Gratitude, 2025.
A powerful first impression of the Powerhouse: International music series, plus recommended live new-music events for Nov. 26–Dec. 2.
I’m grateful to everyone who’s read, subscribed, responded to, interacted with, and/or provided information to Night After Night throughout the year.
I’m also mighty grateful to claire rousay, Kelly Moran, Adam Shore, and everyone else involved in the Powerhouse: International festival for a truly breathtaking opening event last Saturday night in Brooklyn.
Moran’s innovative opening set amounted to a mixtape of favorite compositions by John Luther Adams, Missy Mazzoli, and Nico Muhly, time-stretched songs by Tate McCrae, and her own pieces, over which she improvised complementary piano parts. Presented under brilliant lights in a haze of stage fog, it was a positively theatrical approach to the DJ set notion. (Even without lights, fog, and improvisation, the mix itself is really special.)
Then rousay took the stage, initially focusing on upright piano, laptop, and effects with a dream band including Alex Cunningham and Mari Maurice (more eaze) on violins, Lia Kohl on cello, and Wendy Eisenberg on electric guitar in selections from her latest Thrill Jockey release, a little death.
Abetted by this versatile, resourceful ensemble of improvising composers, each a leader in their own right, rousay brought the enigmatic sound-art of a little death to life onstage. I wasn’t bright enough to request a set list, but feel reasonably confident in stating the first part of the show mirrored the album’s sequence: “i couldn’t find the light,” “conditional love,” “just,” and “somehow.”
True to the hats at the merch table (and, yes, the T-shirt I was wearing; I’ve always been the nerd who wears the artist’s kit to the show) emblazoned with rousay’s cheeky genre tag, emo ambient, the music mostly moved in swells and billows of bowed and fluttering strings, rousay adding modest piano, digital effects, and the vital sampled voices. But when something more anxious was required, the players ventured authoritatively into art-noise terrain reminiscent of Helmut Lachenmann’s chirrups and scrapes.
During an arresting interlude by poet and sound artist LA Warman, rousay prowled through the audience harvesting spoken words with her phone – did Michael Azerrad arrive with any suspicion that he’d be a collaborator? – and, on returning to the stage, threaded what she’d collected into a chatty collage. Strapping on an electric guitar, she performed “lover’s spit plays in the background” and “it could be anything,” from her previous album, sentiment.
Sweetly sung and luminously accompanied, these nakedly vulnerable ballads came at exactly the right moment. One more instrumental segment – the titular “a little death,” I reckon – and the show concluded. Which is not to say it ended, because the crepuscular sights and sounds of this transfigured night continue to echo, haunt, and inspire, and I’d pay to experience it again in a heartbeat.
Powerhouse: International continues on Tuesday, December 2 with Moor Mother and Pussy Riot; more details and a complete calendar here.
Night After Night is taking a break on Friday, November 28. In lieu of the weekly For the Record column, please consult the Master List for new and upcoming recordings. The newsletter will return on Tuesday, December 2.
The Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
26
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper West Side
Wednesday, Nov. 26, Friday, Nov. 28 & Saturday, Nov. 29 at 7:30pm; $88–$111
nyphil.org
Stéphane Denève conducts the NY Phil in three hearty slices of 20th-century orchestral conjuration: Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto (with soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet), Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus, and Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Completing the bill is the New York premiere of Icarus by Lera Auerbach; listen closely for Rob Schwimmer on theremin.
27
Jason Moran & The Bandwagon
Village Vanguard
178 Seventh Ave. S.; Greenwich Village
Thursday, Nov. 27 at 10pm; $45
villagevanguard.com
Nowhere is the entire lineage of creative improvised music employed more nimbly and comprehensively than in a set by pianist-composer Jason Moran and his long-serving trio, the Bandwagon, with electric bass guitarist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. The band’s at the most celebrated basement in jazzdom for its annual Thanksgiving-week hang, and when last I checked, you could still score tickets for late sets on Thursday and Sunday, and both sets Saturday.
28
Matthew Shipp & Rob Brown
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Friday, Nov. 28 at 8 & 10pm; $20
closeupnyc.com
Pianist Matthew Shipp and alto saxophonist Rob Brown have been together seemingly forever, having made their joint debut on 1988’s Sonic Explorations. They’ve worked together sporadically ever since, and share a lean, muscular bond that brings out the best in each player—evident on their most recent joint document, 2020’s Then Now. This intimate reunion should be an ideal way to recover from Thanksgiving overindulgence.
29
Kalia Vandever Quartet
Public Records
233 Butler St.; Brooklyn
Saturday, Nov. 29 at 7pm; $26.78
dice.fm
The first thing you’re likely to notice about Another View, the new album by trombonist Kalia Vandever, is how much it favors conversation and cooperation over competition and grandstanding… nearly the first whole minute of the LP is a loopy soliloquy by guitarist Mary Halvorson, who seems to talk to herself and get answers in response. The album is inspired by Carmen Maria Machado’s 2019 memoir, In the Dream House, and it’s clear Vandever and Halvorson are on the same page, sometimes finishing one another’s sentences; support from bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Kayvon Gordon is unfailingly subtle and supple.
30
S.E.M. Ensemble
Willow Place Auditorium
26 Willow Place; Brooklyn
Sunday, Nov. 30 at 8pm; free admission with reservations
eventbrite.com
As per their regular custom, flutist, conductor, and composer Petr Kotik and his S.E.M. Ensemble throw open the doors of their Brooklyn rehearsal space for a gratis dry run of the concert they’ll present on Tuesday at Paula Cooper Gallery in Manhattan (see Tue 2). The program includes Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, a Kotik composition with words by Buckminster Fuller, plus John Cage’s Cheap Imitation No. 1 and Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate.
1
Patricia Brennan
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Monday, Dec. 1 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
Mexican-American vibraphonist, marimbist, bandleader, and composer Patricia Brennan has been on an unbeatable winning streak pretty much ever since she dropped her 2021 solo debut, the mesmerizing unaccompanied Maquishti, building something new with every step since. Her new album, Of the Near and Far, was inspired by the cosmos, so it makes sense she’d assemble a band big enough to accommodate the vastness of her vision, equipped with strings and circuitry. It’s a group almost certainly too big to assemble or tour very often, so if you’re inclined, best get down here. For those who can’t, the show will be streamed live and archived for on-demand viewing on the Roulette website and YouTube.
TAK Ensemble
520 Clinton Ave.; Brooklyn
Monday, Dec. 1 at 7:30pm; pay what you can, no one turned away for lack of funds
takensemble.com
Exploration and access are key tenets for the intrepid adventurers of TAK Ensemble, and both come into play for this concert, a rare complete performance of Love, Crystal and Stone, a technically virtuosic, temperamentally ecstatic response to Federico García Lorca’s poetry by Iranian-Canadian composer Ashkan Behzadi. That’s the exploration accounted for, and the band assures access to everyone according to their financial situation: if you can pay more, do, and if you can’t, come anyway. Hardanger d’amore improviser Zosha Warpeha, who made a resounding splash with her 2024 solo debut silver dawn, plays an opening set.
2
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave.; Midtown East
Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 7:30pm, through Dec. 14; $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.
S.E.M. Ensemble
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 W. 21st St., Chelsea
Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 7:30pm; $25, advance $15
eventbrite.com
See Sun 30.
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.