Sequenza21

Improvisation, especially of the largely unplanned and entirely freeform variety, can be a bit hit-and-miss, particularly when it becomes apparent that the performers aren’t singing (or playing) from the same hymn sheet. Nevertheless, when collective interactions click into place—as on this seven-track mini-album by Alexander Varty on guitar & electronics, Andres Kahre on percussion and electric cello, and violin virtuoso Jack M Campbell—the results can be truly striking and illuminating. No Room For Error came about through a serendipitous encounter between Campbell and longtime collaborators Varty and Kahre on Gabriola Island (which lies in the Strait of Georgia in British

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, music took another turn on its ambient axis, and ‘post-classical’ was born. Mark Prendergast had already claimed the previous century to be the ambient century, with everything from Mahler to Trance falling under its all-encompassing sonic spell. One nevertheless suspects that, had Prendergast published his book a few years later, he may have been persuaded to call it The Long Ambient Century, such was ambient and its offshoots’ enduring appeal to post-millennial listeners. For better or worse, performers and musicians from Chilly Gonzales, Peter Broderick, Nils Frahm, Johann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir to Ólafur

The final day of this year’s Long Play Festival appropriately began en plein air with a performance of John Luther Adams’ Crossing Open Ground – fitting for a composer whose music doesn’t simply reflect nature so much as exist within it. Led by percussionist and conductor Doug Perkins, the hour-long piece for forty musicians unfolded near the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in the tranquil surroundings of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. As with several other Adams works – including his Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean – Crossing Open Ground emerged from the margins of silence, its opening sounds indistinguishable from the environment to which they belonged. What

(Phaedra Ensemble at Kings Place) Steve Reich’s ninetieth anniversary celebrations continued apace this month with two concerts at London’s Kings Place. Known for its creative buzz, lively atmosphere, and receptive audiences, the venue is an ideal setting for contemporary chamber music. Reich’s three major quartets were heard there within the space of a week: the Solem Quartet’s powerful performance of Different Trains on March 14th (see my review in The Strad) was followed on March 20th by equally compelling interpretations of WTC 9/11 and Triple Quartet by the dynamic Phaedra Ensemble. Both concerts formed part of Kings Place’s imaginatively curated ‘Memory Unwrapped’ series. Subtitled ‘slow change’, Phaedra

(Cover photography by Aaron Eidman of an artwork by Nina Blass) (Photo: Boris Seewald) In Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin (The New Press, 2017)—Paul Hockenos’ illuminating account of the city’s music scene before, during, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989—he retells how its dynamic countercultural scene became a sanctuary for “off-grid experiments” by radical interventionist contrarians: neo-dadaists and situationists, punk rockers and producers of industrial techno, graffiti artists and queer activists. It is not without reason that famous rock and art pop stars such as David