Night After Night

David Tudor performances coming up at MoMA.

Among the many, many things to admire about the newly expanded Museum of Modern Art – which officially opens to the public on Monday, Oct. 21, but actually had a secret soft opening on Sunday, Oct. 20 – is an installation of Rainforest V (variation 1), as conceived by the iconic experimental composer/performer David Tudor, and realized by Composers Inside Electronics. A collective formed by Tudor in 1973 to blaze new trails in electronic-music performance and installation art, CiE is now run by founding members John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein, with a variety of collaborators.

I had seen and enjoyed Rainforest V in a previous installation on Governors Island, in 2011. This new iteration is similar, but, according to Driscoll – who was present and fielding questions when I attended a MoMA members' preview on Saturday, Oct. 19 – includes new sound-making items. The piece is on view in the museum's new Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio through January 5, 2020, and was packed with engaged, delighted visitors of all ages on Saturday.

In addition to Rainforest V, Tudor is also being celebrated during the inaugural season of the new Kravis Studio with a series of live performances of Forest Speech, involving members of Composers Inside Electronics and a stellar array of guest artists. Tudor created the piece, which employs the Rainforest instruments, in 1976, and then expanded it into a group conception in 1978. In it, according to the official Tudor website, "Formant resonances, produced with the natural comb-filtering action of 'Rainforest' instruments, are used to create vocal illusions."

Here's a complete schedule of who's playing when.

Oct. 24 and 26 at 8pm, Oct. 27 at noon and 3pm
Phil Edelstein, Marina Rosenfeld, Stefan Tcherepnin, Spencer Topel, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste

Nov. 14 and 16 at 8pm, Nov. 17 at noon and 3pm
Lea Bertucci, John Driscoll, Ed Potokar, Margaret Anne Schedel, and Philip White

Dec. 12 and 14 at 8pm, Dec. 15 at noon and 3pm
Ginny Benson, Cecilia Lopez, Daniel Neumann, Sergei Tcherepnin, and C. Spencer Yeh

Note that tickets are required for all performances. Thursday and Saturday evening events cost $15 for general admission, $10 for members and students, and tickets are on sale now. (Oct. 24 is sold out already.) Sunday daytime performances are free with museum admission, but, according to the MoMA website, "require a separate ticket, which will be available on site on the day of the performance, on a first-come, first-served basis."

Goings On About Town, May 13, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the May 13, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates May 8-14. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, May 6, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the May 6, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates May 1-7. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, April 29, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the April 29, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates April 24-30. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, March 18, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the March 18, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates March 13-19. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, February 18 & 25, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the February 18/February 25, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates February 13-26. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, January 14, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the January 14, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates January 9-15. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, January 7, 2019.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the January 7, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates January 2-8. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, December 24 & 31, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the December 24/December 31, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates December 19-January 1. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Wandelwatching: Antoine Beuger and Jürg Frey performances in New York City

Seth Parker Woods. Photograph: Michael Yu

Four years ago, I started a weekly series on this blog titled Wandelwatching, devoted to news and essays about composers of the Wandelweiser Group, a loosely knit global collective inspired by post-Cagean ideas concerning sound, space, silence, place, contemplativeness, and collaboration, among other things. If you're just catching up with the term and its adherents, the best starting point remains the essay simply titled "Wandelweiser," published in 2009 by Michael Pisaro, a composer in the group.

Honestly, I'm wincing now at the sheer earnest stiffness of those initial posts from 2014. In starting anew, I don't plan to be overly formal at all. The idea now is pretty simple: While performances of Wandelweiser compositions have grown more common, you still don't see much coverage of such events in the mainstream media. So, here I am to help spread the news.

There are (to the best of my knowledge) two concerts that include at least one Wandelweiser composition happening this week in New York City. Both are eminently recommendable.

Talea Ensemble: "Imagined Time"
Dec. 12 at 7pm
The Flea, 20 Thomas St.; theflea.org

First, on Wednesday, Dec. 12 – yes, I mean this evening, members of the Talea Ensemble present an hour-long program titled "Imagined Time," part of a new intimate series called "Inside Out" that Talea is presenting at the Flea Theater. The present program is made up of pieces concerned with notions of musical time, and includes ô monde sur deux tiges, a 2011 duet for viola and cello by Antoine Beuger, alongside pieces by Victoria Cheah, Iancu Dumitrescu, and Alex Mincek.

Convergences III: Jen Shyu + Seth Parker Woods
Dec. 13 at 8pm
Areté Venue & Gallery, 67 West St #103, Brooklyn; aretegallery.com

Convergences, a truly impressive-looking cross-disciplinary series curated by pianist-composer Eric Wubbels and saxophonist-composer Anna Webber, presents a double bill of soloists working in very different forms, but with a similar focus and intensity. Jen Shyu, an improvising vocalist whose musical rituals dig deeply into Asian musical and cultural traditions, offers a preview of a work-in-progress, provisionally titled Zero Grasses. 

The set of interest to Wandelwatchers is that of cellist Seth Parker Woods, a superb instrumentalist with patience, discipline, and tenacity well suited to works that challenge through expansive stillness and slowness, and infinitesimal gradations of tone. Here, in addition to pieces by Giacinto Scelsi, Oliver Thurley, Nathalie Joachim, and Monty Adkins, Woods plays the world premiere of Music of Unknown Gardens, newly composed for him by Jürg Frey.

Listen here to get a sense of what Woods can do.