You say goodbye, I say hello.
A fond farewell to Kronos Quartet members John Sherba and Hank Dutt… Jazztopad returns to New York… and more live music picks for the next seven days.
It hasn’t quite hit me yet that the two shows the Kronos Quartet will perform at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday, June 15, will be the last time we New Yorkers will get to see the group perform with violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt, both of whom are set to retire at the end of the current season, after 45+ years of service. Adding to this season of change, longtime Kronos manager Janet Cowperthwaite has announced plans to depart in October.
Full disclosure: I’ve done a bit of work with and for Kronos over the years, and am working with the organization now in a major archival venture.
Happily, Kronos will endure, as leader David Harrington and cellist Paul Wiancko soldier on with two superb new additions, violinist Gabriela Díaz and violist Ayane Kozasa. But as someone vividly recalls the intensity of my first few Kronos concerts back in the late ’80s – the striking new music, the hip couture, the moody lighting, the elegantly managed sound, the utter coolness of it all – seeing Sherba and Dutt depart feels a lot like waving goodbye to old friends.
The occasion for these farewell performances is The Ephemeral Cinema of Sam Green, in which filmmaker Sam Green brings together his three innovative “live documentary” projects into a series for the first time. The series comprises four programs on Thursday, June 14, through Sunday, June 16, at Alice Tully Hall, presented as part of Lincoln Center’s voluminous Summer for the City festival.
Screening on June 13 is 32 Sounds, an exploration of the phenomenon of sound itself, featuring live music by JD Samson and significant screen time for Philip Glass and Annea Lockwood. Green’s Kronos Quartet documentary, A Thousand Thoughts, screens twice on June 15. The series concludes on June 16 with The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, with live music by Yo La Tengo. Admission for the series is choose-what-you-pay, with $35 as a suggested price.
To Hank and John – and to Janet, too – thank you for your roles in this grand adventure. Hand on heart, you changed my life.
The Night After Night Watch.
July 11–17
Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.
NOTAFLOF = no one turned away for lack of funds.
11
ChamberQUEER 2024: Constellation
MITU580
580 Sackett St.. Unit A—Ground Fl., Brooklyn
Tuesday, June 11–Sunday, June 16; times and prices vary, NOTAFLOF
chamberqueer.org
Constellation is an ideal name for the largest undertaking to date by the concert presenter and community initiative ChamberQUEER, both because it’s filled with brilliant, illuminating performers and events, and because those events are scattered among a number of neighboring locations. Opening day brings an afternoon sound bath by Bloom Sound Collective; an early evening set by big dog little dog, the minimalist folk-groove outfit of violinist Jessie Montgomery and bassist Eleonore Oppenheim; and a closing set by the Canadian duo of trans(masculine) vocalist Teiya Kasahara and pianist David Eliakis. For complete details, see the calendar here.
12
Thomas Morgan
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, June 12–Saturday, June 15 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com
A bassist admired for his responsive, artful playing alongside leaders like Bill Frisell, Ron Miles, Dan Weiss, and Jakob Bro, among many others, Thomas Morgan comes to The Stone series at The New School for four intimate performances: duos with drummer Johnathan Blake (June 12), bassist Larry Grenadier (June 13), and pianist Jacob Sacks (June 14), and a closing trio with saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and pianist Craig Taborn (June 15).
13
Die Grösste Fuge
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
Thursday, June 13 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp oversees the U.S. premiere of his 2021 opera Die Grösste Fuge (“The Greatest Fugue”), a psychologically penetrating evocation of a tormented Ludwig van Beethoven unmoored in time, having impossible visions that ultimately inspire him to compose his Grösse Fuge. Performers include bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood, the DGF String Quartet, and Sharp on electronics; the production is designed by artist Janene Higgins. If you can’t attend in person, the performance will streamed live on the Roulette website and YouTube, then archived for on-demand viewing.
Jazztopad Festival New York 2024
Various venues
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Philadelphia
Thursday, June 13–Sunday, June 16; times and prices vary
instytutpolski.pl
An ambitious Polish jazz festival returns to New York City for the eighth time, presenting a series of enticing concerts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as select outlier events in Jersey City and Philadelphia. Plainly unmissable where I’m concerned is Thursday’s opening event at Dizzy’s Club, which brings pianist-composer Kris Davis together with the Lutosławski Quartet for the world premiere of The Solastalgia Suite, in which Davis blends influences from Olivier Messiaen, Beyoncé, and Cecil Taylor. (Yes, really.) On Saturday, the Lutosławski Quartet revisits Metamorphoses, its collaboration with bassist Michael Bates based on the music of quartet namesake Witold Lutosławski, this time with some Karol Szymanowski added to the mix. Among the festival’s further participants are Polish violinist Amalia Umeda – about whom gig-listings poet laureate Jim Macnie writes compellingly – and Hand to Earth, a mesmerizing Australian quintet that fuses Yolgnu manikay, a 40,000-year-old folk-song tradition from South East Arnhem Land, with minimalism, electronics, and improvisation.
14
C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective
Saint Peter's Church
619 Lexington Ave., Midtown East
Friday, June 14 at 8pm, Saturday, June 15 at 7:30pm; $10–$40 suggested donation
c4ensemble.org
Baritone Muir Ingliss portrays Arthur Rimbaud in Arthur Rimbaud: This Fugitive Soul, a new choral opera about the French poet’s life and times, assembled by the inventive composers and conductors of C4 Ensemble. Centered around Steven R. Gerber’s 20-minute setting of Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer, the opera includes compositions by Bettina Sheppard, Martha Sullivan, and C4 members Mario C. Gullo, Brian Mountford, and Perry Townsend. The semi-staged presentation will feature projected images generated with AI.
In Memoriam Marian Zazeela
MELA Dream House
275 Church St., 3rd Fl., Tribeca
Friday, June 14 and Sunday, June 16 at 7:30pm; $63, seniors and students $56
melafoundation.org
La Monte Young and his Just Alap Raga Ensemble – Jung Hee Choi, Jon Catler, Hansford Rowe, Naren Budhkar, with the recorded tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath – perform evening ragas in memory of the late artist Marian Zazeela, Young’s wife and close collaborator. The performances will be held in a light environment juxtaposing works by Zazeela and Choi.
17
Laura Cocks & Frederico Isasti + DoYeon Kim & Henry Fraser
Sisters
900 Fulton St., Brooklyn
Monday, June 17 at 8pm; $20 suggested donation (cash/Venmo at door)
sistersbklyn.com
Two fiery duos hold forth at Sisters in Clinton Hill. Laura Cocks, force-of-nature flutist for the TAK and Talea ensembles, squares off with Argentine drummer Frederico Isasti. And DoYeon Kim, a traditionally trained Korean artist who plays the gayageum, partners with bassist Henry Fraser, who provided a center of gravity in the bold quartet Kim led in May at Roulette.
Striped Light
Undisclosed location
Long Island City
Monday, June 17 at 7:30pm; $15
Instagram
In a rare visit to New York City, Australian noise artist Lucas “Granpa” Abela interacts with an extraordinary assemblage of local artists, including Striped Light curator David Watson, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Brandon Lopez, Bob Bellerue, Marcia Bassett, MV Carbon, Sandy Ewen, Chuck Roth, Samara Lubelski, and Hisham Akira Bharoocha. According to Watson, Abela will use a modular rig to carve up improvised sets by two trios and a quartet and reassemble them into a custom-made “Frankenstein” composition. Send a DM via Instagram to get the address for the venue, easily accessible via mass transit.
Girma Yifrashewa
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave., Midtown West
Monday, June 17 at 7:30pm; $54–$74
carnegiehall.org
You could imagine the compositional revolutions of the 20th century never happened when you hear the music of Girma Yifrashewa, an Ethiopian pianist and composer whose original works bear the distinct stamp of the European classical canon in which he was trained—something I noted in a New York Times review of a 2013 concert at Issue Project Room. Last October, Yifrashewa released My Strong Will on the Unseen Worlds label; now, he makes his Zankel Hall debut with original works, tributes to fellow Ethiopians Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and Dr. Ashenafi Kebede, and music by Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
There was something special about those early days of Kronos, wasn't there? I have fond memories of their first Lincoln Center residency. Every week for a couple of months a group of friends and I would meet up and see what the quartet would be serving up this time. Because I wasn't "AnEarful" yet, I have no record or recollection of what happened, but I know it was good!