Night After Night

The New York Times: Frank London profile.

Frank London (Photograph: Anna London)

New in The New York Times today: my feature about Frank London, a trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader who has played a major role in downtown jazz, the klezmer and Balkan music revivals of the ’80s, and a whole lot more. Today is his 66th birthday—which unfortunately he is spending in the hospital, where he was admitted late last week for treatment of a rare cancer he was diagnosed with four years ago.

Here is a gift link.

London spoke about his situation with candor and good humor. It was also a pleasure to interview his close associates Hankus Netsky and Steven Bernstein, and to exchange emails with Matt Darriau and Marcus Rojas.

A concert spanning the breadth of London’s career – focusing on two new albums and a third recent release, but also covering a variety of ambitious large-scale works – will be held at Roulette on Monday, June 3. “What, Carnegie Hall wasn’t available?” I asked him, anticipating obvious demand—and indeed, the show is sold out already. But a standby line will be available for any unclaimed tickets, and the concert will stream live on the Roulette website and YouTube.

Since London can’t be there now, he’s deputized comrades like Bernstein and Darriau to lead bands in his absence. Expect to hear from him, anyway.

As ever, there were far too many strong stories and anecdotes to share. For one, London told me how much it means to him that one of his new albums, Spirit Stronger Than Blood, is coming out on ESP-Disk’ since recordings on that label had exerted such a huge influence on his development. (The other new album, Brass Conspiracy, has an official street date of August 16, but Tzadik hopes to have copies on hand at Roulette.)

And another: Netsky recalled that many times after the Klezmer Conservatory Band played concerts during London’s tenure, when the time came to play an encore, the trumpeter was nowhere to be found—because he’d already sprinted off to some late-night Latin gig elsewhere. “It got to be a joke in our band: Where’s Frank?” Netsky said, laughing.

Here’s wishing Frank London happiness, comfort, and a swift, full recovery.

The New York Times: Jim Staley interview.

Jim Staley (Photograph courtesy Roulette)

"The Man Who Made Roulette Into New York’s Music Lab"
The New York Times
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Gift link

New in The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section: my exit interview with the great trombonist and composer Jim Staley, who co-founded the essential new-music institution Roulette in 1978, and replanted it in his NYC loft in 1980, as he prepares to step away from leadership in June after 45 years.

From my first visit to Roulette in 1993 – the first time I saw Derek Bailey perform in person, a literally life-changing experience – to my latest encounters there with Du Yun’s OK Miss and Robert Ashley’s opera Foreign Experiences, this has been a venue special and dear to me. When I interviewed Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori about their new Phantom Orchard project in 2004 for my sole cover story for The Wire, the interview took place at the original loft.

 

I know that I’m far from alone in feeling this way.

I’m very grateful to Jim for sharing his thoughts about what’s happened and what’s to come—obviously what’s in the Q&A is only the tip of the iceberg. My thanks, too, to Zeena, Matt Mehlan, Jamie Burns, Joanna Mattrey, and the incredibly generous David Weinstein for crucial insights, and to Rachel Saltz and Emily Brennan at The New York Times for a smooth and illuminating edit.

You can help to send Jim off in style at this year’s Roulette Gala on Thursday, June 6, featuring a suitably dazzling constellation of artists: Zeena and Ikue, Henry Threadgill, Yuka Honda and Nels Cline, Immanuel Wilkins and Joel Ross, Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon, and John Zorn with Staley himself. You’ll find all the details here.

Until then, since I couldn’t use a lot of what I was provided in interviews, I plan to share exclusive outtakes in my Night After Night newsletter during the weeks to come.

Program note: Gabriella Smith, Breathing Forests

Gabriella Smith (Photograph courtesy of the artist)

 

Gabriella Smith
Breathing Forests
Cleveland Orchestra, Apr. 4 & 6, 2024
Program note

“For a while I felt like, how do I write music about the climate crisis when I want to write music that’s uplifting? And I realized, that’s the kind of music we need. It needs to feel real and profound. We need to feel our grief, and we need to feel the loss. But we also need to feel the joy in getting to work.”—Gabriella Smith

I've greatly appreciated recent opportunities to do some out-of-town program notes writing, none more so than the brief essay I provided for tonight's Cleveland Orchestra premiere of Breathing Forests by Gabriella Smith. I enjoyed speaking with Gabriella, a composer whose works I've admired greatly and consistently, and envy audience members who'll hear the two performances John Adams will conduct tonight and Saturday.

The brief concert overview essay is also mine. My thanks to former Cleveland Orchestra managing editor of content Amanda Angel, a longtime friend and colleague, for the initial engagement, and to current Cleveland Orchestra publications manager Kevin McBrien, to whom Amanda passed the baton when she decamped to Los Angeles for her new role as editorial director at the LA Phil.

"Love Songs: A Creation Story in Four Acts and Four Voices"

John Zorn (Photograph courtesy National Sawdust)

"Love Songs: A Creation Story in Four Acts and Four Voices"
National Sawdust
Sept. 8, 2023

"We prefer pieces that play with the style and format of traditional profiles," the kind folks at National Sawdust told me when I agreed to write a preview story ahead of Love Songs, the new off-Broadway music-styled show by John Zorn and Jesse Harris that has its premiere performances at the Brooklyn venue on Saturday, Sept. 16, and Sunday, Sept. 17.

Challenge accepted.

Love Songs is a delicious piece, with gorgeous music by Zorn and stylish lyrics and book by Harris, and it'll be deliciously performed by singer Petra Haden with pianist Brian Marsella, bassist Jorge Roeder, and percussionist Ches Smith. I look forward to seeing the fully cast and staged version due for production at The New School sometime in 2024.

This current engagement is part of an ongoing year-long global celebration of Zorn's 70th birthday, which also includes further events at Roulette and Miller Theatre, and in Boston and Minneapolis. You'll find links in my preview, in the paragraph that starts "The setting is National Sawdust…"

And don't miss the interview Rebecca Slaman conducted with Jesse and Petra, also on the National Sawdust website. Beauty and chaos, indeed.

Gothamist: Jonathon Heyward interview, Aug. 3, 2023.

Jonathon Heyward (Photograph: Laura Thiesbrummel)

"Conductor Jonathon Heyward is poised to make history in NYC and Baltimore"
Gothamist, Aug. 3, 2023

My final contribution to Gothamist is this extended version of an interview with conductor Jonathon Heyward – the new music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the newly announced music director of whatever the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will be called when it returns next summer – which I scripted and Tiffany Hanssen conducted. The slightly shorter version of the interview that aired on WNYC last weekend is embedded in this story, too.

Heyward is conducting the orchestra on Friday and Saturday nights, Aug. 4 and 5, at David Geffen Hall; details here.

WNYC: Weekend Arts Planner, July 29, 2023.

Endea Owens (Photograph courtesy Jazz at Lincoln Center and Bryant Park)

The latest Weekend Arts Planner segment for WNYC, which aired on Weekend Edition on Saturday, July 29, covered items selected from a Gothamist story published on Thursday: "25 free things to do in NYC this August."

David Furst and I talked about Free Shakespeare in the Park, happening now in Central Park; Beach Session Dance Series, coming up Aug. 26 on Rockaway Beach; and Live After Dark, a new concert series debuting Aug. 1 at Bryant Park. We closed with a quick mention of a 45th anniversary celebration for Roulette, featuring Immanuel Wilkins, 75 Dollar Bill, and Ka Baird, at Bryant Park on Aug. 26.

First up in that last series is fast-rising bassist, composer, and bandleader Endea Owens, who also plays a free Jazz at Lincoln Center showcase outdoors in Times Square on Aug. 31, part of the TSQ Live series. And a Gothamist reader quickly let me know I'd missed one more free gig featuring Owens, on Saturday, Aug. 26, at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, on day two of the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival.

Listen above, and read more here.

Gothamist: 7 Picks a Week, July 28, 2023.

Endea Owens (Photograph courtesy of the artist)

My contributions to "7 Picks a Week," the weekly Gothamist guide of arts and culture events and happenings in and around New York City. The complete article can be found here.

Check out fast-rising bassist Endea Owens for free

Detroit bassist, composer and bandleader Endea Owens is making a big noise lately on the New York City jazz scene, and here's where you can find out why: On Tuesday, Owens and her soulful combo, The Cookout, will inaugurate "Live After Dark," a new weekly series at Bryant Park. It's not happening on the sprawling lawn, but instead on the more intimate L'OR Porch on the park's south side. The show starts at 8 p.m., and it's free. And if you can't catch Owens & Co. here, you'll get another chance on Aug. 31, when Jazz at Lincoln Center hosts the band smack-dab in the middle of Times Square; details here.

Encounter a Sondheim hit in a whole new way.

Also happening at Lincoln Center on Wednesday is a new production of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company," presented in collaboration with Deaf Broadway and performed by deaf actors in American Sign Language. The show is directed by James Caverly ("Only Murders in the Building") and stars Garrett Zuercher ("Law & Order: Criminal Intent") as Bobby, with a 2011 concert recording, featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone with the New York Philharmonic, serving as an auditory soundtrack. The show starts at 8 p.m. in Damrosch Park; learn more here.

WNYC: Weekend Arts Planner, July 22, 2023.

John-Andrew Morrison (L) and Allen Gilmore (R) in "Malvolio," staged by Classical Theatre of Harlem at Marcus Garvey Park. (Photograph courtesy Classical Theatre of Harlem)

The latest Weekend Arts Planner segment for WNYC, which aired on Weekend Edition on Saturday, July 22, covered a series of Shakespeare-related plays happening in New York City parks – including Betty Shamieh's ingenious Malvolio, which closes this coming Sunday – plus the latest and last Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra season, and a couple of big concerts featuring Kool & the Gang and DJ Rekha in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Listen above, and read more here.

Gothamist: 7 Picks a Week, July 21, 2023.

Conductor Louis Langrée starts his final series as music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra on Saturday. (Photograph: Sachyn Mital)

My contributions to "7 Picks a Week," the weekly Gothamist guide of arts and culture events and happenings in and around New York City. The complete article can be found here.

Celebrate summer music in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

It’s been 50 years since Kool & the Gang scored their first hit with “Jungle Boogie,” but the group has even more history: as Jersey City teenagers, its members first hooked up as the Jazziacs in 1964. Two of those founders, bassist Robert “Kool” Bell and drummer-turned-keyboardist George Brown, are still in the band, which just dropped a new album, “People Just Wanna Have Fun,” and Brown has just published a memoir, “Too Hot: Kool & The Gang & Me.” The band is headlining a free City Parks SummerStage show at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Saturday night; get your groove on with songs like “Ladies Night,” “Too Hot” and “Celebration,” and then come back Sunday evening for a “Bhangra Bacchanal” hosted by Basement Bhangra founder DJ Rekha featuring legendary Punjabi vocalist Malkit Singh.

Visit a cemetery for a taste of New York City on film

Rooftop Films has kept NYC film fans busy with free outdoor screenings of action flicks, family fare and documentaries all summer long. Now, this weekend, they're hosting one of their signature events, and while it's not free, you'll get a lot of value for under $20. "New York Non-Fiction," invitingly described as "Eight million stories, five short films, one night," opens with live music from Mediterranean surf-rock stylists Habbina Habbina, followed by five short films covering such NYC topics as artistic genius, delivery workers and the dollar slice. It's all happening at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery on Saturday at around 8 p.m., and you can order tickets here.

Mark the end of an era with Mostly Mozart

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra is back in action during the weeks ahead — and it's a farewell engagement in more ways than one. The talented French conductor Louis Langrée has served as music director of the festival and its band since 2003. During his 20-year tenure, he revitalized the orchestra and helped to turn the festival from a sleepy summer series into a must-see proposition. This summer's series is his last, and he'll start with a free concert in Damrosch Park on Saturday night. After that, the orchestra returns to David Geffen Hall for the first time since 2019, presenting a series of choose-what-you=pay concerts. The program on Tuesday and Wednesday demonstrates Langrée's knack for forging meaningful connections between the classical tradition and the wider world, pairing Mozart's Mass in C minor with a world premiere by Amir ElSaffar, an improvising trumpeter of Iraqi-American descent. A sense of farewell also extends to the orchestra, which will return next summer with a new name and a new music director, Jonathon Heyward, who you can see in action Aug. 4 and 5. Check out details for the entire series here.

7 Picks a Week, Nov. 25, 2022.

Raphael Payare (Photograph courtesy Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal)

My contributions to the latest installment of 7 picks a week, the arts and culture guide I compile weekly for Gothamist.

See mysticism and melancholy through a world-famous painter's eyes

"Exodus," an exhibition of recent works by the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, is so big one coast couldn't contain it. Part of the show is on view at Gagosian's space at 555 West 24th Street in Chelsea; the other part is housed at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, in Los Angeles. Evoking themes from ancient mythology, the Book of Exodus and the writings of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Paul Celan, Kiefer conjures old gods, monuments and ruins in his characteristically haunting manner. Gagosian, through Friday, Dec. 23; gagosian.com

Be astonished by a jazz quartet's fiery flights

If you've ever had the experience of feeling so overwhelmed by the intensity of a group's cooperation that all you could do was smile and laugh in dumbstruck awe, you've got a good idea of what to anticipate in an encounter with John Zorn's New Masada Quartet. Playing material from Zorn's Masada songbooks – part Jewish theme, part free-jazz steam – the iconoclastic saxophonist's group with guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Kenny Wollesen is among the most joyous outfits he's ever led, and that joy is contagious. Roulette, Sunday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m.; roulette.org

See a rising-star conductor lead the New York Philharmonic for the first time

Conductor Rafael Payare, like his world-famous colleague Gustavo Dudamel, came up through the fabled Venezuelan training program El Sistema, and sprang from the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra to a globe-spanning career. At age 42, he is music director of two outstanding ensembles, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and should make an electrifying first impression on New York Philharmonic audience members with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 12, subtitled "The Year 1917." David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, Thursday, Dec. 1 – Saturday, Dec. 3, times vary; nyphil.org