Concerts

Chamber Music, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Percussion, Women composers

2025 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

2025 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood – July 24 – July 28, 2025 Every summer since 1964, the Tanglewood Music Center presents its Festival of Contemporary Music. According to Tanglewood’s materials: The Festival of Contemporary Music (FCM) is one of the world’s premier showcases for works from the current musical landscape and landmark pieces from the new music vanguard of the 20th century. FCM affords Tanglewood Music Center Fellows the opportunity to explore unfamiliar repertoire and experience the value of direct collaboration with living composers. Over the four FCM concerts (of the total of six) I heard carefully honed performances

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by Gail Wein
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, File Under?, New York

Bell-Isserlis-Denk Trio and Friends

Bell-Isserlis-Denk Trio and Friends Midsummer Musicfest at Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y July 9, 2025   NEW YORK – July often finds New York-based musicians playing in summer festivals well outside the city. The 92nd Street Y’s Midsummer MusicFest enticed a small handful of luminaries back to town to play chamber music at the venue’s Kaufmann Concert Hall. Violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk have joined forces before, but not for a while in New York. In 2024, to commemorate the one hundredth year of his passing, they toured programs of music by the French

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by Christian Carey
Canada, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Preview: Pianists Adam Sherkin and Anthony de Mare: “Composers in Play XV”

The Canadian pianist/composer Adam Sherkin shares music from his home country on an extensive program at Merkin Hall in New York on March 15, 2025. “Composers in Play XV” is presented by Piano Lunaire, an organization launched by Sherkin and his colleagues in 2018. On this occasion he joins forces with the American pianist Anthony de Mare. Together the two perform music by (mostly) living Canadian composers for one and two pianos. Each of the performers has connections with some of the creators. In Sherkin’s case it is himself as the composer of Ink from the Shield for two pianos,

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by Gail Wein
Cello, Composers, Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York, Orchestras

Sphinx Virtuosi and New York Philharmonic Play Black American Composers

Black American composers dominated the programming at two of New York City’s major institutions last week — a 180° turn from the typical fare of Dead White Men at most orchestral concerts. On Wednesday, October 16, Carnegie Hall presented Sphinx Virtuosi — the flagship ensemble of the Sphinx Organization, an organization whose mission it is to encourage careers of Black and Latino classical musicians and arts administrators. Thursday at Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall was New York Philharmonic’s program “Exploring Afromodernism” — a program which was repeated on Friday. Both concerts featured outstanding and committed performances of mainly 21st century classical

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by Gail Wein
Concert review, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Louis Karchin A Retrospective at Merkin Hall (concert review)

Louis Karchin: A Retrospective Merkin Concert Hall September 22, 2024 NEW YORK – Composer Louis Karchin has been prolific, even during the pandemic years. In a program at Merkin Concert Hall of chamber works and songs composed between 2018 and 2024, he was abetted by some of New York’s go-to new music performers, who acquitted themselves admirably throughout.  Stephen Drury is an abundantly talented pianist. But even with a repertoire list as lengthy and challenging as Drury’s, Sonata-Fantasia (2020, New York Premiere) is an imposing addition. The piece is in four large sections combined into a single movement, with elements

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by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, New York, News, Premieres

Tonight: New York Premiere by Christian Carey

Tonight, the Locrian Chamber Players gives the New York premiere of Quintet 2 by Christian B. Carey. Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works. Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine

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by Gail Wein
Brooklyn, Concerts, Events, Experimental Music, Festivals, File Under?, jazz

William Parker Celebrated at Vision Fest

Vision Fest 2024 – William Parker Receives a Lifetime of Achievement Award On June 18th, luminary bassist, bandleader, poet, and composer William Parker will receive a Lifetime of Achievement Award at Vision Fest 2024. The Brooklyn series for ecstatic jazz and improvised music has often featured Parker in a variety of ensemble configurations and in memorable solo performances.  He will be celebrated on Tuesday, June 18th, with a plethora of events (below)  and performances that will also be livestreamed (tickets). There is more to celebrate. On Friday, June 21st, AUM Fidelity is releasing two recordings featuring Parker.  William Parker and

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by Christian Carey
BAM, Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, Minimalism, New York, Opera, Percussion

A Short Piece about Long Play 2024

Long Play …. Not long enough! This year’s Long Play schedule is particularly dizzying. The annual festival presented by Bang on a Can in Brooklyn, now in its third year, seems to have crammed more events than ever into its three day festival, running May 3, 4 and 5. For instance, on Saturday, May 4 at 2 pm, you’ll have to choose between a new opera by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser with libretto by Ben Kaplan, called The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (at American Opera Projects) AND Ensemble Klang imported from the Netherlands playing works by the

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by Gail Wein
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Los Angeles, Review

Wicked GOAT – Stories

On Sunday, March 24, 2024 the Pasadena Conservatory of Music presented the second in this season’s Wicked GOAT concert series of Contemporary Music for Young People. The concert is free to the Conservatory community and every seat in Barrett Hall was filled with eager faces and proud parents. The theme for this occasion was Stories and a stellar group of Los Angeles-based performers were on hand to bring four new music compositions to life, including a world premiere. Sopranos Hila Plitmann and Elissa Johnston brought their extraordinary voices to the stage, and this was the first Wicked GOAT concert to

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by Paul Muller
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, File Under?, New York, Songs, Violin

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri

Saturday, March 30th: Kafka Fragments at Tenri On Saturday at 8 PM, Kafka-Fragmente by  György Kurtág will be performed at Tenri Cultural Institute (43A West 13th Street,New York NY), by soprano Susan Narucki and violinist Curtis Macomber (tickets). Earlier this week, they performed it at another venue also abundantly supportive of contemporary classical music, Buffalo University.   Kafka-Fragmente is based on aphoristic texts by Franz Kafka from his diaries and correspondence. As is his practice, Kurtág brought the composition together gradually, collecting fragments over time and completing the piece in 1985. At seventy minutes in duration, until his opera Fin

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by Christian Carey