Tag: File Under ? blog

CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Recording review, Recordings, Twentieth Century Composer

Tobias Picker, NOVA (Recording review)

Tobias Picker NOVA Various Artists Bright Shiny Things   Composer Tobias Picker won a Grammy for his 2020 operatic version of The Fantastic Mister Fox, and many pianists have first encountered him through the diatonic piece The Old and Lost Rivers. Picker has another side to his musical persona that is in no small measure reflective of his time as a student of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Charles Wuorinen. The Bright Shiny Things recording NOVA includes chamber music that celebrates these high modernist roots, as well as forays into postmodernism.    The title work is the latter, a riff

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by Christian Carey
Composers, Concert review, Conductors, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music: Orchestra Concert

  2025 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra July 28, 2025   LENOX – This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music was curated by composer Gabriela Ortiz. Born in Mexico City, Ortiz is one of the most prominent Latinx figures in twenty-first century classical music. Among other honors, she is composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and the Curtis Institute. Revolucióndiamantina, a recording of her music by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, won three GRAMMY Awards in 2025. This year, FCM has spotlighted music from Mexico, as well as that of women composers. After four chamber ensemble

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by Christian Carey
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
Classical Music, Composers, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

The Met Orchestra Plays Ortiz, Blanchard, and More at Carnegie Hall

  The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor Angel Blue, Soprano Carnegie Hall, April 18, 2025 Published on Sequenza 21  By Christian Carey   NEW YORK – Virtually since its inception, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Met Orchestra for short, has given concerts alongside its main role accompanying operas. For over a hundred years, this has allowed the ensemble to stretch itself, performing vocal works, unstaged or semi-staged operas, repertoire staples, and several premieres. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has relished the opportunity to work with the musicians in this capacity. On Wednesday night, the Met Orchestra premiered a suite from

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by Christian Carey
File Under?, Improv, jazz, Piano

Keith Jarrett – New Vienna (CD Review)

Keith Jarrett New Vienna ECM Records   Keith Jarrett turned eighty on May 8th, 2025, and to fete him, ECM Records has released New Vienna, a solo piano concert recorded on his last tour, in 2016, at the Goldener Saal, Musik Verein in the Austrian city. A previous recording, The Vienna Concert, recorded in 1991 and released in 2000, was also a solo outing by Jarrett, at the Staatsoper. It has been cherished by many listeners as a particularly fine example among the many live appearances by Jarrett that have been documented and released. New Vienna is a worthy successor. 

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by Christian Carey
File Under?, Guitar, Pop, Songs

Gwenifer Raymond: “Jack Parsons Blues” (New song)

Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark by Gwenifer Raymond Gwenifer Raymond will release her third full length recording Last Night I Heard the Dog Bark (We Are Busy Bodies) on September 5th, 2025. Ahead of the release, she is sharing the track “Jack Parsons Blues.” A gentle vocal abetted by the tang of a strummed steel string acoustic guitar gradually gives way to layers of syncopated overlapping guitars. The intricate instrumental is typical of Raymond’s considerable capabilities as an instrumentalist. It may be hard to think of September releases at the outset of the Summer season but, when

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Pop

Swimming Bell’s Early Summer Serenade

Swimming Bell Somnia EP Perpetual Doom   Summers have been getting progressively hotter in much of the world. Here in the Northeast United States, we have had a mild Spring, but anticipate that summer will be a scorcher. Happily, singer/songwriter Katie Schottland ‘s project Swimming Bell has returned to serenade the season.     Swimming Bell’s latest EP, Somnia (Perpetual Doom, 2025) adopts a summery vibe. “95 at Night” both embraces the heat with fevered blur and seeks to assuage it with soothing vocals, pedal steel, and an undulating beat. The end of a summer romance could find little better to

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by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, early music, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Alisa Weilerstein’s Fragments 3 Program at Zankel Hall (Concert review)

  Fragments 3: Alisa Weilerstein at Zankel Hall May 20th, 2025 Published in Sequenza 21 By Christian Carey   NEW YORK – Alisa Weilerstein is a supremely gifted cellist, and it is hard to imagine being anything less than riveted by her playing. At Zankel Hall last Tuesday, she made decisions for her Fragments project that seemed to be needlessly distracting.  There are six Fragments programs all told, each based on one of the Bach Suites, joined by new pieces commissioned for the project. Fragments 3 featured the third cello suite alongside pieces by Joseph Hallman, Thomas Larcher, Jeffrey Mumford,

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by Christian Carey
CD Review, Concert review, File Under?, Minimalism

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall   Kaufman Music Center Piano Dialogues Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn May 12, 2025 Published on Sequenza 21   NEW YORK – Last Monday, the pianist Simone Dinnerstein brought her Baroklyn project to Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall to perform an all Philip Glass program. Baroklyn is a string ensemble, augmented at the concert by harp and celesta, assembled by Dinnerstein from musician friends with an eye towards a mostly, but not exclusively, female group.    The concert opener was The Hours Suite, excerpted from the film score and arranged by Michael

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by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?, New York

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s March 29, 2025 Church of St. Mary the Virgin   NEW YORK – Celebrating their twentieth year, the vocal ensemble Stile Antico brought a program dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s birth to Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series. The concert was held at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, a space that Miller has employed to host a number of Renaissance music performances.   Stile Antico appeared with only eleven singers, instead of their usual complement of a dozen. Baritone Gareth Thomas was ill

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by Christian Carey