Back into the whirlwind of NY concert life! Here’s where I’m planning to be in the next week. By the way, I love the Time Out New York music listings and recommend checking them out.
Sunday March 27: (tonight) Jack Quartet at LPR, 7:30 PM. Pretty heavy-duty new-music program. I’m dragging my son (22) there so he can experience LPR. “Serving art and alcohol” is one of their mottoes, and my boy, unfamiliar with Ligeti, may perhaps need the alcohol to get through. We’ll see.
Monday March 28: So Percussion plays what I think is the final Ecstatic Music Festival concert.7:30 PM. If I wasn’t going to that, I’d be at the opening of the the Monday-night Cutting Edge New Music Concerts (3/28, 4/4, 4/11, and 4/25–no concert 4/18) in the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space.
Tuesday March 29: The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble performs contemporary Japanese music (8:00 PM) at Alice Tully Hall, part of Carnegie Hall’s Japan:NYC Festival, numerous events in almost as many venues around the city. It’s a free concert, but you may need to pick up tickets at the Juilliard Box Office. I love percussion music, so this was a no-brainer choice for me. Earlier, at 6:00 PM, there’s a program of traditional Japanese music at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, which I may try to catch at least part of (it’s free, too–register here). If I could afford $100, I’d probably bypass the Juilliard ensemble (sorry, y’all) to hear and see Yoko Ono and friends in a 10:30 PM Japan fund-raising concert at LPR. (And I’d line up about 9:00 PM.) ‘Cause I have celebrity fever, and she is Yoko!
Wednesday March 30: John Zorn’s 8:00 PM Masada Marathon at NY City Opera (Lincoln Center). Because how often do you get to experience something like it? If it wasn’t for that, I’d be at LPR for the fabulous International Contemporary Ensemble 7:30 LPR show. And hey, it’s FREE. (RSVP directions in the link.)
Thursday March 31: The New York Philharmonic (7:30 PM), with Anne-Sophie Mutter playing the premier of Sofia Gubaidulina’s In Tempus Praesens, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. (And the Tchaikovsky Second Symphony, without Ms. Mutter, I presume.) Haven’t been to the Philharmonic yet this trip, so I’m excited to attend. I know NY critics (paid and otherwise) like to pick on it, but it is one of my favorite orchestras, and Avery Fisher Hall’s acoustics aren’t as bad as some make out. After that, I’ll head uptown to the Thalia Cafe at Symphony Space to have a drink and enjoy the 10:00 PM Jon & Lynn and the Giant Cicada show. Because I met Jon (Burr), he’s a great guy, and he invited me. Which is always a great way to get people to come to your gig.
Friday April 1: I haven’t decided. I might go hear pianist/composers Quentin Kim at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, because I love the idea of composer/performers. And performer/composers (depending on how one self-identifies). He’s playing his own music plus Beethoven and Schumann. Lots of other possibilities, too. Who knows? Maybe someone will invite me to something.
Saturday April 2: Thomas Deneuville’s music, along with that by others, performed at the Estonian House at 4:00 PM. Concert’s called “Something Not Too Complicated.” I might not have spotted this, but Thomas reads my blog and invited me. (Which I bring up because I’m generally not good about inviting people myself, so I’m preaching to myself, and you, too, if you’re a performer or presenter.) Then off to LPR for Taka Kigawa‘s solo piano 7:30 PM Japan Benefit Concert. To which Taka, with whom I recently performed invited me. Plus a mutual friend keeps inviting me, too, (although he keeps mixing up the date and we would be going tonight or tomorrow if he didn’t have me as fact checker). It’s only $25. And he is an extraordinary artist.
Sunday April 3: I may or may not make it to the 11:00 AM Baby Got Bach event at LPR, depending in part on how much I drink at Taka’s show there the night before. It sure looks like a lot of fun, though, so I probably will (and I actually don’t drink much). Sorry, New York Society for Ethical Culture (whose Sunday morning services I often attend). Still deciding about that afternoon, but I haven’t yet heard Juilliard 415 (the school’s early-music orchestra; the link’s to a NY Times review), which is performing on the 3:00 PM all-Handel program featuring vocalists Dorothea Röschmann and David Daniels at Carnegie Hall. At 7:00 PM, Dale Henderson (the Bach in the Subways cellist) and pianist Molly Kiser are giving a recital, and I’ll be at that. Dale invited me.
Monday April 4: Definitely the 7:30 PM Cutting Edge concert at Symphony Space’s Thalia. Why? I’m not sure what else is going on, and I don’t care. The publicist for the series is a great person who I see at lot of performances and she invited me.
Eric Edberg 