The second in an occasional (though not occasional enough) series that started with a blog post in October, here's another omnibus entry covering all of my writing for The New York Times between the Bard Music Festival in mid-August and the New York Philharmonic concert of November 14, both blogged up individually elsewhere. The first date refers to the event, the second to publication.
Julianna Barwick at Judson Memorial Church, August 20, 2013
August 24, 2013
Ms. Barwick’s songs — chiefly wordless vocals, electronically looped — materialize out of ether, saturate a sonorous atmosphere, then dissolve. Environment trumps event.
Joshua Bell with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, August 21, 2013
August 23, 2013
Mr. Bell is easily taken for granted by classical music cognoscenti, not least because of his extra-musical celebrity. What other violinist would accept an invitation to judge the Miss America pageant?
International Contemporary Ensemble at the Clark Studio Theater, August 22, 2013
August 24, 2013
The alternation of movements grew familiar, if never altogether comfortable. Great! Comfort, after all, is highly overrated.
Taka Kigawa at Le Poisson Rouge, August 26, 2013
August 28, 2013
…anyone can appreciate how the wonder and joy Mr. Kigawa conveys in talking about his repertory during a concert is also manifest in the way he performs it.
Fred Frith and Laurie Anderson at the Stone, August 27, 2013
August 30, 2013
…the first set on Tuesday, played for a capacity audience, was a textbook example of how free improvisation can provide common ground for musicians of wildly disparate styles and temperaments.
Charlemagne Palestine, Joe McPhee and Steve Dalachinsky at Issue Project Room, September 3, 2013
September 5, 2013
Mr. Dalachinsky, beholden to the Beats but seasoned by meaner times, recited with a jazz-horn flow. He rushed one phrase and elongated the next; occasionally he stuttered on a single syllable, and then released the pent-up tension in a gush.
Contagious Sounds with Iktus Percussion and t8ts at Cornelia Street Café, September 4, 2013
September 7, 2013
…for plenty of players now swimming the city’s musical currents, DIY is already second nature. Case in point: Vicky Chow, the prodigious Canadian pianist currently embedded in the Bang on a Can All-Stars, de facto house band of the entrepreneurial revolution.
Object Collection "No Hotel" at St. Mark's Church, September 7, 2013
September 9, 2013
As Mr. Just’s music murmurs, natters and erupts into spasmodic punk-metal hammering, Mr. Glickstein, Mr. Nelson and Ms. Peker embrace, dance, exchange wigs, blurt non sequiturs and repeatedly murder one another.
Dedalus Ensemble at Roulette, September 9, 2013
September 11, 2013
Not every substantial American debut by an acclaimed European ensemble comes packaged with oversize fanfare, media hype and an obligatory guest appearance by Yo-Yo Ma.
"In 25 Years, Miller Theater Has Transformed the Arts Scene"
September 15, 2013
---> Web extra: "25 Years at Miller Theater"
"The more specialized the program, the more open it is to an outsider. If you go to a Monet retrospective, you come out, and you say: Hey, I love these pictures of Monet. I hate these. I love the lilies. I hate the lilies. You suddenly can say something, where before you were illiterate."
Pauline Oliveros and Olivia Block at Issue Project Room, September 14, 2013
September 16, 2013
Each has developed strategies for creating music that is not only distinctive and individual but also intentionally and necessarily permeable to sensations from the everyday world.
Each deliberate stroke ignited a pale corona of resonating harmonics, offering a lambent glow akin to dust motes swirling in a pale beam of light.
John Zorn "Zorn@60" orchestral music at Miller Theater, September 25, 2013
September 27, 2013
Mr. Zorn’s language conjures Ligeti and Schoenberg, sure. But the essential DNA of "Contes de Fées," augmented with not just one but two wind machines, reaches back further, to Berlioz fever dreams and macabre showpieces by Saint-Saëns and Mussorgsky.
New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, September 27, 2013
September 30, 2013
I’m not a big fan of gala opening nights, which tend to be all about fancy dress, floral arrangements, celebrity guests and a feel-good repertory that extends from canon fodder to bonbon.
John Zorn "Zorn@60" marathon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 28, 2013
October 3, 2013
…the chutzpah needed to envision Mr. Zorn presenting his music surrounded by some of the art that inspired him, and to facilitate an audience tramping after him during an otherwise typical Saturday, is something new for the institution.
Ethel "Documerica" at the BAM Harvey Theater, October 2 and 3, 2013
October 7, 2013
You saw smokestacks, barnyards and big-city parades, with folks coifed in styles now seldom seen outside early Richard Linklater films and certain corners of Brooklyn.
Georg Friedrich Haas Composer Portrait at Miller Theatre, October 10, 2013
October 12, 2013
…the music billowed and heaved fitfully, its bruised harmonies, obsessive repetitions and sudden, stark silences an almost shockingly intimate conjuring of the emotional intensity at play in the words.
Lise de la Salle at Washington Irving High School Auditorium, October 12, 2013
October 15, 2013
…Ms. de la Salle offered freshness and lucidity in Debussy, her measured approach providing tantalizing whiffs of fragrance instead of heavy perfume.
Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, October 13, 2013
October 15, 2013
…Mr. Levine focused past Carter’s complexity to engage the drama and voluptuousness of this score, which for all its tangles and whorls contains not a single uninteresting or unlovely measure.
"In His Hands, Bach Meets Bluegrass – Chris Thile Will Play Sonatas and Partitas at Zankel Hall"
October 21, 2013
“I just thought, ‘So you can have it all,’ ” he said. “You can get me moving, and be playing some of the most profoundly well-organized music that humans could possibly imagine. It’s visceral, but everything’s in its right place.”
Ronald Shannon Jackson, Composer and Avant-Garde Drummer, Dies at 73
October 24, 2013
“Everything we do has a foundation,” he continued in that article. “I think the African phrases are very obvious. I think the funk phrases are very obvious. I think the Oriental phrases are obvious. I think the Bulgarian rhythms are there — I hear all of it.”
"An Eternal Youth, Now 90 – Celebrating Ned Rorem's 90th Birthday"
October 27, 2013
Coming out was not an easy prospect for Mr. Blier. “The idea that Ned had written a song about my river, and that he shared my secret, was huge for me,” he said.
"Compositions Created to Be Seen…as Well As Heard – Michel van der Aa's 'Up-close' at White Light Festival"
October 28, 2013
“What I found is that there are so many similarities between filmmaking and composing: the way you handle time, the way you handle phrasing, the editing of the film,” he said.
Hotel Pro Forma "War Sum Up" at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, November 1, 2013
November 4, 2013
…the provocative force of “War Sum Up” is in the ambiguity of its message and the allure of its high-gloss finish. If only more New Yorkers could have seen it.
"More Than Shadows: Stars of Strauss – 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' with Schwanewilms and Goerke"
November 3, 2013
Presented with the same speculative exercise in summarizing “Frau,” Ms. Goerke laughed heartily. “Somebody said, ‘In two sentences, can you describe this opera you’re in?’ ” she recalled. “I said, ‘Nope.’ ”
Hilary Hahn "In 27 Pieces" at Greenwich House Music School, November 3, 2013
November 7, 2013
…the violinist Hilary Hahn was at the center of a social whirl, which could be variously described as a marathon concert, a school day and a carnival.
New York Philharmonic Contact! at SubCulture, November 4, 2013
November 8, 2013
Good news: With the fifth season of Contact!, the contemporary-music series the New York Philharmonic inaugurated in 2009, comes a performance space that finally suits the informal tone the orchestra desired but never previously delivered.
"November 21, 1963 – The Day Before" at Symphony Space, November 8, 2013
November 12, 2013
Musical tributes similarly ranged from heavy-weather art song to pop-derived whimsy, much of it by composers not yet born when Kennedy died.
Estonian National Symphony Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall, November 10, 2013
November 12, 2013
Hammering repetitions in the first of five movements echo choral dramatists throughout the ages, from Mozart and Beethoven to Orff and Philip Glass.
Related:
Days between: New York Times writing, March 23–August 12, 2013
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