This week: concerts in New York (August 6, 2012 – August 12, 2012)

Grand Band w/ music for piano sextet by Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, Kate Moore, and Philip Glass

Grand Band is a new piano sextet featuring six of New York City’s top pianists: Vicky Chow, David Friend, Paul Kerekes, Blair McMillen, Lisa Moore and Isabelle O’Connell. Described as “awesome” (Sequenza21) following their performance of Steve Reich’s Six Pianos at this year’s Bang on a Can marathon in June, this stunning collection of performers creates a powerful sonic force. Grand Band will perform multiple-keyboard music by Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, Kate Moore, and Philip Glass.

Tuesday, August 7 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $15 advance, $20 day of show
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY
..:: Website

A Little Night Music | International Contemporary Ensemble

As part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble will perform Berio’s Sequenzas I, II, and VII, Schubert’s Moments musicaux Nos. 3, 4 and 6, and give the world premiere of Patricia Alessandrini’s Black, black, black (Omaggio a Berio).
Wednesday, August 8 at 10:30 PM
Tickets $45
Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, Rose Building, 10th Floor, at 65th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
..:: Website

The Cage Century | Third Coast Percussion

The program highlights works written in John Cage’s early artistic life, when he met and studied with Arnold Schoenberg and Henry Cowell, worked with Lou Harrison, fell in love with and married Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, and found inspiration in Oskar Fischinger’s dictum that “everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound.” The program also features the premiere of the new work RENGA:Cage:100, which is comprised of miniature contributions from 100 contemporary composers, presented in an order determined by chance operations, and performed as a seamless work.  Contributing composers include Aaron Jay Kernis, Missy Mazzoli, Steven Mackey, Andrew Norman, Corey Dargel, Glenn Kotche, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan La Barbara, and Mason Bates, among others.
Thursday, August 9 at 6:30 PM
Tickets first come, first served entry, with regular MoMA museum admission.
The Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019
..:: Website

Bartók’s Birdsong | Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra

Louis Langrée leads the Orchestra and French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet in Bartók’s lyrical Third Piano Concerto, a work that includes echoes of the call of a bird Bartók heard during a winter he spent in the mountains of North Carolina. The Concerto is paired with Witold Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, a reverential work that the composer dedicated “à la mémoire de Béla Bartók,” and the evening ends with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39.

Friday, August 10 and Saturday, August 11th at 8 PM
Tickets begin at $35.
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, NY
..:: Website

Bird Concerto | International Contemporary Ensemble

Le merle noir was among Olivier Messiaen’s first explorations of birdsong, and Jonathan Harvey’s absorbing Bird Concerto with Pianosong uses electronics to mix birdsong with live instruments, performed here by Joanna MacGregor, for whom the work was written. The centerpiece of the program, Schubert’s masterful Octet, is a chamber-music symphony filled with lyrical lines worthy of the birds that have inspired so many melodies.
Saturday, August 11 at 7:30 PM
Tickets begin at $25.
Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, 1941 Broadway (on 65th St between Broadway & Amsterdam), New York, NY
..:: Website

For the Birds | International Contemporary Ensemble

This unusual event is an ambulatory concert, a musical tour of the spacious ground floor of the Park Avenue Armory, opening with the world premiere of Marcos Balter’s Passará, followed by works by Messiaen, Jonathan Harvey, and John Cage.

Sunday, August 12th at 5 PM
Limited Availability; Call CenterCharge 212.721.6500
Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue New York, NY
..:: Website