This press release arrived too late for me to propose a New Yorker listing, so I'm sharing it where I can. Be aware, though, that while this press release states that the concert will happen in Alice Tully Hall, the Juilliard website says it's going to be in the school's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. (I'll try to get some clarity on this point.)
Advance tickets are available now, free of charge, at the Juilliard and Alice Tully Hall box offices.
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My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the January 20, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates January 15-21. (Links lead to detailed listings on the New Yorker website.)
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center; Jan. 16 at 7:30
Karlheinz Stockhausen's visionary Kontakte anchors a fine program for pianos, percussion, and electronics.
The Furies + ~Nois
Scholes Street Studio, Brooklyn; Jan. 16 at 8
Violin duo The Furies and saxophone quartet ~Nois share a double bill stacked with new and recent pieces.
ACME
Tenri Cultural Center; Jan. 17 at 8
The American Contemporary Music Ensemble returns to where it all began for a three-concert 15th-anniversary season, starting with two major pieces by Gavin Bryars.
Hub New Music
1 Rivington St.; Jan. 17 at 6, Jan. 18 at 7:30
Flutist Michael Avitabile and his busy Boston group come to Metropolis Ensemble HQ for a pair of concerts, the first a new collaboration with Brooklyn cabal Oracle Hysterial.
Hotel Elefant + Bearthoven
Areté Venue & Gallery; Jan. 18 at 7
Two excellent young New York new-music groups go head-to-head in pieces by Fjóla Evans and Leaha Maria Villareal. And then on Jan. 19, Ensemble in Progress… presents pianists Brian Marks, Isabelle O'Connell, and Kathleen Supové in works inspired by migration.
New Jersey Symphony
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark; Jan. 19 at 3
(Also: Richardson Auditorium, Princeton; Jan. 17 at 8; State Theatre New Jersey, New Brunswick; Jan. 18 at 8)
Xian Zhang conducts "The Ring Without Words," a 70-minute chronological condensation of orchestral music from Wagner's Ring cycle of operas created by her former mentor and colleague, Lorin Maazel, and Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2, with Simon Trpčeski at the keyboard.
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A little more than a decade ago, when I was at the Metropolitan Opera to see Leoš Janáček's From the House of the Dead, I spotted the composer Missy Mazzoli passing by in the outer lobby. We'd known each other for a few years by then, and waved to one another from a distance. Then I pulled out my phone and posted a tweet: "I've spotted Missy Mazzoli at the Met for House of the Dead. One day I'll be here to hear her. Bank on it." I doubled down on that prognostication a few weeks later in The New York Times, recounting that tweet at the start of a year-end essay in which her work – and that of a few other composers of her generation, who were starting to achieve success in major mainstream institutions – was called out for attention and celebration.
If you'd like to check my work, I posted my receipts in the blog post I wrote on Sept. 24, 2018: the day an article by Michael Cooper in The New York Times revealed that Mazzoli was one of two composers commissioned to create new works for the Metropolitan Opera under the leadership of its new music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Mazzoli and Jeanine Tesori also had the distinction of being the only women composers commissioned by the Met in the company's history.
What prompts me to bring this all up yet again is because when all this buzz was transpiring to make me look insightful in 2018, I ventured one more opinion, posted in conjunction with the New York City premiere of Proving Up, the most recent opera Mazzoli had created with her gifted librettist partner, Royce Vavrek:
One, as of this minute there are 14 tickets remaining for tomorrow night, and one of them OUGHT to have your name on it. Two, the @MetOpera, having announced a future @missymazzoli commission, should fast-track 'Breaking the Waves' into its 2019-20 season. That is all.
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) September 27, 2018
Granted, Cooper's article about Mazzoli's Met commission stipulated that, in the words of general manager Peter Gelb, "the Met Orchestra would perform a Mazzoli chamber opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Mr. Nézet-Séguin conducting." Anyone who knows Breaking the Waves knows that it is no chamber opera, but a full-blown stage drama, for a sizeable cast and a substantial orchestra.
But lo and behold: late today, BAM announced a substantial new festival titled Yours Theirs Ours—including three performances of Breaking the Waves. The production is one by Opera Ventures and Scottish Opera, introduced to widespread acclaim at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival. (The same two producers previously brought Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek to BAM in 2018.) The director is Tom Morris, who helmed the Edinburgh presentation; Nézet-Séguin will conduct the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra together with the Scottish Opera Chorus. As yet, no casting has been announced.
Tickets for Breaking the Waves – and all other Yours Theirs Ours events – go on sale to BAM patrons on January 28, to BAM members on February 4, and to the general public on February 11.
I'm tempted, naturally, to make some bold claim about my powers of perception… but really, this was a no-brainer, even a decade ago.
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My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the January 13, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates January 8-14. (Links lead to detailed listings on the New Yorker website.)
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; Jan. 9 at 7:30, Jan. 10 at 2, Jan. 11 at 8
Conductor Daniel Harding and pianist Paul Lewis join the Phil for a pairing of hardy warhorses by Grieg and Richard Strauss.
Maya Beiser
Winter Garden at Brookfield Place; Jan. 10 at 8
Four years to the day after David Bowie's passing, cellist Beiser presents a solo-with-multimedia adaptation of the Blackstar Concerto she developed with composer Evan Ziporyn, in a free-of-charge performance.
Longleash
Flushing Town Hall, Flushing; Jan. 10 at 7:30
(Also: Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church; Jan. 12 at 3)
The brilliant young trio plays piano trios by Beethoven, plus contemporary responses from John Zorn and Reiko Füting. (On Jan. 12, percussionist Ches Smith joins in on the Zorn piece.)
Ekmeles
DiMenna Center for Classical Music; Jan. 11 at 7:30
The extraordinary vocal ensemble performs tough-but-appealing works from its debut CD, and you'll take a copy home at no extra charge.
String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Roulette; Jan. 13 at 8
This enterprising ensemble performs impressive recent works by Christopher Cerrone and Jacob Cooper, as heard on the group's brand-new CD.
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On a gloomy morning in an uncertain world, finding some measure of joyous reassurance in the ecstatic whoops and whorls of Gabriella Smith's 'Carrot Revolution,' played emphatically by @aizuriquartet. https://t.co/tHyqNOJNx3 via @YouTube
— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) January 3, 2020
Gabriella Smith is a composer other composers evidently like to recommend, to their listeners and to one another. At some point last year, when I was going through some pretty elaborate motions to plan the programming for an entire orchestral season – spurred by an online challenge, and still unfinished – I contacted Gabriel Kahane to ask a few questions about one of his compositions. When I told him why I was inquiring, he insisted that I needed to hear Smith's orchestral piece Tumblebird Contrails right away.
Likewise, when the composer Steve Reich was invited to curate a "Nightcap" concert for the New York Philharmonic in December, he included a piece by Gabriella Smith, whose music he had come to know after John Adams had recommended Reich check her out. Adams had himself included Smith's string quartet Carrot Revolution on his own "Nightcap" program in March; Reich took to it immediately, he told "Nightcap" host Nadia Sirota last month, after picking out a quotation from Viderunt omnes by Pérotin, a 12th-century French composer long hailed by Reich as a decisive influence.
Lost Coast, the piece included on Reich's program, was derived from a cello concerto of the same title, which Smith had composed in 2015 for Gabriel Cabezas and the New York Youth Symphony. The new piece wasn't a reduction, exactly, but rather a supremely clever reworking for solo cellist with recorded accompaniment: all the remaining string parts, played by Cabezas, plus the wind and brass parts sung by Smith. The piece, and its performance, were effective and beautiful.
Lost Coast, it turns out, is part of a recording Cabezas is making with Sirota (his bandmate in yMusic), Valgeir Sigurðsson, and Francesco Fabris for the Icelandic label Bedroom Community. This is excellent news, not least because – despite her popularity among fellow composers, and musicians and listeners, too – Gabriella Smith is sorely underrepresented in the recording catalog. Having spent the first half of my today trawling the internet for more of her pieces to listen to – as Reich urged everyone in attendance at his concert (including Josh Groban and Solange Knowles) to do – I found just five pieces presently available on commercially released recordings:
Thankfully, there's plenty more out there to hear on YouTube and SoundCloud. Here some choice examples:
One reason Gabriella Smith is on my mind is because the Omer Quartet, performing at Merkin Hall on January 7 at 2pm as part of the long-running "Tuesday Matinées" series, will play her newest string-quartet piece, Porcupine Wash. The group presented the work's world premiere last June at the Caramoor Festival, where it's currently in residence. Just before that concert, the Omers stopped into WQXR for a live broadcast performance of one movement, "Barrel Cactus," where application of pencils and paper clips render the group's sound enticingly alien. (In the recorded show, the movement starts at the 43-minute mark.) Presumably, the Merkin concert is the New York City premiere for the rest of the piece.
Look ahead in the "Tuesday Matinées" schedule, by the way, and you're bound to notice that Gabriel Cabezas is presenting a concert in the series on May 12, and Gabriella Smith is on his agenda—looks like New Yorkers have another chance to hear Lost Coast coming right up. Before that, Carlos Kalmar will conduct the Oregon Symphony in a program featuring a commissioned premiere by Smith on February 7 in Salem, and February 8-10 in Portland.
Back in New York City, the Aizuri Quartet will include Carrot Revolution on its Sunday Morning Coffee Concerts program at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, on April 26 at 11am. And the pianist/composer Timo Andres, in a recital at Zankel Hall on April 29 at 7:30pm, presents a Carnegie Hall-commissioned world premiere by Smith as part of his lively, alluring program.
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My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the January 6, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates January 1-7. (Links lead to detailed listings on the New Yorker website.)
James Moore
The Stone at the New School; Jan. 2-4 at 8:30
Guitarist James Moore's Stone residency is brief but eventful: a variety night, a performance with Forever House, and a Dither finale.
"Here & Now Festival"
Bargemusic; Jan. 3 at 7, Jan. 4 at 6, Jan. 5 at 4
Before closing for seasonal maintenance, Bargemusic hosts three concerts of new music in wildly varying styles.
New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark; Jan. 3 at 8
(Also: Count Basie Center for the Arts, Red Bank; Jan. 4 at 8; Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, Morristown; Jan. 5 at 3)
Xian Zhang conducts Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto, with Inon Barnatan at the keyboard; Smetana and Prokofiev works complete the bill.
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center; Jan. 3-4 at 8, Jan. 7 at 7:30
Jeffrey Kahane is both the conductor and the piano soloist in a blithe mix of Mozart, Respighi, and Haydn.
"Broken Silence"
DiMenna Center for Classical Music; Jan. 6-8 at 8:25
Wandelweiser composer Craig Shepard narrates his own musical meditation, meant to facilitate healing in the wake of sexual-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.
Omer Quartet
Merkin Hall; Jan. 7 at 2
Gabriella Smith is that composer all the other composers are eager to tell you about, and for good reason; here, she shares a bill with Schubert and Beethoven.
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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."
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