Music
Brooklyn Rail Highly Selective Music Events
A thoughtful, discerning, and carefully compiled list of the most notable, promising and unique musical events for the month of May in New York City.
Diary of a Mad Composer
By George GrellaI don’t think it’s possible to gauge even the approximate extent to which we take electricity for granted. Many of us take vacations where we unplug from the digital world, but still have lights to turn on. We can go camping, and even do so with our phones turned off (do we actually leave them behind?), or any GPS device. But the last time civilization as a whole contemplated a world without electricity was during the murmuring panic about Y2K, which was a dud everywhere except for our bizarre imaginations.
COMPLEXITY, STRANGENESS, AND CHARM:
Noah Creshevsky’s Archives
By George Grella
You could say that Noah Creshevsky sits at the crossroads of the world. He lives in a comfortable apartment—where he keeps his composition studio—a short walk from Times Square, and his music and compositional career are an intersection for several important directions for music, old and new, high and low, traditional and technological.
10 LISTENS
Forest Management’s Sharper Focus EP
By Michael Durek
10 Listens is a music review series where Michael Durek listens to an album at least 10 times, taking notes along the way: the aim is to give a comprehensive picture of an album.
CODED FOR TRANSPARENCY
Tristan Perich’s Parallels
By Marshall Yarbrough
Whether or not you can get past the florid language, Kundera’s point is to question music’s place in the noise-filled modern world. Of course, the same noise of modernity that Kundera laments has inspired countless composers, who have sought to make of it a music for their own time.
OUTTAKES
By Steve DalachinskyWhat really does happen when a sewing machine encounters an umbrella on an operating table? I can’t say for sure though I have my ideas. But I can tell you what happens when a sewing machine encounters a piano and violin in a performance space.
