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A Moving Sound Puts Their Original Spin on Ancient Chinese Music
Taiwanese group A Moving Sound’s music is not deferential or folkloric, at least in the sense that it tries to fossilize a traditional musical style for the same of mass appeal, or for yuppie cultural...
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Lee Feldman and Noah Hoffeld Go Deep into Classic Jewish Themes
Thursday night pianist Lee Feldman and cellist Noah Hoffeld made their public performance debut together in the welcoming second-floor space at Chabad of North Williamsburg on Bedford Avenue. Their new...
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Ancient and Avant-Garde Korean Sounds From Janya
This page might not be the first place you’d expect to discover an ensemble that made their stage debut at the Kennedy Center, but the pleasure is yours, if you’re in an adventurous mood – or if you...
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Debussy Was Right – And Apparently So Was Obama
Debussy was right about gamelan music. In a marathon three-and-a-half show Friday night at the Asia Society, famed Javanese dhalang (shadow puppeteer) Purbo Asmoro led New York’s Gamelan Kusuma Laras...
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Ljova & the Kontraband: Playful Fun and Riveting Intensity at Symphony Space
In an email the day before his show last night at Symphony Spaace, composer/violist Ljova Zhurbin described his ensemble the Kontraband as being “wry, fierce and ready.” Which is a considerable...
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Edgy String Band Eclecticism from the Real Vocal String Quartet
Former Turtle Island Quartet violinist Irene Sazer, a pioneer of string-band improvisation, founded the all-female Real Vocal String Quartet. You could characterize them as a less caustic. considerably...
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Name That Tune with the International String Trio’s Help
Old habits die hard. If you go back as far as the radio-and-records era, you were probably used to having a cd – or if you were lucky, a vinyl album – to refer to for song titles and now-archaic things...
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Getting to Know Wu Man
Wu Man is one of the world’s leading advocates and virtuosos of the pipa, the spiky, ancient Chinese lute which has enjoyed a renaissance over the last fifty years. Last night at Symphony Space...
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A Night to Remember with Tift Merritt and Simone Dinnerstein
Earlier generations might not be able to handle the concept of of juxtaposing Appalachian and classical music on the same stage. But songwriter/bandleader Tift Merritt and pianist Simone Dinnerstein...
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Ran Blake Headlines a Transcendent NEC Jazz Bill at Symphony Space
The New England Conservatory’s New York celebration of forty years of their contemporary improvisation program wound up Saturday night at Symphony Space with Ran Blake alone at the piano. It seemed...
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Skuli Sverisson’s Sad, Beautiful Box Tree Suite
One of the most enchanting albums to come over the transom here in recent months is The Box Tree, the duo collaboration by Skuli Sverisson and Oskar Gudjonsson. The production is muted, echoey and...
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Newpoli Make Elegant and Exciting Connections in Old and New Italian Music
Along with the recent explosion in Romany music and Romany-flavored rock, there’s been a resurgence in interest in Italian folk music, which can be just as wild and feral. Italian folk revivalists...
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Terse, Tuneful Cinematics from Ljova & the Kontraband
[republished from Lucid Culture's sister blog New York Music Daily, which has appropriated the Balkan and Slavic sounds this blog covered for years] Is there a more cinematic composer working today...
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A Pensive, Quietly Dynamic, Relevant Album of Japanese-Tinged Themes from...
Kojiro Umezaki‘s axe is the shakuhachi, the rustic Japanese wood flute, an instantly recognizable instrument that can deliver both ghostly overtones and moody, misty high midrange sonics. Umezaki’s...
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An Exhilarating Celebration of Ancient Yet Sophisticated Korean Sounds at...
Saturday night’s celebration of traditional Korean music and dance staged by Sue Yeon Park of the Korean Performing Arts Center at Symphony Space featured sounds that were as cutting-edge as they were...
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A Darkly Riveting Concert and an Upcoming Parkside Show by Diana Wayburn’s...
You might think from the name of the group that pianist/flutist Diana Wayburn‘s Dances of the World Chamber Ensemble play ballet music. That might be possible, but while their music is kinetic and...
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Norian Maro’s Deliriously Entertaining Korean Harvest Spectacle Keeps the...
You might think that a drum-and-dance troupe performing an ancient Korean peasants’ nongak harvest festival celebration would draw a mostly Korean audience, right? Friday night at Flushing Town Hall in...
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The Jake Schepps Quintet Take Bluegrass to Unlikely Places
It’s likely that there’s a crowd of people who think the idea of playing classical music on bluegrass instruments is flat-out absurd. Then again, music is always evolving, and the musicians pushing...
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High-Voltage Bagpiper Cristina Pato Brings Her Explosive Spanish Sounds to...
Even in an age when the mainstream is full of all kinds of esoterica, Cristina Pato has a particularly individualistic choice of axe: the Galician bagpipe. Her sound is wild, feral yet virtuosic and...
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The Brooklyn Youth Chorus Soar Through an Ambitious, State-of-the-Art Program...
To paraphrase Rebecca Turner, Brooklyn is so big because it has to hold a lot of beautiful voices. Last night at the newly opened and sonically exquisite National Sawdust in Williamsburg, approximately...
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