Gridlock.

Riffing on Alex Ross's oft-cited "Night of 10 New Music Concerts" post from last February (as Bruce Hodges did a little more than a week ago in a post titled "My head hurts"), poring over the concert offerings for Saturday, October 28 is enough to make me want to be in at least four places at once, and likely more.

Where I actually will be is at Alice Tully Hall for a "Steve Reich @ 70" concert by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, which includes the New York premiere of Reich's sublime You Are (Variations) plus welcome reprises of Tehellim and Clapping Music. Were it not for that engagement, however, I'd be hard pressed to choose between three major piano events.

At Merkin Concert Hall, Morton Feldman specialist Aki Takahashi marks the composer's 80th birthday with performances of his Piano and For Bunita Marcus. Elsewhere, the dazzling Marilyn Nonken is in action at New York University's Loewe Theatre, offering Pascal Dusapin's Préludes and Joël-François Durand's Le chemin, both local premieres, plus Tristan Murail's Les Travaux et les Jours, a mysterious, 40-minute cycle composed for Nonken (and played with spellbinding style and authority on her 2-CD set of Murail's complete piano music, issued last year on Metier). And in the stylish surrounds of the Allen Room in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Time-Warner compound, composer Stephen Scott and the Bowed Piano Ensemble (pictured) will conjure all manner of unearthly beauty from an unsuspecting, topless grand piano.

As if that weren't bad enough, expand your purview beyond new-music concerts, and there's also the eloquent Baroque violinist John Holloway to contend with on the 28th. His recording of the Bach unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas is just out on ECM -- a label clearly out to conquer this niche of the market, given the excellence of its modern-instrument set of the same works by Gidon Kremer, issued almost exactly a year ago. Holloway adds to this particular evening's traffic jam by playing the second and third partitas and second sonata at Miller Theatre.

Finally -- as far as I know, anyway -- Jonathan Nott is conducting Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Ligeti's Lontano at the New York Philharmonic. Peter Serkin is his soloist in the Bartók; the program begins and ends with Beethoven. (That concert, at least, you can also catch on the preceding Thursday night or Friday afternoon.)

Playlist:

Giovanni Martinelli - Lebendige Vergangenheit (Preiser)

Elisabeth Rethberg - Lebendige Vergangenheit (Preiser)

Marco Oppedisano - Electroacoustic Works (CD-R demo)

Héctor Buitrago - Conector (Nacional)

Andra Echeverri - Andrea Echeverri (Nacional)

Aterciopelados - Oye (Nacional)

Modest Mussorgsky - Night on Bald Mountain; Béla Bartók - The Miraculous Mandarin; Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps - Los Angeles Philharmonic/Esa-Pekka Salonen (Deutsche Grammophon)

Tristan Murail - Les Travaux et les Jours - Marilyn Nonken (Metier)

Comments

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I was actually thinking I might run into you at the Feldman...my wife and I will be there.

[Ian Moss]

Actually, there are at least two more new music concerts happening that night. At Tenri Cultural Institute, several of my old college classmates will be presenting Igigi in New York with pieces by Alex Temple, Lainie Fefferman, Timothy Andres, David Hanlon, and Jody Redhage. And a BAMCafe, new-music-cum-avant-rock ensemble Zs will be performing spazzed out sets with several other like-minded bands. New York can be pretty crazy sometimes!