Start of something new.
Groundbreaking composer-performer Frankie Mann presents her first NYC performance in more than 20 years—plus more events during the week ahead.
Uptown this week, esteemed bassist, composer, and bandleader Dave Holland comes to Smoke Jazz for the first time with a bold new quartet of fellow leaders—“an outfit that lets the action unfold with the patience of a chess master (as well as boasting a chess master's strategy insights),” the redoubtable Jim Macnie proclaimed earlier today in his weekly “Must See Three” post. Midtown, Adam O’Farrill mounts a two-night stand with a memorably named quartet. Way out in Red Hook, the International Contemporary Ensemble is performing with veteran improviser and sound designer Earl Howard.
Clearly, the new season is upon us.
My recent note about my new place and mode of employment, and what impact it will have on this newsletter and everything else, is here.
The show I’m looking forward to most is the first performance in more than 20 years by Frankie Mann, a downtown composer and performer active during the ’70s and ’80s, regarding whom the internet is very light on details. One learns from Wikipedia that Mann was born in Charlotte, NC, in 1955, studied electronic music at Oberlin and Mills, where she worked with David Behrman and Robert Ashley, and released music – though evidently not much – on the Lovely Music label, whose roster included Ashley and Behrman.
Turning to archival media isn’t a lot more revealing. Here’s John Rockwell, reporting for The New York Times in 1979:
To this taste, the “best” pieces were by Phill Niblock, Charles Dodge, David Behrman, Rhys Chatham, Frankie Mann and Laurie Anderson. … Miss Mann revealed an intuitively convincing sense of flow and shape in her use of all manner of electronic musics…
Why best gets scare quotes is beyond me, but Mann’s in some pretty heavy company. A 1983 review by dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, also for The New York Times, provides a fleeting glimpse of Mann’s style and range:
Frankie Mann, the composer-performer, was dominant in the pieces danced by Eric Barsness and Julie Lifton. “Sea Ranch” had Miss Mann at the xylophone, in dress-shirt and black tie, singing her lyrics about California romance, how horrible Christmas is and a warning about a walking grenade, as opposed to a Waltzing Matilda.
This collage, with a steady beat as underpinning, offered a witty commentary on the state of our unwitty world and contrasted effectively with the formal minimal dances, in two diagonals, by Miss Lifton and Mr. Barsness. “The Party” had Miss Lifton in black bra and tulle, slinking with punk artiness. Mr. Barsness, in earrings, necklaces and blue tulle, was the other side of the coin in “Danke Schöen,” in which Miss Mann did a Marlene Dietrich number.
I presume it’s Mann performing on xylophone during a 1983 performance with Behrman in the handful of photos MoMA PS1 has posted here.
Here’s an excerpt from a 1985 New York Times review by Tim Page:
Miss Mann, who hails from California, played a small synthesizer and occasional other instruments to the accompaniment of her own pre-recorded tapes. Her music is direct and uncomplicated – quirky melodies superimposed over simple rhythmic patterns. Selections from Miss Mann's “Seven Deadly Sins” called to mind a cross between a Satie Gymnopedie and “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy.”
From 1986, here’s Rockwell again, also in the Times and rather less positive on the subject of Seven Deadly Sins:
…determinedly chirpy music, its colors further brightened by the inherent timbre of the electronic equipment, subverted the presumed variety one might expect in any musical depiction of “Sloth,” “Lust,” “Anger” and so forth. Ms. Mann used a computer as part of the composing process, and while the resultant emotional anonymity may have been intended, it seemed to subvert any programmatic intentions.
Crabby as Rockwell occasionally was (and still can be) I’m nevertheless intrigued by what he describes. Kyle Gann, in a Village Voice review that should be read in full – download a PDF here – found deeper currents in what Rockwell dismissed:
The harsh incongruity between the sophistication of the performance and the fake naïvete of the music posed many such difficult questions. The building’s corporate-looking lobby, the elevated loudspeakers, and the cloying synthesizer timbres conspired to create the insidious aura of Muzak. So monotonous was the music's rumpty-tum rhythm that it invited the tapping of feet even as it ridiculed the expectation of variety, as though inviting us to participate in our own humiliation. Underneath the ostensive parody of social values seemed to be a more subversive parody of compositional technique itself—of the very idea of musicality.
Now, that sounds promising. Gann wrote about Mann several times, and in another instance likened what he heard in and appreciated about two younger composer-performers, Corey Dargel and Rob Reich, to Mann’s work.
Mann’s last New York City performance was a Roulette engagement on April 30, 2000: the premiere of a project called I Land, with words by Mary Griffith, an author, poet and librettist who also collaborated with Leroy Jenkins and Joseph Hannan. Choreographer Eric Barsness joined Mann for the occasion, with Hannan at the keyboard—and, thanks to the ceaseless bounty of the Roulette archives, you can watch it on-demand online, free of charge.
Why Mann left the scene, and what she’s been doing since, are questions I hope very much that someone will address; regardless, the prospect of her return engagement is tremendously exciting. The performance, mounted by Issue Project Room, will be held at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn on Saturday, Sept. 7 at 8pm.
Joining Mann for an evening of new compositions are her longtime colleague David Behrman, plus Allison Easter, Sarah Hennies, and John King. You can read a great deal more and order tickets here.
The Night After Night Watch.
Sept. 3–10, 2024.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
3
Tim Berne
Lowlands
543 3rd Ave., Brooklyn
Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 8pm; pass-the-hat
Instagram
Saxophonist Tim Berne is back at Lowlands on Tuesday, playing with an aggregate that may or may not be called The Diversions: guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi, bassist John Hébert, and drummer Tom Rainey.
Sam Weinberg Trio
Sisters
900 Fulton St., Brooklyn
Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 8:30pm; $20 suggested donation (cash/Venmo at door)
sistersbklyn.com
Saxophonist Sam Weinberg continues his back-room residency at Sisters in Brooklyn, leading a trio with bassist Henry Fraser and drummer Jason Nazary. Sharing the bill are flute dynamo Laura Cocks and poet Parker Menzimer.
4
Dave Holland New Quartet
Smoke Jazz
2751 Broadway, Upper West Side
Wednesday, Sept. 4, Thursday, Sept. 5, and Sunday, Sept. 8 at 7 & 9pm
Friday, Sept. 6 and Saturday, Sept. 7 at 7, 9 & 10:30pm; $25–$55
7 and 9pm sets are dinner shows, requiring entree purchase; $20 minimum for 10:30pm sets
tickets.smokejazz.com
The venerable British bassist Dave Holland rumbles into Smoke for the first time with his latest ensemble, a lithe quartet featuring saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, pianist Kris Davis, and drummer Nasheet Waits . Everyone onstage is a bandleader and composer, and the set list reflects makes the most of that explosive potential. The band has turned heads already at SFJAZZ, Big Ears, and across Europe, and tickets are understandably scarce.
5
International Contemporary Ensemble
Pioneer Works
159 Pioneer St., Red Hook
Thursday, Sept. 5 at 8pm; $20 (plus $5.58 fee)
pioneerworks.org
Appearing under the auspices of the ever-illuminating series False Harmonics, the International Contemporary Ensemble opens its new season with the world premiere of Boson1, a flexible-instrumentation structured improvisation by Earl Howard for 10 players and a performer of live sound processing—here, Howard himself. The program also includes compositions by Fay Victor, Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, Ingrid Laubrock, Rick Burkhardt, and Nicole Mitchell.
6
Dark Music Days at PAC
Perelman Performing Arts Center
251 Fulton St., Lower Manhattan
Friday, Sept. 6 at 5:30pm; free admission, first-come first-served
inspiredbyiceland.com
Presented under the aegis of the tourism-oriented Taste of Iceland series, this preview of Reykjavik’s long-running Dark Music Days festival features violinist-composer Keir GoGwilt, composer-performer Celeste Oram, and Ensemble Adapter (percussionist Matthias Engler and harpist Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir) in a performance of Yunge Eylands Varpcast Netwerkið, a 60-minute live-radio play that mixes and melds songs, stories, music, and archival broadcasts to evoke the role radio plays in isolated island-nations like Iceland and Oram’s native New Zealand.
7
Frankie Mann
First Unitarian Congregational Society
121 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn
Saturday, Sept. 7 at 8pm; $25
issueprojectroom.org
For her first New York City performance in more than 20 years, pioneering electronic composer/performer Frankie Mann is joined by David Behrman, Sarah Hennies, and John King in Descent, a new work for acoustic and electronic instruments and soundscapes, and Songs: 3+3, a collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Allison Easter
8
Alex Zhang Hungtai
Noguchi Museum
9-01 33rd Rd., Long Island City
Sunday, Sept. 8 at 3:30pm; $16, seniors and students $6, under 12 free
noguchi.org
The monthly Bang on a Can Summer–Fall concert series at the Noguchi Museum concludes with a performance by Alex Zhang Hungtai, formerly active under the name Dirty Beaches and now involved in improvised music and film scoring in Los Angeles. These shows are ideally intimate and tickets are limited, but they include museum access—a substantial bonus.
10
Adam O’Farrill
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th floor, Midtown East
Tuesday, Sept. 10 and Wednesday, Sept. 11, 7:30 & 9:30pm; $28–$39
Livestream tickets $22
jazzgallery.org
I’ve admired the work trumpeter Adam O’Farrill has done in ensembles led by Mary Halvorson and Anna Webber, but my friend and colleague Peter Margasak made it very clear to me yesterday in his latest Nowhere Street post that I’ve slept on O’Farrill’s work as a bandleader—something I addressed this morning with a first spin of his impressive new quartet album, Hueso. During these two nights at The Jazz Gallery, he’ll be leading a different quartet, Elephant, with pianist Yvonne Rogers (a fast-rising artist I’m watching closely these days), bassist Walter Stinson, and drummer Russell Holzman, in material they’ll be recording soon. (If you can’t attend in person, livestream tickets are available both nights.)
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.