Capital New York

Did you know the pianist in AMOUR is a real (good) pianist? Talked to him about acting (and playing) for Haneke: http://t.co/OtQUjBuR:

Records coming out next week that I love: 1. Miles Davis: Live in Europe 1969 2. Buke & Gase: General Dome 3. Rudresh Mahanthappa: Gamak

25 Prince rock songs since "Cream" better than that new slab of o_0 that Buzzfeed says is his best rock song since "Cream."

Eatin chips n guac. Watchin @BerlinPhil +Barbara Hannigan doin William Walton's Facade (words by Edith Sitwell) at tha Digital Concert Hall.

All the fluids that normally slide around NYC's sidewalks have frozen into an action-painting style taxonomy of horrifying urban illness.

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