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    Philharmonic’s Afromodernism Festival Gathers Black Artists

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    An Afromodernism festival at the New York Philharmonic shines a light on Black artists, who are vastly underrepresented in classical music.At the New York Philharmonic’s festival Afromodernism: Music of the African Diaspora, the composer Nathalie Joachim plans to showcase the richness of Black musical expression, like Haitian funeral brass bands, swing and New York Minimalism.“We are not a monolith,” she said.Black artists have long struggled to be seen or heard in classical music. And despite some recent progress, they remain vastly underrepresented among orchestra players, soloists, composers and conductors.But this week, Black musicians will be front and center at the Philharmonic, which is devoting a series of concerts and events to the music of the African diaspora. On Thursday and Friday, the orchestra will play works by living composers like Joachim and Carlos Simon and revered figures like William Grant Still, whose Symphony No. 4 celebrates the fusion of musical cultures in the United States.On Saturday, the orchestra will host a Young People’s concert focused on diasporic experiences. And later this month, the Philharmonic will also present a concert by the International Contemporary Ensemble, the contemporary music group, featuring a variety of Black composers.The composer Carlos Simon wants to shatter stereotypes about Black American culture, with a piece highlighting dance forms including tap, holy dance, ring shout and waltz.“There will be people in the audience who had no idea that Black people were doing a waltz,” he said about wealthy Black Americans in the 1930s who had debutante balls for their children. “It’s going to be a learning experience.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Courtney Bryan’s Music Brings It All Together

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      A recent recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, this pianist and composer fuses different styles for a sound that is entirely her own.The name Courtney Bryan is not one that you’ll currently find on many recordings. Aside from two independently released, jazz-tilting albums from 2007 and 2010, precious little of this pianist and composer’s finely woven, adventurous music is available to hear widely.But you can expect that to change, beyond live performances including the premiere of Bryan’s chamber work “DREAMING (Freedom Sounds),” presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble at Merkin Hall on Wednesday. She also recently signed with the influential music publisher Boosey & Hawkes, whose biography of her online includes the promise of a third recording: “Sounds of Freedom.”Bryan, 41, who was born in New Orleans and received a MacArthur “genius” grant earlier this month, has been making her mark since earning her doctorate in composition from Columbia University in 2014. Symphony orchestras, chamber musicians, vocal groups and jazz performers have all been drawn to her sound. Last spring, the New York Philharmonic premiere of “Gathering Song,” with text by the stage director Tazewell Thompson and hints of post-bop jazz harmony, displayed her place among the most exciting voices in contemporary American music.In a phone interview, Bryan said that before she started her Ph.D. program, “I had the separate thing of doing ‘classical’ here, ‘jazz’ here,” while also working as an organist at the Bethany Baptist Church in Newark.From left, Leslie B. Dunner, Tazewell Thompson, Ryan Speedo Green and Bryan at the New York Philharmonic premiere of “Gathering Song” last spring.Chris LeeBut at Columbia, her composition teacher — the eminent composer, trombonist and computer-music pioneer George E. Lewis — encouraged her to put everything together. “He helped me dream bigger,” Bryan said.And Lewis also helped introduce her to other like-minded students, including the musicologist Matthew D. Morrison, who said that his forthcoming book “Blacksound” is “heavily informed by our conversations, our conspiring — trying to figure out how to get certain ideas of what Black music is out into the world.”Lewis recalled Bryan’s “unassuming brilliance,” a quality evident even at the admissions stage, in which “bombast” and “blowing your own horn” are the norm. Once she started, she altered the culture of the program, Lewis said. The school’s composition seminars had a reputation for treating people poorly: “you know, the idea that somehow sharpening one’s critique was confused with being mean to people.”One day, Lewis added, “Courtney stood up and said, ‘We just can’t continue to treat people this way.’ And everyone just looked at her; she hadn’t said very much, to this point. She’s a person who has that deep spiritual reservoir. And she changed a lot of people.”Their relationship continues today: Lewis leads the International Contemporary Ensemble, and he programmed Bryan at Merkin as part of “Composing While Black: Volume One” — which has ties to his latest book, a volume of critical essays that he edited with Harald Kisiedu.The inclusion of Bryan on this bill reflects Lewis’s appreciation for her direct approach to political commentary. “Courtney was one of the people who, early on, put Black Lives Matter on the classical music table,” he said. Yet, he added, in her works “there’s no one dogma. It’s not conventionally tonal; it’s not conventionally atonal. The orchestration is lush — but spare in some ways.”She brings eclectic references to bear in “DREAMING,” which incorporates text from a dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other legal opinions. To hear the gospel and jazz elements, Lewis said, “you have to go through the looking glass with her,” and the results are what he called “strange resonances.”“Courtney is able to make you feel reassured,” Lewis said, “but also to realize that you should be feeling unsettled about the state of the world.”In an archived La Jolla Symphony performance of “Yet Unheard,” a 2016 piece that incorporates poetry by Sharan Strange and commemorates the life of Sandra Bland (a Black woman who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in 2015 after she was arrested during a traffic stop), you can hear Bryan’s talent for transfiguring trends in experimental orchestration, as well as gospel tradition. Similarly, a recently filmed performance of “Sanctum” (2015) by the London Sinfonietta illustrates the score’s braiding of influences including the sermons of Pastor Shirley Caesar, marching band percussion and the rhythmic exultations of street protests.Bryan’s religious side is likewise front and center in her Requiem, in which she sets Greek and Latin text from the Mass as well as selections, in English, from Ecclesiastes and Psalm 23. That work was performed on video during the lockdown portion of the pandemic by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the treble-voice quartet Quince Ensemble.The mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Butcher, a member of Quince, said that Bryan’s use of extended technique — including whispering and chanting — was not “super intense or aggressive” compared with other contemporary music. But, she added, it was Bryan’s way of fusing those elements with more traditional chamber writing that was responsible for its distinctiveness: “Usually someone will only do an only-extended techniques piece. Or only a tonal, written-notes-on-a-page piece, and not combine them in interesting ways.”“Courtney is able to make you feel reassured,” George E. Lewis said, “but also to realize that you should be feeling unsettled about the state of the world.”Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesBryan’s recent piano concerto, “House of Pianos,” bustles with references to jazz-piano history, including boogie-woogie and Harlem stride. It also contains approaches to harmony that she learned in lessons from the towering New Orleans pedagogue Ellis Marsalis, and traces of music that she examined in a master’s degree program at Rutgers, where she studied with the jazz pianist Stanley Cowell. “New Orleans Concerto,” by her former teacher Roger Dickerson, also informs the work.“It’s my way to pay tribute to a lot of pianists who’ve inspired me — but also a challenge for me as a pianist and composer,” Bryan said of the concerto. For its premiere at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra last May, she performed the solo part.More of her pianistic prowess can be found on those early recordings. For Morrison, the musicologist, one exemplary moment comes during a rendition of “City Called Heaven,” from Bryan’s first album, “Quest for Freedom.”

      Quest for Freedom by Courtney Bryan“She takes this spiritual and she really transforms it,” he said, professing himself “obsessed” with its experimental rhythmic touches and its “Chopinesque” figurations. The first time he heard it, Morrison thought: “Oh my goodness, who does this so seamlessly? And it was Courtney.” More

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      Claire Chase Is Changing How People Think of the Flute

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      She is marking her 24-year effort to expand the instrument’s repertoire with performances, including a Carnegie Hall series, as well as a box set and a new fellowship.Something unusual happens when people speak about the flutist Claire Chase. Seasoned musicians light up with gleeful optimism. They use superlatives that would seem reckless if they weren’t repeated so often. The most jaded among them appear incapable of negativity.“It’s so difficult to talk about Claire,” the composer Marcos Balter said. “She’s so much more than a virtuoso flutist or a pedagogue. She is a true catalyst for change. But also not only that. She makes you think that everything is possible.”Chase’s reputation is all the more remarkable for the level head she maintains as one of the most enterprising and imaginative musicians in her field — which is to say one of the busiest fund-raisers and devoted interpreters of new music, and the unconventional performances it often demands. This, on top of a life that involves shuttling among Cambridge, Mass., where she teaches at Harvard University; Brooklyn; and Princeton, N.J., where her partner, the author Kirstin Valdez Quade, works, and where they have been raising their 10-month-old daughter.This month is one of the biggest stress tests on her schedule yet. Earlier in May, she played Kaija Saariaho’s concerto “L’Aile du Songe” with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Next she is planning a marathon of 10 performances looking back on the past decade of her “Density 2036” project, a colossal initiative intended to last 24 years in which she has commissioned annual new works for the flute, leading up to the centennial of Edgar Varèse’s solo for her instrument “Density 21.5.”Her coming concerts will culminate in two premieres, on May 24 at the Kitchen and the next day at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. She is also releasing a box set of “Density” recordings and starting a fellowship to ensure that this music reaches the next generation of flutists.Chase performs with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, where she will return for a series of concerts.Chris LeeIn an interview at her Brooklyn apartment, Chase, who turns 45 on Wednesday, recalled being told that once you become a parent, everything else becomes “like miniature golf.” That has helped.“Two weeks into our daughter’s life, I was like, Oh, I get it,” she said. “I have these 10 ‘Density’ shows and things that are finally launching, and it really is miniature golf. And it’s such a gift because I can’t possibly take what I’m doing too seriously. The only truly important thing is feeding and caring for and learning from this little person.”Much has changed in Chase’s life since “Density” began, but her resting state of restlessness has been a constant. She was a founding artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble — arguably America’s leading performers of new work — which in 2001 had grown out of her time at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. With that group, she churned out commissions that put composers like Balter on the map.By the time “Density” got off the ground, though, Chase knew that she wouldn’t remain with the ensemble forever. Leaving, she said, “was always in the back of my mind. All artists — we have to be very honest about what we’re afraid of, and I was really afraid of holding this thing back.” It was one of the hardest things she’s ever done, she added, but also one of the best lessons she’s ever learned.As the years of “Density” went on, more developments came. She joined the Harvard faculty and was asked to become one of eight collaborative partners of the San Francisco Symphony under its music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. She met Quade and started a family. And since then, she has approached her work with a fresh sense of time.“My dream for all pieces, not just ‘Density’ pieces, but for everything I commission,” Chase said, “is that it can potentially work with me and a Bluetooth speaker on a granny cart in the subway.”Jamie Pearl for The New York Times“I only have so much time I can give each day, and so much energy,” Chase said. “If this month of ‘Density’ had happened in a different part of my life, I think I’d be practicing eight hours a day, and I would be living and eating and breaking and only seeing this material.”Even with what limited time she has, Chase is seen by fellow musicians as thoroughly committed — whether performing Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto on tour with Esperanza Spalding or revisiting the “Density” repertoire. Audiences can tell, too, from her animated but not overstated movement, dizzying technical facility across the flute family, and extended techniques that branch out into vocalization and dramatic text recitation.The composer and scholar George E. Lewis, who now serves as artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble, said that her interpretation of his piece “Emergent,” from early in “Density,” has evolved so much that it sounds “like the difference between early and late Coltrane.” Susanna Mälkki, who has led Chase in performances of the Lara concerto, as well as the Saariaho at Carnegie, said that she stands out among contemporary music specialists because, while some might “be very scientific about it,” Chase doesn’t forget that, fundamentally, most composers just want to reach listeners.“If we approach this as an intellectual exercise, it won’t work,” Mälkki added. “We need to have a balance, and she is so generous and engaged, it’s mesmerizing. And from there, her aura just spreads.”It spreads not just to fellow performers but to colleagues in the broader classical music field. Lewis said that Chase has a gift for seeing “how things could be, not how they are now,” and that in the process, “she sweeps you up into the enthusiasm and makes you believe you can do anything.”Salonen recalled meeting her as part of a New York University project devoted to the future of classical music. When the inevitable subject of getting young people interested in and on the boards of institutions came up, he recalled, she said “that her problem with I.C.E. is that she would really want to see some older board and audience members.”“Jaws dropped,” he said. “You could hear it. Then I thought: This woman is doing something. She has her finger on something that we don’t.”Through the ensemble, Chase caught the attention of Matthew Lyons, a curator at the experimental-art nonprofit the Kitchen. When she introduced the idea of “Density,” before it had begun, he quickly got on board. “I have a weakness for long-form creative projects,” he said, “and Claire just kind of came in with this infectious energy and determination and courage to take it on.”Chase’s projects include a fellowship she started to ensure that the music she is commissioning reaches the next generation of flutists.Jamie Pearl for The New York TimesThe Kitchen has been the New York home for “Density,” a space where Chase has been given time to prepare theatrical, multimedia presentations for each edition. A program can contain just one, full-length piece — like the two premieres this month, Craig Taborn’s “Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms” and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Ubique” — or it can be a batch of new works. Regardless, an installment typically adds up to roughly an hour, with the idea that the project can conclude with a 24-hour performance.The roster of composers has been diverse in nearly every sense of the word: age, race, gender identity, career stage. “It’s not uniform,” Balter said. “Claire is the glue, but there is not an aesthetic glue.”If there is a defining aesthetic, it’s virtuosity. Lewis said that a commission for her means that you are writing music for “someone who can do just about anything.” “Busy Griefs,” which premieres at the Kitchen on the 24th, calls for its performers to wander through the audience and navigate notated and improvised material; “Ubique,” at Carnegie Hall on the 25th, however, is fully notated, a journey of its own, but with nothing left to chance.Thorvaldsdottir said that she “always pictured Claire in everything I was writing,” but balanced her technique with more abstract ideas about density and ubiquity — “an exploration of colors and timbres and textural nuances between the instruments.” In composing specifically for Chase, Thorvaldsdottir is far from alone among the “Density” contributors; it can be difficult to picture anyone other than Chase performing this idiosyncratic, challenging and occasionally large-scale music.Chase is aware of how, as “Density” enters its second decade, she must ensure that the new repertoire doesn’t merely exist, but that it also spreads beyond her own concert calendar. She is already a teacher and mentor — young flutists “follow her around like little puppies,” Lewis said — and now she has also created a “Density” fellowship, whose first class was announced this month.Ten early-career flutists will take on one of the project’s pieces and devote a year to studying it with Chase, and often the composer, then performing and potentially recording it. Future concerts might not have the grand multimedia treatment of a Kitchen program, but, Claire said, that has always been the plan.“My dream for all pieces, not just ‘Density’ pieces, but for everything I commission,” she added, “is that it can potentially work with me and a Bluetooth speaker on a granny cart in the subway.”With that philosophy, “Density” begins to look a lot more like, well, the rest of classical music: endlessly interpreted, with endless possibilities for how it’s presented. All it takes for repertoire to survive is continued performance, generation after generation. Chase’s fellowship, she hopes, is a start.“One little thing at a time,” she said. “It’s such a gift to be thinking about 20 years from now, or even just 10 years from now, and then 13 when this is all over. Oh, then I’ll be so sad. What am I going to do?” More

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      Review: A Contemporary Music Group’s Next Era Begins

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      George E. Lewis’s tenure with the International Contemporary Ensemble began with a tribute to the multitalented artist Douglas R. Ewart.Some artists earn the “multi-hyphenate” label by doing two or three things. But Douglas R. Ewart works on a whole other level.That much was clear when this composer, visual artist, poet, multi-instrumentalist and instrument-maker put on a true multimedia event at the Chelsea Factory on Friday night. He gave a thrilling tour of his varied creativity in the company of a violist, cellist, bassoonist and two percussionists from the International Contemporary Ensemble — whose new leader, George E. Lewis, organized the concert, making his curatorial debut with the group.In the lobby were three of Ewart’s sculptures (including one dedicated to the jazz musician Eric Dolphy), and inside the hall hung five of his paintings (including one titled “Rasta in Sun Ra”). Underneath those canvases, the concert featured some shimmering, percussive work from Ewart, 76, himself — on a tall wooden staff outfitted with a sequence of Bundt cake pans, which he called “The George Floyd Bunt Staff.” (More on the chiaroscuro effect of that Bundt/bunt ambiguity later.)From left, the International Contemporary Ensemble players Wendy Richman, Aliya Ultan and Rebekah Heller.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAlso on offer was Ewart’s piping, ecstatic approach to the sopranino saxophone, informed by bebop and the avant-garde alike. And there was plenty of meditative yet tuneful chamber music writing for the full ensemble, which the composer sometimes underlined with performances on a series of flutes.Elsewhere, Ewart gave somber, spoken-word testaments to Floyd’s memory, in addition to more slyly humorous commentaries on contemporary discussions of race. One such aperçu involved his interrogation of the phrase “unapologetically Black,” with him saying, “I am not unapologetically anything, because when I say that I have already apologized.”Other compositions offered space for Ewart to celebrate the practice of “sound sifting” — which he defined as a dedicated process of studying music’s mysteries — alongside playing from the ensemble members that emphatically endorsed his poetry’s quality of exultation.Clockwise, from top left: Ewart’s “Eye of Horus” (2017-18); “Sonic Stroller” (2006); his elaborately decorated performance outfit, which has bells stuffed in its pockets; and “Eric Dolphy Sonic Dread” (2017).It sounds like there’s a lot going on here. But while undeniably jam-packed and charged with grave themes, the evening progressed with a sense of unhurried equanimity. That was in large part thanks to the figure cut by Ewart; when he paced the stage to grab a new instrument, you could hear bells — tucked away in the pockets of his colorful, homemade concert suit — jangling peaceably.The International Contemporary Ensemble had commissioned the evening’s first through-composed piece, “Songs and Stories of Hopes, Dreams and Visions,” and throughout, the players were on Ewart’s same wavelength: intense yet generous. At the outset of the concert’s first half — a 40-minute set that included three works played without a break — the percussionists Nathan Davis (on vibraphone) and Clara Warnaar (on marimba) collaborated on dreamy, interlocking mallet-instrument patterns that recalled past Ewart projects that have involved choirs of similar instruments.Rebekah Heller, the ensemble’s bassoonist, responded to the upward-swooping graphic notation of “Red Hills” with a peppery excitement that rivaled earlier interpretations of it. (This piece was previously documented during a 1981 concert in Detroit, which has recently been reissued digitally on Bandcamp.)

      Beneath Detroit / Ewart . Barefield . Tabal Trio by Geodesic DisquesEwart, center, performed spoken-word portions of the show alongside musicians including Ultan, left, on cello, and Heller, on bassoon.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThat members of the International Contemporary Ensemble could stack up so well against the recorded legacy of an artist like Ewart was no small thing. Credit also to Lewis, the ensemble’s new artistic director. This pathbreaking trombonist, composer and scholar literally wrote the book on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the organization that provided schooling to Ewart in the 1960s, after he immigrated from Jamaica. (Ewart later served as chairman of that influential organization.)During the intermission on Friday, Lewis interviewed Ewart, a longtime collaborator, onstage. They amiably referred to moments in their history together, which includes a memorable 1979 duo recording on the Black Saint imprint.Given that relationship, Lewis was an ideal figure to extract more from Ewart about the ambiguities only hinted at in the performance’s staging and program notes. Such as: Why was the percussion instrument that Ewart employed during “Homage to George Floyd” billed as “The George Floyd Bunt Staff,” when it was clearly built from a series of Bundt pans? Channeling the serious-and-witty ingenuity of his music, Ewart responded with a sports analogy. He noted that Floyd’s death had catalyzed protests that had helped the national conversation to advance, like the sacrifice bunt in baseball.Nathan Davis, left, and Clara Warnaar on percussion. The performers played against a backdrop of visual artworks by Ewart.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSuch poetic abstraction risks sounding flip out of context, but the qualities of Ewart’s compositional practice made the gesture seem more like an authentic celebration of multiplicity and invention. The variety of tones he elicited from this instrument helped make the ambit of the tribute clear. When rapidly twirling it, and dragging the edges of a particular pan against a drumstick, he created a haunting, skittering effect — a restless signal of warning. When striking it directly, he could produce profoundly resonant gong-like sounds.This elegant shift from the grave to the exultant was heard again during the finale of the concert’s second half, which reached a climax with a fully notated piece for the ensemble players, “Truth is Power,” in which Ewart improvised on sopranino saxophone.It was a raucous, exciting conclusion to the show. And it was just a taste of what Lewis’s directorship of the International Contemporary Ensemble could bring. How many other artists like Ewart might benefit from having their larger works receive this kind of attention? The possibilities are extensive, and tantalizing.Douglas R. Ewart and the International Contemporary EnsemblePerformed on Friday at Chelsea Factory, Manhattan. More

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      Review: Iranian Female Composers Speak Indirectly to the Moment

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      Planned before anti-regime protests broke out in Iran, a concert centered on connectivity finds itself tied to the news of the day.From its founding in 2017, the Iranian Female Composers Association has found itself frequently tied to the news of the day.Niloufar Nourbakhsh, a composer and one of the association’s founders, wrote in liner notes for a recording of “Veiled,” her lyrical yet aggrieved 2019 work for the cellist Amanda Gookin, that, “personally as an Iranian woman, I carry a lot of anger with me.”That rage, Nourbakhsh specified when the recording was released in 2021, was informed by her own experiences, as well as the more general feeling of “growing up in a country that actively veils women’s presence through compulsory hijab or banning solo female singers from pursuing a professional career.”Still, when the musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the organization Composers Now drew up the program for an evening focused on the Iranian Female Composers Association at NYU Skirball on Saturday, few could have anticipated how specifically this concert would connect with the moment: Anti-regime protests in Iran were entering their fifth week, following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been held in the custody of the morality police, accused of improperly wearing a required head scarf.The association has posted statements of solidarity with the protesters on social media, and some of its composers have spoken directly about the events in interviews. But nothing was said from the stage on Saturday; after all, the connection between the group’s mission and the events in Iran spoke for itself. So too did the concert’s title, “Peyvand,” the Persian word for connectivity, a reminder of the connections among the featured composers in this revealing and essential evening.Nourbakhsh’s three-movement “C Ce See”— a commemoration of the contemporary music advocate Cecille (Cece) Wasserman — closed the program. And it employed a conceit reminiscent of the Fluxus movement, courtesy of a kinetic sculpture, by the artist Roxanne Nesbitt, that circled six instrumentalists and sometimes made sounds with them; picture small conical objects rotating, in Rube Goldberg fashion, among string players and percussionists, with all those elements connected by a long, single thread manipulated by the percussionist Ross Karre.In the first and second movements, the result of that string-on-string interference was often a hazy yet interdependent din. But at the end of the second movement, when the conductor, Steven Schick, dramatically cut the wires snaking through the string instruments (and into the rotating mini-sculptures), there was a sense of release. The short third movement — featuring scalar, zigzagging, independent parts for flute, vibraphone and strings — heralded a brief but hard-won freedom.Nourbakhsh’s music is something of a known quantity, not least because she is one of National Sawdust’s recent Hildegard Competition winners. Less so is Nina Barzegar, whose world premiere “Inexorable Passage” was thrilling in its fusion of experimental, extended-technique effects, as well as melodic and chordal inventions.Written for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, the eight-minute “Inexorable Passage” felt packed, and moved along with momentum. The cello swerved in and out of mellifluous melody; each time its lines slid into heedless-sounding glissandos, you wondered if the center would hold. But Barzegar’s compositional command kept it together. (Trained as a pianist and composer at the University of Tehran, she’s now a doctoral candidate at University of California, Santa Cruz.)There isn’t much of Barzegar’s music on YouTube yet. But what’s there is promising — including a piano work “for slain protesters around the world,” and the spare (then galvanic) “Chronoception,” for the group Yarn/Wire.Also of note on Saturday were intimate, brief pieces by Nasim Khorassani and Golfam Khayam. A pair of untitled solo performances by Niloufar Shiri, on kamancheh (a small, bowed string instrument) were similarly transporting.If not everything else on the two-hour program achieved similar mastery, that was understandable; the artists here were on the younger side. But their music’s delivery, by the International Contemporary Ensemble, argued well for additional exposure, no matter the news cycle.PeyvandPerformed on Saturday at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org. More

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      It’s Alive! It’s With the Band! A Computer Soloist Holds Its Own

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      Voyager, a computer program, played with Ensemble Signal in the U.S. premiere of a George Lewis piece that was a highlight of this year’s concert calendar.Two guest soloists, each skilled in the art of improvisation, appeared in New York City on Friday night with the cutting-edge chamber group Ensemble Signal.One soloist was human: Nicole Mitchell, the veteran flutist, composer and bandleader whose albums and performances are regularly (and rightly) celebrated by jazz critics.The other soloist was a computer program — called Voyager — that can listen to live performances in real time and offer improvised responses. Originally programmed in 1987 by George Lewis, the composer, performer and computer-music pioneer, Voyager’s discography is slighter than Mitchell’s, but likewise thrilling.On a 1993 CD for the Avant label, Voyager played the role of a real-time improvising orchestra — alongside Lewis’s trombone and the saxophone of Roscoe Mitchell (no relation to Nicole Mitchell). By the time of the 2019 RogueArt album “Voyage and Homecoming,” Voyager had been updated to perform — next to those same soloists — on a computer-controlled Disklavier piano. This, in turn, has made it possible for Voyager to enter into the tradition of the distinctive soloist, partnering with orchestras or chamber groups like Signal.On Friday at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Hell’s Kitchen, Voyager improvised on a concert grand Yamaha Disklavier, sharing the stage with Nicole Mitchell and members of Signal. These forces united to give the U.S. premiere of Lewis’s “Tales of the Traveller,” the final composition on a program presented as part of this year’s Time:Spans festival, which runs through Saturday.Lewis’s material for Signal is fully notated. But his score gives an improviser no notes to play — nor does it specify the instrumentation or number of improvising soloists. (The composer offers only entry and exit points for soloists.) Lewis merely gives soloists some advice regarding what not to do, when entering the fray. “Direct imitation of melodic or harmonic passages is to be avoided,” he says, referring to what the chamber group is playing. So what should the improvisers do? “Strategies for dialogue with the written music include blending, opposition or contrast, and transformation.”Without question, this was a lot of to-do for a 20-minute-plus performance at the end of a single show. But as “Traveller” unfolded, it proved a highlight of the year’s concert calendar, thus far, in New York.In large measure, this was because of Lewis’s instrumental writing for the chamber group. You could take Voyager out, and “Traveller” would still sound vivacious — full of high-stakes drama and responsive good humor. (The 2016 world premiere performance of the work by the London Sinfonietta involved only a single human improviser.)Lewis has been on a particularly strong chamber music run in the last 10 or so years. This hot streak has included larger-group efforts like “The Will to Adorn” and “As We May Feel” — as well as more intimate pieces like the “The Mangle of Practice.”In these works, and in “Traveller,” you are often immersed in instrumental density — quick rhythmic accelerations and parched sound-production textures. But paradoxically, these moments rarely feel abrasive (as in some other forms of modernism).Even when the music whips up complex, noisy nimbuses of competing motifs, the fast, finely judged changes within the dense activity are preparing you for variations on the weather. And, soon enough, there’s a clearing of skies: The music decelerates and makes room for melodic fragments that are voiced more sweetly. From there, you’re taken to the in-between states, with varieties of gradation. You get the sense that the suggestions Lewis lays down for his improvisers in “Traveller” — de-emphasizing imitation, and promoting contrast and transformation — are similar to the directives he charges himself with when composing.On Friday, the Disklavier piano was turned toward the audience, allowing viewers to watch for the moments when the Voyager software — running on a nearby computer — elected to depress the keys of the Disklavier.“It’s alive!” I thought — with a monster-movie watcher’s delight — when the piano first started playing, quietly. But since “Traveller” also has a part for a human pianist within the chamber group, you had to pay close sonic and visual attention to discern which pianistic choices were Voyager’s.Mitchell was a guest soloist with Ensemble Signal on Friday. On Saturday, the International Contemporary Ensemble performed her composition “Cult of Electromagnetic Connectivity.”Stephanie BergerFor all that techno-drama, it wound up being Mitchell who took the early, demonstrative lead in improvising — with some fluid, songful passages that added a depth of lyricism to the boisterous material for Signal. During this stretch, Voyager limited its contributions to fluttering, high register filigree. And it sometimes chose silence.But since improvisation is also about knowing when to listen, that was no mark against the software’s intelligence. And when Voyager decided to make a forceful, fortissimo statement, late in the piece — in a relatively quiet passage for the chamber players — the provocation felt right on time. During the applause, as the conductor Brad Lubman made a gestures to both soloists, there was some laughter when he encouraged an ovation for Voyager. But the computer program had earned its plaudits.This was the kind of performance that you want to hear in a residence, night after night. The improvisations would be different. And the notated music would be great to hear multiple times. But that’s not the world we live in. So while Lewis’s duos for live players and electronic partners are performed with some frequency, the star-soloist turns for Voyager — in the company of many human partners — are more rare.Time:Spans is to be commended for producing the concert, even for a single night. This festival — put on each August by the Earle Brown Music Foundation — specializes in filling just this kind of contemporary-music niche. In past years, Time:Spans was where you could find important local premieres by John Luther Adams or works by comparatively lesser-known members of the Wandelweiser school. And it’s the rare festival at which you’ll also find members of Freiberg, Germany’s SWR Experimentalstudio.In addition to Signal’s hugely entertaining take on Lewis’s “Traveller,” Time:Spans has already presented several other rewarding concerts this year. In a single week I enjoyed gigs by the quintet Splinter Reeds, the Argento New Music Project chamber ensemble and the International Contemporary Ensemble.The ensemble’s set on Saturday had many points of connection with the Signal show — in part because of the presence of three other works by Lewis. Enjoyable as those were, the brightest moment of that concert was a contribution from the pen of Mitchell, “Cult of Electromagnetic Connectivity.” (This concert was entirely for human players.)Written for the cello, violin, flute, a percussionist and a clarinetist (who doubled on bass clarinet), the 10-minute piece was often powered by a succession of duos within the quintet; these vivid episodes were often connected by gloomy but propulsive motifs played by the percussionist Levy Lorenzo.This week brings sets by the JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire and the Talea Ensemble. Tickets are affordable; the acoustics grand. It’s a reason to hang around town in the depths of summer swelter. More

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      Du Yun Revisits Her Early Music Theater at NYU Skirball

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      A program at NYU Skirball pairs “Zolle” and “A Cockroach’s Tarantella,” youthful works from when the composer felt “like a fish out of water.”When the composer Du Yun was a doctoral student at Harvard in the early 2000s, she felt like a fish out of water.“Very much out of water,” Du Yun, 44, said in a recent interview. “It was my first time not in a conservatory setting since I was 6.”But Du Yun — now the Pulitzer Prize-winning conjurer of exhilaratingly elusive and often moving sound worlds — did have a rich community of artistic collaborators. She was a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the group of new-music specialists started in 2001 by the flutist Claire Chase, a fellow Oberlin conservatory graduate. And when the ensemble had an opportunity to create an original work of theater, Du Yun, who was resistant to opera, instead wanted to stage a set of songs.“I just began writing stories,” she said, as an exercise. “And then I used those stories for a kind of structure.”Fanciful, allegorical and open to interpretations personal and political, they became “Zolle,” which premiered in 2005. A tale of a wandering soul in the afterlife, it was followed a few years later by a work set in what Du Yun sees as a preparational “before-life”: “A Cockroach’s Tarantella,” a fable about a pregnant cockroach’s longing and plans to become human. Now, the two have been paired — an interplay that casts both in a new light — for a diptych that will be presented at NYU Skirball on Friday and Saturday.In the early months of the pandemic, Du Yun recorded “A Cockroach’s Tarantella” with the JACK Quartet, the players accompanying her narration in elevated speech. Its sense of yearning for another, freer life was freshly affecting at a time when the album could be heard only at home in isolation. (In 2021, Los Angeles Opera made a digital short called “The Zolle Suite.”)With the return of live performance, “A Cockroach’s Tarantella” and “Zolle” were staged together in October at the Lucerne Theater in Switzerland, directed by Roscha A. Säidow, who also did the surreal scenic and costume design. Du Yun acted as the narrator, and another vocalist took on the role in “Zolle” she had previously sung.That production is being adapted for Skirball, played by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, with Du Yun storytelling onstage and, again, a new singer: Satomi Matsuzaki, from the rock band Deerhoof. In an interview after a recent rehearsal, Du Yun spoke about how the two works speak to each other, and to different audiences, and what it’s like to revisit them now. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What makes “Zolle” and “A Cockroach’s Tarantella” a diptych?Before I finished “Zolle,” I just thought it was so melancholic, because it starts with this woman being dead, and it has to do with so many sorrows, and she’s stuck in her memories. And then I realized: You know what? I need to write a really funny piece — sort of like a “life before” thing.Stylistically they are quite different.There is a small musical relation, but other than that I wanted to have a contrast. In “Zolle,” the writing is very full-bodied, with a group of instruments and singers. But I wanted “Cockroach” to be simple: a string quartet that behaves like one instrument, with a narrator.I also want to tell you, I was doing horribly at Harvard with writing fugues. They were like, You have to write a Bach fugue. And I was like, Why can’t it be a Du Yun-style fugue? I grew up and memorized all this Bach; it’s in my head and it’s in my hand. But I never understood why on these tests it had to be resolved a certain way. So in “Zolle” there’s a bit of Baroque style, and that was my way of proving that I could do it, and do it my way.Kamna Gupta, right, rehearsing members of the International Contemporary Ensemble ahead of the Skirball performances.Jasmine Clarke for The New York TimesThese invite a lot of different interpretations. I’ve seen “A Cockroach’s Tarantella” compared to Kafka, for example, though on the surface it seems more like “Rusalka” or “The Little Mermaid.”It was much more “Little Mermaid,” right? Wanting to be human and let go of who she was, and then having that struggle. When I wrote it, I was also very frustrated with the idea of heaven — the idea of it, the betterment, the pursuit of happiness. I’ve written this before: At the time, I was living in government-subsidized housing that had a lot of cockroaches, so I became fascinated by them and learned that, you know, they can just release eggs for their entire life. It’s kind of mind-boggling.So like “Zolle” had people thinking about immigration and belonging, “Cockroach” had funny moments but hit audiences differently. You can see it as being about this female body thing, but I also have a Chinese version of it, and women in their 30s and 40s were really crying when they saw it because of lines like “I want to be pregnant out of love.”Right. For all its levity, it’s actually profound.It’s very profound.And I feel like, standing alone, each piece can be open to X and Y reading. But pairing them changes that. The “Tarantella” has so much hope and defiance, but when you follow it with the lonely afterlife of “Zolle,” it becomes devastating.Audiences connect with these however they do. But I want to mention that when we recorded the digital short of “Zolle” for LA Opera and I was narrating some of the portions, I got really, really emotional. I was thinking about Asian hate, and it really got to me because this piece was almost 20 years ago and it still rings so true. There is a line of saying something like “I am an immigrant, even in this ghost world.” Then I realized it’s something that me, you know, as an immigrant I will always carry with me. [Du Yun was born in Shanghai and moved to the United States to study at Oberlin.]What else are you feeling as you revisit these works?You know, this is the International Contemporary Ensemble’s 20th anniversary season. We feel like 100 years old, but we’re also transitioning into another era with George Lewis as the new leader.But this was the first stage production the International Contemporary Ensemble ever did. So even though they’re moving into different models and we’re bringing in Satomi — I’m a big fan of Deerhoof — this feels like a kind of homecoming. Which is fitting, because these pieces are really about homecoming. Homecoming, but also sending off as well. More

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      Outspoken Composer to Lead International Contemporary Ensemble

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      George E. Lewis, a Columbia scholar who has documented how Black composers have been excluded from experimental music, will lead the renowned group.A composer and scholar who has spoken forcefully about the exclusion of Black artists from experimental music will lead the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble, the group announced on Friday.George E. Lewis, a professor of music at Columbia University known for his groundbreaking work in electronics, will take the helm as artistic director later this month. Lewis, 69, a trombonist and frequent collaborator with the ensemble, will be the first Black leader in its 21-year history. He said in an interview that he hoped to bring more of a multicultural focus to one of New York’s premier new music groups, and to feature a wider variety of artists.“I’m looking to bring newer people who happen to have great ideas, but who might be overlooked by other ensembles or institutions, to the forefront so they can be noticed by everybody,” Lewis said. “It’s a sense of widening the community.”Lewis is an influential voice in the effort to “decolonize” classical music, at a time when the field is reckoning with questions about racial injustice and a legacy of exclusion.“The composers and improvisers are not the ones producing the sounds of colonialism,” he wrote in a recent essay. “Rather, it is the music curators and institutions who have been composing and improvising colonialism.”Lewis has called on music schools to recruit more young composers who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups. He has also said that ensembles should commission more works from composers of color.“There is no reason why major music institutions that tout themselves as international should continue to present all-white programs,” he wrote in the essay.The International Contemporary Ensemble, with its 35 members, has long been an important outlet for modern composers — including Lewis, long revered among avant-garde jazz fans. In 2011, the ensemble premiered his “The Will to Adorn,” inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston essay and also the title of a 2017 album of his works made by the ensemble.Lewis will replace Ross Karre, a percussionist who after five years as artistic director is stepping down to take a teaching position at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The ensemble was co-founded and led for years by the flutist Claire Chase.The group’s leaders said Lewis, a board member since 2018, had long had an outsize influence on their work.“George’s impact on this ensemble is almost immeasurable,” Rebekah Heller, a bassoonist and board member, said in a statement. “His voice and his vision have been quietly shaping the musical direction of our collective.”Lewis said he hoped to help the ensemble move beyond rigid notions of genre, in part by encouraging artists to listen to each other through improvisation.“At a certain point, classical music becomes so fluid that it becomes like a permeable membrane where you start to realize that it’s a point of connection rather than a set of practices or a set of received histories,” he said. “It’s something that accretes and accumulates new information, rather than something that excludes or does gatekeeping.” More

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      The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020Listen to our critics’ favorites from a year in which much of the energy in music came from recordings.Credit…The New York TimesAnthony Tommasini, Zachary Woolfe, Joshua Barone, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, David Allen and Dec. 17, 2020Thomas Adès: Berceuse from ‘The Exterminating Angel’“In Seven Days”; Kirill Gerstein, piano (Myrios)The composer Thomas Adès and the pianist Kirill Gerstein’s artistically fruitful friendship has given us two essential albums this year: the premiere recording of Mr. Adès’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, featuring Mr. Gerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon); and this one, which includes a solo arrangement of the harrowing and slippery Berceuse from Mr. Adès’s opera “The Exterminating Angel.” JOSHUA BARONEBerceuse from “The Exterminating Angel”Myrios◆ ◆ ◆Bach: Cello Suite No. 4, GigueBach: Complete Cello Suites (Transcribed for Violin); Johnny Gandelsman, violin (In a Circle)From the beginning of this movement, ornamented with the insouciance of folk music, it’s difficult to resist tapping along with your foot. That urge doesn’t really leave throughout the rest of the six cello suites, lithely rendered here on solo violin by Johnny Gandelsman. This is Bach in zero gravity: feather-light and freely dancing. JOSHUA BARONESuite No. 4, GigueIn a Circle◆ ◆ ◆Beethoven: Symphony No. 2, Allegro moltoBeethoven: Symphonies and Overtures; Vienna State Opera Orchestra and others; Hermann Scherchen, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)The few new Beethoven symphonies released in this, his 250th birthday year, have largely offered more evidence for the drab state of interpretive tastes today. Not so the rereleases — above all this remastered and exceptionally bracing cycle that was eons ahead of its time when it first came out in the 1950s. Scherchen’s Beethoven — like this Second Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra — is fast, sleek and astonishing detailed, as exciting as anything set down since. DAVID ALLENSymphony No. 2, Allegro moltoDeutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Nadia Boulanger: ‘Soir d’hiver’“Clairières: Songs by Lili and Nadia Boulanger”; Nicholas Phan, tenor; Myra Huang, piano (Avie)After Lili Boulanger, the gifted French composer, died in 1918 at just 24, her devoted older sister Nadia suffered doubts about her own composing and turned to teaching. On this lovely recording, the tenor Nicholas Phan performs elegant songs by both sisters, ending with Nadia’s misty, rapturous “Soir d’hiver,” a 1915 setting of her poem about a young mother abandoned by her lover. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Soir d’hiver”Avie◆ ◆ ◆Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1, RomanceChopin: Piano Concertos; Benjamin Grosvenor, piano; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Elim Chan, conductor (Decca)There’s pianism of historic caliber on this release, and another mark of Mr. Grosvenor’s breathtaking maturity, even though he is still in his 20s. Summoning playing of pure poetry, he lavishes on these concertos all his lauded sensitivity, innate sense of pace and effortless way with phrasing. He’s matched bar for bar by Ms. Chan, an impressive young conductor who makes an occasion of orchestral writing that in other hands sounds routine. DAVID ALLENPiano Concerto No. 1, RomanceDecca◆ ◆ ◆Duke Ellington: ‘Light’“Black, Brown and Beige”; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Blue Engine)If Ellington’s 1943 Carnegie Hall performance of his “Black, Brown and Beige” remains matchless, its radio broadcast sound has dated, making the crispness of this faithful recent rendition worth savoring. Sterling interpretation and production values permit a fresh look at “Light,” including the elegant way Ellington weaves together motifs heard earlier in “Black,” just before a rousing finish. SETH COLTER WALLS“Light”Blue Engine◆ ◆ ◆Eriks Esenvalds: ‘Earth Teach Me Quiet’“Rising w/ the Crossing”; the Crossing (New Focus)Earlier this year, when singing together became just about the most dangerous thing you could do, Donald Nally, the magus behind the Crossing, our finest contemporary-music choir, began posting daily recordings from their archives. He called it “Rising w/ the Crossing,” also the title of an album of a dozen highlights. There’s David Lang’s eerily prescient reflection on the 1918 flu pandemic, performed last year, and Alex Berko’s stirring “Lincoln.” But I keep returning to Eriks Esenvalds’s dreamily unfolding appeal to the Earth, its text a prayer of the Ute people of the American Southwest: a work of true radiance, fired by the precision and passion of this spectacular group. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Earth Teach Me Quiet”New Focus◆ ◆ ◆Antoine Forqueray: ‘Jupiter’“Barricades”; Thomas Dunford, lute; Jean Rondeau, harpsichord (Erato)This is Baroque music as hard-rock jam: driving, intense, dizzying, two musicians facing off in a brash battle that raises both their levels. It is the raucous climax of an album that creates a new little repertory for lute and harpsichord duo, with arrangements of favorites and relative obscurities that highlight Thomas Dunford and Jean Rondeau’s sly, exuberant artistic chemistry. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Jupiter”Warner Classics◆ ◆ ◆Ash Fure: ‘Shiver Lung’“Something to Hunt”; International Contemporary Ensemble; Lucy Dhegrae and Alice Teyssier, vocalists (Sound American)I try not to be fussy with audio quality. But if anything calls for an exception, it’s this long-awaited collection of music by Ash Fure — works that experiment with how sounds are made and felt. So before hitting play, gather your focus, along with your best headphones or speakers, for an intensely visceral listening experience. JOSHUA BARONE“Shiver Lung”Sound American◆ ◆ ◆Handel: ‘Pensieri, voi mi tormentate’“Agrippina”; Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Il Pomo d’Oro; Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor (Erato)A shot of venom, boring its way into the brain: There are some arias that aim to soothe anxiety, but for pure cathartic transference of all the anger, fear and impotence that 2020 has sparked, this aria — “Thoughts, you torment me” — by the title character of Handel’s “Agrippina” is the ticket. The fiercely dramatic Joyce DiDonato brings her multihued mezzo and over-the-top embellishments to the music, while the period-instrument orchestra pushes things along with raw-edged insistence. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Pensieri, voi mi tormentate”Erato◆ ◆ ◆Handel: Harpsichord Suite No. 4, AllemandeHandel: Suites for Harpsichord; Pierre Hantaï, harpsichord (Mirare)Handel’s eight suites for harpsichord, published in 1720, haven’t always gotten as much attention or respect among performers as the keyboard works of Couperin, Rameau or, especially, Bach. Sometimes they’ve been viewed more or less as training exercises: good for technique but not quite sublime. Pierre Hantaï, known for his vivid Scarlatti, dispels the slightly derogatory preconceptions with suave danciness and lucid touch. ZACHARY WOOLFEHarpsichord Suite No. 4, AllemandeMirare◆ ◆ ◆David Hertzberg: ‘Is that you, my love?’“The Wake World”; Maeve Hoglund, soprano; Samantha Hankey, mezzo-soprano; Elizabeth Braden, conductor (Tzadik)With his playfully convoluted 2017 fairy tale opera “The Wake World,” David Hertzberg demonstrated that voluptuous, sweeping elements of grand opera could be reimagined for today. In the work’s swelling, shimmering climactic duet between a young seeker and her fairy prince, Ravel meets Messiaen, and Wagner meets Scriabin; the music is spiky, original and wondrous strange. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Is that you, my love?”Tzadik◆ ◆ ◆Nathalie Joachim: ‘Dam mwen yo’“Forward Music Project 1.0”; Amanda Gookin, cello (Bright Shiny Things)Even when brief and minimalist, Nathalie Joachim’s compositions cross complex ranges of emotion. Here, in a piece for cello (and vocals recorded by its composer), the somber cast of mood at the opening is complicated by a change in gait. The effect is akin to what you might feel inventing a new dance on the spot, while trudging through otherwise grim surroundings. SETH COLTER WALLS“Dam mwen yo”Bright Shiny Things◆ ◆ ◆George Lewis: ‘As We May Feel’“Breaking News”; Studio Dan (Hat Hut)Boisterous riffs and counter-riffs seem to suggest improvisatory practices; after all, this veteran artist has explored those practices. Yet George Lewis’s 25-minute joy ride is fully notated. And it was written for an Austrian ensemble which appreciates the chug and wail of Duke Ellington’s train-imitation music, as well as the rigors of extended-technique modernism. SETH COLTER WALLS“As We May Feel”Hat Hut◆ ◆ ◆Meredith Monk: ‘Downfall’“Memory Game”; Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble; Bang on a Can All-Stars (Cantaloupe Music)For almost 60 years, the composer and performer Meredith Monk has created works mainly for herself and her close circle, so it’s been an open question what will happen to those intricate, idiosyncratic pieces when she’s gone. This album of sympathetic but not slavish new arrangements — collaborations with the Bang on a Can collective — offers tantalizing experiments. The clarinetist Ken Thomson gives the hawing vocals of “Downfall,” part of Ms. Monk’s post-apocalyptic 1983 evening “The Games,” seductively sinister instrumental surroundings. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Downfall”Cantaloupe Music◆ ◆ ◆Tristan Perich: ‘Drift Multiply,’ Section 6“Drift Multiply” (New Amsterdam/Nonesuch)Music emerges out of snowdrifts of white noise on this mesmerizing track. Tristan Perich is one of the most innovative tinkerers in electronic music, creating works of vibrant mystery. In “Drift Multiply,” 50 violins interact with 50 loudspeakers connected to as many custom-built circuit boards that channel the sound into one-bit audio. The result is a constantly evolving landscape where sounds coalesce and prism, where the violins both pull into focus and blur into a soothing ether. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Drift Multiply,” Section 6New Amsterdam◆ ◆ ◆Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: ‘Ferguson: Summer of 2014’“The Grey Land”; Numinous (New Amsterdam)Joseph C. Phillips Jr.’s “The Grey Land” is a stirring, stylistically varied mono-opera that draws on its composer’s reflections on being Black in contemporary America. The longest movement on the premiere recording makes an early textual reference to Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” while dramatizing an expectant couple’s unease in the wake of the death of Michael Brown. SETH COLTER WALLS“Ferguson: Summer of 2014”New Amsterdam◆ ◆ ◆Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2, Andantino“Silver Age”; Daniil Trifonov, piano; Mariinsky Orchestra; Valery Gergiev, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)The thoughtful pianist Daniil Trifonov explores the music of Russia’s so-called “silver age” of the early 20th century on a fascinating album that offers various solo works and concertos by Scriabin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The spacious yet fiendishly difficult first movement of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto is especially exciting. ANTHONY TOMMASINIPiano Concerto No. 2, AndantinoDeutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Rameau: ‘The Arts and the Hours’“Debussy Rameau”; Vikingur Olafsson, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)Few musicians craft their albums with as much care as Vikingur Olafsson, whose “Debussy Rameau” is a brilliantly conceived, nearly 30-track conversation across centuries between two French masters. There is one modern intervention: Mr. Olafsson’s solo arrangement of an interlude from Rameau’s “Les Boréades” — tender and reverential, a wellspring of grace. JOSHUA BARONE“The Arts and the Hours”Deutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Jean-Féry Rebel: ‘Le Chaos’“Labyrinth”; David Greilsammer, piano (Naïve)In his riveting, aptly titled album “Labyrinth,” the formidable pianist David Greilsammer daringly juxtaposes pieces spanning centuries, from Lully to Ofer Pelz. The theme of the album is captured in Jonathan Keren’s arrangement of Rebel’s “Le Chaos,” which comes across like an early-18th-century venture into mind-spinning modernism. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Le Chaos”Naïve◆ ◆ ◆Rebecca Saunders: ‘Still’“Musica Viva, Vol. 35”; Carolin Widmann, violin; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Ilan Volkov, conductor (BR-Klassik)A renowned figure on Europe’s experimental music scene, Rebecca Saunders builds teeming systems of shimmying severity from the sparest melodic materials. In this live recording of her violin concerto, Carolin Widmann excels in fulfilling the score’s contrasting requirements of delicacy and power. Helping judge the balance is the conductor Ilan Volkov, an artist American orchestras might consider working with. SETH COLTER WALLS“Still”BR-Klassik◆ ◆ ◆Schubert: ‘Des Fischers Liebesglück’“Where Only Stars Can Hear Us: Schubert Songs”; Karim Sulayman, tenor; Yi-heng Yang, fortepiano (Avie)Intimate, sweet-toned and more easily given to dry humor than its powerful keyboard successors, the fortepiano should be a natural choice for Schubert lieder. Yet recordings such as this exquisitely personal recital — with the clear-voiced tenor Karim Sulayman and the sensitive pianist Yi-heng Yang — are still rare. Listen to them weave a storyteller’s spell in this song about a nighttime tryst in a fishing boat, and marvel at the emotional arc they weave with the simplest of gestures. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Des Fischers Liebesglück”Avie◆ ◆ ◆Ethel Smyth: ‘The Prisoner Awakes’“The Prison”; Experiential Orchestra and Chorus; James Blachly, conductor (Chandos)Ethel Smyth, suffragist and composer, is among several female composers receiving fresh, deserved attention as the classical music industry tackles its diversity problem. If they all receive recordings as perfect as this account of her last major work, we will all benefit. Half symphony, half oratorio, “The Prison” includes this striking chorale prelude, with dark and light in the same bars, at its heart. DAVID ALLEN“The Prisoner Awakes”Chandos◆ ◆ ◆Anna Thorvaldsdottir: ‘Mikros’“Epicycle II”; Gyda Valtysdottir (Sono Luminus)A subterranean hall of mirrors lures in the listener in this deeply affecting three-minute track. Gyda Valtysdottir’s cello takes on the guise of a modern-day Orpheus and the spectral sounds of the underworld as she layers her performance on top of two prerecorded tracks. As this protagonist cello line sighs, heaves and slackens, the taped parts add fragmented scratch tones, whispers and tremors, evoking terrain both alluring and treacherous. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Mikros”Sono Luminus◆ ◆ ◆Joseph Wölfl: Piano Sonata in E, Allegro“The Beethoven Connection”; Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano (Chandos)No finer recording has emerged from the Beethoven celebration than this, and it has not a single work by Beethoven on it. Mr. Bavouzet’s inquisitive look at the musicians who were composing at the same time as their colleague and competitor features Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek — but it’s the forgotten Joseph Wölfl, who once battled Beethoven in a duel of keyboard skills, who comes out best, in this immaculate, charming sonata. DAVID ALLENPiano Sonata in E, AllegroChandos◆ ◆ ◆[embedded content]AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More