Capital New York

The surprising and genre-confounding collaboration of Hillary Hahn and Hauschka

Curiously (and enticingly), however, when both players stopped referencing the album in any direct way, they seemed capable of greater invention. Playing what they called a series of “solos”—which the pair described from the stage as “those things where you play solo, and then I join you at the end”—they reached for a language beyond the one they’ve already set down on the album. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on June 22nd, 2012 11:40am

A free Philip Glass show, and more treats from him on deck

If you’ve never seen Glass play his own music, there have been—and will continue to be—a great number of opportunities during this, his 75th birthday year. (But this one is the cheapest!) Even if you have seen Glass perform his music before, this particular concert is one to strongly consider catching. Right now, the composer sounds, well, pretty damn good. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on June 20th, 2012 3:17pm

Experimental composer Pauline Oliveros, having her big moment at age 80

The rave Pitchfork review was for a 12-C.D. retrospective of Oliveros' electronic and tape works from 1961-1970, on the (correctly named) Important Records imprint, with their “best new reissue” garland. “I read that review and I was really pleased with it!” Oliveros said. “I thought [the writer] just did a beautiful job.… Because there were very few of my '60s electronic pieces that had been out, in recordings. Most of my material on this 12-C.D. set has been sitting on the shelf all that time.” This weekend, Oliveros and her Deep Listening Band will come to the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden, as part of this year’s 12-hour Bang On A Can Marathon. Oliveros says they’ll be playing three pieces during their set, which is scheduled to start in the 4 p.m. hour of the Sunday festival. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on June 15th, 2012 5:19pm

How thinking both big and small made the Darmstadt music festival indispensable to New York

Starting tonight, with a live appearance by Pauline Oliveros (during the week of her 80th birthday), and extending into late June, when Darmstadt will co-present a rare theater work by Karlheinz Stockhausen as part of the Make Music New York festival, their brainchild has become an indispensable part of the city’s live music calendar. Whether based at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, or else at the Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park (where Stockhausen’s Musik Im Bauch, or “Music in the Belly” will be presented on June 24), the duo has managed to pull in some legendary names from the avant-garde world as well as give the spotlight to lesser known up-and-comers. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on June 1st, 2012 12:51pm

Cecil Taylor returns, and stuns the Issue Project Room

At the rough midway point, Taylor departed from the piano to recite one of his mystical-poetic texts. Not all of it was discernible at a textual or recitative level, or meant to be—though the word “radius!” was given several clear, enthusiastic shouts—but its rhythms were musical in a way that seemed inseparable from Taylor’s pianism: full of surprise pauses, repetitions, and revisions of articulation. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on May 21st, 2012 3:19pm

Trust David Byrne: '80s downtown veteran Mikel Rouse still has lots to say

You can trust David Byrne's ear on this one. Mikel Rouse (his first name is pronounced like "Michael") has made dozens of great records since coming to New York. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts acquired his archive in 2010—making it the easiest place for the public to see video recordings of Rouse's modern operas, like Dennis Cleveland, that have played at Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in recent decades. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on May 18th, 2012 2:43pm

Terry Riley on giving up self-publishing and his new concerto for electric violin, being performed this weekend

In this way, you might think of Riley as a blue-chip modern-art stock. But once a listener moves beyond Riley’s sixties-era work, and the enduring pop-culture legacy it has earned him, the composer’s efforts can seem surprisingly ignored. Though his chamber music champions are notable, they have not been large in number (if not for the Kronos Quartet’s commissioning and performance activity, Riley’s latter-day catalogue might not amount to much), while his symphonic works are largely absent from the modern repertoire. This counter-intuitive, outsider aspect of Riley’s persona is what makes this Saturday’s concert at Carnegie Hall such a must-see event. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on May 11th, 2012 3:34pm

It's (unofficially) Cecil Taylor month in New York's jazz world

Next week, the 83-year-old avant-garde pianist is scheduled to play two different solo concerts —one each at Harlem Stage and Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room—which will be his first performances in his hometown since 2009. And while both of those dates have already sold out, a variety of other celebratory events have been scheduled around the margins of Taylor’s reemergence, suggesting that theaters and promoters and individuals were just waiting for an opportunity to celebrate the musician. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on May 9th, 2012 1:55pm

Tyondai Braxton on crossing genres, and the 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' festival at BAM

While it’s useful for consumers and musicians alike to have a citywide infrastructure that can support both a composer like Missy Mazzoli as well as a band like Buke and Gase (who also have a new single out), it can also, at times, feel rather exquisitely figured out before you get to the show. Or, put another way, precisely un-Whitman-like in its sense of being a matter of minds already settled, rather than engaged with in an active process of collective self-discovery. Braxton, though, isn’t in a totally figured-out place—nor does he report any pressure or hurry to get there. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on May 3rd, 2012 10:24am

Thanks to Bang on a Can, a noise-rock show sneaks in the back door of Alice Tully Hall tomorrow

Tatsuya Yoshida is the drummer of the long-running Japanese noise-rock duo Ruins. For three decades, his principal band has pounded its gospel of rhythmically complex, quasi-improvised thrash across the globe. (The duo collaborated memorably with British free-improvisational guitar hero Derek Bailey in the late 90s.) But it would take the Asphalt Orchestra—the Bang On A Can house “marching band”—to commission a suite of music by Yoshida to bring into Alice Tully Hall’s Starr Theater. More

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By Seth Colter Walls

on April 27th, 2012 2:25pm