Founded by the amazingly talented and versatile violinist Sarah Goldfeather and clarinettist Chuck Furlong, dynamic new music septet Exceptet are one of New York’s most distinctive ensembles. Their fearless approach to challenging contemporary music can be heard on this latest release of music by Brooklyn-based composer and guitarist Brendon Randall-Myers. Called Episodic Memory, the album kicks off with Chopsticks—its craggy, pointillistic, and fissured surfaces evoking New York City’s urban urgency and intensity. This is a street-level view of city life where nervous, agitated drum and bass-style rhythms rattle on metal-sounding percussion, flitting hyperactively from one math rock-like module to

Just when Steve Reich’s ninetieth birthday celebrations appeared to be drifting towards an inauspicious conclusion, along comes Charles Hazlewood and the Paraorchestra to gatecrash the party, tear up the rulebook, let loose a posse of Dionysian dancers on the scene, and transform a routine Reich event into a Bacchanalian rave. This new take on Music for 18 Musicians provided a breath of fresh air amongst a raft of retrospective events—Reich remodelled and refracted through the prism of psychedelia and 1990s warehouse EDM, with perhaps a whiff of hippy idealism and transcendental meditation thrown in. I’m not sure whether the composer would have

(Colin Currie Group perform Steve Reich’s Quartet) Steve Reich’s ninetieth anniversary year would not be complete without a world premiere. Or two, as was the case in this evening’s all-Reich concert at Usher Hall, Edinburgh. There again, a Reich premiere would not be complete without the Colin Curry Group either, with Quartet (also on the programme) and Traveler’s Prayer previous co-commissions for Currie’s group. Forming part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, these two new compositions – Two Pianos and the stirring, spectacular In All Your Ways – appeared in either half of the program. More on that later. The

My Steve Reich odyssey has taken me to several cities so far this year, including Liverpool, Manchester, London, Cologne and New York, so it seemed fitting that at least one event marking the composer’s ninetieth anniversary year should happen closer to my doorstep, in Wales. In fact, it’s a two-hour drive from where I live to Aberystwyth, where Solem Quartet and singer Alice Zawadzki were performing as part of this year’s Musicfest Festival. Driving down the northwest coast of Wales towards Aberystwyth (through some astonishingly beautiful scenery, where the mountains tumble into the sea), it struck me that perhaps Reich’s

Alongside Steve Reich’s Violin Phase (1967), Philip Glass’ Strung Out (1968) ranks as early minimalism’s most important work for solo violin. However, unlike Violin Phase—which has received countless performances and several recordings during its nearly sixty-year shelf life—Strung Out has largely gone unnoticed. This twenty-minute work has remained something of an outlier, consigned to the periphery of Glass’ back catalogue. Even when I’ve discussed Strung Out with violinists who frequently perform Glass, several have admitted to not knowing about it. This definitive new release by gifted and versatile violinist Darragh Morgan will surely dispel any lingering doubts about the significance of this piece. It may not

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