This week: concerts in New York (March 31 – April 6, 2014)

Musica Sacra and Kent Tritle present Meredith Monk and the NY Premiere of Jocelyn Hagen’s amass

Meredith Monk along with Katie Geissinger will present Nightfall, written for Musica Sacra and performed in concert for the first time by the chorus. Selections from ATLAS, Part III: Invisible Light and Facing North will also be performed. The New York Premiere of Jocelyn Hagen’s amass will be presented on the second half of the program. Traditional texts from the Roman Catholic mass provide the framework for the composition, along with poetry from Saint John of the Cross, medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, and Eastern texts from the Hindu poet Tukaram.
Monday, March 31 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $30-$50
Alice Tully Hall, Adrienne Arsht Stage, 1941 Broadway, New York, NY
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Pop-Up Concerts | Tony Arnold and Jacob Greenberg

Harawi, a 12-part song cycle, is the first part of Olivier Messiaen’s “Tristan Trilogy,” a series in which he explores the themes of love and death, particularly in relation to the myth of Tristan and Isolde. The French composer is revered as one of the pioneers of modern music and serialism, and was a longtime professor at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Boulez and Stockhausen.
Tuesday, April 1 at 6 PM
Free
Miller Theatre, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY
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Cypress String Quartet

Cypress String Quartet performs works by Dvořák, Tsontakis, and Schubert.
Tuesday, April 1 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $30-$35
SubCulture, 45 Bleecker Street, Downstairs, New York, NY
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New Juilliard Ensemble

Joel Sachs leads the New Juilliard Ensemble in a program of world premieres and winners of the NJE composition audition. Featuring music by Molly Joyce, Robin De Raaff, Michae Ippolito, and Valentin Bibik.
Tuesday, April 1 at 8 PM
Free
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway, New York, NY
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Unsound Festival New York Opening

Opening the festival this year at ISSUE Project Room is a live presentation of Knots, the centerpiece composition from Australian Oren Ambarchi’s album Audience of One, released in 2012 by the sound-art label Touch. For Knots, Ambarchi is joined by fellow Australians drummer Joe Talia, Crys Cole on contact mics and spring and soloist James Rushford leading a quintet from Krakow’s Sinfonietta Cracovia as well as other string players. Opening for them is half of the Barcelona-based post-rave sound-art duo EVOL, known for what they call “computer music for hooligans”. EVOL will present the New York premiere of the rarely performed mathematics-based music of German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven.
Wednesday, April 2 at 8 PM
$25 or $18 IPR members / students
Issue Project Room, 22 Boerum Pl, Brooklyn, NY
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Lixiviation | Unsound Music Festival

The esoteric musical-research duo Neotrantrik (Demdike Stare’s Sean Canty and Andy Votel) will collaborate for the first time with legendary American electronic music innovator Suzanne Ciani. Ciani played a pivotal role in the development of electronic music in the U.S., creating sounds for Atari, pinball machines, commercials and Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Opening for them is the Polish duo Piętnastka, who will present their densely-woven sound-tapestries with synthesizer and drums. Note: this show is free, but capacity is limited. Entry is first-come, first-served.
Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 PM
Free
David Rubenstein, Atrium at Lincoln Center 61 W. 62 St, New York, NY
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The Long Tone | Unsound Music Festival

For their Unsound-commissioned project Concealed, UK duo Demdike Stare have created an uncanny live work of sound and vision in collaboration with a quintet of string players from Sinfonietta Cracovia, reflecting a variety of influences from giallo movie scores to sounds from early hardcore rave and the American noise scene. Live visuals created especially for the project by filmmaker Michael England (previously known for collaborating with the likes of Autechre) explore urban decay, bleak English landscapes and Japanese mythology. Phill Niblock is one of New York’s true music treasures, a master of drone and minimalism who is now over 80 and still going strong. He will appear with Pauline Kim and Conrad Harris on violin to perform Unipolar Dance as well as present a solo piece, with projections of his own experimental film work. Poland’s Stara Rzeka offers a sound he calls “magical brutalism”, blurring the outer perimeters of black metal, noise and ambient.
Friday, April 4 at 7 PM
$25 or $18 for IPR members and students
First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn, NY
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American Composers Orchestra

Brazilian songstress Luciana Souza joins the American Composers Orchestra for an evening of internationally influenced works that defy musical and political borders. The renowned vocalist performs Derek Bermel’s Mar de Setembro, a song cycle set to texts by the late Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade and written expressly for Souza. The ensemble also performs works by Gunther Schuller, Gabriela Lena Frank, Silvestre Revueltas, and Marcos Balter.
Friday, April 4 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $43-$50
Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, NY
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Marilyn Nonken: Voluptuous Virtuosity

Marilyn Nonken’s series at Spectrum continues.
Friday, April 4 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $15, $10 students/seniors
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
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Ghost Ensemble | East Bank Music Series

At Greenpoint’s beautiful Church of the Ascension, hosted by the East Bank Music series, Ghost Ensemble will present immersive, atmospheric works by Somna M Bulist, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, Matthew Sargent, John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi and Ben Richter.
Friday, April 4 at 8 PM
$10 Suggested Donation
Church of the Ascension, 127 Kent Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY
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John King Presents: Born into Flames

John King’s series at Spectrum continues.
Friday, April 4 at 8:45 PM
Tickets $15, $10 students/seniors
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
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Resonance | Unsound Music Festival

A weekend afternoon of percussion performances at ISSUE Project Room. Poland’s Hubert Zemler will perform a distinctive set bringing together new music, improv and jazz, demonstrating why he is a key figure in Warsaw’s independent music scene. Norwegian Håkon Stene will present Michael Pisaro’s Ricefall, which involves rice falling upon a surface at varying intensities. American percussionist Sean Meehan has pared down his kit to a single snare and uses different obeys to activate vibrations; he will be joined by longtime collaborator Ben Manely, performing on fans and other everyday appliances.
Saturday, April 5 at 3 PM
Tickets $15 or $12 for IPR members and students
Issue Project Room, 22 Boerum Pl, Brooklyn, NY
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Iktus Percussion Presents

Iktus Percussion is pleased to announce the 2014 installment of The Firehouse New Music Series. One of the featured highlights of our concert season, Iktus will host some of New York City’s most cutting edge, diverse, and electrifying experimental new music ensembles and performers. This event will feature: Richard Kamerman and Uptown Girls.
Saturday, April 5 at 8 PM
Tickets $10
The Firehouse Space, 246 Frost St., Brooklyn, NY
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Kleksploitation | Unsound Music Festival

Andy Votel, an eclectic DJ, composer and curator, was commissioned by Unsound to create Kleksploitation (an homage to “Pan Kleks”), reconfiguring images, music and sound from a much-loved Polish trilogy of films for children from the 1980s and subverting them to coax their darker side to the surface. The Pan Kleks trilogy was originally scored by Andrzej Korzyński, a mysterious Warsaw composer whose unearthed catalogue Votel is releasing on his ever-growing Finders Keepers label. To open, Warsaw-based experimental musician Piotr Kurek of Piętnastka will perform a live score for the 1958 Janusz Majewski absurdist short Rondo, in which a waiter ignoring a customer leads to dire consequences.
Saturday, April 5 at 8 PM
Tickets $13, $8 for BAM Cinema Club members
BAMcinématek at BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY
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Peckinpah Trios | Music For Contemplation

Craig Shepard (trombone), Tyler Wilcox (soprano sax), and Dan Joseph (hammer dulcimer) build passing moments out of soft tones of Antoine Beuger’s Peckinpah Trios.
Saturday, April 5 at 8:05 PM
Tickets $15, $75 season pass
Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, 259 North 5th St, Brooklyn, NY
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Dollshot: New Art Songs

Dollshot performs new art songs inspired by Lionel Feininger, Clarice Lispector, and Franz Schubert.
Saturday, April 5 at 9:30 PM
Tickets $15, $10 students/seniors
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
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Nino Jvania: Piano Salon

The concert will feature the world premieres of piano pieces composed for a Georgian pianist Nino Jvania by five women composers: Elizabeth Hoffman, Katarina Miljkovic, Yoon-Ji Lee, Caroline Park and Eka Chabashvili. The pieces will be juxtaposed with several “Natural Durations” by Karlheinz Stockhausen – short pieces from the cycle of 24 pieces for solo piano, as well as one of the most famous piano pieces of New Music – Klavierstück IX.
Sunday, April 6 at 3 PM
Tickets $15, $10 students/seniors
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
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Cymbeline | Metropolis Ensemble

New Music by David Bruce, Chris Cerrone, Jakub Ciupinski, and Vivian Fung.
Sunday, April 6 at 6 PM
Tickets $15-$75
(Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY
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Patrick Derivaz (bass), Cornelius Dufallo (amplified violin): Soundscapes Series

This week’s guest is Rob Schwimmer, theramin and perhaps various and sundrie other instruments of delight.
Sunday, April 6 at 6 PM
Tickets $15, $10 students/seniors
Spectrum, 121 Ludlow Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
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The Mirror Visions Ensemble

The evening will include music based on the poems of Linda Pastan and Jeffrey Greene, including two American premieres — songs to poems of Greene by Russell Platt, and a song cycle by Richard Pearson Thomas set to poetry of Pastan. The poets and composers will be in attendance, discussing the intricacies of setting poetry to music. The program will also include works by Christopher Berg, Tom Cipullo, Deborah Fischer Teason and Francine Trester.
Sunday, April 6 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $10-$20
SubCulture, 45 Bleecker St, New York, NY
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Sybil Tones CD Release Party

CD release event: JACK Quartet performing Matthew Barnson’s String Quartet No. 3 featured on Sibyl Tones released by Tzadik.
Sunday, April 6 at 10 PM
Tickets $15
The Stone, Corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street, New York, NY
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