette.org
A year-end benefit concert for the invaluable new-music and dance venue Roulette offers a powerful lineup of participants – composers and sound artists Raven Chacon and C. Spencer Yeh with Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich; violinists Laura Ortman and gabby fluke-mogul with an unannounced guest; multi-instrumentalist more eaze – and you might well imagine even more artists turning up to participate.
12
andPlay
Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery; Lower East Side
Friday, Dec. 12 at 7pm; $17.18, students $11.82
withfriends.events
Every performance by andPlay, the duo of violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson, is a special event… but it’s especially breaking my heart to miss “The Willow Bends,” described by the pair as an exploration of texture, ritual, and timbral extremes. The program, hosted by New Ear Inc., includes two uncanny works: Desire Lines by Angharad Davies and The Willow Bends and So Do I by Magnus Granberg. Even if I can’t make it, perhaps you can; please do, and then rub my face in what I missed.
13
Paul de Jong with Beth Daunis
Issue Project Room
22 Boerum Pl.; Brooklyn
Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8pm; $21
issueprojectroom.org
Appearing at Issue for the first time since 2018, cellist and composer Paul de Jong, co-founder of beloved art-pop group The Books, introduces a new multimedia assemblage with assistance from violist-composer Beth Daunis.
Peter Gordon & Love of Life Orchestra
Pianos
158 Ludlow St.; Lower East Side
Saturday, Dec. 13 at 7pm; $22.66
dice.fm
Few artists have mixed the distinctly downtown New York cocktail of high-art composition and dance music reverie as faithfully as multi-instrumentalist and composer Peter Gordon—which makes sense, seeing as how he had a hand in developing the recipe during the 1970s and 80s. Hailed more recently by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, whose DFA label issued a Love of Life Orchestra anthology in 2010, Gordon’s back in action as a DJ and bandleader; tonight’s ensemble, which plays at 8pm, boasts an exciting lineup including David Van Tieghem, Peter Zummo, Fima Ephron, Eve Essex, and more. Mattie Safer’s silky lovetempo follows at 9pm; DFA’s Sam Duke DJs throughout.
Here & Now Winter Holidays Concert
Bargemusic at the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse
10 Montague St. at Pier 5; Brooklyn
Saturday, Dec. 13 & Sunday, Dec. 14 at 2pm; free admission
bargemusic.org
Though land-locked now, Bargemusic sets sail for year’s end with a generous bounty of new and recent piano works aboard. Composer Scott Wheeler plays the New York premiere of his own Blue Ridge Suite, joined by violist Celia Daggy. Ethan Iverson gives the world-premiere performances of Matthew Guerrieri’s Pop Songs and his own Prelude and Fugue. Kathleen Supové plays her own DenshiRenji alongside pieces by Alvin Curran and Douglas Cuomo. And Beth Levin completes the bill with the U.S. premiere of Andrew Rudin’s Piano Sonata, composed in 2013.
Chad Taylor Quintet
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Saturday, Dec. 13 at 7 & 9pm; $35–$45, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org
Likely best known for his work alongside Rob Mazurek in a constellation of Chicago Underground Duo-and-then-some projects, Chad Taylor has plied his percussive trade alongside an extraordinary range of artists, including Peter Brötzmann, Jeff Parker, Matana Roberts, Derek Bailey, and Rosa Barba. At the Jazz Gallery he’s celebrating the arrival of Smoke Shifter, a potent new quintet session on the Otherly Love label.
14
Catalytic Sound Festival
The People’s Forum
320 W. 37th St.; Midtown West
Sunday, Dec. 14 at 8pm; free admission
festival.catalyticsound.com
The creative-music co-operative Catalytic Sound is presenting its annual festival in four different cities this year; Chicago and Oslo have already sounded off, followed by NYC and Washington, D.C. this weekend. The local series, a three-day affair curated by Brandon Lopez and Zeena Parkins, starts on Sunday with a screening of Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the acclaimed 2024 documentary by Johan Grimonprez about the U.S. government’s jazz ambassador program in Africa and the February 1961 incident when Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crashed the UN Security Council to protest CIA involvement in the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Stick around for a post-screening discussion, and see Mon 15 and Tue 16 for further festival events.
15
Catalytic Sound Festival
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Monday, Dec. 15 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
See Sun 14. A truly potent lineup of creative-music collaborations tonight includes sets by Craig Taborn and Miriam Parker, Joe McPhee with Michael Foster’s Ghost, and the duo of Fred Moten and Brandon Lopez.
MACE—Mannes American Composers Ensemble
John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School
63 Fifth Ave.; Greenwich Village
Monday, Dec. 15 at 7:30pm; free admission with registration
event.mannes.edu
David Fulmer leads this Mannes new-music group in the world-premiere performance of O, the unknown, I cry for thee by Mannes graduate composer Manel Paret, and New York premieres by David Bird and Carola Bauckholt, as well as further works by Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, and Augusta Read Thomas—the last of whom will be on hand for an onstage conversation with Fulmer and the players.
Striped Light
Undisclosed location
Long Island City; Queens
Monday, Dec. 15 at 7:30pm; $17.18
withfriends.events
The last Striped Light session of 2025 features the return of bassist Moppa Elliott’s radical improvising unit Mostly Other People Do the Killing, here in a lineup with Ron Stabinsky and Kevin Shea on Nord keyboards. The bill also includes Church Car, the duo of Ian Douglas-Moore and Aaron Snyder, and an unaccompanied solo set from trumpeter and MOPDTK associate Peter Evans.
Gabriel Zucker
Littlefield
635 Sackett St.; Brooklyn
Monday, Dec. 15 at 8pm; $21.79–$39.79
littlefieldnyc.com
The term polymath could have been coined for Gabriel Zucker, who’s made a name for himself as an interpreter of rigorous piano repertoire, an improviser agile enough to go head-to-head with Tyshawn Sorey, a string arranger for artists like L’Rain, and a social activist involved in matters of taxation, homelessness, and health policy. Naturally, his new album, Confession, is something entirely different, an extravagant art-pop song cycle certain to appeal to fans of baroque acts like Sparks, Cardiacs, and Dirty Projectors, in whose company it demands to be considered. Zucker’s band for this start-to-finish performance of the album includes violinist Ledah Finck, cellist Lester St. Louis, saxophonist Alfredo Colón, and trumpeter Dave Adewumi; opening the show are guitarists Grey Mcmurray, who played on the record, and Wendy Eisenberg, who didn’t but very well could have.
16
Catalytic Sound Festival
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Tuesday, Dec. 16 at 7pm; $20
viewcy.com
See Sun 14. The final night of the Catalytic Sound Festival brings three powerful sets by seasoned collaborators: harpist Zeena Parkins and sound artist Cecilia Lopez (as heard on the recent Red Shifts) at 7pm; the trio of guitarist Chuck Roth, pianist John Blum, and saxophonist Steve Baczkowski at 8:30pm; and a final set from pianist Matt Shipp, bassist Brandon Lopez, and drummer Whit Dickey at 10pm—all covered by one affordable ticket.
To submit listings for consideration, email nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.
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.
Hi Steve!
This might be a little under the radar but we have some interesting trios Saturday!!
https://shevchenko.org/event/evening-of-ukrainian-piano-trios/
Steve Smith is right. Every AndPlay concert is special, and all too rare in NYC these days. Maybe see some of you there? https://withfriends.events/event/Vo4MbvTD/andplay-presents-the-willow-bends/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email