Music Review: New Versions of Some Old Classics
by Naomi Perley
Petrushka and Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Performed by the Győr National Ballet.
Il mondo della luna by Franz Joseph Haydn. Performed by Gotham Chamber Orchestra.
This review is about three recent adaptations of classical works: The Győr National Ballet’s take on Stravinsky’s early-twentieth-century masterpieces, Petrushka and Rite of Spring, and Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of […]
The East Village Scene
by Mark Schiebe
Like predecessors such as Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones, Foster doesn’t just “kick” the soloist, providing “fills” in the spaces between the horn players’ lines.
Rather, he sets up his own rhythmic patterns “underneath” the soloist. He is the Matisse of the drums, painting in bold shapes and colors, rather than the dense polyrhythms of Jones. Overall, the show was an example of beautiful, non-pretentious music with a focus on craft, openness, and freedom within tradition.
And the Beat Goes on… and on, and on…
by Naomi Perley
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Last month, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Argento New Music Project, the Music Information Center Austria (MICA), and Le Poisson Rouge jointly presented Moving Sounds 2009, a festival “devoted to sound and its roles in contemporary music.” The three-day festival, which sought to bring together artists working with sound across different media and genres, featured several concerts of works by “classical” composers as well as by DJs, an art installation at the Austrian Cultural Forum, panel discussions, and parties. In order to get a taste of the festival, I attended concerts on September 12 and 13 and one of the panels on the afternoon of September13.
On the Musical Genealogy of Neko Case
by Justin Rogers-Cooper
This review is an attempt to assess the latest work of Neko Case within a broader genealogy of mostly North American guitar songwriters. It imagines these songwriters as a collective voice cut into discrete consciousnesses, contributing to one long, dissonant narrative on the rolling American stone. For the sake of argument, then, Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone might […]
The Sign of Three: Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard
by Mark Schiebe
Fly: Sky & Country (ECM, March 2009)
My personal and admittedly partial lineage of the jazz saxophone trio starts with Sonny Rollins’s pair of 1957 recordings Way out West and A Night at the Vanguard. Way out West was a studio album, with bass icon Ray Brown anchoring and Shelley Manne on drums. The cover pictures Rollins in full […]
Next Steps New EPs from TMS and Beirut
by DTyler-Ameen
Throw Me the Statue, Purpleface (Secretly Canadian)
Beirut, March of the Zapotec / Holland (Ba Da Bing!)
The careers of Throw Me the Statue and Beirut are still young, and for the moment it seems both bands are doing exactly what they should. The stories of their success almost make this music business stuff sound easy: TMTS frontman […]
California Dreaming (at Juilliard)
by Naomi Perley
FOCUS! Festival at Lincoln Center.
In trying to untie the many strands of classical music’s storied history, one of the most common techniques is to proceed country-by-country: the Austro-German school with its musical superheroes (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms) ostensibly dominates, but there are equally fascinating stories to be told about the histories of the French, […]
Composers and Conversation
by Naomi Perley
George Crumb, The Sleeper, Vox Balaenae, and Voices from the Morning of the Earth at Carnegie Hall.
Works by Charles Wuorinen at the Guggenheim.
Many people feel intimidated by attending concerts, especially those focusing on new music. They don’t know the scene, they don’t know the music, they don’t know the performers. Sometimes programme notes are helpful, […]
A Screaming Comes Across the Sky: John Adams’ Doctor Atomic
by Mark Schiebe
John Adams, Doctor Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera
The idea to do an opera about the atomic bomb was the brainchild of Pamela Rosenberg, who in 2002 was the politically-minded director of the San Francisco Opera. The genesis of the bomb’s music, however, came much earlier, in a childhood experience of John Adams: “I do remember as a kid — I […]
Masters of New Music
by Naomi Perley
John Zorn and Signal at (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. at Thompson St., (212) 228‑4854.
Things other than school start in September. The new Greenwich Village club, (Le) Poisson Rouge, is a fine example. Described on its website as a “multimedia art cabaret,” (Le) Poisson Rouge presents a dizzying array of concerts, art exhibitions, films, and dance […]
