this week in music

TIME AND THE COSMOS: HEATHER CHRISTIAN’S ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS AT THE SIGNATURE

Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is an exhilarating journey through time, space, and shared human experience (photo by Ben Arons)

HEATHER CHRISTIAN’S ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through November 23, $181-$197
signaturetheatre.org

Below is my original review of Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things when Ars Nova presented it at Greenwich House in the spring of 2022. The show at the Signature is just as compelling and rewarding; I have made only small adjustments to the review to note just a few changes, including updating the cast. For a more personal take on it, please visit my Substack here.

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Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is a gloriously exhilarating ninety-minute celebration of life, art, and nature, an immersive journey through the complex quantum, human, and cosmic time and space of our daily existence.

Oratorio is Obie winner Christian’s follow-up to Animal Wisdom, a confessional of music and storytelling dealing with the personal and communal aspects of ritual and superstition, grief and loss, ghosts and the fear of death, and I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, a solo virtual musical about Mother Teresa, performed in drag in a closet by Theater in Quarantine’s Joshua William Gelb.

Originally premiered by Ars Nova at Greenwich House, the Signature production takes place in a reconfigured, in-the-round Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, where the audience sits in a few steeped rows of rafters, each section separated by a dozen steps; it’s such a small group that you feel specially privileged to be there. Twelve lovely performers (Kirstyn Cae Ballard, Jonathan Christopher, Carla Duren, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Brian Flores, Jonny-James Kajoba, Barrie Lobo McLain, Ángel Lozada, Divya Maus, Ben Moss, Onyie Nwachukwu, and Dito Van Reigersberg) in casual, carefully considered dress move up and down the stairs and through the tiny center stage area, over which dangles a glowing orb that evokes an unstructured, abstract globe or meteor. At the top of either side is the outstanding band: Fraser A Campbell on woodwinds, Jane Cardona on piano, Jules Biber on cello, Odetta Hartman on violin, John Murchison on upright and electric bass, and Peter Wise on percussion.

Twelve singers and six musicians envelop the audience in Heather Christian’s glorious Oratorio for Living Things (photo by Ben Arons)

Throughout, the singers make warm, intimate direct eye contact with the audience, signaling we are all on this planet together and need to live in unison with one another and nature. Christian’s libretto, which is handed out to each audience member as they’re seated, is in English and Latin; the lights are usually dimmed just enough to still allow you to follow along, but you certainly don’t have to.

As Christian notes in a program letter, “Don’t worry! You do not need a degree in astrophysics, antique languages, or microbiology to ‘get’ this piece. In fact, one would argue that Oratorio for Living Things could function as a Rorschach test. It’s made to engage with you at whatever level you’d like to do so.”

However, it can become a bit distracting when a lot of heads are buried in the white libretto instead of watching the performers, particularly when they’re right in front of them. But this is a judgment-free zone. (The comforting set is by Krit Robinson, with costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, and sound by Nick Kourtides.)

The score morphs from classical oratorio to jazz, gospel, blues, and a burst of Godspell-like musical theater as Christian guides us through canticles, hymns, choruses, and poems with such titles as “Beginning (Infinite Fractal),” “Alligatum (membranes),” “Dust to Dust (water),” “Hydrogen and Helium: History of Violence,” and “Vesuvius,” which contains the warning: “Now we have arrived at something truly Frightening.”

In “Memory Harvest,” individual singers recall major and minor moments from their past, one example of which is: “I’m five years old and my cousin is seven years old and we jump from one foot to the other standing on the side of the road across from the train tracks. Our excitement builds as the train approaches, our arms flailing, pump up and down, we want the engineer to pull the chain to blow the train whistle. And he does.”

In “Carbon/DNA Iteration 4: Building DNA via Ticker Tape on Time Spent,” the performers use numbers to quantify life, including such observations as “Three and a half hours throwing away unopened mail / Forty minutes putting lids on Tupperware / Eighteen days looking for a bathroom / One year in the ‘Bag Drop’ line / Eleven days trying to remember why you came into the room / Four hours changing pants / Two and a half years being too cold / Four years and eleven days being too hot.” It’s a gorgeous, often very funny look at the little things that add up, equating a wide range of items that we all have in common and which feel particularly meaningful as we emerge from a pandemic lockdown that severely limited our presence in society and has led to so much grief and loss.

Obie-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation, Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya) has just the right touch to make it all flow seemingly effortlessly, like a babbling brook where you rest and casually reflect on the beauty of everything. Evans also makes sure we don’t feel like we’re trapped in science class amid mentions of entropy, energy, evolution, chloroplasts, mitochondria, diatoms, and covalent bonds. (However, in the hallway leading into the theater are posters detailing the nucleus of a cell, a human heart, the core of the earth, the solar system, and a nebula.)

Inspired by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, American astronomer Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and German composer Carl Orff’s cantata “Carmina Burana,” Christian imbues Oratorio with an existential hope that fuels who we are as individuals and as a harmonic unit. In the libretto, she describes “Fields” as “a brief indulgence in an environment (now established). A reminder that because something is devoid of human consciousness or observation does not mean that it is empty.” In “Vesuvius: Dormancy,” we are told, “Do not mistake dying for stopping,” and in “Vesuvius: Eruption” that “we are in the middle / we aren’t at the end / of a loop.” (After the show, in the lobby, attendees can write down a memory on seed paper and pin it to a board, then take someone else’s memory home.)

Do whatever you can to see Oratorio for Living Things, which has been extended through November 23; several of the last performances of this extraordinary shared pilgrimage are sold out, but a few tickets are left. As Christian writes in the libretto, “A very smart person once said that given the choice between living in a universe where only some things are known and knowable and living in a universe where either everything or nothing was known, they’d take the former. Because out of mystery evolves curiosity, and out of confoundment evolves wonder.”

And that is exactly what Oratorio delivers.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

LIFE AS IMPROV: VERA BRANDES, KEITH JARRETT, AND KÖLN 75

Mala Emde is hypnotic as teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes in Ido Fluk’s Köln 75

KÖLN 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 17
www.ifccenter.com

In Ido Fluk’s exciting, propulsive Köln 75, if teenage concert promoter Vera Brandes (Mala Emde) is going to make the impossible happen and first book master pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro) for the first-ever jazz show at the Cologne Opera House in Germany, sell tickets, and then convince Jarrett to actually take the stage and perform, she’ll need to improvise like, well, a jazz legend.

Inspired by a true story, the film begins at Vera’s (Susanne Wolff) fiftieth birthday party, where her father (Ulrich Tukur) makes a surprise, unwelcome appearance. “When she was young, she had a lot of potential,” he says in what is supposed to be a celebratory toast. “She is, without a doubt, my greatest disappointment.”

Vera turns to look into the camera and confidently declares, “Let’s do this again!” The action then shifts to the 1970s, with Jazzworld magazine critic-at-large Michael “Mick” Watts (Michael Chernus) discussing some of the most famous recorded false starts in music history. We then meet Vera when she’s sixteen, a freewheeling, free-loving jazz fan into John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Dexter Gordon. One night she goes to a club to see British saxophonist Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts), who, after hanging out with Vera, asks her to book a German tour for him even though she has zero experience. (She tells him she’s twenty-five.) When she asks why her, he answers, “Because I can’t imagine anyone turning you down.”

Soon Vera, her older boyfriend, Jan (Enno Trebs), her best friend, Isa (Shirin Eissa), and a young man she’s just met, Oliver (Leon Blohm), are putting together shows and living life in the fast lane, much to the chagrin of Vera’s stodgy and humorless conservative dentist father and mother (Jördis Triebel).

After watching Jarrett perform a solo concert, Vera decides that she must book the pianist into the Cologne Opera House, staking her entire music future on it even as she faces roadblock upon roadblock, from the opera house’s total lack of support to Jarrett’s unpredictability, neuroses, and nearly debilitating back pain. As Jarrett and his producer, Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer), set out on an eight-hour drive with Watts to get to Germany, Vera is determined to not let multiple problems stop her from staging the show and forging her career.

Emde (And Tomorrow the Whole World, 303) is hypnotic as Vera, who is always thinking, always planning, never sitting still; like Scott said, you can’t imagine anyone turning her down. Emde imbues Vera with endless bursts of energy, emotion, and an infectious joie de vivre even when everything is falling apart. Magaro (Past Lives, September 5) offers a terrific counterpoint as Jarrett, who is overwhelmed by a bundle of nerves and a lack of confidence despite his success. As Watts, Chernus (Severance, Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy) serves as a calming force somewhere in between them, speaking directly to the audience as a concerned observer, a journalist who keeps being told that he cannot use anything he witnesses in his story. (Although there was a real jazz writer with the same name, the character is a composite of several people.)

In making the film, writer-director Fluk (The Ticket, Never Too Late) ran into numerous problems of his own, so he and his crew had to improvise as well; for example, the Cologne Opera was not available, so they had to find an alternate space in Poland, and Jarrett and his record company chose not to cooperate, so Fluk could not use Jarrett’s actual music. However, Fluk did have an eight-hour conversation with the real Vera Brandes, who had been waiting fifty years to tell her story to someone. Köln 75 works because it’s not primarily about music, or the 1970s, or Keith Jarrett; instead, it’s told from the perspective of an unsung hero, an intoxicating young woman who refuses to let her dreams die.

Köln 75 opens October 17 at IFC Center, with Brandes, Emde, Chernus, and Fluk on hand for Q&As at the 6:45 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ONSTAGE PARTY: TILER PECK AND FRIENDS AT CITY CENTER

Tiler Peck (left) will team up with Michelle Dorrance and others for “Turn It Out” at City Center (photo by Christopher Duggan)

TURN IT OUT WITH TILER PECK & FRIENDS
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
October 16-19, $45-$125
www.nycitycenter.org

“I initially didn’t want to be a ballerina,” New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck tells Emma Memma in a recent Instagram post about her new children’s book, XO Ballerina Big Sis: Wisdom and Advice from the Heart (DK, October 21, $16.99). “I wanted to dance. I will say I love to dance. It’s just that I grew up in a studio where I tried all styles, and ballet was my least favorite.”

Thankfully, the Bakersfield-born Peck, who began her training at the age of two, followed her mother’s guidance and took the ballet route, entering the School of American Ballet when she was twelve and becoming an NYCB apprentice, a member of the corps de ballet, a soloist, and, in October 2009, at the age of twenty, a principal dancer. Peck has originated featured roles in such works as Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle), Benjamin Millepied’s Quasi una Fantasia, Angelin Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, and Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

During the pandemic lockdown, Peck expanded her horizons on Instagram, dancing with her father and her dog, giving lessons from her mother’s kitchen, and providing sunshine on dark days with her infectious enthusiasm.

Peck is now curating a special program running October 16-19 at New York City Center, “Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends,” where she will be joined by such dancers as India Bradley, Christopher Grant, Chun Wai Chan, Byron Tittle, Lex Ishimoto, Quinn Starner, Roman Mejia, and Mira Nadon, performing William Forsythe’s The Barre Project, Blake Works II, set to music by James Blake; Peck’s Thousandth Orange, with live music by Caroline Shaw; Alonzo King’s pas de deux Swift Arrow, with music by Jason Moran; and the new commission Time Spell, a collaboration with Michelle Dorrance and Jillian Meyers, set to music by Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt. There will be a community talkback after the October 17 show with Peck and her friends, most likely including her new husband, Mejia.

“It’s literally like a party onstage,” Peck says in the above video, a party you won’t want to miss.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE MEXICAN EXODUS: A HIP-HOP TALE OF SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada wrote and star in Mexodus (photo by Curtis Brown)

MEXODUS
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and MacDougal St.
Monday – Saturday through November 1, $56.50-$120.50
mexodusmusical.com
www.audible.com

Between 1829 and the end of the Civil War, several thousand American slaves escaped to Mexico, a kind of Underground Railroad that headed south instead of north, though without the same organized support system. Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson have adapted that story into Mexodus, an exhilarating, funny, and passionate must-see two-person musical that has been extended through November 1 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre.

“Did you know this shit? / We didn’t know this shit!” they declare early on. “In eighteen forty-eight it was America that won the war. / Ten territories from Mexico / Including the behemoth of Texas, yo! / And what would that land be used for? / Oh lord! To pick a bale of cotton / And what was slaves’ most common chore? / To jump down, turn around, and pick a bale a day. / Cotton: America’s original sin / And it’s then and there where our story begins.”

Quijada and Robinson switch between portraying versions of themselves, speaking directly to the audience in the present day, and two tough men from the pre–Civil War era. They also play all the instruments — guitars, keyboards, standup bass, harmonica, accordion, drums, percussion, triangle — creating live loops by recording snippets of music, then layering them electronically so it often sounds like there’s a full band in the theater while allowing them to act with their hands and feet free.

Henry (Robinson) is a Black man who has escaped from a brutal incident on the Texas plantation where he was enslaved, while Carlos (Quijada) is a former Mexican army medic and deserter overwhelmed by guilt, now working on a farm in la Frontera, which he describes as “la mitad — the middle. No laws, no lines, tierra descontrolada,” evoking a kind of middle passage.

Carlos found Henry washed up on the shore of the Rio Grande and is nursing him back to health. Henry is suspicious of Carlos; when Henry asks if it’s safe there, Carlos responds, “It’s not safe anywhere,” adding that he’s seen many “gringos” in the area hunting down runaways.

Both men are in vulnerable positions, alone and on their own, so they’ll need to help each other if they are going to survive while battling the elements and worrying about the slave hunters.

Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson play all the instrument in historical loop musical (photo by Curtis Brown)

Quijada and Robinson met at a conference in February 2020 and decided to team up for the show, which was inspired by a Facebook post Quijada saw in 2017 and is named after this little-known Mexican exodus. The story of how the two strangers came to team up runs parallel to the relationship fostered between Carlos and Henry, who are composites of real figures, bonding through different aspects of looping. During the musical, Quijada and Robinson each share a tale from their childhood involving racism, love, and sacrifice. Robinson, honoring three generations of women in his family, says, “I don’t think I’m their wildest dreams because where we’re from, you don’t get to dream like this.” Quijada, describing a frightening instance of racial profiling at a gas station, explains, “We are taught to separate, we are taught to stick to our own, / Taught how to protect our homes. / We are given reasons to fight and start wars. / But what if / What if / What if we weren’t so quick to lock our doors.”

Director and costume designer David Mendizábal (Tell Hector I Miss Him, the bandaged place) expertly blends the multilayered narrative with Mextly Couzin’s lighting, Mikhail Fiksel’s looping and powerful sound, Johnny Moreno’s live projections, and Tony Thomas’s movement choreography on Riw Rakkulchon’s barn set, which includes multiple platforms, doors at either end, a DJ table at the top, and a rear wall of lights and speakers.

Robinson and Quijada, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, are magnetic as they move across the stage and pause for emotional interludes. The score is influenced primarily by Hamilton, but in this case hip-hop interlaced with country and the blues. Their apprehension is palpable every step of the way — not just as Henry and Carlos but as themselves, Black and brown men in a nation that is rounding up nonwhite people ever more frequently and violently. When the law comes knocking at the barn door, it is hard not to think about what ICE is doing to legal and illegal immigrants — and citizens — in America.

“We’re all in this together,” Henry says. Echoing his words in Spanish, Carlos replies, “Todos estamos juntos en esto.” Henry responds, “Whoa, slow that down.”

The message of Mexodus is clear: We are all in this together — and this is no time to slow down.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

SONIC SENSATION: 11,000 STRINGS AT PARK AVE. ARMORY

Georg Friedrich Haas’s 11,000 Strings envelops Park Avenue Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall in sound and light (photo by Stephanie Berger)

11,000 STRINGS
Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Through October 7
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

“The idea of this commission did not come from myself because of an easy reason. I never would have dared to make this suggestion. Nobody would have believed that this is possible,” composer Georg Friedrich Haas says about 11,000 Strings, his extraordinary concerto grosso continuing at Park Ave. Armory through October 7. The stirring production encircles the entire audience with fifty specially microtuned upright pianos that face the walls of the fifty-five-thousand-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall, while the twenty-five members of the Klangforum Wien face the audience, playing the harp, saxophone, cello, violin, accordion, and more.

There is no conductor; instead, the pianists, from Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes School of Music, NYU, and Columbia, play unique scores from individualized iPads while the Klangforum Wien perform with their own hard-copy scores and iPhones that track the time.

Under the music direction of Bas Wiegers and with lighting by Brian H. Scott, the sixty-six-minute piece unfolds in a series of sections that range from whispers to passionate explosions, from glorious cinematic moments to soft melodies evoking bees, birds, and the natural world. Close your eyes and you can get lost in the architecture of the space, as if the building itself is participating in the consonance.

Harpist Miriam Overlach performs with fellow members of Klangforum Wien and emerging and established pianists from New York City (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Since no two musicians are playing the exact same thing, it feels as if there is a wave of motion flowing through the hall and hovering over the audience, a compelling choreography as the pianists gently shift their bodies up and down or to the right and left and the Klangforum Wien members stand up and sit down. The unintended vagaries of live performance in physical space add visual surprises; near me, one of the pianos seemed to be the slightest bit loose, so as the pianist hit the keys, abstract images shook on the top panel, adding a touch of lovely mystery. Everyone is dressed in different all-black outfits; the reflections of each pianist’s face in their instrument’s panel have an otherworldly glow.

I focused on flutist Vera Fischer, violinist Gunde Jäch-Micko, violoncellist Benedikt Leitner, saxophonist Gerald Preinfalk, and percussionist Lukas Schiske, who were closest to where I was sitting, although I made sure to swivel my head around to catch harpist Miriam Overlach, violinist Sophie Schafleitner, trombonist Mikael Rudolfsson, and others. Several times the string musicians stood and dragged their bows against cymbals, offering brief flashes of dissonance that enhance the ritualistic feel of the piece.

11,000 Strings is yet another unusual and fascinating sonic environment that the armory is renowned for housing, following such previous works as Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Inside Light and Tyshawn Sorey’s Monochromatic Light (Afterlife).

You don’t have to understand the details of the music to be swept away by its magic. For example, Haas notes in the program, “When a violin tunes its strings in perfectly intoned fifths, this interval is a tiny fraction (almost exactly one-fiftieth of a semitone) higher than the piano’s fifth. If each of the 50 pianos is tuned higher by this very small interval, then an absolutely perfect fifth is created, for example, between the C of the first piano and the G of the second piano. The same applies between the C of the second and the G of the third piano (one-fiftieth of a semitone higher), between the C of the third and the G of the fourth piano, and so on. After 50 pianos, the circle closes, and the fifth has risen by a semitone.”

What is more important is what he writes later: “11,000 Strings is not an experiment. It is music for the people who play the piece and for the people who hear it. You don’t experiment with people.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ROOFTOP MUSIC: JENNIE C. JONES AND ICE AT THE MET

Jennie C. Jones celebrates the opening of Ensemble on Met roof (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: International Contemporary Ensemble, Jennie C. Jones, George Lewis
What: Live performance and discussion
Where: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, the Met Fifth Ave., 1000 Fifth Ave. at Eighty-Second St.
When: Sunday, October 5, $35-$70 (use discount code ENSEMBLE20 to save 20%), 2:00
Why: “What I hope for this work is that it ignites the sonic imagination. The pieces are not always singing, they’re not always performing, they’re not always activated. I think for me that’s also a tremendous part of the work, the way to hold space, and nuance, not always full of an outward expression but to hold a rich, interior imagination, and to hold a rich sonic imagination,” Jennie C. Jones said at the opening of Ensemble, her stunning installation on the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. On view through October 19, Ensemble consists of three large-scale pieces inspired by a few of Jones’s previous works, the extraordinary skyline of the buildings surrounding the roof, and the Met’s musical instruments collection and use of travertine; one recalls a zither, another an Aeolian harp, and the third a one-string, in addition to a red path that expands in one corner.

The Roof Garden Commission rewards the viewer’s attention through close contemplation and intimate enjoyment; if you’re lucky, you might even hear the wind gently playing the strings.

On October 5 at 2:00, you’ll be able to hear the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) play their strings in the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, as the Brooklyn-based collective performs Jones’s 2022 Oxide Score and 2024 Met Color Study, featuring Emmalie Tello on clarinet, Mike Lormand on trombone, Nuiko Wadden on harp, Clara Warnaar on percussion, Modney on violin, Kyle Armbrust on viola, and Brandon Lopez on bass. The Cincinnati-born, Hudson-based Jones will be on hand for a discussion with ICE artistic director George Lewis.

“This is one of Jennie’s things, right? The sculpture changes the sound. See, you stick your head in here, it kind of echoes,” composer, musicologist, and trombonist Lewis says in a video of him walking around Ensemble. “My first encounter with Jennie’s work was probably around 2015. She was finding all these incredible parallels between visual art and music. Jennie taught me a lot about graphic scores. You could say they’re open-ended, but she is definitely weighing in on what she feels could be a perspective. . . How do we transmit these energies to everyone around us, and how do we make these scores part of a larger listening and visual environment? Jennie engages sound as a medium and as a subject. . . . One of the great parts about this work is that it’s not telling you what or how to think or how to hear or how to feel or any of that. You have a lot of agency to decide that for yourself. And once you do, there’s discovery there.”

There’s lots to discover with Ensemble, but you’ll need to get to the Met fast, before the installation closes and the museum begins a five-year renovation of the roof.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]