Got to choose.
A brief look back at last week's musical doings, and a generous clutch of choice new-music events happening during the next seven days in New York City.
I only got out to two live music events last week, and I daresay you don’t want me to go on at any length about the first one.
So let’s just say that Kiss, in presenting what was billed as its last-ever live performance last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, mounted the Platonic ideal of a Kiss show. As a lifelong fan of the band in all its garish, lunkhead glory, I needed to be there—were it not for Kiss, I literally would not be writing this now, and you would not be reading it.
After long weeks of mounting alarm over extravagant secondary-market ticket prices, fortune smiled upon me in the form of a 13th-row floor seat priced at face value, which popped up on Ticketmaster only a few hours before showtime. Closure achieved.
The previous afternoon, I’d heard pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque play the second New York performance of Bryce Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Semyon Bychkov. I know there are Dessner naysayers out there, but I’m not one of them. The 2019 Deutsche Grammophon recording of this piece reveals what a skillfully made, attractive, and effective work it is.
I was mystified by its rather more muted impact at David Geffen Hall, especially hard on the heels of a high-octane account of Richard Strauss’s Don Juan. Then I read the New York Times review by Oussama Zahr, which reported that Bychkov had “opted for a reduced orchestration that sounded skeletal in live performance.”
And so it did. A friend said the piece sounded like Philip Glass; I responded that, if so, it was a Glass who’d been hypnotized and told he was Béla Bartók. Listening again to the recording, I’m more inclined to invoke a kinship with John Adams in the way Dessner deftly balances standard virtuoso showpiece conventions with post-minimalist shimmer and propulsion. Read Oussama Zahr for more, here.
Sad but true: I’ve come down with a nasty cold, which prevented my attending the Unsound Festival show with The Caretaker and Moor Mother on Monday at Geffen Hall. (ARTNews and Art in America executive editor Andy Battaglia posted some intriguing clips on Instagram; I’m hoping a review might follow.)
This being the case – snrffl, ahacchu!! – I’ll cut to the listings here, and hope to recover swiftly so I’m not forced to cancel the next item on my own agenda.
Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
6
Ashley Bathgate with Mantra Percussion
National Sawdust
80 N. 6th St., Williamsburg
Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 7:30pm; $25
nationalsawdust.org
Cellist Ashley Bathgate teams up with Mantra Percussion to introduce Topography, described by composer Matt McBane as a “terrestrial companion” to his previous electroacoustic tour de force, Bathymetry. Bathgate opens alone in works by Anuj Bhutani and Kate Moore. (If you miss this one, watch out for a delayed stream on a future episode of New Sounds.)
Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 8pm; $30, advance, seniors, and students $25
Free livestream, donations encouraged
roulette.org
Stellar vibraphonist Patricia Brennan enlists a superb duo partner, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, for the debut of a new project, Talamanti, for mallet percussion, piano, and electronics. I could say more, but instead encourage you to read a characteristically lapidary blurb by Jim Macnie, master of that particular form. If you can’t attend in person, the show will stream free of charge on the Roulette website and YouTube, and will be archived for on-demand viewing afterward.
7
TAK Ensemble
MITU580
580 Sackett St., Brooklyn
Thursday, Dec. 7 at 8pm; pay-what-you-can starting at $10
takensemble.com
TAK Ensemble presents the premiere of Organic Synthesis, Volume 2, a new work by Bryan Jacobs that you can learn more about in the latest episode of the ensemble’s TAK Editions Podcast. Also on the bill are Michelle Lou’s In a Forest and Andrés Gudarrama’s La quemada es el lenguaje con que juro, manos abiertos sobre el hielo. The suggested cost of admission is just $10, but TAK says no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Wet Ink 25th Anniversary Festival
Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St., Lower East Side
Thursday, Dec. 7–Saturday, Dec. 9 at 8pm; suggested donation $20, three-night pass $50
eventbrite.com
The 25th anniversary of multifarious improvising composers/performers collective Wet Ink offers an eye-popping array of events. Opening night includes compositions by Peter Ablinger, Anthony Braxton, Raven Chacon, Chiyoko Szlavnics, and Wet Ink cellist Mariel Roberts, with a star-studded ensemble including guests Gelsey Bell, Carrie Frey, Darius Jones, Charmaine Lee, and Charlie Looker. Program two features world premieres by Wet Ink violinist Josh Modney and resident composer Rick Burkhardt, a Guillaume DuFay work arranged by Wet Ink vocalist Kate Soper, and further pieces by Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, and mathias spahlinger; guests include Peter Evans, gabby fluke-mogul, and Lester St. Louis. And the finale on Saturday focuses on pieces by and for the core Wet Ink group, including a Kate Soper premiere and pieces by Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, and Eric Wubbels.
8
andPlay
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St, Midtown West
Friday, Dec. 8 at 7:30pm; $15, students and community $10
eventbrite.com
andPlay, the duo of violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson, celebrates the release of Translucent Harmonies, issued by the reliably compelling label Another Timbre and featuring sublime accounts of works by Catherine Lamb and Kristofer Svensson. But don’t show up expecting a verbatim repeat: Bennardo and Levinson are playing two new pieces by Svensson and the ensemble version of Lamb’s Prisma Interius VIII, joined in the last by cellist Thea Mesirow, bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, bass, and David Adamcyk and Corie Rose Soumah on rainbow synthesizers. Madison Greenstone, a clarinetist of astounding capabilities, opens with extended-technique études from their recent solo record, Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness.
Either/Or
Speyer Hall, University Settlement
184 Eldridge St., Lower East Side
Friday, Dec. 8 at 8pm; $20, seniors and students $10
eventbrite.com
Venturesome new-music ensemble Either/Or presents a pair of fascinating large-scale works: It only has shelves, a world premiere by Victoria Cheah (featured on electronics), and Requiem of Art (fluxum organum II) Opus 50, a Fluxus tape piece by enigmatic Danish composer Henning Christiansen, in a realization for ensemble by Apartment House director and cellist Anton Lukoszevieze.
Carl Stone 70th Birthday Lollapalooza
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Friday, Dec. 8 and Saturday, Dec. 9 at 8pm; $30, advance, seniors, and students $20
Free livestream, donations encouraged
roulette.org
Pioneering digital-sampling artist and electronic improviser Carl Stone wraps up the final leg of a world tour marking his 70th birthday and his newest anthology on Unseen Worlds, Electronic Music from 1972-2022, with two nights of solo performances, collaborations, and new projects. Friday’s bill features the local debit of Senile Felines, in which Stone teams up with Ned Rothenberg on winds and Soo Yeon Lyuh on haegeum; Saturday brings a new trio with Stone, violinist Todd Reynolds, and pedal-steel guitarist Matthew Sargent.
10
Marty Ehrlich Dark Woods/Bright Sparks
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Sunday, Dec. 10 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
Free livestream; donations encouraged
roulette.org
The versatile improving wind player Marty Ehrlich formed his Dark Woods Ensemble in the early ’90s, augmenting its woodwind/cello/bass core as needed to express his more intimate compositional leanings. Here, though, he tricks out the core group of himself, cellist Erik Friedlander, and bassist Matt Pavolka with a clutch of brighter companions – trumpeter Ron Horton, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi – plus his wife, poet Erica Hunt, for a program of new compositions.
For even more listings, see the Night After Night Watch master list, here.
Thank you.
(Photographs by the author, except where indicated otherwise.)