Venue: The Kitchen, New York City

In a posthumous premiere of his opera-novel Quicksand at The Kitchen in New York City, Ashley’s ingenuity was awakened by a troupe of artists who understand his work on a spiritual level.

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.

Thursday night at The Kitchen, the exceptional new music ensemble Either/Or performed a diverse selection of five works all composed in the past two years.

As I was leaving the upstairs gallery at The Kitchen last Wednesday night, thinking about what to tell you about the performance I had just seen, “You have never seen a game show quite like this” kept coming to mind.Rewind.

There is something to be said for process over product, but in the case of Jennifer Monson’s Live Dancing Archive, it is not quite enough to raise the solo show – an exploration of how environmentally based experiences shape movement – out of its intellectual heaviness.

Nothing much happens in Adrienne Truscott’s puzzlingly titled ...Too Freedom... (the original title includes a sea of Japanese characters that yours truly, alas, cannot decipher), presented in its world première this past weekend at The Kitchen.