Kurt Gottschalk is a journalist and author based in New York City. His writings on contemporary and classical music, jazz and improvisation have been published in outlets throughout Europe and America and he has two volumes of short fiction to his name. He is also the producer and host of the Miniature Minotaurs radio programme on WFMU.
An evening of instrumental works found inspiration in a Christian Wolff composition, a Salvadoran folk song and the voices of Angela Davis and Arnold Schoenberg.
Bernard Labadie’s orchestration of the Goldberg Variations came to feel strikingly close to the Brandenburgs, which is to suggest a certain achievement on his part. The arrangement was altogether convincing as Bachmusik.
Within the quietude, Pierre Hantaï played beautifully, blues and reds slowly drifting across the waves of wood behind him. It was dramatic yet subtle, occupying the eyes while the mind floated with Bach's variations.
Composer Claude Vivier approaches the unknowable with a text delivered by a septet of vocalists in a language of his own invention. But the new production adds overly literal video, trading abstraction for the obvious.
The unfolding of the tale was beautifully unhurried, made all the more effective by not being an updating. Underscoring connections to the current day wasn’t necessary. The contemporary reverberations were apparent.
El Cimarrón proved worthy of both stage and museum, presenting the story of Esteban Montejo, born into slavery in Cuba in 1869 and later escaping to live in the forest.
The immigrant experience was examined in the New York premiere of Du Yun’s impressive and expansive Where We Lost Our Shadows. Sadly, the rest of the program wasn’t entirely on message.
Ustvolskaya’s piano pieces can be thunderous or gentle as a soft rain, but at all times Schroeder played with deliberation. Each moment carried with it its own independent world.
With an old swing tune, a retrofitted Ligeti piece, a Syrian wedding and a Vivaldi sinfonia, the Knights mixed old and new without quite blending the two.
NYVOS Next offers works by Alvin Lucier, Kaija Saariaho and evening curator Kate Soper in a program demonstrating both the breadth of and inherent risks in live performance with electronics.
Modney and Wubbels presented Braxton’s challenging Composition no. 222 as an early entry into the composer’s extended 75th birthday celebration planned for 2020.
The New York Philharmonic premieres Julia Wolfe’s remembrance of the victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and plays an elegy to LBJ and an Aaron Copland jazz concerto.
An eerie program of resonant sounds and sacred songs overtakes New York’s St Peter's Chelsea with Alvin Lucier, Salvatore Sciarrino and Galina Ustvokskaya alongside 17th-century works for an evening not short on drama.
