Joseph Pfender, a PhD student in musicology at NYU, has active research interests in electroacoustic and multimedia performance, perceptual agency, music and folklore, and theorizing orchestration. He has presented work in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera, and in Athens, Greece.
The flute is one of the most venerable musical instruments we have (the earliest archaeological records have been dated to over 35,000 years ago), and as Claire Chase proved Thursday night at The Kitchen in Chelsea, it retains an energy that ensures it will continue to play a vital role in the future of concert music.
What compelled the composer to use this particular ensemble? Why does this musical texture work best for this moment? Is there a better one? Should I be able to hear more of what’s going on right now? Is that sound really coming from that instrument? These and other questions, uncommon or irrelevant in the context of a Beethoven symphony or a Haydn string quartet, were front and center Tuesd
There’s more than one way to blow a trumpet, and the (figuratively) innumerable players at Roulette in Brooklyn accounted for many of them Wednesday night. While Tuesday’s performance at the same venue was the first in the 2013 Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), this second concert was much more frank in its orientation, putting the instrument and its idiomatic style directly in the spotlight.
The “Masterworks Series” at Bargemusic, featuring such diverse composers as Bach, Stephen Foster, Tan Dun and Gunther Schuller, gave audiences a welcome break from the oppressive New York humidity Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday evening the JACK Quartet, seemingly ubiquitous in new music circles, performed an enlightening array of musical styles at (Le) Poisson Rouge, joined by rising young cellist Joshua Roman. The thoughtful programming was almost as chronologically diverse as it could have been.
Jennifer Koh and Ensemble LPR helped celebrate the five-year anniversary of (Le) Poisson Rouge Friday night, with a lively program of works by John Zorn, Charles Wuorinen and Ludwig van Beethoven. The club-like atmosphere of LPR was in full swing before the show began, waiters ferrying salads and glasses of wine as percussionists adjusted their instruments on stage under colored blooms of light.
Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto performed their masterful and engaging duo set at Rogers Auditorium in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Wednesday night, with the glamor and poise that such a venue implies.
On Friday night, the Irish new music group Crash Ensemble produced some sonic pyrotechnics to match the Scriabinian lights display at Carnegie Hall’s recently renovated Zankel Hall.
Saturday night, Avery Fisher Hall saw a solid and well-crafted final performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25 and Bruckner’s Symphony no. 3. The piano concerto was cleanly executed and so polished as to allow the Mozartean patina to shine clearly through.
Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work.
A genre-bending performance by Laurel Halo, Julia Holter, and Daniel Wohl’s TRANSIT ensemble was the latest instalment in the 2013 Ecstatic Music Festival at the Kaufman Center in Lincoln Square. The EMF, an annual incubator for new and adventurous music in New York City, once again achieved its aim to provide a space for the new and surprising.
The talent was top-shelf at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday evening, kicking off 2013 for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with a cello sonata by Brahms, and trios by Dvořák and Haydn. Emerson String Quartet violinist Philip Setzer joined co-artistic directors of the Society David Finckel on (cello) and Wu Han (piano).
Sō Percussion finished their four-day run of Where (we) Live on Saturday 22 December. A resplendent and confusing bonanza, the hour-long concert consisted of poignantly thin and simple melodies, intensely personal testimonial, performative carpentry, and absurdist and stop-motion film, all piled together with a demeanor of contemporary improvisation and glam rock dressed in flannel.
The minimalist composer Phill Niblock’s Annual Winter Solstice Concert was a great success on Friday night at Roulette in downtown Brooklyn. Featuring Niblock himself on minimalist electronics as well as the guitarists Robert Poss, David Watson, and David First, the six-hour-long concert was a study in timbral interference and the tactile dimension of sound.
Tessa Lark’s recital of violin music on Wednesday evening, in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, was a brilliant showcase of a promising young virtuoso, carefully planned and beautifully executed.
