Slippery when wet.
Newly announced details for a Wet Ink celebration, plus choice events happening during the next seven days in New York City.
Details for the three-night festival marking the 25th anniversary of multifarious improvising composers/performers collective Wet Ink are out now, and it’s quite the eye-popping array of events. Opening night on Dec. 7 includes compositions by Peter Ablinger, Anthony Braxton, Raven Chacon, Chiyoko Szlavnics, and ensemble member 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 ensemble member Josh Modney and resident composer Rick Burkhardt, a Guillaume DuFay work arranged by ensemble member Kate Soper, and further pieces by Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, and mathias spahlinger. Guests include Peter Evans, gabby fluke-mogul, and Lester St. Louis.
The final program 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.
Phew. It’s all happening at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side, Dec. 7-9 at 8pm, and tickets are available now, here.
Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
29
Ekmeles
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St., Midtown West
Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 7:30pm; $20, seniors and students $15
simpletix.com
In a program titled “Ekmeles with Strings,” the versatile, exacting vocal ensemble Ekmeles offers the premiere of Tomás Gueglio’s Soap madrigals/Murmuring river and the first local performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’s ......., the latter featuring violist Carrie Frey. Completing the program are works by Zosha di Castri, Evan Johnson, and Dan Trueman.
Philip Glass Ensemble: “Koyaanisqatsi Live”
The Town Hall
123 W. 43rd St., Midtown West
Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 7pm, $68–$83.85
thetownhall.org
Michael Riesman leads the Philip Glass Ensemble – minus its namesake composer – in a complete performance of the score to Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio’s groundbreaking 1982 wordless screen meditation, synced to a screening of the film.
30
A highly anticipated premiere by the ingenious vocal improviser, composer, and storyteller Shelley Hirsch has been postponed until January 23, 2024.
1
Emanuel Ayvas + Jackson Greenberg
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
3 W. 65th St., Upper West Side
Friday, Dec. 1 at 8pm; $20
eventbrite.com
In an event produced by the consistently fascinating local DIY label cmntx records, violinists Giancarlo Latta and Clara Kim, violin, violist Carrie Frey, and cellist Julia Henderson are the core ensemble for live realizations of two beautiful and intriguing albums: AMMA, by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emanuel Ayvas, and The Things We Pass On Through Our Genes, by composer Jackson Greenberg. (I recently wrote a bit more about Greenberg and his album, here.)
loadbang
Church of the Intercession
550 W. 155th St., Harlem
Friday, Dec. 1 at 7:30pm; $20, seniors and students $10
eventbrite.com
Baritone Tyler Bouque, trumpeter Andy Kozar, trombonist William Lang, and clarinetist Adrián Sandi, the disparate quartet collectively known as loadbang, introduce new works by Mario Diaz de Leon and Ben Richter, presented alongside recent music by ensemble member Lang, Chen Yi, and Adam Zahller, as well as Renaissance pieces by Johannes Ciconia, Vincente Lusitano, and Cristóbal de Morales.
Unsound New York
Various venues
Lincoln Center, Upper West Side
Friday, Dec. 1, Saturday, Dec. 2 at 7:30pm; Monday, Dec. 4 at 8pm; pay what you choose.
lincolncenter.org
Trailblazing Polish music and sound-art festival Unsound returns to New York City for three concerts of adventurous sounds. A free opening event on Friday at the Rubenstein Atrium features performances by jazz guitarist Raphael Rogiński and vocalist-soundscaper Martyna Basta. A second show on Saturday at Alice Tully Hall features Osmium, a sound-art supergroup comprising Hildur Guðnadóttir, Sam Slater, James Ginzberg, and Rully Shabara, plus video artist Robin Fox’s project TRIPTYCH. The finale on Monday at David Geffen Hall, brings together two towering figures in contemporary music: British hauntologist James Leyland Kirby, making a rare U.S. live appearance as The Caretaker, and Philadelphia poet and musician Moor Mother, presenting her spellbinding Black Encyclopedia of the Air.
2
Sō Percussion
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave., Midtown West
Saturday, Dec. 2 at 9pm; $65–$75
carnegiehall.org
Joined by a cadre of special guests, the intrepid explorers of Sō Percussion present world premieres by Vijay Iyer and Olivier Tarpaga, along with recent pieces by Angélica Negrón and ensemble member Jason Treuting.
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side
Saturday, Dec. 2 at 8pm; $47–$470
metopera.org
The first opera by composer Anthony Davis and librettist Thulani Davis – introduced at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia in 1985, and presented in its operatic premiere by New York City Opera in 1986 – comes to the Metropolitan Opera in a new production helmed by the Tony-nominated director Robert O’Hara. Will Liverman is in the title role, and Kazem Abdullah conducts.
3
NOVUS NY and Sandbox Percussion
Trinity Wall Street
89 Broadway, Downtown New York
Sunday, Dec. 3 at 4pm; free admission
trinitywallstreet.org
Inventive quartet Sandbox Percussion joins Trinity Wall Street’s house orchestra, NOVUS NY, in a performance of Viet Cuong’s concerto Re(new)al. That clever, appealing work shares a program with two pieces inspired by The Overstory, Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about nature, conservation, and activism: A Passage Between Earth and Sky, by Jessica Meyer, and A Forest Unfolding, a cantata jointly created by composers David Kirkland Garner, Stephen Jaffe, Eric Moe, and Melinda Wagner.
For even more listings, see the Night After Night Watch master list, here.
Thank you.
(Photographs by the author, except where indicated otherwise.)