Education, levitation, and mountain bears in collected stories: “(post)folk”

“I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music”, Steve Reich wrote in his 1968 essay Music as a Gradual Process. His music of the 1960s, from tape pieces such as It’s Gonna Rain to instrumental works like Piano Phase, employed phasing and looping techniques. These compositions are some of the first examples of both process music and downtown musical minimalism.

Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band whose name has become synonymous with new and emerging contemporary classical work. Whether the music is playful of spiteful, dramatic or lighthearted, Alarm Will Sound nails the performance – just as they did Saturday night in Zankel Hall.Opening with Journeyman, a New York première by John Orfe, Alarm Will Sound immediately made their presence known.

Launching a new “Reflektor” series of short festivals, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie invited Bryce Dessner to curate two days of concerts.

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.

The Brooklyn Festival, a week-long celebration of the new music scene from New York City’s “most dynamic borough”, was launched on Tuesday 16 April with a Green Umbrella concert at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles.Interestingly enough, the festival came hard on the heels of another festival which ended Sunday, the Hear Now Music Festival.