Giant beauty.
The utterly singular British quartet أحمد [Ahmed] visits New York City, plus more recommended live new-music events March 18–25.
Maybe you’ve heard of أحمد [Ahmed], the idiosyncratic, extraordinary quartet that sprang forth fully formed in 2017. Since that time, pianist Pat Thomas, saxophonist Seymour Wright, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Antonin Gerbal have released four albums, a single, and a 5CD box set, transforming the music of Black American bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik into epic-length disquisitions on timbre, rhythm, spontaneity, and the inheritance of tradition. Or maybe the band is new to you. Either way, a prediction: you’re unlikely to find a more singular experience anywhere in town this week.
Speaking to The Wire for an online brief in 2019, Wright described why and how the four players set out to honor Abdul-Malik, a Brooklyn-born musician who played with Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Randy Weston, among others. As a leader Abdul-Malik sought to infuse American jazz with elements of Middle Eastern and North African music:
“[T]he project is about us learning about, reflecting (or even meditating) on, (re)imagining and drawing attention to the ideas, work and approach of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. The etymology of the name Ahmed – or Ahmad – is something like to thank or praise. So to us it felt an appropriate appreciation and acknowledgement, given the way we work with our ideas and imaginations of his work and ideas, imaginations and influence, to name what we do in this way.”
As with The Necks, an أحمد [Ahmed] performance might consist of a single piece approaching or exceeding an hour in continuous duration, exploring simple, subtle material at supernatural length. Unlike that similarly sui generis Australian trio, this British quartet is less meditative than obsessive: why take a line for a walk, as Paul Klee suggested, when you can drive it like a mechanized plow? I wouldn’t say أحمد [Ahmed] sounds so much like Anthony Braxton’s notorious Piano Quartet of the early ’90s, in which the leader comped at the piano in pulverizing blocks, but for me there’s a similar quality of obstreperous glee about the band’s romping, honking enterprise.
Thomas, a versatile pianist whose repertoire extends from Duke Ellington via Tony Oxley and Derek Bailey to This Is Trick Step, a 2024 electronics album he described as “an Alternative Universe where JDilla and Morton Feldman collaborate,” might laugh at the furrowed intensity of my characterization—after all, the band also swings furiously. Interviewed by the tireless Joshua Minsoo Kim during an extraordinary week of Tone Glow newsletters devoted solely to أحمد [Ahmed] last year – one for each member, the fifth a collective chat about Abdul-Malik – Thomas described how the band found its groove:
“We went to Hong Kong and were supposed to make a record for this label there. We were booked as the party band, which was hilarious and completely insane. But we did lock in. If you see people trying to dance, you will start trying to lock in—it’s just an unconscious thing. And I think that’s when we turned into [Ahmed].”
This Roulette engagement is the band’s U.S. debut, and it also appears to be Thomas’s first-ever performance in New York: a shocking notion for so distinguished a player—and please correct me if I’m mistaken. (It’s not his Roulette debut, though; in 2022 Thomas participated in Transatlantic Trance Map, a real-time collaboration between groups located here and in the U.K.) Regardless, this is a rare and special opportunity to catch in person one of the most distinctive and highly regarded improvisational units currently working. Basically, a no-brainer.
أحمد [Ahmed] performs at Roulette on Tuesday, March 25 at 8pm; details below.
The Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
18
Copland House Ensemble
Elebash Hall, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave.; Midtown East
Tuesday, March 18 at 6:30pm; free admission with registration
gc.cuny.edu
Music from Copland House dispatches its house ensemble to midtown Manhattan for an early-evening program featuring compositions inspired by visual art and film. Included are the world premiere of Lightplay, a newly commissioned work by Bobby Ge, alongside pieces by Robert Sirota, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Viet Cuong. Admission is free with registration, here.
19
Moby-Dick
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center
30 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper West Side
Wednesday, March 19 at 7:30pm, Saturday, March 22 at 8pm, Tuesday, March 25 at 7:30pm; $42–$400
metopera.org
Karen Kamensek conducts the Met Opera premiere of a 2010 opera by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, which handily adapts Herman Melville’s classic novel into a lean, effective lyric drama resourcefully staged by Leonard Foglia. As I wrote in The New York Times about the world premiere at Dallas Opera (gift link), you’ll hear echoes of Debussy, Puccini, Britten, Glass, and more, deployed with shrewd dramatic instincts. The solid cast here includes Brandon Jovanovich, Stephen Costello, Peter Mattei, Ryan Speedo Green, and Janai Brugger.
20
Charlotte Mundy
Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave.; Midtown East
Thursday, March 20 at 6pm; free admission
gc.cuny.edu
Hard on the heels of releasing The Sea, a sublime recorded collaboration with composer Francisco del Pino, NYC MVP soprano Charlotte Mundy presents a DMA recital with pianist Nathaniel LaNasa. The program includes selections by Tania León, Hannah Kendall, Katherine Balch, Kate Soper, and Gelsey Bell, and if you can’t attend in person, the recital will be streamed live via Zoom, accessible here.
Experiments in Opera
The Tank
312 W. 36th St.; Midtown West
Thursday, March 20—Saturday, March 22 at 7pm; sold out
experimentsinopera.com
Experiments in Opera, a consistently innovative incubator for contemporary opera and music theater, mounts a double bill of single-performer works, “SOLOperas.” Included are The INcomplete Cosmicomics, a riff on Italo Calvino’s mystical entity Qfwfq for vocalizing cellist, created by composer Anna Heflin and performed here by Aaron Wolff; and This is Not About Natalie by Jason Cady, in which singing guitarist Sarah Daniels portrays a singer-songwriter who interacts with a ventriloquist doll. Alas, it appears that all three shows are sold out, but check in for returns and cancellations.
Variations for Dusk
HiFi Provisions
51 35th St., Building 5; Brooklyn
Thursday, March 20 at 8pm; $20
eventbrite.com
Variations for Dusk is an experimental/ambient music series curated by Chet Doxas and Micah Frank—a.k.a. Larum, which has a second volume of gorgeous Hildegard von Bingen interpretations and elaborations due on April 11. Returning from an extended hiatus, the series resumes with a choice program: VONDISY pairs Frank with IDM producer Kodomo (Chris Child), Doxas teams up with BlankFor.ms (Tyler Gilmore) on degraded tapes and analog synths, and UCC Harlo (singing violist Annie Garlid) completes the bill.
With Womens Work
Issue Project Room
22 Boerum Pl.; Brooklyn
Thursday, March 20–Saturday, March 22 at 8pm; $20
issueprojectroom.org
Issue Project Room returns to its stately Boerum Place HQ for With Womens Work, a series of concerts and other events honoring Womens Work, a magazine edited and self-published by composers Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood in 1975, and also building on Issue’s previous With Womens Work Series, a 2021 virtual festival that offered fresh realizations of scores from the 1975 magazine. Thursday’s program features new works by Sydney Spann and Audrey Chen. Friday’s event includes a performance by Annabelle Playe and a panel discussion involving Lockwood, Chen, and crys cole. Beth Anderson hosts a free composition workshop on Saturday afternoon at 2pm, and on Saturday evening cole and Maayan Tsadka will present new works.
21
Wild Up
92NY
1395 Lexington Ave., Upper East Side
Friday, March 21 & Saturday, March 22 at 7:30pm, Sunday, March 23 at 2pm; $40 and up
92ny.org
The eclectic, persuasive West Coast (mostly) supergroup Wild Up brings its intriguing Darkness Sounding series, a winter celebration of deep, contemplative listening, to New York City for the first time. Friday’s program offers a world premiere by Sarah Davachi, a local premiere by Andrew McIntosh, and McIntosh’s arrangement of Four Violins, Tony Conrad’s milestone of frictive minimalism. Saturday’s concert includes pieces by Scott Walker (yes, the “Pop Idol Turned Avant Auteur”), Leilehua Lanzilotti, James Tenney, and Claude Vivier; for Sunday’s finale, McIntosh plays Baroque maverick Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s 15 extraordinary Rosary Sonatas, replicating a California event Alex Ross named one of 2023’s most memorable.
22
International Contemporary Ensemble
NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Place, Greenwich Village
Saturday, March 22 at 7:30pm; $39–$50
nyuskirball.org
The latest offering from the vital International Contemporary Ensemble, part of a series titled “Composing While Black,” finds the group collaborating with the New York chapter of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). The program features works by Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson, Thurman Barker, and Reggie Nicholson.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave.; Upper East Side
Saturday, March 22 at 7 & 9pm; $45
armoryonpark.org
Opening the newest season of the consistently probing Artists Studio series Jason Moran curates for the Park Avenue Armory’s handsome Veterans Room, composer, improviser, and sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe presents the premiere of The Unbearable Comedy of a Caterwaul in 4 Parts, a new work for modular synthesizer, voice, and bowed and struck objects.
23
The Rhythm Method
JACK
20 Putnam Ave.; Brooklyn
Sunday, March 23 at 4pm; free admission
therhythmmethod.nyc
Groundbreaking string quartet The Rhythm Method hosts its sixth-annual Broad Statements mini-festival, a one-day celebration of creative music making by women and other gender-marginalized artists—and yes, I’m choosing to cite the group’s own words to accurately encapsulate a worldview that embraces improvising drummer and composer Lesley Mok, klezmer fiddler and folkways explorer Zoë Aqua, and Latinx composer and vocal improviser isabel crespo pardo. The quartet opens its show at 4pm and also plays the closing set at 6pm.
24
Juilliard at Zankel Hall
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave.; Midtown West
Monday, March 24 at 7:30pm; sold out
carnegiehall.org
Accomplished student musicians from The Juilliard School come to Carnegie Hall’s subterranean den for an evening of compositions by three of the school’s Arnhold Creative Associates: Matthew Aucoin, Jessie Montgomery, and Caroline Shaw. The stylistically wide-roaming program includes world premieres by Aucoin and Shaw, and all three composers will be on hand to discuss their work with Juilliard President Damian Woetzel. The show’s officially sold out, but it never hurts to check on returns and cancellations.
25
أحمد [Ahmed]
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
Tuesday, March 25 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
See feature, above. If you can’t attend in person, the show will stream live and be archived for on-demand viewing on the Roulette website and YouTube.
Rebekah Heller
Miller Theatre, Columbia University
2960 Broadway, Upper West Side
Tuesday, March 25 at 6pm; free admission
millertheatre.com
The dynamic bassoonist, conductor, and International Contemporary Ensemble core member Rebekah Heller appears as part of Miller Theatre’s generous series of intimate, casual free Pop-Up Concerts, which invite audience members onstage to surround the featured attraction, Her program pairs a world premiere, Righteous Rage by Brittany J. Green, with a bassoon-choir arrangement of Julius Eastman’s The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, plus further works by Fay Victor, Jessie Cox, and Joy Guidry.
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.
Good gawd, 'Nights on Saturn' is utterly *amazing.* Where have these guys been all my life!?! Thanks so much for sharing this.