Tag: NYC concerts

Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Events, Music Events, New York

Where’s the Music? A Guide (New York Edition)

At a TIME:SPANS concert at DiMenna Center this summer, I sat next to a gentleman who asked me, “How do you find out about concerts like this one?”

It used to be easy, but…..over the past decade or so we’ve seen the demise of New York Times’ “Guide to the Lively Arts”, Time Out New York‘s extensive performing arts listings, and The New Yorker’s classical and opera Goings On Around Town section decimated to a mere one or two events per issue.

I have long wanted to create a classical events calendar for New York City, but my own limited resources (time, money) have made that project impractical. What I CAN offer is this list of terrific sites:

  1. Live Music Project – LMP launched in 2014 as a Seattle-only classical calendar service, and expanded a couple of years ago to cover the entire United States. It is largely events that are posted by the presenters or artists themselves, so its level of comprehensiveness depends on the community.
  2. New Music Calendar – launched and maintained by composer Todd Tarantino. A no-frills but fairly comprehensive listing of contemporary classical music events in New York
  3. Extended Techniques – Co-founded by musicologists Oksana Nesterenko and Alex Minkin, the main purpose of the site is a podcast series about contemporary music, but the well-maintained monthly concert listing is the most informative part of the site
  4. New York Classical Review – Primarily a site with well-written concert reviews, NYCR also posts a curated, linear list of events
  5. New Music USA – A user-posted events calendar of new music around the country
  6. Club Free Time – A listing of free performing arts events in New York, as well as films, walking tours and other free things to do. Detailed information is by subscription.
  7. Go Out! The List: A highly curated weekly performing arts list, heavy on new music, distributed by subscription newsletter (there are both free and paid versions). Each event listed is paired with a bar or restaurant recommendation.

I hope these resources get you to where you want to go this season.

Have I missed any major calendars? Let me know in the comments section below.

by Gail Wein
Contemporary Classical

Tonight: NYNME Celebrates Lukas Foss

Foss NYNME


Monday at the DiMenna Center, New York New Music Ensemble presents a program of works by Lukas Foss (1922-2009). Lukas (with whom I studied in the 90s when I was at BU) was a man of many musical talents with a near-omnivorous interest in a host of musical styles. Rather than try to present a comprehensive portrait of them all (a tall order in a single evening!), NYNME will focus on pieces from the mid-sixties through the mid-eighties, the period during which he was in his most experimental phase. In Echoi (1963), Foss made use of vast swaths of serial-inspired charts – there are pictures of them taking up whole walls of his studio. However, his performance directions add a measure of postmodern theatricality and there’s more than a bit of aleatory at work too. These seemingly disparate elements come together in a piece that is a masterful melange. Paradigm (1968), is more ebulliently chaotic still. Incorporating clangorous percussion and vociferous shouts alongside quasi-rock riffs from electric guitar, it channels more than a bit of the cultural and political revolutions afoot in the year of its composition.

Rendezvous - Tashi


Solo Observed (1982), began its life as a virtuosic solo piano piece, Solo, which found Foss experimenting with minimalism and maximalism at the same time. Solo Observed (1982, in versions for both orchestra and chamber ensemble), adds additional instruments, who observe, comment on, and sometimes even obstruct the pianist’s solo. The last work on the program, Tashi (1986), written for the star-studded chamber ensemble of the same name, is one of my favorite of Foss’s chamber works. Abundantly virtuosic and sumptuously harmonically varied, it is one of the best syntheses of the various styles and varied materials that fascinated Foss. Hunt down Rendezvous, the group’s 1989 recording on which it appears. Better yet, catch it live tonight.


NYNME

by Christian Carey