This most anomalous year has held true to form over the past long months, preventing my finding the time to write here, or to have much to say, really. But I’ve managed to get out twice to hear music performed live since last I filed a concert update—and believe me, friends, that’s something.

The first outing was the performance by Jeremiah Cymerman that I wrote about here on July 17: a brief but impactful set of electronically enhanced solo pieces for clarinet and bass clarinet at New York Insight Meditation Center. Preceded by a guided meditation by Anjie Cho, the concert offered sonic spaces in which to linger for a time in stillness and contemplation.

If I half-expected some some sepulchral riff on Tony Scott’s trailblazing 1965 LP, Music for Zen Meditation and Other Joys, what I experienced was more profoundly informed by John Coltrane’s ceaseless quest, Eric Dolphy’s sonic explorations, and Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening discipline.

Blessed with a keen ear for detail, Cymerman treated his horn with feedback, distortion, echo, and other interventions that altered his sound and the space around it. He’d billed the performance as his first since making the bass clarinet his chief horn, but owing to circumstance began the evening on a standard B-flat horn, pliant bends and slurs evoking klezmer balladry. His second piece transposed that expressive vocabulary downward, bass clarinet tones augmented with roseate aura and burbling electronic counterpoint.

Explaining to his listeners that he doesn’t consider himself a jazz musician, Cymerman nevertheless continued with Coltrane: “Love,” from the 1966 LP Meditations – appropriate! – with ghostly pulsations and iridescent chorales etching paths through the air around his warbling low horn. One final soliloquy included electronically generated accompaniment, sounding at times like an invisible accordion.

It was clear from the start that most of the small audience came from the meditation center’s core clientele rather than the new-music community, so it was gratifying to see listeners paying rapt attention, and posing thoughtful, curious questions after it ended. For me, the experience was exactly the right input in the right setting at the right time, and I eagerly anticipate following Cymerman on this new journey.

The other show I saw, thanks to my esteemed friend and colleague Hank Shteamer, was something else entirely: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson celebrating 50 years of Rush at Madison Square Garden, an unapologetic nerd-rock apotheosis in which we all were Paul Rudd and Jason Segal.

Taking on the almost unthinkable challenge of filling in for the late Neil Peart, drummer Anika Nilles was miraculous: locked in tight, sufficiently faithful to Peart to make 20,000 fans roar with every rippling tom-tom barrage, and willing to add her own flourishes when it was appropriate. (That she’s also locked into the band’s screwball humor was clear in the way she finished the evening’s last song, “Working Man.”) The power trio also benefited from the added hands and pipes of keyboardist Loren Gold, who freed Lee up to roam and leap more freely than in most recent tours.

The setlist on August 1 was the third in a four-set rotation Rush has carried from coast to coast, the one incorporating the entire Moving Pictures LP from start to finish. That was exciting, but my highlights lay elsewhere: “La Villa Strangiato,” a display of peacock virtuosity so gleeful that I misted up in shared delight; and “Time Stand Still,” a potent reflection on time, loss, and what we carry with us, sublime even when Aimee Mann’s part is phoned in.

When tears came, I didn’t even try to hold them back.

Getting back to my old pace with listings is still going to take some time, and I’m doing my best to be patient with myself. But there’s no way I can let this week go by without mentioning the supremely fine violinist Sarah Saviet is here in town for two performances during this year’s action-packed Time:Spans festival, which opened last Saturday. I won’t be able to attend either of them, so I’m counting on you to get there and tell me what I missed.

I wrote about Saviet for Musical America in March 2024, covering her as New Artist of the Month. (Unlike most MA content, this piece is not paywalled.) The article discusses Saviet’s journey from childhood in Washington, D.C., through training at Peabody Preparatory and Indiana University to arrive in Berlin, where her career as a new-music advocate has blossomed.

Saviet spoke with me about who and what prompted her to pursue her chosen path. And composers Bryn Harrison and Liza Lim weighed in on working with Saviet.

Saviet’s first Time:Spans appearance comes this Friday, Aug. 14, when she and baritone Ty Bouque participate in the world premiere of O Maria by Kelley Sheehan, an award-winning composer and sound artist, in a concert also featuring GrauSchumacher Piano Duo and SWR Experimentalstudio. (These soloists share what might be an unsuspected connection: in 2024, Bouque profiled Saviet for the contemporary-music webzine VAN.)

The second concert, on Sunday, Aug, 16, brings together Saviet and her frequent platform partner, pianist-composer Joseph Houston, for the U.S. premiere of The Blue Hour by Sarah Hennies. A 90-minute exercise in patience, focus, endurance, and intensity, the piece had its premiere at Donaueschinger Musiktage last October, and was repeated in November at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

From the Huddersfield program notes:

For Hennies, repetition is never only a musical device. As she writes, “my work for the past nearly 20 years has been based primarily on repetition and often exploring the ways in which repetition affects my life in other, non-musical ways.” In The Blue Hour, those repetitions take on the qualities of her recurring dreams: vivid and often unsettling states of being chased, unable to reach a destination, or caught in cycles that never resolve. The music too feels “unfulfilled, never reaching a resolution or destination,” drawing the listener into a fragile, suspended terrain.

You can read a more personal program essay by Hennies on the Time: Spans website. The Blue Hour is an extraordinary piece: deeply personal, sonically resourceful, stylistically illimitable. Happily it’s being recorded this weekend for those of us who can’t be there. But if you can attend, you should.

Time:Spans 2026 runs through Saturday, Aug. 22 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W. 37th St., midtown west; timespans.org

NYC event calendars.

By music lovers, for music lovers.

• All Ears – classical, experimental & creative musics; monthly

• Concert Net – indie-rock & eclectic; weekly

• Dada Strain – creative & club musics, activism & community; weekly

• Extended Techniques – experimental & creative musics; monthly

• GUNKYARD – indie rock, punk & underground; monthly

• Lament for a Straight Line – “Must See Three” jazz; weekly

• New Music Calendar – contemporary concert music; continuous

• ODEA – classical & experimental music; monthly

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

British pianist John Tilbury is one of those performers whose playing you can tell within the space of just a few notes. Whether he’s playing something by a composer with whom he’s closely related – Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew, and Howard Skempton foremost – or improvising with the matchless free-music ensemble AMM, of which he’s been a member since 1980, Tilbury is a player whose every note embraces paradox: at once crystalline and weighty, spontaneous yet inevitable.

I’ve always regretted not seeing Tilbury perform live. Yes, I never had an opportunity to see AMM perform. But since Tilbury broke his principled political boycott of the U.S. to play in Boston’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice not long after I’d moved there in 2014, there’s no one to blame but myself.

Happily, Tilbury has made many fine recordings—not least a staggering 4CD Morton Feldman survey from 1999 that fetches steep prices now. And now, the English label Another Timbre has added to that considerable bounty with At home, a new 4CD selection of private recordings from the pianist’s own archives.

Taped at home between the end of his public performing career in 2016 and his 90th birthday in February 2026, when he declared his recording career also at an end, At home includes fine performances of works by Cardew, Feldman, Skempton, and Wolff. The box also includes performances of works by a wide range of other composers – Guillaume Machaut, Christopher Hobbs, John Lely, Linda Catlin Smith, Michael Parsons, and so on.

The set also includes a handful of collaborations with colleagues like AMM comrade Keith Rowe, artist Morgan O’Hara, and electronics performer Klaus Filip. And Tilbury’s fascination with Samuel Beckett is duly represented. All told, this is a treasure chest for committed Tilbury admirers, who’ll need no urging to pursue it, and a wide-ranging introduction for the newcomer.

The arrival of At home is accompanied by a repressing of Seaside, a quietly intense collaboration among Tilbury, electronic composer-performer John Lely, and oud player Dirar Kalash, recorded at Tilbury’s home in 2016. The set includes compositions by Lely and Christian Wolff, alongside improvisations named after Palestinian villages depopulated or destroyed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Proceeds from the restocked album benefit Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a humanitarian charity working on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank—not the first time Another Timbre has devoted a fund-raiser to this cause.

More by John Tilbury on Another Timbre:

• Terry Jennings & John Cage - Lost Daylight - John Tilbury & Sebastian Lexer (2010)

• John Tilbury, Johnny Chang, Angharad Davies, Jamie Drouin, Phil Durrant, Lee Patterson - Variable Formations (2013)

• Morton Feldman - Two Pianos and other pieces, 1953-1969 - John Tilbury & Philip Thomas (2014)

• John Tilbury, Michael Duch, John Lely, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Rhodri Davies - Goldsmiths (2016)

• Terry Riley - Keyboard Studies - John Tilbury (2022)

New this week.

Aaron Edgcomb - Sisters Songbook (self-released)

James Emery & Anthony Braxton - Articulations (self-released)

Hypercube - Trace - compositions by Marcel Castro Lima, Seong Ae Kim, Corie Rose Soumah, Farzia Fallah, and Charles Rudig (New Focus)

Brandon Locher - The Shadow Planets (Shared Materials)

Joanna Mattrey, Camila Nebbia, Camilo Ángeles, Violeta García - Heavy Handed (Relative Pitch)

Finola Merivale & Catherine Sikora - Abhaile (Relative Pitch)

Florian Stoffner - bijou (Relative Pitch)

John Tilbury - At home (Another Timbre)

Tres Hongos - More Chips (Relative Pitch)

Tu-Ner - Rendezvous Rodeo (7d Media)

Upcoming releases.

August 7.

Greg Sandow - Three Quartets - Terra String Quartet (Acis)

Linda Catlin Smith - The Complete Piano Solos (1989-2023) Vol. 2 - The Underfolding and Early Works - Cheryl Duvall (Redshift Music)

August 21.

Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto - Fifteen (Nonesuch)

August 28.

Marty Ehrlich - Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head)

Henry Threadgill - Cut You Where You Was (Pi Recordings)

September 11.

Janel Leppin - The Realist (Out of Your Head)

September 18.

John McCowen with Lucy Railton and Weston Olencki - Pressure Chords (Hallow Ground)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

This continues to be a year of dramatic challenges, not least the evident climate crisis wafting outside our windows. In general I’m getting out to performances extremely rarely, and that won’t change soon. Yet even in such times, you have to stop now and then to take stock of the positive things: in my case, a loving family, solid friends, and an employer doing important work that’s easy to feel good about supporting.

Despite the near-complete silence in this space since April, I have been busy. If you plan to attend a concert by the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center this summer, you’ll surely see the program notes I provided; likewise the Manchester Music Festival, violinist Philip Setzer’s summer series in Vermont. It’s been gratifying to write for those presenters, and to maintain associations with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and BBC Proms, as well.

Just over a month ago here, I mentioned completing a publicity bio for a new album by pianist-composer Sova, Alight! Since then, I’ve had the honor of writing liner notes for a forthcoming release by another pianist and composer I’ve admired for many years, and another press bio for an exceptional project on the near horizon—details when the time is right.

Speaking honestly, I miss my previous career path fiercely sometimes, even though I’m rational enough to know it had reached a dead end. But the privilege and pleasure of talking to artists, and then framing their words for mass consumption, remains valuable no matter what forum engages me. I’m keeping that in mind as I contemplate what comes next, whether here or in some new and different format.

I’m not quite back yet today, but there are a couple of pressing things I have to tell you about right away.

Today is the release day for Trans Requiem, a beautiful, powerful, and deeply moving piece for cello, vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra by Andrew Yee. Best known as the cellist for the Attacca Quartet, Yee has developed a steady side hustle as a solo artist, collaborator, and composer for a while now. Trans Requiem, introduced at Trinity Church Wall Street last September, is their biggest piece to date, and their most audacious, as well.

Melissa Baker, Trinity’s terrific director of artistic planning, has written beautifully about the makings and significance of the piece here. The concert, which took place on Sept. 18, 2025, can still be streamed in its entirety on the Trinity website, here.

I missed the concert, but when I watched the stream, the introductory comments by The Rev. Michael A. Bird put a lump in my throat:

“I’m not sure how many times each and every member of the clergy here and the music team here have been asked, why would a Trans Requiem be commissioned by a church, and why would it be performed in a church? Maybe you were thinking that yourselves, maybe… maybe you aren’t. But the reality is: how could we not?”

The recording, produced by Baker and New Amsterdam’s William Brittelle, captures the beauty and profundity of the piece and the performance ideally. Strongest possible recommendation. You can read more about Yee and Trans Requiem on I Care If You Listen.

Clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman has been a significant musical citizen in New York City for about as long as I can remember, as a solo artist, collaborator, curator, technician, and one third of the heavyweight improvising trio Bloodmist. “A clarinetist and an ace sound designer, Cymerman crafts aural worlds of rare detail,” my friend and colleague Hank Shteamer once wrote.

Cymerman’s maintained a lower profile recently, or so it’s seemed from my own vantage point in exile. Turns out one reason is that he’s taken up the bass clarinet as his principal horn, and tomorrow evening – Saturday, July 18 at 6:30pm, to be precise – he’ll play his first public concert since making that change around a year ago, presenting a new piece for bass clarinet and analog resonators. The description is tantalizing:

Inspired by the compositions and deep listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, the performance explores subtle shifts in texture, resonance, and sustained harmonic interplay through the use of analog resonators and immersive electronic processing. The result is an intimate sonic environment that invites focused listening and contemplative attention.

The event is happening at the New York Insight Meditation Center (115 W. 29th St., 12th floor), a place I got to know intimately during a transformative Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course a few years ago. The evening will begin with a guided meditation led by Anjie Cho.

“This music comes from a place of profound vulnerability, and sharing it feels less like presenting a finished work than opening a new chapter,” Cymerman wrote to his Bandcamp community earlier this week. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to participate, and as I write this, advance tickets are still available. A remote Zoom option is also being offered, but the real event will be happening in the space—read more and order here. (Note that advance ticket purchase is required; there will be no walk-up admission available.)

NYC event calendars.

By music lovers, for music lovers.

• All Ears – classical, experimental & creative musics; monthly

• Concert Net – indie-rock & eclectic; weekly

• Dada Strain – creative & club musics, activism & community; weekly

• Extended Techniques – experimental & creative musics; monthly

• GUNKYARD – indie rock, punk & underground; monthly

• Lament for a Straight Line – “Must See Three” jazz; weekly

• New Music Calendar – contemporary concert music; continuous

• ODEA – classical & experimental music; monthly

Thank you all.

Breaking radio silence to share news of a work assignment I completed recently—a piece of writing mostly meant to be read by other writers and editors, so I’ll share the gist here: I’m elated and grateful to have contributed the artist bio that accompanies Alight!, the upcoming recording by Troy, NY-based pianist, composer, and concert presenter Sova.

Here’s her own announcement, sent out earlier today:

Sounding Softly

Announcing: Alight!

Dear ones, I am ecstatic to finally announce that I have a new LP on the way: Alight…

Read more

3 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Sova

I initially encountered Sova when she was working under her given name, Sophia Subbayya Vastek, as an interpreter of contemporary classical works. I heard her first in a 2017 recital presented with the entrepreneurial composer Michael Vincent Waller at Spectrum, when that venue was a cozy loft on Ludlow Street—a concert I reviewed for National Sawdust Log. Later that year she released Histories, a bold and gorgeous recital of works by Michael Harrison, John Cage, and Donnacha Dennehy, on the Innova label.

A period of evolution would soon commence. In 2022 I reviewed Sova’s next solo album – the sublime In Our Softening, featuring original piano pieces recorded on a weathered upright rescued from a church that had been occupied previously by what amounted to a hate group – in this newsletter:

Sova’s new album continues that evolution, showcasing a new approach and sound—her “soul music,” as she describes it—heralded by the meaningful new name under which she’s now performing. Alight! sustains the momentum begun on In Our Softening, and welcomes new contributors like cellist Clarice Jensen, fretless bass guitarist Spencer Zahn, and her husband, multi-instrumentalist and producer Sam Torres, into the mix.

Here’s a video for the album’s opening track:

One hesitates to simplify a deep transfiguration with a “RIYL” tally, but if you’ve ever been touched by the painterly instrumental music of acts like Hauschka, Eluvium, and Mono, as well as the sanctified ruminations of Keith Jarrett in Köln Concert mode, then Alight! warrants your attention. The album is due in LP, CD, and digital formats via the Swiss label Hout on September 4, and pre-orders are open now on Bandcamp.

If you’re a writer, editor, or radio host and want to know more about Alight! reach out to Geo at Terrorbird Media: geo@terrorbird.com.

Bonus track.

Speaking of Michael Vincent Waller, he’s back in New York after a lengthy Los Angeles sojourn, and is presenting a concert matching his works (including a world premiere) with pieces by Valentin Silvestrov and Morton Feldman. The concert features two stellar musicians, cellist Ruben Kodheli and pianist Steven Beck, and it’s happening tomorrow night – Thursday, June 11 at 8:30pm – at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W. 37th St., $20 suggested donation at the door.

NYC event calendars.

By music lovers, for music lovers.

• All Ears – classical, experimental & creative musics; monthly

• Concert Net – indie-rock & eclectic; weekly

• Dada Strain – creative & club musics, activism & community; weekly

• Extended Techniques – experimental & creative musics; monthly

• GUNKYARD – indie rock, punk & underground; monthly

• Lament for a Straight Line – “Must See Three” jazz; weekly

• New Music Calendar – contemporary concert music; continuous

• ODEA – classical & experimental music; monthly

Thank you for reading.

Night After Night is currently on indefinite hiatus. Other responsibilities and obligations demand attention. While I’m away, I wholeheartedly endorse these invaluable resources for NYC event recommendations, by music lovers for music lovers.

• All Ears – classical, experimental & creative musics; monthly

• Concert Net – indie-rock & eclectic; weekly

• Dada Strain – creative & club musics, activism & community; weekly

• Extended Techniques – experimental & creative musics; monthly

• GUNKYARD – indie rock, punk & underground; monthly

• Lament for a Straight Line – “Must See Three” jazz; weekly

• New Music Calendar – contemporary concert music; continuous

• ODEA – classical & experimental music; monthly

Thank you for your interest, and stay tuned.

This will be the last update here for a while. Other responsibilities and obligations demand attention. There’s never enough time for the kinds of writing I’d like to be doing. Eking out a bare minimum in the margins of my waking hours has not been satisfying lately, and the pressure of self-imposed deadlines hasn’t felt healthful. And to be honest, a few ill-advised media-business communications have bothered me more than perhaps they should.

In the mean time, I wholeheartedly endorse these invaluable resources for NYC event recommendations, by music lovers for music lovers.

• All Ears – classical, experimental & creative musics; monthly

• Concert Net – indie-rock & eclectic; weekly

• Dada Strain – creative & club musics, activism & community; weekly

• Extended Techniques – experimental & creative musics; monthly

• GUNKYARD – indie rock, punk & underground; monthly

• Lament for a Straight Line – “Must See Three” jazz; weekly

• New Music Calendar – contemporary concert music; continuous

• ODEA – classical & experimental music; monthly

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

7

Caroline Davis + Matt Mitchell
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Tuesday, April 7 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

A double bill of solo performances pairs two consistently inventive mainstays of the NYC creative-music scene. Saxophonist Caroline Davis showcased her prowess with electronics on her absorbing new album, Fallows, which I wrote about at length here; for this Roulette date, she’ll employ similar tactics with poetic spontaneity. Likewise, pianist Matt Mitchell offers a completely improvised solo set along the lines of his recent albums Illimitable and Sacrosanctity, while also completely different from those impressive documents. If you can’t attend in person, the concert will be streamed live and archived for on-demand playback on the Roulette website and YouTube. (See Sat 11, Lux Quartet, for another performance by Davis.)

8

Vicky Chow & Mivos Quartet
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Wednesday, April 8 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

Most widely known for her work in the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the versatile, accomplished pianist Vicky Chow joins forces with the always arresting Mivos Quartet for a performance of Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet marking the composer’s centennial year. If you can’t attend in person, the concert will be streamed live and archived for on-demand playback on the Roulette website and YouTube.

Erik Hall, Metropolis Ensemble & Sandbox Percussion
Tishman Auditorium, The New School
63 Fifth Ave.; Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Apr. 8 at 7:30pm; free with registration
event.newschool.edu

Michigan instrumentalist and composer Erik Hall has recorded Canto Ostinato (1976–79), a watershed minimalist work by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, in a multitracked solo rendition, and Sandbox Percussion has performed the work with other keyboardists. Now, Hall and Sandbox join forces with Metropolis Ensemble for a fresh account of the work: a lush, cinematic rendition they’ve documented on a new Western Vinyl recording. If you can’t attend in person, the concert will stream live on YouTube.

New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper West Side
Wednesday, April 8–Friday, April 10 at 7:30pm; $57–$132
nyphil.org

Guest conductor Kwamé Ryan takes the podium for one of the most exciting, enterprising programs of the current New York Philharmonic season. Featured in their Phil debut are the members of intrepid new-music quartet Yarn/Wire – pianists Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, founding percussionist Russell Greenberg and newcomer Dustin Donohue – in the world premiere of “…ohne festen Wohnsitz” (…without a fixed residence), a Phil co-commission composed by George E. Lewis. Soprano Golda Schultz lends her splendid voice to selections by Samuel Barber, Carlisle Floyd, and Igor Stravinsky; the concert opens with Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question, and concludes with Barber’s too-seldom-encountered Second Essay.

The Trio of the FLUX Quartet
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St.; Midtown West
Wednesday, April 8 at 8pm; $20 suggested donation
livemusicproject.org

Entrepreneurial composer-curator Michael Vincent Waller is back in town, and he’s serving up notice with this concert featuring three-quarters of the invaluable FLUX Quartet. Violinist Tom Chiu, violist Josh Henderson, and cellist Ruben Kodheli will perform premieres by Waller, alongside his 2012 work Per la madre e la nonna, Iannis Xenakis’s Ikhoor, and Arvo Pärt’s Summa.

9

The Knights
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave.; Midtown West
Thursday, April 9 at 7:30pm; $81–$91
carnegiehall.org

The sensational clarinetist Anthony McGill joins indie orchestra The Knights in the New York premiere of If love will not swing wide the gates, a new concerto by Gabriel Kahane. The auspicious introduction comes as part of an all-American program presented as part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival; also featured are Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite and selections by Duke Ellington, Margaret Bonds, Albert Edward Brumley, and Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin.

10

Adam O’Farrill & Elephant
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Friday, April 10 & Saturday, April 11 at 8 & 10pm; $37.49
closeupnyc.com

One of the most in-demand sidemen on the current jazz scene, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill burnished his burgeoning profile as a noteworthy leader on Elephant, released last month on the Out of Your Head label. Sophisticated, assured, and instantly seductive, the album’s among this year’s best, and the band that made it – O’Farrill, pianist/keyboardist Yvonne Rogers, bassist Walter Stinson, and drummer Russell Holzman – is celebrating its arrival with a two-night stand at an intimate club that lives up to its name.

Poiesis Quartet & Amiri Harewood
Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center
129 W. 67th St.; Upper West Side
Friday, April 10 at 7:30pm; $25
kaufmanmusiccenter.org

The red-hot Poiesis Quartet hits Manhattan for an evening at Merkin shared with pianist Amiri Harewood. The concert comprises delectable layers, with Gabriela Lena Frank’s piano quintet Tres Homenajes framing quartet works by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and Brian Nabors, as well as preludes and fugues for solo piano by Johann Sebastian Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich.

11

Innocence
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center
30 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper West Side
Saturday, April 11 at 8pm, Tuesday, April 14 at 7:30pm; through April 29; $35–$470
metopera.org

Set in the aftermath of a school shooting, the final opera by the extraordinary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho is unquestionably a work for our day and age. The libretto is by prominent Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Saariaho’s son, Aleksi Barrière; Susanna Mälkki is on the podium, and the cast includes Joyce DiDonato, Vilma Jää, Jacquelyn Stucker, Miles Mykkanen, and – making her Met Opera debut at 82 – the peerless, fearless trailblazer Lucy Shelton.

Lux Quartet
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Saturday, April 11 at 7 & 9pm; $40–$50, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org

Jointly led by pianist Myra Melford and drummer Allison Miller, this luminous foursome made an impressive debut with Tomorrowland, issued by Enja in 2024. For this one night stand at the cozy Jazz Gallery, the leaders are joined by bandmate Scott Colley on bass and guest saxophonist Caroline Davis.

13

thingNY with Olivia Shortt
Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery; Greenwich Village
Monday, April 13 at 7pm; $22.50
new-ear.org

Mercurial improvising multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performance artist Olivia Shortt joins members of the similarly inclined cabal thingNY for an evening of vocal, instrumental, and electronic works by Raven Chacon, who’ll be on hand in person to perform an opening solo set in this New Ear presentation. The performers ask all guests to wear an N95 or similar high-quality mask/respirator; see the event page for further details.

14

Alisa Weilerstein
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave.; Midtown West
Tuesday, April 14 at 7:30pm; $55–$66
carnegiehall.org

In the fifth installment of a multi-year series titled FRAGMENTS, the eloquent cellist Alisa Weilerstein interleaves new pieces by Gabriela Lena Frank, Gabriella Smith, Gerard McBurney, Mathilde Wantenaar, and Osvaldo Golijov with the movements of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor, presented without pause in an hour-long sequence imaginatively staged by Elkhanah Pulitzer.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

Today is not a bona fide Bandcamp Friday; the next one is on May 1. But some artists are sharing the wealth anyway. For instance, gabby fluke-mogul is donating all profits from their new self-released solo set, GUT, to Stand With South Brooklyn, which organizes financial and other support for South Brooklyn community members targeted by ICE.

As Piotr Orlov pointed out yesterday, the fierce improvising violinist, activist, and Creative Music Studio executive director is celebrating a birthday this week – cheers!! – with a very keen-looking gig coming up next Wednesday in Brooklyn.

At this moment, I can’t overstate how strange and wonderful it is to have the voice of Steve Dalachinsky in my ears again thanks to Tonguesnatcher, newly arrived this morning from Elliott Sharp on his zOaR label. The recording preserves a show Steve played with guitarist Alex Lozupone’s jazz-rock band Eighty-Pound Pug and flute virtuoso Robert Dick one night in March 2019. Steve died, suddenly and unexpectedly, just six months later. (Here’s a gift link for Neil Genzlinger’s very fine New York Times obituary, in which I’m cited.)

“I have trouble recalling any significant, edifying or exhilarating free-jazz or total-improvisation concert I’ve attended at which Mr. Dalachinsky has not been in the audience, rough-edged, congenial and ready with an opinion,” I wrote on the single occasion when I was assigned to review one of his performances for The New York Times. He shared the bill with multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee and keyboardist-composer Charlemagne Palestine. You really had to be there, but I did my best to evoke what I heard:

Mr. Dalachinsky, beholden to the Beats but seasoned by meaner times, recited with a jazz-horn flow. He rushed one phrase and elongated the next; occasionally he stuttered on a single syllable, and then released the pent-up tension in a gush. Mr. McPhee, on tenor saxophone, mustered a pastor’s incantatory tone to recall the September 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala. In an eruptive soliloquy partly based on Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” and partly on the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” he repeated the names of the four schoolgirl victims like a mantra.

Reviewing Steve was challenging not because his artistry was ambiguous – it was not – but because I held him in such fond esteem. Indeed, it was when I began to understand I’d become a friend to Steve and his wife, Yuko Otomo, that I first started to regard myself as an authentic New Yorker.

Thanks, Elliott. Thanks, Steve.

New this week.

Chris Abrahams/Mark Wastell - Two Thousand Sacred Steps (Confront)

Marion Brown - Awofofora (Aguirre; originally issued 1972)

Steve Dalachinsky & Eighty-Pound Pug with Robert Dick - Tonguesnatcher (zOaR)

Wendy Eisenberg - Wendy Eisenberg (Joyful Noise)

gabby fluke-mogul - GUT Live at Roulette (self-released)

Gabriel Kahane & Roomful of Teeth - Elevator Songs (Octoverse Media)

Brian Krock - no one can really see (self-released)

Kronos Quartet - Glorious Mahalia - compositions by Stacy Garrop, Zachary James Watkins, and more (Smithsonian Folkways)

György Kurtág - Secreta - Quatuor Béla (bastille musique)

Steve Roach & Serena Gabriel - Entering Elysium (Timeroom Direct)

Matthew Shlomowitz - Explorations in Polytonality and other Musical Wonders, Volume 5 - K!ART (New Focus)

Shūdan Sokai - その前夜 - Live At 八王子 Alone (Aguirre; originally issued 1977)

Simeon ten Holt - Canto Ostinato - Erik Hall, Metropolis Ensemble, Sandbox Percusion (Western Vinyl)

Hans Thomalla - Dark Fall - Estelle Kruger, Curtis Uwe Eikötter, Ilse Lila Chrisp, Owen Thomas Berau, Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim/Alan Pierson (Oehms Classics)

Andrew Weathers - Haxa (Variable Recordings)

Wired (Michael Ranta & Karl-Heinz Böttner) - Kyoto 1970 (Metaphon)

Upcoming releases.

April 10.

Sarah Plum - an expanding distance of multiple voices - compositions by Osnat Netzer, Tonia Ko, Mari Takano, Ben Fuhrman, Jeffrey Mumford, and Sidney Corbet (Blue Griffin)

April 15.

Kyle Bruckmann - patternalia (Clairvoyant)

April 24.

Marty Ehrlich - Cartographies of Flight: Lines Set Afloat Towards Hope (Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Abby Fisher - Continuous Interior - compositions by Robert Honstein and Andrea Mazzariello (Neuma)

Amanda Irarrázabal - Imprimiendo (Relative Pitch)

Mike Khoury - For Hind Rajab (Relative Pitch)

Lazro Leandre Lovens - For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset (Relative Pitch; recorded 2013)

Cath Roberts & Olie Brice - Setpieces (Relative Pitch)

Bonnie Whiting - through the eye(s) - compositions and writings by Char’dae Avery, Whittney (CoCo) Bales-Malone, Eliza Brown, Amaris Rose Bunyard, Lara Campbell, Joyce (Potter) Hawkins, LaDawn Johnson, Marjorie Woods, Ashley Strong, Ingrid Swinford, and Dawnetta Taylor (Shelton) (Neuma)

May 1.

Dario Calderone - The Infinite Garden (Moving Furniture)

Clara Yang - xmachina - compositions by Yang, Reena Esmail, Lee Weisert, Stephen Anderson, Liliya Ugay, Phil Young, Philip Glass, Allen Anderson, Christopher Cerrone, and Suzi Analogue (Bright Shiny Things)

May 8.

Tasha Warren & Dave Eggar - MotherLoad (Bright Shiny Things)

May 15.

Lea Bertucci with Norbert Rodenkirchen - The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity (Cibachrome Editions)

crys cole & Oren Ambarchi - Sparkling or Silent (Portraits GRM)

Giuseppe Ielasi - unfamiliar music (paris) (Portraits GRM)

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - Happy Today (International Anthem)

May 22.

John Glover/Kelley Rourke - Eat the Document (Bright Shiny Things)

June 5.

Jeff Myers - Dark Imagining - performances by Rachel Schutz, Andrea Christie, Christopher Gross, and Ashleé Miller (Bright Shiny Things)

June 19.

Curtis Stewart - 24 American Caprices - performances by Curtis Stewart, Tai Murray, Tobia Im, Deborah Buck, Njioma Grevious, Jory Lane, Lin-Chi Chuang, Bryan Hsu, Ruben Rengel, Melissa White, Max Brown, Ryan Chung, and Natalie Oh (Bright Shiny Things)

June 26.

David T. Little/Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You - Karim Sulayman, Alarm Will Sound/Alan Pierson (Bright Shiny Things)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

There’s a lot buzzing around inside my head, but nothing’s in coherent shape just yet, and there’s no time to bring it to a boil. But it’s still Tuesday as I write this, so I’m sending you the concert picks and calling it a win.

Recommended reading.

• Piotr Orlov on the end of a community space in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park (Dada Strain)

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

31

Eunbi Kim
National Sawdust
80 N. 6th St.; Williamsburg
Tuesday, March 31 at 7:30pm; $30
nationalsawdust.org

I wrote about pianist Eunbi Kim and her ongoing autobiographical multimedia project it feels like a dream a few years ago for a former workplace, and what I said then still applies: it’s mighty satisfying to watch an artist working with material over a span of a few seasons or years, witnessing a journey toward a destination they might not even have envisioned at the start. Tonight’s program includes new and recent music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Angélica Negrón, Pauchi Sasaki, Sophia Jani, and Zosha Di Castri.

The String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Tuesday, March 31 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

The ensemble affectionately known as The SOB returns to Roulette for its annual String Theories program, a celebration of modern and new pieces for string orchestra. The program includes two confirmed classics, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver, plus the New York premiere of Falling Together by Sarah Hennies and the debut of Aveilut, a work for string orchestra and extreme-metal vocalist by Brendon Randall-Myers, with his Scarcity bandmate Doug Moore on vocals.

1

Tomeka Reid
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Apr. 1–Saturday, Apr. 4 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com

There’s not a dull night to be found when the MacArthur genius cellist Tomeka Reid sets up shop for a Stone series of concerts at The New School, most of which will feature the versatile improviser in trio settings with the likes of fellow genius Ikue Mori, saxophone firebrand James Brandon Lewis, and percussive force Lesley Mok. But forced to choose just one night, it would have to be Wednesday, when the irresistible Hemphill Stringtet gathers for a fresh encounter with the canon of namesake composer Julius Hemphill—including a rare performance of his quintet One Atmosphere with his widow, contemporary-piano icon Ursula Oppens, at the keyboard.

2

Perfect Lives
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Thursday, April 2 at 7pm; $25 general admission; enhanced tickets $50–$100
roulette.org

In what amounts to a curtain-raiser for Roulette’s annual Gala coming up in May, a complete screening of Perfect Lives, the groundbreaking 1984 television opera by Robert Ashley, is introduced by members of the original production. Perks of the enhanced tickets include drink tickets and a hardcover copy of the libretto.

3

Hannah Marks
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Friday, April 3 at 7 & 9pm; $30–$35, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org

Well in advance of her new album, Feed the Fire (due in June on endectomorph music), bassist and composer Hannah Marks comes to the Jazz Gallery with a project called Salt of the Earth, featuring Jacob Sacks at the piano and Tom Rainey on drums.

4

Jihye Lee Orchestra
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Saturday, April 4 at 7 & 9pm; $30–$40, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org

Brooklyn-based composer, arranger, and conductor Jihye Lee brings her power-packed orchestra to the cozy Jazz Gallery, promising a sophisticated roar with her elegant original charts.

5

andPlay Spring Gathering
Mise-En_Place
45 St. Nicholas Ave.; Harlem
Sunday, Apr. 5 at 7pm; $23.18*
eventbrite.com

The asterisk next to the price you see above is a nod to a two-for-one deal in place for this seasonal gathering shepherded by andPlay, the consistently fascinating duo of violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson. The pair will present arresting works by Bennardo and Angharad Davies; also featured in this neighborly affair are composer-performer Henry Birdsey and Lamnth, the violin and cimbalom duo of Lilit Hartunian and Nicholas Tolle.

6

Innocence
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center
30 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper West Side
Monday, April 6 at 7pm, through April 29; $35–$470
metopera.org

Set in the aftermath of a school shooting, the final opera by the extraordinary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho is unquestionably a work for our day and age. The libretto is by prominent Finnish author Sofi Oksanen and Saariaho’s son, Aleksi Barrière; Susanna Mälkki is on the podium, and the cast includes Joyce DiDonato, Vilma Jää, Jacquelyn Stucker, Miles Mykkanen, and – making her Met Opera debut at 82 – the peerless, fearless trailblazer Lucy Shelton.

Eleonore Oppenheim
Miller Theatre, Columbia University
2960 Broadway; Morningside Heights
Monday, April 6 at 6pm; free admission
millertheatre.com

Self-described as a purveyor of “zero boundary music for past, present, and future,” the sensational double bassist Eleonore Oppenheim shows off something of her prodigious range in this generous free Pop-Up Concert, which gives audience members the chance to come onstage for an up-close and personal view. The program is devoted to duets – including big dog little dog, Oppenheim’s working duo with violinist/composer Jessie Montgomery – and the music is provided by Giovanni Bottesini, Julia Wolfe, and Glasser, along with big dog little dog originals.

7

Caroline Davis + Matt Mitchell
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Tuesday, April 7 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

A double bill of solo performances pairs two consistently inventive mainstays of the NYC creative-music scene. Saxophonist Caroline Davis showcased her prowess with electronics on her absorbing new album, Fallows, which I wrote about at length here; for this Roulette date, she’ll employ similar tactics with poetic spontaneity. Likewise, pianist Matt Mitchell offers a completely improvised solo set along the lines of his recent albums Illimitable and Sacrosanctity, while also completely different from those impressive documents.

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

Mindful of a recent exchange of messages between a fiercely independent creative musician and myself regarding the predominance, efficacy, and possibly detrimental impact of record labels, marketing budgets, paid publicity and such in the relatively rarefied musical climes under discussion in this newsletter, I’m wondering this morning where the line is drawn between organic discovery and paid positioning.

Case in point: One of the most original, absorbing records I’ve heard so far this year is Fallows, issued today by saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Caroline Davis on the Ropeadope label. Facts: Davis has been a substantial contributor to the local creative-music ecosystem for more than a decade, and Ropeadope is a well-known imprint.

Regarding labels and publicity: No one sent me Fallows ages ago for advance consideration, or peppered me with “just checking in” emails. Actually, no one sent it at all; I discovered it by opening the Qobuz app on my iPhone over my morning coffee to see what’s new today, part of my Friday routine. Pride of place belongs to Robyn, obviously, with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Black Label Society, and the much-discussed “jazz album” by Flea close by.

Alongside those titles I see new releases by artists and acts like Irreversible Entanglements (now on a major label), Harriet Tubman (with a high-profile guest, Georgia Anne Muldrow), Dave Adewumi, and Davis—whose new album is an uncompromising solo saxophone-and-electronics collection that scans like a collection of diary entries and personal ruminations on matters of biography, ecology, and spirit.

The detailed story presented on the Bandcamp page for Davis’s album reveals the circumstances, tools, and inspirations that led to this specific album at this particular time. It’s highly readable and very thorough. Honestly, though, I just let Fallows wash over me three times in succession before I read anything, reveling in the jittery beats, gritty distortion, tranquil found sounds, and digitally duplicated saxophones in chatty counterpoint and plush chorales. You might discern echoes of Terry Riley, Steve Lacy, or whatnot, but Davis’s conception is her own, and the results are an absorbing delight.

Was my finding Fallows a simple twist of fate? Is a prime spot on Qobuz a marketing tool? Did it pop up because the platform has sussed my patterns of consumption? I’m contemplating all of those angles in light of the exchange of messages I mentioned before… but mostly I’m grateful for the serendipity of having the right album served up to me at the right moment.

Bonus track.

Up until I stumbed upon Fallows this morning, the album that’s occupied my attention most this week is Música Para Quinteto (Live at Jazz Cava), by guitarist Juanma Trujillo. I hadn’t encountered this Barcelona-based Venezuelan artist before he sent his new album along for consideration, but the sound of this live date with tenor saxophonists Albert Cirera and Miguel Pintxo Villar, bassist Masa Kamaguchi, and drummer Ramon Prats recalls the early oughts scene populated by heavies like Tony Malaby, Bill McHenry, Ben Monder, Steve Cardenas, Chris Lightcap, and Gerald Cleaver.

Trujillo’s compositions are loosely knit yet coherent; in the simple, pliable melody of “Conflagration (for los Angeles),” to single out just one example, I hear echoes of composers like Bill Frisell and Paul Motian—not least when saxophone rubs abrasively against guitar or vice versa. The performance is awash in lithe energy and subtle yet sure propulsion, making the album a very welcome introduction.

New this week.

Dave Adewumi - The Flame Beneath the Silence (Giant Step)

Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone - Music for Intersecting Planes (Ideologic Organ)

John Cage - Two2 - Judith Wegmann, Marlies Debacker (Hat Hut)

Charlatan (Brad E. Rose) - The Mutual Blur (The Jewel Garden)

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio - Éclats - Live in Europe (Intakt)

Caroline Davis - Fallows (Ropeadope)

Dietrichs - Live Bahdu (Relative Pitch)

Liliane Donskoy - Intégrale Acousmatique (Metaphon; recorded 1970s and 1980s)

Morgan Evans-Weiler - ORGAN - Scientific American (self-released)

Andrea Giordano/Kalle Moberg/Jo David Meyer Lysne - Radis (Black Truffle)

Goal Weight (Maggie Cox & Jennifer Gersten) - Keep Telling Yourself That (Relative Pitch)

Simon Hanes - GARGANTUA (Pyroclastic)

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow - Electrical Field (Pi Recordings)

Eva-Maria Houben, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen - someone is breathing (okazo)

Irreversible Entanglements - Future Present Past (Impulse!)

Matthew Langford - Subtle Vessel (Discreet Archive)

Lazyhorse - “Are There Bars in Heaven?” (Out of Your Head)

LDL (Urs Leimgruber, Jacques Demierre, Thomas Lehn) - the eerie glow of jellyfish (Relative Pitch)

Janel Leppin - Slowly Melting (Cuneiform)

Janel Leppin’s Ensemble Volcanic Ash - Pluto in Aquarius (Cuneiform)

Lukas Ligeti - Notebook (New World)

Christopher Mayo - Walk the Darkness Down - performances by Andrew Noseworthy & Grace Scheele (people|places|records)

Scott Ordway - Squares (self-released)

Danya Pilchen - Paper Braids - Kali Ensemble (Moving Furniture)

Reverso (Ryan Keberle, Frank Woeste, Vincent Courtois) - Between Two Silences (Alternate Side)

Fie Schouten, Vincent Courtois, Sofia Borges, Pierre Baux - Open Space (Relative Pitch)

Marianne Schuppe/Deborah Walker - Two Paths (elsewhere)

Walter Thompson, Sam Day Harmet, Billy Martin - WaSaBi Trio (577 Records)

Juanma Trujillo - Música Para Quinteto (Live at Jazz Cava) (UnderPool)

Mark Turner - Patternmaster (ECM)

Miroslav Vitous - Mountain Call (ECM)

Zosha Warpeha - I grow accustomed to the dark (Outside Time)

Upcoming releases.

April 1.

Wired (Michael Ranta & Karl-Heinz Böttner) - Kyoto 1970 (Metaphon)

April 10.

Ivo Perelman - Trifecta (Mahakala Music)

Kip Winger - Symphony of the Returning Light; Violin Concerto “In the Language of Flowers” - Peter Otto, Nashville Symphony/Giancarlo Guerrero (Naxos)

April 17.

Camilo Ángeles - Flautas Ahogadas para Jacobo Grinberg (Dinzu Artefacts)

Laura Cocks – A Pearl in the Jaw (Dinzu Artefacts)

Carlo Costa - Ashes (Dinzu Artefacts)

Allison Loggins-Hull - Legacy; Can You See?; Grit. Grace. Glory. - The Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst (TCO Media)

Lester St. Louis - THE END SITE (Dinzu Artefacts)

Kevin Sun - lofi at lowlands 四 (endectomorph music)

Drew Wesely - Silence Is a Sharpened Blade (Dinzu Artefacts)

April 24.

ContraPunctus (Mike McGinnis, Carmen Staaf, Gui Duvignau, Hamir Atwal) - ContraPunctus (Adhyâropa)

May 1.

Allison Loggins-Hull - Patchwork - Allison Loggins-Hull, Laquita Mitchell, Cleveland Soloists (Avie)

May 29.

Columbia Icefield - A Silence Opens (Out of Your Head)

Philip Glass - Music With Changing Parts - Philip Glass Ensemble (Superior Viaduct; originally Chatham Square, 1971)

June 12.

Hannah Marks - Feed the Fire (endectomorph music)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

If it’s Wednesday, then this must be the Tuesday newsletter. Let’s go.

Recommended reading.

• Nate Chinen on the late, great drummer, bandleader, and composer Paul Motian. (The Gig)

• Yaz Lancaster interviews Lucy Liyou on her new album and an NYC performance this Saturday. (Which Sinfonia)

• Sam Newsome, an improvising saxophonist and composer, mulls why musicians’ gig alerts don’t connect on social media. (Soprano Sax Talk)

• Will Robin on the 10th International Conference on Music and Minimalism, coming in May. (Industry)

• brin solomon has launched a keen newsletter covering music and culture in Western Mass. (That Supreme Alive-ness)

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

25

Theresa Wong
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, March 25–Saturday, March 28 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com

Bay Area cellist and composer Theresa Wong comes to The New School for a Stone series engagement featuring collaborations with local luminaries DoYeon Kim, Jane Rigler, Nava Dunkelman, and John McCowen.

Jeffrey Zeigler
National Sawdust
80 N. 6th St.; Williamsburg
Wednesday, March 25 at 6:30 & 8:30pm; $45
nationalsawdust.org

We’ve all grown accustomed to seeing the dynamic cellist Jeffrey Zeigler juggling pieces, engagements, and roles like the consumate virtuoso that he is. But for two shows tonight, Zeigler’s sole assignment is to handle playing cello for Division of Time, a new evening-length piece by composer Eric Nathan, while the juggling is left to the skillful performers of London’s Gandini Juggling—a troupe familiar to anyone who’s thrilled to Phelim McDermott’s production of Philip Glass’s Ahknaten.

26

Composer Portrait: Chinary Ung
Miller Theatre, Columbia University
2960 Broadway; Morningside Heights
Thursday, March 26 at 7:30pm; $20–$35
millertheatre.com

The celebrated Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung is the subject of a career-spanning survey by the excellent Del Sol Quartet, including two world premieres from 60 years apart: a String Trio composed in 1966, and a new piece commissioned by the quartet and Miller Theatre for this occasion.

Skylark
Hispanic Society Museum & Library
3741 Broadway; Washington Heights
Thursday, March 26 & Friday, March 27 at at 6:30pm; free admission, VIP seating $75
eventbrite.com

The exemplary Massachusetts vocal ensemble Skylark alights in Washington Heights for a performance of Path of Miracles by Joby Talbot, while surrounded by the 14-panel masterpiece Vision of Spain by Joaquín Sorolla.

The Westerlies
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Thursday, March 26 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

Poised, mellifluous, and simultaneously urbane and rustic, brass quartet The Westerlies is pretty much the best group you could imagine tackling the Bill Frisell canon… possibly short of Frisell, who’s celebrating a milestone birthday elsewhere this weekend. The proof is evident throughout the new Westerlies album, Have You Heard: The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1, a collection of succinct ballads and bops Frisell composed during the pandemic. If you can’t be here in person, watch for free, live or later, on the Roulette website or YouTube.

27

Bill Frisell
The Appel Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center
10 Columbus Circle; Midtown West
Friday, March 27 at 7 & 9pm; Saturday, March 28 at 4:30 & 7pm; $57–$107
jazz.org

Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Bill Frisell, a musician central to New York City’s vanguard for decades, celebrates his 75th birthday at Jazz at Lincoln Center with a bunch of heavy friends. On Friday, he’s joined by Jenny Scheinman, Eyvind Kang, Hank Roberts, Tony Scherr, and Rudy Royston for a project titled In My Dreams: A Sonic Reunion—not coincidentally named after his latest Blue Note album featuring that band. Saturday’s program features a smaller group of disparate collaborators: singer Petra Haden, drummer Tim Angulo, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.

28

Canines in Six Musical Portraits
AKC Museum of the Dog
101 Park Ave.; Upper East Side
Saturday, March 28 at 4pm; $25, seniors & students $20, children $15, dogs $5
museumofthedog.org

Pianist Ning Yu presents a performance of A Dog Is a Machine for Loving, a whimsically inventive piece for for piano, spoken voice and fixed media by Alec Hall, derived from close observation of some four-footed friends. On her fine Kairos recording, the pianist handled the spoken parts; here, New Yorker writer Vinson Cunningham does the honors.

Loren Connors + David Grubbs & Jules Reidy + Liam Grant
Roosevelt Island Cultural Center
548 Main St.; Roosevelt Island
Saturday, March 28 at 7:30pm; $27.50
eventbrite.com

Roosevelt Island plays host to an extraordinary evening of advanced approaches to guitar, including hushed poetry from the inimitable Loren Connors and a first-time duo from post-punk icon turned hometown hero David Grubbs and Berlin composer/improviser Jules Reidy.

Lucy Liyou: Mister Cobra
Keith Haring Theatre, Performance Space New York
150 First Ave.; East Village
Saturday, March 28 at 7pm; $12–$100 sliding scale
performancespacenewyork.org

Singer, songwriter, composer, and performance artist Lucy Liyou mixes elements of free jazz, Korean folk opera, musique concrète, text-to-speech recordings, drag-inspired performance techniques, and more in Mister Cobra, a performance piece documented on a new album due in April. For much more insight, see the Which Sinfonia interview linked above.

29

Miranda Cuckson, Jessica Meyer & Laura Metcalf
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle; Midtown West
Sunday, March 29 at 11am; $30, children under 12 free
gathernyc.org

The Gather NYC series is one of New York City’s secret treasures, a weekly offering on Sunday mornings celebrating live music, storytelling and silence. This week, cellist and series co-founder Laura Metcalf takes the stage with two first-call colleagues, violinist Miranda Cuckson and violist-composer Jessica Meyer, performing selections by Meyer, Missy Mazzolli, Nina C. Young, and Dobrinka Tabakova. All this, plus free coffee and pastries!

31

Eunbi Kim
National Sawdust
80 N. 6th St.; Williamsburg
Tuesday, March 31 at 7:30pm; $30
nationalsawdust.org

I wrote about pianist Eunbi Kim and her ongoing autobiographical multimedia project it feels like a dream a few years ago for a former workplace, and what I said then still applies: it’s mighty satisfying to watch an artist working with material over a span of a few seasons or years, witnessing a journey toward a destination they might not even have envisioned at the start. Tonight’s program includes new and recent music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Angélica Negrón, Pauchi Sasaki, Sophia Jani, and Zosha Di Castri.

The String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Tuesday, March 31 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

The ensemble affectionately known as The SOB returns to Roulette for its annual String Theories program, a celebration of modern and new pieces for string orchestra. The program includes two confirmed classics, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver, plus the New York premiere of Falling Together by Sarah Hennies and the debut of Aveilut, a work for string orchestra and extreme-metal vocalist by Brendon Randall-Myers, with his Scarcity bandmate Doug Moore on vocals.

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

We’re living in a brave new world of indie record labels supporting creative music: an impression shaped by how much I’ve come to anticipate the thrill of discovery every time labels like Pyroclastic, Out of Your Head, and endectomorph music put out a new release. It’s also encouraging to see that Werner X. Uehlinger, the venerable, enterprising founder of the crucial Hat Hut label and its spiritual reboot, ezz-thetics, has launched yet another new enterprise, AlAy (as in Albert Ayler), available in the US via Squidco.

But what I’m mostly thinking about this week is a rising tide of reliable labels we seem to be losing lately. In December, the important New Haven venue Firehouse 12 shuttered its in-house label. Cornetist and composer Taylor Ho Bynum, who helped to launch that label, was quick to announce that he had joined with Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara to launch a new imprint, SG3, partly to keep their Firehouse 12 titles in circulation.

Since then, we’ve also lost Not Two, a Polish label winding down its physical operation after three decades, though possibly transitioning to a virtual mode. Likewise, this week Clean Feed, the enterprising Portuguese imprint, announced its final release after 25 years in business. (Hat tip to Chris Monsen, who shared these two pieces of news on Substack Notes.) Another vital indie, Astral Spirits, hasn’t issued anything in nearly a year; one of the label’s subscribers posted on Reddit last month that he’d been informed the label is on “indefinite hiatus”—not gone, perhaps, but notable in its absence.

These are all timely reminders that the indie labels we cherish are run by people – maybe just one person, or a handful – who have lives and needs that extend beyond feeding a fandom. They need steady support, which hasn’t always been so forthcoming during our recent decades of piracy, streaming, and AI slop. When support dwindles, something has to give.

Labels come and labels go… and sometimes they come back again, as archival outfits like Strata-East or as ongoing concerns like Candid. Still, it’s sobering to comprehend that imprints we come to rely on – even those that have shaped musical discourse for a decade or more – can simply disappear one day without much warning. And even if the music doesn’t disappear with them, it certainly can become much harder to find, discover, and share.

Something to think about.

Recommended reading.

• Nate Chinen on Tyshawn Sorey’s newest records (The Gig)

• Michelle Mercer on becoming a jazz cruise convert (Call & Response)

• Matt Merewitz interviewing bassist Tyrone Allen II about UPWARD, one of last week’s strongest new releases (The Side People)

• R. Emmet Sweeney interviewing trumpeter Adam O’Farrill about Elephant, one of this week’s strongest new releases (Old New)

New this week.

Binary Canary (Kyle Hutchins & Ted Moore) - alloy (Carrier)

Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone - Music for Intersecting Planes (Ideologic Organ)

Michael Formanek - New Digs (Intakt)

Christoph Gallio - XOXO, Birds & Dogs (ezz-thetics)

Michael Harrison & Ina Filip - Evening Light: Raga Cycle I (Cantaloupe Music)

John McGuire - Double String Trios (Unseen Worlds)

John Moran - Theatrical-Audio Archive (1990-2000) (self-released)

more eaze - sentence structure in the country (Thrill Jockey)

Eva Novoa - Solo (I) (577 Records)

Adam O’Farrill - Elephant (Out of Your Head)

Scott Ordway - Public Ceremony EP01 (self-released)

Sarah Genevieve Burghart Rice - Yet (Neuma)

Sonic Fiction Special featuring Earl Howard - Banding Patterns (Trost)

Cassia Streb & Tim Feeney - Lampworking (kuyin)

Viva Voce - Enduring Harmonies - compositions by Thomas Lloyd, Steven Gerber, Dale Trumbore, Ingrid Arauco, Charles Fussell, and David Pegg (Neuma)

Kristina Warren - Tusk (Gold Bolus)

The Westerlies - Have You Heard: The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1 (Westerlies)

Immanuel Wilkins - Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1 (Blue Note)

Upcoming releases.

March 27.

Andrea Giordano/Kalle Moberg/Jo David Meyer Lysne - Radis (Black Truffle)

Christopher Mayo - Walk the Darkness Down - performances by Andrew Noseworthy & Grace Scheele (people|places|records)

April 3.

Matthew Shlomowitz - Explorations in Polytonality and other Musical Wonders, Volume 5 - K!ART (New Focus)

April 10.

Lei Liang - Six Seasons: Instrumentation Lab (New Focus)

April 17.

Analog Tara - Life of the Mother (Important)

Gamelan Yowana Sari - Gamelan Yowana Sari - compositions by Evan Ziporyn, Kyle Miller, Vivian Fung, and Michael Gordon (Cantaloupe Music)

April 24.

Dave Douglas - Transcend (Greenleaf Music)

Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi - Making Colors (AKP Recordings)

April 28.

Daryl Jamieson - Descants (Atelier Jaku)

May 8.

Rhodri Davies - Live Telyn Wrachïod [Brussels 2026] (scatterArchive)

Sarah Rothenberg - In Darkness and Light - compositions by Vijay Iyer, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Morton Feldman (DACAMERA Editions)

May 14.

Han-earl Park - uᴉɐƃ∀ ʍǝN sI plO sI ʇɐɥM (self-released)

May 15.

William Hooker featuring John King - Convergence: Live in China (Org Music)

May 29.

Tyshawn Sorey - Members… Don’t! (Pi Recordings)

June 5.

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn - Hourglass - compositions by Philip Glass (Naïve)

Beatriz Ferreyra - A Distracted God (Room40)

June 12.

Holland Andrews + Methods Body - Remain (Whited Sepulchre)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

Hello, again.

As I posted on Substack Notes not quite a week ago, I’ve been having big thoughts about what I’m doing here, what it means, and whether it works.

There are things I want to be doing with this platform, but limited time presents a persistent challenge. Two thoughts: one, more than anything, I want to be talking to artists about what they’re doing and why, and two, I maintain that challenge can be a good thing.

But in the meantime, there are excellent musical events happening this week that warrant attention… so here we are once more, offering up the Tuesday newsletter on a Wednesday.

Go out and hear something fresh. And remember, I’m always curious to hear what you thought of what you heard.

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

18

GEORGE
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Wednesday, March 18 at 7:30 & 9pm; $25
closeupnyc.com

Drummer-composer John Hollenbeck brings his newest ensemble, GEORGE, to Close Up with a slightly revamped line-up: Looking for Consonance, the quartet’s forthcoming May release on Out of Your Head, brings singing keyboardist Sarah Rossy into the silky, seductive mix. “At a time when so much feels fractured,” Hollenbeck offers, “this music feels like my small attempt to search for alignment, clarity, and community.”

19

Interpretations
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Thursday, March 19 at 8pm; $20, seniors and students $15
roulette.org

Rooted at Roulette for its 36th season, Interpretations offers a disparate double bill of forward-looking composer-performers. Half the program belongs to Present, a collaboration among sound artists Miguel Frasconi, Tom Hamilton, and Matthew Ostrowski, with cellist Meaghan Burke as a special guest. On the other half, electro-acoustic violinist Mari Kimura presents motion sensor-enhanced pieces by Dai Fujikura, Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Ileana Perez Velazquez, Jean Claude Risset, and Nolan Miranda, along with a piece of her own. If you can’t attend in person, the performances will be streamed live and archived for on-demand playback on the Roulette website and YouTube.

Clarice Jensen & Chuck Johnson
Public Records
233 Butler St.; Brooklyn
Thursday, March 19 at 7pm; $26.78
dice.fm

The swoonworthy prospect of multi-instrumentalist Chuck Johnson and cellist Clarice Jensen isn’t without evidence—the latter was featured on the former’s ravishing 2024 session, Sun Glories. Each is an accomplished solo artist, but the real treat here will be a new joint piece called Hand on the Bay, in which harmonic material from 16 bars of Willie Nelson’s ballad “Red Headed Stranger” is transformed via a graphic score by Jensen and a melodic sequence by Johnson—both shared on Instagram.

New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center
10 Lincoln Center Plaza; Upper East Side
Thursday, March 19–Saturday, March 21 at 7:30pm, $62–$140; Sunday, March 22 at 2pm, $88–$238
nyphil.org

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the world premiere of the wealth of nations, a new oratorio by Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang. Styled after Handel’s Messiah, the work involves the treatise of the same title by Adam Smith, plus texts by Franklin Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, contemplating the power of free-market capitalism. The orchestra is joined for the occasion by mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, and the New York Philharmonic Chorus.

Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St.; Midtown West
Thursday, March 19–Saturday, March 21 at 7:30pm; $40–$65, full festival pass $90–$150
eventbrite.com

Resourcefulness and resilience are bound to be on the agenda during the seventh Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival. Titled “Mosaics,” the festival is spread across three thematic evenings: “Places,” featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble in works inspired by geography and imagination; “Peoples,” celebrating the various ethnicities and cultures that historically have comprised the Ukrainian populace; and “Practices,” for which string quartet The Rhythm Method showcases the stylistic breadth of contemporary compositional thought.

20

JACK Quartet
92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Ave.; Upper East Side
Friday, March 20 at 7:30pm; $50–$75, livestream $25
92ny.org

The tirelessly inventive JACK Quartet – violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell – return to the 92nd Street Y with a program of works developed in its JACK Studio initiative for emerging composers. Included are world premieres by Tristan Perich (a 92NY co-commission), Jules Reidy, and Ailie Ormston, plus a local premiere by Keir GoGwilt. If you can’t attend in person, the streaming ticket provides access for 72 hours.

Ben Richter + Steve Long
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
225 W. 99th St.; Upper West Side
Friday, March 20 at 7:30pm; $15–$30 sliding scale
Instagram

Composer and accordionist Ben Richter celebrates the impending release of Mymerian, a drone-thick triptych for organ, quarter-tone accordion, and low strings due in May on the mighty Sedimental label. Richter performs here with the artists on the album, cellist Laura Cetilia and bassist Mike Bullock; afterward, composer, keyboardist, and organizer Steve Long fields a nonet featuring two vocalists in his original composition Perfect Time. (You can also catch Long in jazz-trio mode on Sun 21 at Close Up, where he’s playing sets at 7:30 & 9pm; details here.)

Talea Ensemble
St. Bartholomew Hall, Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew
520 Clinton Ave.; Brooklyn
Friday, March 20 at 7:30pm; $20, seniors $10, students pay what you can
taleaensemble.org

The newest installment in the Written for Talea series – which, true to the title, concentrates on pieces created expressly for the formidable Talea Ensemble – includes world premieres by Marti Epstein, Artun Çekem, and Katherine Balch.

21

Piano+#49
The Old Stone House
336 3rd St.; Brooklyn
Saturday, March 21 at 7:30pm; $23.18
eventbrite.com

The long-running contemporary chamber-music series curated by composer and pianist Teodora Stepančić is creeping up on its milestone 50th installment. But you definitely don’t want to sleep on this special offering of works from Wandelweiser composers Michael Pisaro-Liu (Harmony Series), Eva-Maria Houben (echo-fantasy IV), and Jürg Frey (circular music No. 5), played by LCollective: here, Stepančić, Amanda Tabor on French horn, Jordan Dykstra on viola, and Assaf Gidron on bass guitar.

22

The Music of Harold Budd
Coffey Street Studio
153 Coffey St.; Brooklyn
Sunday, March 22 at 3pm; $23.18
eventbrite.com

David Nagler, Nick Hallett, and Stuart Bogie, three versatile, busy musicians involved in a myriad of diverse settings, converge to celebrate and share the music of the late Harold Budd, an influential California composer and pianist known for his meditative ambient style and his collaborations with Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins.

Thank You, Amina!
Mabou Mines Theater at 122CC
150 First Ave.; Lower East Side
Sunday, March 22, 3–8pm; $42
maboumines.org

The venerable singer, keyboardist, and composer Amina Claudine Myers, an NEA Jazz Master and Jazz Foundation Fellow, participates in a daylong salon celebrating her life and work on the occasion of her 84th birthday. Not a concert but much more than a listening session, this is a rare opportunity to have a distinguished artist walk you through her memories and achievements, from Arkansas to the A.A.C.M. and points beyond—and yes, there’s a birthday cake at the conclusion.

23

Cutting Edge Concerts
Leonard Nimoy Thalia, Symphony Space
2537 Broadway; Upper West Side
Monday, March 23 at 7:30pm; $30
symphonyspace.org

Cutting Edge Concerts, the long-running, composer-centered series curated by composer-conductor Victoria Bond, offers a double bill called “Miami Comes to New York.” That modest title is doing more work than it appears: pianist José R. López, who hails from Florida State University, plays works by Aurelio de la Vega, Tania León, and Orlando Jacinto Garcia, among others, while cellist Sarah Kim, visiting from Miami University in Ohio, offers a world premiere by Bond alongside pieces by Kati Agócs, Rictor Noren, Kristin Kuster, and Ellen Harrison.

24

The Crossing
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave.; Midtown West
Tuesday, March 24 at 7:30pm; $41–$52
carnegiehall.org

Celebrated new-music choral ensemble The Crossing returns to Carnegie Hall’s underground lair with a program titled “Infinite Body”—which shares its name with a newly commissioned work by the ensemble’s first-ever resident composer, Ayanna Woods, featuring superstar flutist Claire Chase. Rounding out the program are New York premieres by Wang Lu and Tania León.

Carolyn Enger
Mise-En_Place
45 St. Nicholas Ave.; Harlem
Tuesday, March 24 at 7:30pm; $20
mise-en.org

Resonating Earth, the sonorous statement of ecological activism that pianist Carolyn Enger released in September 2024, was conceived from the start as a multimedia presentation. In this Spectrum presentation, Enger presents her vision as intended: compositions by Nico Muhly, Pia Møller Johansen, Missy Mazzoli, Philip Glass, Marcos Balter, Iman Habibi, and Caroline Shaw, among others, played in proximity to stunning nature images by Elliott Forrest, Myles Aronowitz, Mary Edna Fraser, Sheryl Intrator and J. Henry Fair.

[Mandatory disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for Ms. Enger’s CD.]

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

My first order of business on this newest Bandcamp Friday was to pick up Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington, the glorious new solo recital pianist Jason Moran put out last Friday—which I’d set aside just for the occasion.

If your inbox is like mine this morning, you’ve seen an absolute inundation of new releases and special offers from artists and labels who ply their trades on this particular sales platform. (Some Bandcamp Fridays feel heavier than others.) Today’s one of those days when Bandcamp gives up its cut of each sale, which means more money for those who need it most—which is why I delayed picking up the Moran album. Maybe you did, too.

By the way, if you’re in New York City two weeks from now (or plan to be), you can catch Jason Moran at the Blue Note Jazz Club with Savion Glover and Chris Dave on Saturday, March 21, and Sunday, March 22.

Again, I know you’re already awash in options—but if I might gently guide you toward just one more thing? I can’t overstate how much I’m enjoying God Docks at Death Harbor, the debut orchestral release by improvising composer Qasim Naqvi, just out on Erased Tapes.

In a note posted on the album’s Bandcamp page, Naqvi says he’d been listening to Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs – the final song, Im Abendrot, in particular – when he set out to compose what he’d originally conceived as a meditation on our planet repairing itself after the end of humanity.

Yet for all the grim finality of that conception, the music feels restorative and hopeful, full of life and possibility. Naqvi approached the orchestra as if it were a massive synthesizer: washes and waves and loops and shimmers, lapping and fading, punctuated by tubular bells. The BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by André de Ridder, is poised and persuasive, and the live recording is clean and clear; an occasional rustle aside, you might forget an audience is present until the final applause.

If you respond to Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars, Jóhann Jóhannsson, even early John Adams, then you owe it to yourself to give this a shot. Now, if only we could find a New York orchestra willing to give this a spot on a program…?

New this week.

Amalie Dahl’s Dafnie EXTENDED - Live at Moldejazz (Sonic Transmissions)

Every (Mara Rosenbloom & Barbara Majnarić) - Tried in the Fire (Daily Music)

Philip Glass/David Henry Hwang - 1000 Airplanes on the Roof - Ithica Tell, Third Angle New Music (Orange Mountain Music)

Philip Glass - 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (Instrumental) - Third Angle New Music (Orange Mountain Music)

Devin Gray/Andrea Parkins/Frank Gratkowski - Hz of Gold (Rataplan)

Haptic - Ambivalence (Ash International)

Philip Jeck - Live at Rote Fabrik, Zürich 5 Oct 02 (Touch)

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Piano Works - Alice Sara Ott (Deutsche Grammophon)

David Lang - last lullaby - Katie Geissinger (Cantaloupe Music)

Okkyung Lee - Signals - Explore Ensemble (Flung)

Teerath Majumder - Dust to Dust (Infrequent Seams)

Jessie Marino - Curtain Pleater (self-released)

Andrew MacKelvie’s Many Worlds - Many Worlds (Watch That Ends the Night)

Qasim Naqvi - God Docks at Death Harbor - BBC Concert Orchestra/André de Ridder (Erased Tapes)

Charles K. Noyes - Blue All (Zoar)

Elliott Sharp - K!L!A!V! (Zoar; originally issued in 1990 on Newport Classic)

Dave Tucker + Hannah Marshall - Lawns (scatterArchive)

Gregory Uhlmann - Extra Stars (International Anthem)

Various artists - Field Studies, Volume 2 (The Jewel Garden)

Gabriel Vicéns - Niebla (Clepsydra)

Upcoming releases.

March 10.

Maya Bennardo - rustlings (elsewhere)

Adrián Demoč - Flute - Manuel Zurria (elsewhere)

Grass Asunder - Swerve of Shore (Harmonic Ooze)

March 13.

Bentley Anderson - Valence (Digital Regress)

Bill Orcutt - Music in Continuous Motion (Palilalia)

Soft Machine - 13 (Dyad)

March 20.

Michael Formanek - New Digs (Intakt)

Sarah Genevieve Burghart Rice - Yet (Neuma)

Viva Voce - Enduring Harmonies - compositions by Thomas Lloyd, Steven Gerber, Dale Trumbore, Ingrid Arauco, Charles Fussell, and David Pegg (Neuma)

Kristina Warren - Tusk (Gold Bolus)

March 27.

Dietrichs - Live Bahdu (Relative Pitch)

Goal Weight (Maggie Cox & Jennifer Gersten) - Keep Telling Yourself That (Relative Pitch)

Irreversible Entanglements - Future Present Past (Impulse!)

LDL (Urs Leimgruber, Jacques Demierre, Thomas Lehn) - the eerie glow of jellyfish (Relative Pitch)

Lukas Ligeti - Notebook (New World)

Fie Schouten, Vincent Courtois, Sofia Borges, Pierre Baux - Open Space (Relative Pitch)

Miroslav Vitous - Mountain Call (ECM)

Zosha Warpeha - I grow accustomed to the dark (Outside Time)

March 30.

Marianne Schuppe/Deborah Walker - Two Paths (elsewhere)

April 3.

Gabriel Kahane & Roomful of Teeth - Elevator Songs (Octoverse Media)

György Kurtág - Secreta - Quatuor Béla (bastille musique)

Brian Krock - no one can really see (self-released)

Hans Thomalla - Dark Fall - Estelle Kruger, Curtis Uwe Eikötter, Ilse Lila Chrisp, Owen Thomas Berau, Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim/Alan Pierson (Oehms Classics)

Andrew Weathers - Haxa (Variable Recordings)

April 14.

TAK Ensemble - Between the Air - compositions by Eric Wubbels, Golnaz Shariatzadeh, Lewis Nielson, Bethany Younge, and Tyshawn Sorey (TAK editions)

April 15.

Quentin Tolimieri - Monochromes II (elsewhere)

April 17.

John Luther Adams - Horizon - Australian Chamber Orchestra (Cold Blue)

John P Hastings & Benjamin Mayock - Traces (self-released)

Lucy Liyou - MR. COBRA (Orange Milk)

May 1.

Ben Richter - Mymerian (Sedimental)

Ben Vida - Oblivion Seekers (Shelter Press)

Dorian Wood - Canto de Todes (New Amsterdam)

May 8.

Laurie Anderson - Let X=X (Live) (Nonesuch)

John Hollenbeck & GEORGE - Looking for Consonance (Out of Your Head)

May 15.

Borderlands Ensemble - CROSSING - compositions by Barbara White, Jorge Sosa, Nubia Jaime-Donjuan, Edwin Guevara-Gutiérrez, and Michael Leibowitz (Imaginary Animals)

Matt Evans - Daydream Observatory (AKP Recordings)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

When I last provided concert tips here two weeks ago, I’d just participated in recording a podcast for the Jazz Journalists Association about the rise, fall, and rebirth of music listings. You might recall what I said at that time:

…one downside of counting on Substack newsletters to fill the gaping hole left after mainstream media abandoned the practice: full-time, professional publications offer reliability and accountability, whereas for individuals, sometimes life takes precedence.

The podcast has been posted now, by the way, and you can find it here.

Other priorities continue to require my attention, so I’ll direct you instead to some alternative sources of illumination. First up are my ride-or-die regulars, the sources I cite at the bottom of all of my updates:

• Dada Strain - Piotr Orlov on Rhythm, Improvisation and Community

• Extended Techniques - Contemporary concert and creative music

• Lament for a Straight Line - Gemlike jazz listings by Jim Macnie

• New Music Calendar - Just-the-facts contemporary concert-music events compiled by Todd Tarentino

Elsewhere, the stylish, informative classical music calendar ODEA has an especially strong batch of recommendations for March. Reading the listings Emery Kerekes compiles for All Ears is a sure-fire FOMO trigger. And creative-music cognoscenti should watch what Hank Shteamer is up to.

Until soon…

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

Playing catch-up today… not enough time to go deep, but too many excellent new records to ignore. This week, you don’t want to miss Forward Into Light, a glorious collection of orchestral works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, played beautifully by conductor Andrew Cyr and the Metropolis Ensemble. (There’s a fancy, intimate, and free record-release event on Tuesday, March 3.) Also strongly recommended: aerial, a pair of hypnotically gentle, ambiguous improvisations by Oker, the quartet of Torstein Lavik Larsen, Adrian Fiskum Myhr, Fredrik Rasten, and Jan Martin Gismervik.

From last week’s hefty pile of releases I’ll single out Doing Something, Doing Nothing, a mesmerizing album by Chris Pitsiokos that proceeds from a bold premise – “something like In a Silent Way meets Rothko Chapel,” Pitsiokos explains on his Bandcamp page – and then went somewhere else. Some features of the landscape are indeed familiar, but the resulting totality is alien and intriguing, demanding exploration. I’m also wildly stoked to hype Hunab Ku, a long-awaited new album by Corima—the Los Angeles-based zeuhl band featuring the unstoppable Patrick Shiroishi. And from two weeks ago, dance! skip! hop!, the latest by the Tomeka Reid Quartet, is buoyantly irresistible.

This week’s MVP is pianist Yvonne Rogers, who plays it wacky and skronky on Oh Horror!, this week’s new release by My trio; lends strong, sympathetic support on Color Theory, last week’s newcomer by alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe; and plays a significant supporting role on Elephant, eagerly anticipated in March from trumpeter Adam O’Farrill. This morning, the Pyroclastic label added to the elation with new that Rogers will be releasing a solo album, The Button Jar, on May 8. Yes, please!

New this week.

Alexander Lloyd Blake - Songs of Remembering - Angel Blue, Ogi, Jamal M. Moore, Tonality, Wild Up (Bright Shiny Things)

John Chowning - Stria (Important)

Jack Dettling - keyboard works (Populist)

Asher Gamedze - A Semblance: Of Return (Northern Spy)

Max Kutner - Rogue Lash (Orenda)

My trio (Tim Watson, Yvonne Rogers, Jon Starks) - Oh Horror! (self-released)

Vadim Neselovskyi - Preservantia - Vadim Neselovskyi, Ysaÿe String Trio (Tzadik)

Oker - aerial (Aspen Edities)

Shane Parish - Autechre Guitar (Palilalia)

Sibyl (Chloe and Lily Holgate) - Sibyl (Gold Bolus)

Sarah Kirkland Snider - Forward Into Light - Metropolis Ensemble/Andrew Cyr (New Amsterdam)

Wilfrido Terrazas - Trilogía del Dolor — An Investigation of Human Pain in Three Parts (New Focus)

These Things Happen - A Gentle Reminder (Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Triple Blind - Cold Walk (self-released)

New last week.

Beam Splitter - Dedicated Play - Live at Morphine Raum (Tripticks Tapes)

Corima - Hunab Ku (Soleil Zeuhl)

Anne Efternøler/Maria Laurette Friis/Johanna Borchert - We are. Profoundly. Predisposed. To drowning. (Relative Pitch)

Masayo Koketsu/Nava Dunkelman - Veins of Rain (Relative Pitch)

Takuma Kuragaki/Pierre Gerard - ambiguous garden (Ftarri)

David Lang - note to a friend - Theo Bleckmann, Attacca Quartet (Cantaloupe Music)

Leo Major - Latentenergy Miniatures (self-released)

Hannah Marshall - Grazing (Relative Pitch)

Magda Mayas’ Filamental - Murmur (Relative Pitch)

Nicole McCabe - Color Theory (self-released)

Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps - Anzû Quartet (Cantaloupe Music)

Chantal Michelle - All Things Might Spill (Shelter Press)

Ben Nobuto - Hope Spiral - Ben Nobuto, Ben Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound (NMC)

Sean Noonan - The Drummer of Tedworth (Neuma)

Meg Okura - Isaiah (Adhyâropa)

Chris Pitsiokos - Doing Something, Doing Nothing (Eleatic)

Aaron Quinn - To Be Held (endectomorph music)

Eric Sawyer - Civil Disobedience - Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP/sound)

Christina Vantzou - The Reintegration of the Ear (Editions Basilic)

New two weeks ago.

Michael Stephen Brown - Twelve Blocks (First Hand)

Harry Christelis - Preserving Fictions (Clonmell Jazz Social)

Bruno Duplant - En d’autres lieux (Discreet Archives)

Andrew Greenwald - for Distractfold - Distractfold (dFolds)

Joel Harrison & The Alternative Guitar Summit - Don’t Forget Your Guitar (AGS Recordings)

Shawn Lovato - Biotic (endectomorph music)

Sam Pluta - Slays Well with Others (Carrier)

Tomeka Reid Quartet - dance! skip! hop! (Out of Your Head)

Upcoming releases.

March 6.

Jessie Marino - Curtain Pleater (self-released)

March 13.

Kevin Sun - lofi at lowlands 三 (endectomorph music)

March 20.

Cassia Streb & Tim Feeney - Lampworking (kuyin)

The Westerlies - Have You Heard: The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1 (Westerlies)

March 27.

Simon Hanes - GARGANTUA (Pyroclastic)

Mark Turner - Patternmaster (ECM)

April 24.

Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi - Making Colors (AKP Recordings)

May 1.

Travis Laplante - Estuary (Carrier)

May 8.

Chris Potter - Alive With Ghosts Today (Edition)

Yvonne Rogers - The Button Jar (Pyroclastic)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

Participating in a recording session for a forthcoming podcast about the glorious past, dismal present, and hopeful future of live music listings last week, I pointed out one downside of counting on Substack newsletters to fill the gaping hole left after mainstream media abandoned the practice: full-time, professional publications offer reliability and accountability, whereas for individuals, sometimes life takes precedence.

Illustrating my assertion, you’ve surely noticed that I’ve produced no listings here for just over a month, during which span many events assuredly have happened. It’s proof positive that we badly need reliable professional sources of event listings alongside we indie dreamers. And as it happens, for New York City jazz aficionados there’s a new source in town starting today.

Already active in New Orleans, the Jazz Generations Initiative has just started posting concert listings for New York City as well. And here, our picks are curated by my friend and former Time Out New York comrade Hank Shteamer, now a regular and welcome presence in The New York Times and here on Substack. The listings Hank is gathering eventually will be accessible on the JGI website—for now, they’re exclusively on Instagram.

Extraordinary circumstances have also conspired against my seeing any concerts during recent weeks, apart from two in which my daughter performed—which were superb, obviously. But I did manage to slip out to the NYU Bobst Library for the North American premiere of Derek Bailey – New Sights, Old Sounds, an anthology of performances by the great British improvising guitarist on film and video, assembled by Ian Greaves from sources held by the Derek Bailey Archive at the University of Huddersfield.

Some of this footage, like a TV sequence featuring the young Bailey, Barry Guy, and Paul Rutherford professionally filmed on a sound stage, is breathtaking. Other examples – a long, scrappy video shot at the Cooler by a cell phone user who mostly fixated on Peter Brötzmann; a wayward clip of a latter-day Joseph Holbrooke Trio reunion in which glimpses of Bailey and percussionist Tony Oxley are scattered among long shots of bassist Gavin Bryars and a tightening knob – requires patience.

Recent misgivings about saxophonist Evan Parker notwithstanding, I can’t endorse seeing his substantial place in Bailey’s life and work relegated to a punchline. (Luckily, there’s vintage video of the duo in happier days readily accessible elsewhere.) But as a steadfast Bailey devotee, I’m very glad to have caught this documentary—not least because during a lively post-screening talk back conducted via Zoom, Greaves explained that licensing issues would likely prevent streaming and home video options. I’m grateful to The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture for the congenial presentation.

There are a few judiciously chosen events coming up on my calendar; if I get to any of them, I’ll tell you all about it. In the meantime, the listings follow.

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

16

Mano a Mano
La MaMa ETC
74 E. 4th St.; East Village
Monday, Feb. 16, Thursday, Feb. 19–Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7pm; Sunday, Feb. 22 at 2pm. $35, support-the-artists tickets $50, seniors and students $30
lamama.org

Running now at La MaMa is a one-man show significant for two reasons. First, it’s the latest work by the protean improvising vocalist and composer Paul Pinto, a reliably electric presence in work by thingNY, Varispeed, and Robert Ashley’s New Band; second, it’s the first major directorial venture for Kristin Marting after her rightly celebrated stints as a founder of HERE Arts Center and the PROTOTYPE festival. The show is described as “an operatic monodrama about toxic masculinity,” one that transforms the question “what if Sir Gawain and Beowulf were fighting over killing the same dragon?” into a 90-minute thrill ride. If you can’t attend in person, livestream tickets are available for the performance on Thursday, Feb. 19; details here.

Steve Lehman Trio + Craig Taborn
Close Up
154 Orchard St.; Lower East Side
Monday, Feb. 16 & Tuesday, Feb. 17 at 7:30 & 9pm; $25
closeupnyc.com

The incisive, uncompromising saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Steve Lehman is back in town from the west coast for a couple of nights, and it’s hard to imagine a better way to catch up than to hear him in the company of his working rhythm section, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid, plus genius pianist Craig Taborn – the band featured on 2019’s exhilarating The People I Love – especially in a club intimate enough to warrant its name.

Striped Light
Undisclosed location
Long Island City; Queens
Monday, Feb. 16 at 7:30pm; $17.19
withfriends.events

The second Striped Light session of 2026 brings a duet from guitarist John King and dancer/sound artist Leyya Mona Tawil; a performance by improvising composer Jack Langdon on bibigwan, an Objibwe flute; and a solo set by violinist and composer Jennifer Gersten. (For another Jack Langdon performance this week, see Sat 21, Webb Crawford.)

17

Ensemble Connect
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
154 W. 57th St.; Midtown West
Tuesday, Feb. 17 at 7:30pm; $47–$53
carnegiehall.org

Ensemble Connect, the industrious fellowship for emerging professional musicians operated by Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute, offers a vivacious mix of American music, positioning a premiere by George E. Lewis alongside works by Scott Joplin, Charles Ives, Samuel Barber, and Valerie Coleman.

Talea Ensemble
The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew
520 Clinton Ave.; Brooklyn
Tuesday, Feb. 17 at 7:30pm; $20, seniors $10, students pay-what-you-can
taleaensemble.org

The season-long Talea Ensemble focus on Luciano Berio’s complex, expressive Sequenzas reaches its third installment, featuring clarinetist Rane Moore in Sequenza IX, bassoonist Adrian Morejon in Sequenza XII, and soprano Lucy Shelton in Sequenza III. Completing the program are Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 304 and Yoshiaki Onishi’s Gz III.

18

Alternative Guitar Summit
Barbès
376 9th St.; Brooklyn
Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 7pm; $20
viewcy.com

Guitarist Joel Harrison rounds up fellow plectrists Ben Monder, Anthony Pirog, Wendy Eisenberg, Tim Watson, Emmanuel Michael, Gilad Hekselman, and Max Light to celebrate the release of Don’t Forget Your Guitar, a new collection of congenial string entanglements much like the ones you can anticipate at this gathering. (Also to be anticipated: a crowded room.)

Anzû Quartet
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St.; Midtown West
Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 7:30pm; $20, supporter tickets $42
tickettailor.com

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time hardly counts as contemporary music 85 years after its composition. But its impact is timeless and its influence endures; for evidence, look to the Anzû Quartet, a foursome of new-music luminaries who formed to extend Messiaen’s legacy by commissioning and performing new works like the ones found on its debut album, Adjust. The quartet’s new recording of the Messiaen masterpiece is out Friday, but with a “supporter ticket” you can take a copy of the CD home a little early.

Sylvie Courvoisier
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Wednesday, Feb. 18–Saturday, Feb. 21 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com

Sylvie Courvoisier returns to The New School for a Stone series of concerts that find this flexible, formidable improvising pianist and composer in a variety of enticing settings—and none more so than Friday’s set with tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, whose live performances have been exceedingly infrequent in recent years. Dip into every so often, their 2009 duo release, and you’ll understand what’s so special about this reunion. Courvoisier opens on Wednesday with the working trio heard on her forthcoming album Éclats – Live in Europe, and drives disparate quartets on Thursday and Saturday.

National Sawdust Ensemble
National Sawdust
80 N. 6th St.; Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 6pm; $45
nationalsawdust.org

The versatile, eclectic house band of National Sawdust presents the New York premiere of A Dust in Time, a meditative string quartet work based on Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas by composer Huang Ruo. The program also includes the composer’s two-part micro-opera Song of Everlasting Regret, performed by mezzo-soprano Kelly Clarke and pianist Joanne Kang.

19

Joyce DiDonato + Time for Three
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
881 Seventh Ave.; Midtown West
Thursday, Feb. 19 at 8pm; $20–$130
carnegiehall.org

The arresting mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato joins forces with Time for Three, the eclectic string trio comprising violinists Nick Kendall and Charles Yang and bassist Ranaan Meyer, for the New York premiere of Emily—No Prisoner Be, a dynamic cycle of Emily Dickinson settings by composer Kevin Puts. Responding to a Bay Area performance of the work, the redoubtable Joshua Kosman wrote, “There were times during the elaborately staged performance when I could barely believe the richness of what I was hearing.” Read his complete, detailed review here.

Experiential Orchestra
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave.; Morningside Heights
Thursday, Feb. 19 & Friday, Feb. 20 at 7:30pm, Saturday, Feb. 21 at 3:30pm; $100
experientialorchestra.com

Conductor James Blachly leads his enterprising Experiential Orchestra in three concerts celebrating the 90th birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The program features works for strings, including the U.S. premiere performances of Für Lennart in memoriam and Sequentia. On Thursday and Friday, Michael Pärt, the composer’s son and co-founder of the Arvo Pärt Centre, will participate in pre-concert conversations starting at 6:30pm.

20

Endectomorph Music Festival
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Friday, Feb. 20 & Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7pm; $30–$40, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org

It’s a strong, strong week at The Jazz Gallery: saxophonist Alden Hellmuth fronts a killer band with guest Steve Lehman on Wednesday, and violinist-composer Meg Okura celebrates Isaiah, a bold new album with her long-running Pan-Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, on Thursday. But even in this company, the booking that packs the biggest punch is a festival named after endectomorph music, the consistently vital indie record label founded 10 years ago by saxophonist Kevin Sun, pianist Phillip Golub, and drummer Jake Richter. That none of those players is performing during this two-night celebration underscores the label’s resolutely forward-looking stance. Instead, each night brings sets by three fresh acts; highlights include an intriguing quartet led by bassist Nick Joz on Friday, an opening set by the finely calibrated collaborative Prawntail to start Saturday’s show, and a closing set that night by pianist-composer Steve Long with the trio heard on his 2024 album, VĪXĪ. As ever, if you can’t join ’em, stream ’em.

21

BlackBox Ensemble
The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew
520 Clinton Ave.; Brooklyn
Saturday, Feb. 21 at 8pm; $28.52, artists $23.18, students $17.85
eventbrite.com

BlackBox Ensemble, appearing under the banner of the 2026 Composers Now Festival, performs New York premieres by Ileana Perez-Velazquez and Douglas Boyce alongside works by Ursula Mamlok, Nathalie Joachim, and festival founder and artistic director Tania León.

Webb Crawford
Issue Project Room
22 Boreum Pl.; Brooklyn
Saturday, Feb. 21 at 8pm; free admission
issueprojectroom.org

Webb Crawford, an ingenious, resourceful improvising guitarist, tenor banjoist, and instrument-builder, presents the first work of their term as an Issue Project Room artist-in-residence. Men dreme of thing that never was ne shall involves two modern-day reconstructions of the tromba marina, a medieval monochord sometimes referred to as the “nun’s violin,” played by Crawford and Sean Ali, plus Adam O’Farrill on trumpet and Jack Langdon on homemade PVC serpent horn.

22

Parlando
Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center
129 W. 67th St.; Upper West Side
Sunday, Feb. 22 at 3pm; $30–$40
kaufmanmusiccenter.org

Conductor Ian Niederhoffer leads his adventurous ensemble Parlando in an indelible work that emerged at the very end of the 20th century, as if to predict the 21st: in vain, a haunting microtonal meditation that composer Georg Friedrich Haas designated to be performed in absolute darkness.

23

Hypercube
DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 W. 37th St.; Midtown West
Monday, Feb. 23 at 7pm; suggested donation $20
eventbrite.com

Hypercube, the fiery new-music quartet comprising saxophonist Erin Rogers, guitarist Jay Sorce, pianist and accordionist Andrea Lodge, and percussionist Chris Graham, starts your new week off right with premieres composed by Rick Burkhardt and Ashkan Behzadi.

Mannes Orchestra
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center
1941 Broadway; Upper West Side
Monday, Feb. 23 at 7:30pm; stand-by only
event.newschool.edu

No surprise that this characteristically inventive program by the Mannes Orchestra is already booked to capacity . The concert opens with student conductor Dajoung Choi leading Sun Splendor, a brief, handsome work by Marion Bauer that Leopold Stokowski introduced with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York in 1947—a performance recorded for posterity. Music director David Hayes then conducts the New York premiere of Concerto for Westerlies by Conrad Tao, featuring the improvising brass quartet The Westerlies as soloists, and closes with Harmonielehre, the powerful early symphony-in-all-but-name by John Adams. Stand-by tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis just before the concert.

24

MATA Festival
Church of Advent Hope
111 E. 87th St.; Upper East Side
Tuesday, Feb. 24 at 7:30pm; pay-what-you-choose (suggested donation $30)
matafestival.org

DragonBoot Quartet, a bright young group currently enrolled in the Honors Chamber Music Program at the Juilliard School, presents the world premiere of a new String Quartet by bassist-composer Kebra Seyoun Charles. Movements from quartets by Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leoš Janáček, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold lend contrast and context to this MATA Festival joint venture with Carnegie Hill Concerts.

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

It’s Bandcamp Friday, and you know what that means: time to buy (more) music on the day when the popular digital sales platform gives up its own cut of every sale, putting more money into the pockets of the independent artists and labels who need it most. Since I missed posting a newsletter last Friday, I’m including those releases among the “New this week” selections.

My usual impulse is to concentrate on new recordings, but this week I’m especially fascinated and glad to see one of the cornerstone documents of 1970s jazz return to wide circulation: Dogon A.D., the 1972 album by saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Julius Hemphill., originally self-released on his Mbari label. Joined by trumpeter Baikida Carroll, cellist Abdul Wadud, and drummer Phillip Wilson, Hemphill demonstrates the mix of cerebral intensity and bluesy grit that made him so impactful and influential.

Addressing Hemphill and this crucial album in the new liner notes, Marty Ehrlich – saxophonist, composer, bandleader, Hemphill protégé, and chief researcher for the Julius Hemphill Archive at NYU – writes:

“The Dogon A.D. recording session introduces [Hemphill] to the world as a protean composer, as a singular and passionate improviser and instrumentalist, and as a cultural thinker. In this striving toward transcendence, he brings in a sense of celebration and high spirits, of tough loss and sadness, and of proud resistance and survival.”

Ehrlich’s work on Hemphill’s behalf, covered in an extensive 2021 interview by Troy Collins in Point of Departure, previously yielded the supremely illuminating New World box set The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony. Last month saw the Relative Pitch label release Circle the Heart, a joyous, pithy duo concert by Hemphill and Ehrlich taped in 1982.

The New World reissue was produced from the original 1972 master tapes, donated to the Julius Hemphill Estate by German outfit D.A. Music, which released a previous CD edition in 2011. Like that version, this new one adds “The Hard Blues,” a long track with baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett recorded during the 1972 Dogon A.D. sessions, but then issued on Hemphill’s 1975 LP, ’Coon Bid’ness.

Stated bluntly, if you care at all about contemporary jazz during the 1970s, and about an improvising composer whose groundbreaking example is echoed in the work of followers like Ehrlich and Tim Berne, you need Dogon A.D. in your life and on your shelf. If you’re looking for CD and download formats, New World’s got you covered; vinyl aficionados, meanwhile, can anticipate a new pressing due March 6 on Superior Viaduct.

New this week (and last).

Rachel Beetz - Tone Keepers (Outside Time; Feb. 6)

Laura Cannell - The Medieval Drone Society (Brawl; Jan. 30)

Leo Chang - Live at CPR (self-released; Jan. 30)

Tashi Dorji - low clouds hang, this land is on fire (Drag City; Jan. 30)

Dave Douglas - Four Freedoms (Greenleaf Music; Jan. 30)

Morton Feldman - Piano and String Quartet - Florence Millet, JACK Quartet (bastille musique; Jan. 30)

Satoko Fujii - Live at Tube’s, Graz (Libra; Feb. 6)

Carlos Giffoni - Pendulum (Room40; Feb. 6)

Keiji Haino & Reinhold Friedl - truly, slightly, overflowing, whereabout of good will (Bocian)

Hello Spiral - Hallways (Discreet Archive; Jan. 30)

Julius Hemphill - Dogon A.D. (New World; Feb. 5, originally released 1972)

Jashiin - Interior/Exterior - Zeynep Büşra Eldem (Mode; Feb. 6)

Ania Karpowicz & Dominik Strycharski - SYRENA:RE (Fundacja Słuchaj; Jan. 27)

Keeffe/Lisle/Serries - Intangible Construct (a new wave of jazz; Feb. 6)

David Moore/Bing & Ruth - Graze the Bell (RVNG Intl.; Jan. 30)

Bobby Previte - VISITOR I: Parlor Organ (self-released; Feb. 6)

Riot Ensemble - Gates - compositions by Eden Lonsdale, Eric Skytterholm Egan, Kaija Saariaho, and Bernhard Gander (Coviello Contemporary)

Mariel Roberts Musa - Sunder - Conor Hanick (New Focus; Feb. 6)

Brad Rose - The Sound Leaves (Room40; Feb. 6)

claire rousay - live in Espoo, FI (self-released; Feb. 6)

Maria Schneider - American Crow: A Narrative in Notes and Frames (ArtistShare; Feb. 3)

Grisha Shakhnes - open (Disappearing)

Sigma Project - New Colombian Music for Saxophone Quartet - compositions by Juan Antonio Cuéllar, Carolina Noguera Palau, and Rodolfo Acosta (Mode)

Tyshawn Sorey - Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) - Davóne Tines, Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rothenberg, Steven Schick, Houston Chamber Choir/Tyshawn Sorey (DACAMERA Editions; Jan. 30, related story here)

whait & Cole Pulice - Over and Over (Residence subscriber exclusive; Feb. 5)

Upcoming releases.

February 11.

Andrew Greenwald - for Distractfold - Distractfold (dFolds)

February 13.

Harry Christelis - Preserving Fictions (Clonmell Jazz Social)

Bruno Duplant - En d’autres lieux (Discreet Archives)

Shawn Lovato - Biotic (endectomorph music)

February 15.

Takuma Kuragaki/Pierre Gerard - ambiguous garden (Ftarri)

Xiang/Otomo Yoshihide - A Waiting Room Creation (Ftarri)

February 17.

Eric Sawyer - Civil Disobedience - Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP/sound)

February 20.

Ben Nobuto - Hope Spiral - Ben Nobuto, Ben Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound (NMC)

Meg Okura - Isaiah (Adhyâropa)

February 20.

Beam Splitter - Dedicated Play - Live at Morphine Raum (Tripticks Tapes)

Anne Efternøler/Maria Laurette Friis/Johanna Borchert - We are. Profoundly. Predisposed. To drowning. (Relative Pitch)

Masayo Koketsu/Nava Dunkelman - Veins of Rain (Relative Pitch)

David Lang - note to a friend - Theo Bleckmann, Attacca Quartet (Cantaloupe Music)

Hannah Marshall - Grazing (Relative Pitch)

Magda Mayas’ Filamental - Murmur (Relative Pitch)

Nicole McCabe - Color Theory (self-released)

Aaron Quinn - To Be Held (endectomorph music)

Christina Vantzou - The Reintegration of the Ear (Editions Basilic)

February 27.

Asher Gamedze - A Semblance: Of Return (Northern Spy)

March 6.

Amalie Dahl’s Dafnie EXTENDED - Live at Moldejazz (Sonic Transmissions)

Every (Mara Rosenbloom & Barbara Majnarić) - Tried in the Fire (Daily Music)

Devin Gray/Andrea Parkins/Frank Gratkowski - Hz of Gold (Rataplan)

Okkyung Lee - Signals - Explore Ensemble (Flung)

March 13.

Bill Orcutt - Music in Continuous Motion (Palilalia)

March 20.

Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone - Music for Intersecting Planes (Ideologic Organ)

John McGuire - Double String Trios (Unseen Worlds)

March 27.

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio - Éclats - Live in Europe (Intakt)

Danya Pilchen - Paper Braids - Kali Ensemble (Moving Furniture)

April 17.

Marta Sánchez - For the Space You Left (Out of Your Head)

April 18.

Cecil Taylor Unit - Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts (Elemental Music; RSD exclusive 3LP vinyl edition, 2CD version TBA)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change.

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

I’ll admit it, I’ve scoffed every time I’ve seen references to a “2016 nostalgia trend” on social media during recent days. But since last night, I’ve definitely had 2016 on my mind for one specific reason: the final concert ever played by the magisterial creative-music pianist, composer, and bandleader Cecil Taylor has finally arrived in CD and download formats, courtesy of the vital Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj.

Words and Music: the last bandstand captures two performances, respectively 35 and 44 minutes long, by Taylor and the band he assembled for a concert on April 23, 2016, presented as part of Open Plan: Cecil Taylor, a 10-day exhibition mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with Blank Forms.

At the time, my family lived in Boston. The concert fell on one of my milestone birthdays, and I’d seriously entertained the notion of driving down for the day, catching the historic performance, and then turning around and heading straight back. Eventually pragmatism made me drop that idea… and of course there was no way to know this would be Taylor’s last show.

Now, at least, I can hear what I missed. In some ways, it’s much different than I’d anticipated: Taylor’s whorls of seismic energy, perhaps unsurprisingly, are parceled out with unfamiliar reserve—though they’re here, make no mistake—but I don’t think I’m imagining a deeper than usual vein of ruminative lyricism in this music.

Among Taylor’s bandmates, percussionist Tony Oxley limits himself to electronic sound, while Jackson Krall has a strong outing behind the drums. Soprano saxophonist Harri Sjöström is reliably penetrating, but the set’s real MVP is cellist Okkyung Lee, who contributes mightily at the top and bottom of her instrument’s range.

For Taylor aficionados, this obviously is an essential purchase; for others, it’s a vibrant document of a historic occasion. One important note: only 200 copies of the CD are being sold, so if you need a physical object on your shelf, don’t hesitate. And while you’re on the Fundacja Słuchaj website, poke around and explore the label’s other Taylor rarities like Lifting the Bandstand, the sole official release by Taylor’s late-’90s quintet with Sjöström, Tristan Honsinger, Teppo Hauta-aho, and Paul Lovens.

New this week.

John Butcher - Away, I Was (Relative Pitch)

Nicolas Collins/Birgit Ulher - Spark Gap (Relative Pitch)

Isidora Edwards, Biliana Voutchkova, Zosha Warpeha - A Far Within (Relative Pitch)

Marty Ehrlich/Julius Hemphill - Circle the Heart (Relative Pitch; recorded 1982)

Erik Hall - Solo Three - compositions by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel, and Steve Reich (Western Vinyl)

Colin Hinton - Three Suites (endectomorph music)

Emily Manzo - Time in Water - compositions by Mary Halvorson and Aaron Siegel (Gold Bolus)

Angelika Niescier - Chicago Tapes (Intakt)

Jordan Topiel Paul & Bryan Eubanks - Pushovers (Sacred Realism)

Elliott Sharp - Elegy Ralph Towner (Zoar)

Cecil Taylor New Unit - Words and Music: the last bandstand (Fundacja Słuchaj)

Upcoming releases.

January 27.

Ania Karpowicz & Dominik Strycharski - SYRENA:RE (Fundacja Słuchaj)

January 30.

Laura Cannell - The Medieval Drone Society (Brawl)

Leo Chang - Live at CPR (self-released)

Hello Spiral - Hallways (Discreet Archive)

February 20.

Chantal Michelle - All Things Might Spill (Shelter Press)

February 27.

Sibyl (Chloe and Lily Holgate) - Sibyl (Gold Bolus)

March 6.

Philip Glass/David Henry Hwang - 1000 Airplanes on the Roof - Ithica Tell, Third Angle New Music (Orange Mountain Music)

March 13.

Claire Dickson - Balance (New Amsterdam)

March 20.

more eaze - sentence structure in the country (Thrill Jockey)

March 27.

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow - Electrical Field (Pi Recordings)

April 3.

Wendy Eisenberg - Wendy Eisenberg (Joyful Noise)

April 17.

Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin - ITERAE (greyfade)

April 24.

Setting (Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, Joe Westerlund) - Setting (Thrill Jockey)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

For the Record is a weekly column that rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community – contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined – on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.

This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts,  and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)

These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)

All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.

Topspin.

A quick note before we begin: This column was slated to appear last Friday, January 9, and was essentially complete before an urgent issue reorganized the day, the weekend, and beyond. In the spirit of accepting what can’t be changed, I’m leaving this text alone, save for acknowledging the changed date and adding a single new citation at the end.

Compact discs hit the mass market midway through my high school years, a time when all me and my friends were interested in was hearing Steely Dan’s Aja and Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles in the most surgical sound we cassette-reared younglings could imagine. It was years later when I realized another benefit of growing up during the CD age is never having known a time when Morton Feldman’s music wanted for representation on record.

True, you needed a box set for some of the notoriously long late works, at least until DVD and Blu-ray audio arrived; still, it wasn’t long before you could choose from multiple versions of works like String Quartet 2. Labels like Hat Hut and Mode developed impressive surveys of Feldman’s singular oeuvre, while others like Bridge and Frozen Reeds made significant contributions.

In 2019, Another Timbre, an English label I’ve cited frequently and fervidly in this newsletter, joined the Feldman venture in a major way with a supremely fine box set devoted to works for solo piano, played with authority and sublimity by Philip Thomas. “The performances are intimate to the point of sensuality,” Hugh Morris memorably wrote for VAN, “every gesture like a phantom hand hovering above the tiny hairs on your arm, in that fragile space between presence and contact.”

The set became the label’s best seller, and established Another Timbre as a trusted guide to Feldman’s rarefied canon. More noteworthy albums followed, including a properly ghostly Violin and String Quartet played by de facto house band Apartment House and an arresting, glacial interpretation by Antti Tolvi of Intermission 6—the latter lucidly analyzed by Tim Rutherford-Johnson in his recently launched, already essential Purposeful Listening.

Now, with the Feldman centennial arriving on Monday here today, comes yet another persuasive offering from Another Timbre. Titled Trios, the 6CD box includes Feldman’s three great late works for flute, piano, and percussion – Why Patterns? (1979), Crippled Symmetry (1982), For Philip Guston (1984) – played by GBSR Duo, percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys, with flutist Taylor MacLennan. The release comes ahead of a concert these performers will present in London on January 18, details of which are here.

There are other fine recordings of this repertoire, of course, including a historic live recording of Crippled Symmetry by dedicatees Eberhard Blum, Jan Williams, and Nils Vigeland on Frozen Reeds. But MacLennan, Barton, and Rhys bring extraordinary poise and quiet intensity to these contemplative lattices of tone, and the recorded sound serves the music and musicians ideally.

What’s more, listening in sequence to these three works – respectively around 30, 90, and 280 minutes – you discern enrichment and refinement over time. Why Patterns? can seem positively gabby in proximity to For Philip Guston, one of what Rutherford-Johnson terms “those long, late works that play Proustian games of recollection and faulty re-inscription” in “Something that has to do with … leaving …” published yesterday by VAN.

That article is warmly recommended; so, too, is “The genius of Morton Feldman,” a succinct, intelligent Feldman overview by Philip Clark for The Spectator – which includes a firsthand account of having been a page-turner in a concert performance of For Philip Guston. “American Sublime,” a 2006 New Yorker column by Alex Ross, retains its authority and ineffable lyricism; on his long-running blog, The Rest Is Noise, Ross also offers a useful list of Feldman 100 concerts far and wide, among other timely posts.

Notably, Rutherford-Johnson acknowledges troubling allegations of sexual misconduct and possibly worse that surfaced years after Feldman’s death and Ross’s article, observing that “great music can leave both ugliness and beauty in its wake.” Each listener is left to determine how to negotiate an unsettling distance between artist and art; all might agree, however, that the enduring enigma of this music is eloquently served in these profound accounts.

January 12 postscript: One more new essay to recommend today, “The Feldman Century,” published by George Grella at Kill Yr Idols.

New releases: January 9.

Kris Davis and the Lutosławski Quartet - The Solastalgia Suite (Pyroclastic; concert recap here)

Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard - DLW: Live at Salle Cortot (bastille musique)

Leo Genovese - Solo Brooklyn (577 Records)

Ken Ueno - Wavelengths - performances by Ken Ueno, Karen Yu, and The Up:Strike Project (New Focus)

Uncivilized - “Froggies” (Unciv Music)

Various artists - BMP: SONGBOOK, Vols. 1 & 2 - compositions by Juhi Bansal, Mohammed Fairouz, Michael Gordon, Ricky Ian Gordon, Ted Hearne, Emma O’Halloran, Molly Joyce, Mary Kouyoumdjian, David Lang, David T. Little, Keeril Makan, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Ellen Reid, Kamala Sankaram, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, and Du Yun (Bright Shiny Things)

Upcoming releases.

January 16.

Helen Grime - Violin Concerto - Malin Broman, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding (OUR Recordings)

January 23.

Emily Manzo - Time in Water - compositions by Mary Halvorson and Aaron Siegel (Gold Bolus)

Angelika Niescier - Chicago Tapes (Intakt)

January 30.

Morton Feldman - Piano and String Quartet - Florence Millet, JACK Quartet (bastille musique; new date)

February 13.

Joel Harrison & The Alternative Guitar Summit - Don’t Forget Your Guitar (AGS Recordings)

March 6.

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Piano Works - Alice Sara Ott (Deutsche Grammophon)

March 20

Adam O’Farrill - Elephant (Out of Your Head)

Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.

Happy New Year! I never intended to skip out on the live-events newsletter coinciding with the movable feast that live music in January has become. Life comes at you fast sometimes, and you just do your best to keep up.

The big concerns this week are two festivals: PROTOTYPE*, which opened with a fancy anniversary gala last night, but really gets hopping tonight, and Winter JazzFest, which also starts swinging tonight. Since those two events are sprawling multi-venue affairs, I’m not going to break them out into individual listings; check out the master schedule for each festival and make your choices accordingly.

I will, however, urge you to read the timely, detailed feature on producer Beth Morrison, a PROTOTYPE co-founder and now its sole curator, written by Joshua Barone for The New York Times—here’s a gift link for you. While I’m at it, here’s a gift link for my own New York Times feature on Beth, from 2014.

It’s been a privilege and a thrill to watch Beth build her organization from a bold upstart to a crucial player in the world’s artistic ecosystem, and I felt great pride and joy in contributing a personal essay to the commemorative BMP: SONGBOOK Anthology.

* Obligatory disclaimer: One PROTOTYPE event, What to wear, is presented in partnership with BAM, my full-time employer.

As for Winter JazzFest, a sagacious friend and colleague tried to assuage my regret at missing out on this year’s action by reminding me that since we actually live and work in New York City, the festival basically represents an intensified concentration of the incredible bounty we regularly enjoy.

In terms of the artists and bands involved, that’s surely true—but the real magic in a festival gig happens when the artists sharing any given bill bump up against one another, borrowing ideas and sharing in the communal buzz humming among themselves and their audiences. Plus, when friendly colleagues like Matt Merewitz and Piotr Orlov ply their insights and skills in assembling showcases like the ones they’ll host during Saturday’s Brooklyn Marathon… well, that’s something you definitely want to see and hear if you can. (Matt’s Fully Altered stage is at Loove Annex and Piotr’s Dada Strain party at Union Pool; Saturday’s complete schedule is here.)

Speaking of Matt and Piotr, the former was responsible for inviting me to chatter alongside the latter on Big Ears: Conversations About Music, the podcast Matt produces for Big Ears, Knoxville’s annual multifarious musical smorgasbord, returning March 26–29.

It was an honor and a privilege to talk about musical highlights of 2025, tilted toward the Big Ears 2026 lineup, with Piotr and two more dazzling media professionals I admire hugely, Ayana Contreras and Liz Pelly. My specific beat comprised John Zorn, JACK Quartet, and Hania Rani; among all of us, we covered a lot of stylistic ground—while also reminding everyone that Liz wrote the most important, vital, and healthful music-oriented book of 2025, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

The Big Ears podcast is available pretty much everywhere—yes, even on Spotify. Look for your favorite hook-up here.

Now, onward with a handful of attention-worthy listings for events that aren’t part of PROTOTYPE or Winter JazzFest…

The Night After Night Watch.

Concerts listed in Eastern Standard Time.

8

Tim Berne
Lowlands Bar
543 3rd Ave., Brooklyn
Thursday, Jan. 8 at 9pm; pass-the-hat
instagram.com/berneornot

Veteran saxophonist, bandleader, and composer Tim Berne, reigning king of Brooklyn’s neighborhood bar hang, continues his “Winter Timfest” with his Capotosta bandmates, guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi and drummer Tom Rainey, plus guitarist Marc Ducret and bassist John Hébert. The band also holds forth this Saturday at Barbès, then returns to Lowlands next Tuesday. Keep tabs on this bicameral marathon and other assorted Berne notices on Instagram.

Jason Moran
Veterans Room, Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave.; Upper East Side
Thursday, Jan. 8 at 7:30pm, Saturday, Jan. 10 at 8pm; $75
armoryonpark.org

Doings in the spacious Drill Hall on the premises tend to grab most of the spotlight at the Park Avenue Armory, but for a decade now improvising pianist and composer Jason Moran has been curating equally provocative fare in the intimate confines of the Veterans Room. Tonight, he’ll play solo and offer his reflections on the series, among other timely topics.

Pyroclastic Festival
The Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th fl.; NoMad
Thursday, Jan. 8–Saturday, Jan. 10 at 7 & 9pm; $40–$50, livestream $20
jazzgallery.org

Greatly admired as an improvising pianist, composer, and bandleader, Kris Davis has another feather in her cap: curator of Pyroclastic Records. The imprint has been responsible for some of the strongest creative-music releases in recent memory; now, some of the artists behind those records hook up to usher in the label’s tenth year. The festivities begin tonight with sets by Eric Revis and Patricia Brennan; Friday brings a gaggle of solos and duos, plus Angelica Sanchez’s trio with Sam Newsome and Nasheet Waits, and Saturday finishes the run with bands led by Davis and Sylvie Courvoisier.

Ches Smith
Glass Box Theatre, The New School
55 W. 13th St., Greenwich Village
Thursday, Jan. 8–Saturday, Jan. 10, Wednesday, Jan. 14–Saturday, Jan. 17 at 8:30pm; $20 cash only
thestonenyc.com

If you wondered why percussionist, composer, and bandleader Ches Smith isn’t caught up in the Pyroclastic Festival (see above) across town, having made three exceptional records for the label, presumably it’s because he’s tied up with his own two-week residency at The New School. A single band is featured throughout most of this Stone series engagement: Smith, guitarists Liberty Ellman and Mary Halvorson, and bassist Nick Dunston, the blazing quartet heard on Clone Row, issued by Otherly Love last year. Smith wraps up the run in two trios with keyboardist Craig Taborn: one completed by saxophonist Darius Jones (Jan. 16); the other with Shara Lunon lending voice and electronics (Jan. 17).

9

Uncivilisation Festival No. 3
360 Record Shop
360 Van Brunt St.; Red Hook
Friday, Jan. 9 at 6pm; $10 suggested donation
uncivilisationfestival.com

Guitarist Tom Csatari rounds up his free-jazz-meets-freak-folk comrades of Uncivilized for an evening of revelry celebrating a new single, “Froggies.” Before the group hits the stage, you’ll get solo sets by tuba player Ben Stapp, bassists Rick Rosato and Thomas Morgan, and guitarist Ben Monder.

10

Tim Berne
Barbès
376 9th St.; Brooklyn
Saturday, Jan. 10 at 6pm; $20
viewcy.com

See Thu 8.

12

Gelsey Bell: mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning]
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.; Brooklyn
Monday, Jan. 12 at 8pm; $30, advance $25, seniors and students $20
roulette.org

Singing composer, scholar, and sometime siren Gelsey Bell reprises mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning], her beautiful, whimsical, and haunting experimental opera about life on earth post-humanity. Joining her are two original cast members, Aviva Jaye and Paul Pinto, and two touring cast members, Brian McCorkle and Mia Pak.

Striped Light
Undisclosed location
Long Island City; Queens
Monday, Jan. 12 at 7:30pm; $17.18
withfriends.events

The first Striped Light session of 2026 offers a trifecta of arresting duos: C. Spencer Yeh and Kwami Winfield, Gryphon Rue and Sean Meehan, and Shoko Nagai with series curator David Watson.

13

Tim Berne
Lowlands Bar
543 3rd Ave., Brooklyn
Tuesday, Jan. 13 at 9pm; pass-the-hat
instagram.com/berneornot

See Thu 8.

Submit listings for consideration at nightafternight [at] icloud [dot] com.

Find even more events in Night After Night Watch: The Master List, here.

More vital directories of new-music destinations:

• Dada Strain

• Extended Techniques

• Lament for a Straight Line

• New Music Calendar

Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.