World turning.
Writing about writing, and writing about writing about music, plus a fistful of choice musical events happening this week in New York City.
“I just wanna be back where I belong.”
True story: Every time I resume writing seriously about music after a break of weeks or months, I worry that I’ve forgotten how to do it. Bear with me while I work my way back to fitness, because there’s quite a lot of writering ahead.
“I gotta get my feet back on the ground.”
As those who follow me on Bluesky likely sussed – and as subscribers to Piotr Orlov’s crucial Dada Strain newsletter learned last week – my time at New York Public Radio has ended. Right now, that means I’m returning to what I did most and best before my public-radio stint: writing about music and musicians, mostly, as much as possible.
“Maybe I'm wrong, but who's to say what's right?”
I initially titled this particular newsletter “In-Between Days,” thinking it might signal a transition from one place, state, or condition to another. But the truth is: who knows? It’s a tough time for media, tougher still for arts and culture media. No guarantee that another career-track position will materialize, certainly not quickly.
“Everybody's got me down.”
Even long-secure freelance engagements are evaporating: Dada Strain, in the same edition that noted my departure from WNYC, also reported that The New Yorker has re-imagined and drastically abbreviated its listings section, “Goings On About Town” – to which I contributed happily for four years – and in the process disengaged most of the freelancers who wrote it, including at least one writer who’d been doing his job well for decades.
All the more reason to get back to work here, where at least I can bring to readers’ attention musical events that might otherwise have gone unmentioned. There’s music happening that deserves attention—the raison d'être for this venture.
Yesterday I received an email from Substack, trumpeting the six-figure succcess one popular writer has generated on its platform—the suggestion presumably being: You can do it, too… maybe.
I think about that from time to time. Once in a while, some kind soul who subscribes to this modest venture pledges to pay, should I return to that model. With sufficient support, I reckon I might produce something readers would deem worth paying for.
But then again…
“… we all have subscription fatigue. The paid subscription model has subsumed not only media but everything from food to hair dye. Unsubscribing from anything feels liberating these days. As much as we might want to support individual writers, paying a single rate for the New York Times’ hundreds of contributors is cheaper and more convenient than ponying up for scores of disparate newsletters.”
My colleague Michelle Mercer wrote that yesterday, in a post largely about bigger issues. And she’s right… I know that I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain all the subscriptions, streaming TV channels and whatnot I feel moved to support. So for now, and for the foreseeable future, this venture will remain free while I seek to earn my living elsewhere.
But I’m curious: What are you most interested in seeing here? Is it the live event recommendations now missing elsewhere? News of upcoming record releases? Concert and album reviews? The extensive Q&A articles I published at the newsletter’s onset?
Leave a comment on the website or respond privately to this email, whichever you prefer. But let me know, okay?
Playlist.
The latest tally of memorable things that got stuck in my ears includes:
the sophomore release by fibril, a more eaze studio project reborn as a delectably fuzzy industrial-metal quartet…
the newest installment of the National Symphony Orchestra’s invaluable George Walker series…
an LP by Madhuvanti Pal, claimed to be the first-ever album by a woman musician playing the rudra veena…
and the second release this year by composer and vocalist Annika Socolofsky, an edgier flip-side to the gentler album she issued in June.
Details here.
Night After Night Watch.
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
Time:Spans
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th Street, midtown Manhattan
Tuesday, Aug. 15, Friday, Aug. 18, Saturday, Aug. 19, and Monday, Aug. 21 at 7:30pm; $20, seniors and students $10. Sunday, Aug. 20 at 7:30pm, sold out.
timespans.org
This wholly remarkable new-music festival, presented annually by the Earle Brown Music Foundation, is offering its characteristic abundance of riches. Tonight, Ensemble Signal performs compositions by Anahita Abbasi, Augusta Read Thomas, Aida Shirazi, and Agata Zubel. On Friday, violinist Marco Fusi and composer Patricia Alessandrini present Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, in a version newly adapted for the EMPAC Wave Field System, along with an original companion piece. Alessandrini and Zubel have works on Saturday night’s Talea Ensemble program, which also includes music by Clara Iannotta and Yi Ting Lu. On Sunday, Talujon Percussion Quartet and Argento New Music Project pay homage to Earle Brown and Alexander Calder, and next Monday, Byrne:Kozar:Duo (vocalist Corrine Byrne and trumpeter Andrew Kozar) showcase music from a new CD, a world premiere by Taylor Brook, and more. The festival runs through August 26; tickets are scarce for some programs, and Sunday’s Talujon/Argento affair is sold out already.
David First’s Secret Sounds Workshop Orchestra
FourOneOne
411 Kent Ave., Williamsburg
Wednesday, Aug. 16 at 8 p.m.; $20
withfriends.co
“Have you ever wondered why there are infinite shades of color but only 12 notes?” The intrepid composer and multi-instrumentalist David First poses that question and more in his pursuit of sonic mystery and mastery via drones, overtones, and a method he terms gestural improvisation. In his Secret Sounds Workshop Orchestra, he shares his tools and methods with a select group of collaborators.
Tomeka Reid
The Stone at The New School
55 W. 13th Street, Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Aug. 16–Saturday, Aug. 19 at 8:30pm; $20
thestonenyc.com
Improvising cellist and composer Tomeka Reid, a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, arrives at The Stone on Wednesday with violinists Curtis Stewart and Sam Bardfeld and violist Stephanie Griffin, in a project called Hemphill Stringtet. She carries on in a duo with pianist Alexander Hawkins on Thursday, and with the trio Artifacts with flutist Nicole Mitchell and drummer Mike Reed on Friday. She ends the series on Saturday with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tomas Fujwara, the agile quartet last heard on her 2019 album Old New.
Bent Duo
Brick Aux
628 Metropolitan Ave., Williamsburg
Saturday, Aug. 19 and Sunday, Aug. 20, times vary; $20–$50 sliding scale
bentduo.com/dark-room
Apart from being a brilliant performing ensemble, pianist David Friend and percussionist Bill Solomon have set out to create explicitly queer aesthetic experiences with projects like Ramble, presented in 2019. (Bringing this newsletter full circle, here’s the listing I wrote for “Goings On About Town” in The New Yorker.) In Dark Room, a new venture inspired by anonymous trysts, each audience member will be blindfolded ahead of a 20-minute individual performance. “Stepping into a dark room requires a leap of faith that can lead to unexpected connections, heightened experiences, and discoveries about ourselves that couldn’t happen in the bright light of daily life,” the duo explains; read more and schedule your appointment here.
Assembly
Sisters
900 Fulton St., Brooklyn
Monday, Aug. 21 at 8pm; $20 cash/Venmo, no presales
instagram.com/sistersbklyn
The eighth edition of this monthly series, jointly curated by Lester St. Louis and Luke Stewart, features a plus-size version of the resident ensemble, Nate Wooley’s Mutual Aid Music. You’ll also catch a duo set from Chuck Bettis and Jerry Lim, and a new project by composer and multi-instrumentalist Weston Olencki, battery, which “brings together aspects of my early formative years marching DCI with the permutational flair and technical rigor of freak electronics.” (View a brief trailer for the project here.)
Find more listings in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, available exclusively to paid subscribers to everyone free of charge, at least for now.
Photographs by the author, except where indicated otherwise.
The listings are great (though I'm on the wrongs side of the planet to attend most of them -- I wonder how many of us are outside the US?), but I especially like the news, reviews, and Q&As, as well as the Playlists (much of which end up on my Bandcamp wishlist).
Listings (TONY style) and short album reviews or track raves.