Performer: Sō Percussion

Steve Reich turned 80 last month, and New Yorkers finally pencilled him, between the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and the daunting presidential election, for big birthday bash at Carnegie Hall.

On Thursday night, I left a concert longing for a tranquilizer, but at Saturday night’s Man Forever/Sō Percussion concert, I began wishing for sedatives about three minutes into the first set. Before the performance, the audience sat entranced by a subtle humming drifting through the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nico Muhly describes A Scream and an Outrage, the weekend of events he curated at the Barbican this weekend, as like a dinner party, “a gathering of friends and family new and old; loosely organised”.

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.

Performances by English Touring Opera and the London Philharmonic Orchestra are the highlights of an autumn season at Saffron Hall with a distinctly theatrical vibe – alongside major Baroque and chamber offerings.