Night After Night

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.

Goings On About Town, December 17, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the December 17, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates December 12-18. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Fun fact: Editors excised two words from the very end of the above listing: "(Mine did.)"

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For whatever reason, as I'm typing this, the date is missing for the MATA event. It's on Dec. 17 at 8pm; details here.

Goings On About Town, December 10, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the December 10, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates December 5-11. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, December 3, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the December 3, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates November 28-December 4. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, November 26, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the November 26, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates November 21-27. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, November 19, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the November 19, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates November 14-20. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, November 12, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the November 12, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates November 7-13. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, November 5, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the November 5, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates October 31-November 6. (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

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Goings On About Town, October 29, 2018.

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the October 29, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates October 24-30. The bug that lately has prevented venues from appearing with listings online has been repaired, but I'll provide them again here anyway. Why not? (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)

Ralph van Raat: Weill Recital Hall (Oct. 24); Pierre-Laurent Aimard & Tamara Stefanovich: Zankel Hall (Oct. 25) [link]

The Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St. [link]

Merkin Concert Hall, 129 W. 67th St. [link]

Italian Academy, Columbia University, 1161 Amsterdam Ave. [link]