Stepping out.
A feature story in The New York Times, news from FourOneOne in Brooklyn, a Joshua Bell premiere, and live music highlights for the next seven days.
I’m very happy to be back in The New York Times this week, and with my first feature outside of the classical music & opera world: a profile of Tangerine Dream, now touring for the first time ever without founder Edgar Froese, who died in 2015. The current trio has carried on at Froese’s behest and with his blessing—not that every former member of the storied group agrees. My personal view is that the band is making some of the strongest music of its long career right now, especially with last year’s Raum, which is why I bought my ticket for their concert this Saturday at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth a long, long time before I pitched this feature.
News this week from FourOneOne, which I described as “one of New York City’s most vital spaces” based on its consistently excellent programming, as well as seeing veena master Bahauddin Dagar improvise there recently with Melvin Gibbs and Joseph Branciforte—part of an adventurous residency presented in collaboration with Blank Forms. According to an email that arrived yesterday, FourOneOne will close for renovation on Oct. 1, and won’t reopen until March 2025. (I had to re-read that date a few times to be sure I had it right.)
FourOneOne programming is scheduled to resume in January at various locations, and the next major artist residency, focusing on cornetist and electronic explorer Graham Haynes, is due next March and April. But exactly who will be manning the fort on its return is unclear, given this part of the statement:
It's been a rewarding and hectic ride. And it could not have happened without all of you.
Nor could it have happened without the ceaseless efforts of the staff at FourOneOne: our departing curator David Watson and former technical lead Ian Douglas-Moore, Calvin Chang, Lizzie Feidelson, Constancio Gonzalez, Brandon Lopez, Will Stanton, and Teerapat Parnmongkol, among many others, as well as Moriah Evans, and Angel Ramirez of Blur Cafe and Brian Gempp of Supplemental Space, and their staffs.
Farewell, FourOneOne… we’ll be eagerly awaiting your next chapter.
I’d intended to embed a timely “Video of the week” in this newsletter, but the video in question seems to be un-embeddable, likely because it started as a livestream and is available for only a limited time. This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, violinist Joshua Bell will perform the U.S. premiere of The Elements, a new cycle of five succinct concertos he commissioned from composers Kevin Puts, Edgar Meyer, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, and Jessie Montgomery, with the New York Philharmonic and conductor Jaap van Zweden. (Limited tickets are still available.)
It’s an impressive initiative—and it sounds great, too. But don’t just take my word for it: the world-premiere performance, by Bell with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and former New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert, is available on YouTube through Sunday, Oct. 1. The concert opens with a hypnotic account of Henri Dutilleux’s Métaboles, and concludes with Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps. Stream it here, while you can.
Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
Dan Weiss
The Stone at The New School
55 W. 13th Street, Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Sept. 27–Saturday, Sept. 30 at 8:30pm; $20
thestonenyc.com
Drummer Dan Weiss fields a series of remarkable bands for his Stone residency at The New School. A quintet with Anna Webber, Darius Jones, Craig Taborn, and Chris Tordini kicks things off tonight, followed by a quartet with Peter Evans, Patricia Brennan, and Miles Okazaki (Sept. 28); a trio with Jacob Sacks and Thomas Morgan (Sept. 29); and another threesome with Miguel Zenón and Matt Mitchell (Sept. 30).
Tim Berne with Gregg Belisle-Chi, Michael Formanek, and Jeff Davis
Lowlands Bar
543 3rd Ave., Brooklyn
Thursday, Sept. 28 at 8pm; pass-the-hat
instagram.com/berneornot
Saxophonist and composer Tim Berne has been in residence at Lowlands practically every Thursday night for months now, so you know his creative juices are flowing in abundance. This week, in addition to regular collaborators Gregg Belisle-Chi on guitar and Jeff Davis on drums, Berne will be welcoming a longtime friend and collaborator, bassist Michael Formanek, so spirits should be especially high.
Arthur Russell: “City Park”
New York City AIDS Memorial
76 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich Village
Saturday, Sept. 30 at 4pm; free admission
www.nycaidsmemorial.org/citypark
Composer, singer, and organizer Nick Hallett presides over a site-specific piece by chameleonic cellist, singer, composer, and dance-music iconoclast Arthur Russell, featuring Russell collaborators David Van Tieghem and Peter Zummo, plus Nat Baldwin, Lea Bertucci, and Alex Waterman. Reconstructed by Hallett, this radical concert work was inspired by the similarly mercurial Christian Wolff—and described by Russell’s then-teacher, modernist eminence Charles Wuorinen, as “the most unattractive thing I’ve ever heard.” Unmissable, for sure.
“Momenta Festival VIII”
Broadway Presbyterian Church
601 W. 114th St., Upper West Side
Saturday, Sept. 30 and Sunday, Oct. 1 at 7pm; free admission
momentaquartet.com
The Momenta Quartet demonstrates its cooperative mettle with every outing, but once each year it turns the spotlight on its individual strengths with a series of four concerts, each curated by a different member of the group. This year’s Momenta Festival opens with a program organized by cellist Michael Haas, comprising works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Robert Schumann, Matthew Greenbaum, and Han Lash; the second concert, designed by violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron, includes pieces by Elizabeth Brown, Jeffrey Mumford, Julian Anderson, and Julián Carrillo. Two further programs follow on Oct. 4 & 5 at Americas Society; for details, see here.
Sandbox Percussion
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave., Midtown East
Sunday, Oct. 1 at 3pm and Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 7:30pm; $60
armoryonpark.org
Presented as part of the Park Avenue Armory’s intimate recital series, the versatile quartet Sandbox Percussion presents a world premiere by Christopher Cerrone, the first local performance of Viet Cuong’s Next Week’s Trees, and works by Andy Akiho, Amy Beth Kirsten, Juri Seo, David Crowell, and Julius Eastman.
For even more listings, see the Night After Night Watch master list, here.
Thank you.
(Photographs by the author, except where indicated otherwise.)