this week in music

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.]

HERE WE ARE: EISA DAVIS’S THE ESSENTIALISN’T

Eisa Davis immerses herself in a water tank in The Essentialisn’t (photo by Daniel J. Vasquez)

THE ESSENTIALISN’T
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 28, $10-$120
here.org

“Can you be Black and not perform?” is the critical question at the center of Eisa Davis’s intimate and rewarding — and brilliantly titled — The Essentialisn’t.

During the pandemic, I saw Davis in Lynn Nottage’s What Are the Things I Need to Remember, a virtual microplay that was part of Theatre for One’s Here We Are, brief shows presented live for one person at a time, sitting at home in front of their computer, in which not only did the actors have their video and audio turned on but so did the audience member, allowing the performer to gauge the viewer’s reaction in real time — and in some cases even engage in very brief conversation. I wrote that What Are the Things I Need to Remember was “superbly directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene despite the clear limitations of physical space, in which Eisa Davis portrays a woman who brings up an old memory that still haunts her.”

I have the same feeling about The Essentialisn’t, which continues at HERE Arts Center through September 28.

In the lobby is a wall projection of black-and-white clips of legendary Black performers, including actress Dorothy Dandridge, dancer Jeni Legon, and jazz great Hazel Scott playing two pianos, one black, one white, simultaneously. To these, Davis intercuts footage of herself in a black skirt and high heels in a large vertical water tank.

The audience enters the theater itself and is greeted by an interactive art installation consisting of such books as Fred Moten’s Black and Blur, Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, and Douglas Kearney’s Mess and Mess and as well as a pair of black Capezio tap-dancing shoes. In the far corner is a box of tags in a half-basketball filled with black dirt; audience members are asked to “write in your vote on essences of Black women” and put them in a clear acrylic box on a stool. The night I went, I saw such handwritten words as helper and light. There is plenty of time for everyone to interact with the books and tags while audio of Daniel Alexander Jones as W. E. B. Du Bois is piped in through a speaker.

After several minutes, the audience is led through a Mylar curtain to a small space with a few rows of seating perpendicular to the stage, which features a standing keyboard with a microphone, a water tank with a ladder, and two hair comforters on the floor. Davis is in the tank, barefoot, in a white dress. Her head emerges from the water and she begins singing over a Mende funeral dirge as video of the ocean and extreme close-ups of a Black woman’s hair, recalling Lorraine O’Grady’s Landscape (Western Hemisphere), are projected on two walls.

“I’m crossin, I’m crossin, I’m crossin the water / Darkness be my friend,” Davis begins. After she leaves the tank, two Sovereigns, Jamella Cross and Princess Jacob, dry her off, then wheel over a coat rack that has LED letters on it spelling out “Can you be Black and not perform?” Davis sings, “No, no, no, no.”

The Essentialisn’t is a magical multimedia mixtape at HERE (photo by Daniel J. Vasquez)

For more than an hour, Davis and the Sovereigns sing and talk about the slave narrative, logic, gender, ritual, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, technologies of liberation, objectification, Afrofuturism, consent, and emancipation in such songs as “No Music,” “Tripping,” “Magical Negro,” and “Black Girl Bullet.” Davis explores Black diasporic culture and the Black feminine, making powerful pronouncements while placing white paper over a few of the words in the LED sign.

“Can you make sense of this nonsense? No,” she says. The Sovereigns declare, “This is not a performance. This is a performance.” Davis explains, “So I’m a act like I know. Even though . . . Let me be clear, performance isn’t the same as being enslaved. There’s just . . . a connection. I can perform, but when it’s forced? When it’s an obligation that can cost livelihood, life if you do or don’t do it? If you do or don’t do it well? When performance equals the illusion of success, an American dream I never even believed in because I knew it was a trick bag?”

The Essentialisn’t is a multimedia mixtape filled with both clear and subtle messages, which makes sense, as Davis, whose given first name is Angela, is the daughter of civil rights lawyer and social justice activist Fania Davis and the niece of educator and activist Angela Davis. Davis, who wrote and directed the piece, builds a genuine connection with the audience, encouraging participation and revealing the artistry, laying it all out in the open.

Her terrific team includes sound designer and live sound mixer Chris Payne, video designer Skye Mahaffie, lighting designer Cha See, soundscape artist Rucyl Mills, costumes by James Gibbel, movement consultant Okwui Okpokwasili, and scenic and costume consultant Peter Born, who add a magical feel to the show, incorporating Houdini-like elements. Cross and Jacob contribute humor and energy to the proceedings.

The Brooklyn-based Davis (The History of Light, The Secret Life of Bees), who won Obies for Passing Strange in 2006 and for Sustained Excellence in 2009 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Bulrusher in 2007, is a fearless multi-hyphenate, and much of that is on view in The Essentialisn’t, a provocative and affecting work that is as challenging as it is engaging.

The night I went, the audience was mostly white; that fact did not appear lost on Davis. In the scene “What Are You Working On?,” Davis’s grad school acting teacher (the Sovereigns) tells her, “Remember. We can’t train you in Blackness. We’re white. You’ll have to do that for yourself. . . . You’re gifted. You’ll work. But will you do the work?” Davis then covers the word “can” on the LED sign.

“Can you be Black — and not perform?” she says.

It’s not a rhetorical question. Here we are, indeed.

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

A DIFFERENT WORLD: A CELEBRATION OF SONGS SHE WROTE

Who: Michael G. Garber, Miss Maybell, Charlie Judkins
What: Book talk with music
Where: Ceres Gallery, 547 West 27th St. between 10th & 11th Aves., #201
When: Thursday, September 11, free with advance RSVP (suggested donation $15), 6:30
Why: “This book celebrates women who wrote popular songs in the early twentieth century. These female composers and lyricists deserved greater opportunities and fame and to be more highly valued. Generations later, the same could be said for many of their sisters in songwriting in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Hopefully, looking at the past will inspire change in the future. To do this, we must travel in our minds back to what was, in effect, a different world.”

So begins historian, professor, scholar, and artist Michael G. Garber’s Songs She Wrote: 40 Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music (Rowman & Littlefield, March 2025, $36), an illustrated journey into that different world, focusing on women’s contributions to popular music, including ragtime, jazz, Broadway, and Hollywood. Featuring a foreword by Janie Bradford and Dr. Tish Oney, the book explores such tunes as Lucy Fletcher’s “Sugar Blues,” Lovie Austin and Alberta Hunter’s “The Down Hearted Blues,” Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” Dorothy Parker’s “Serenade from The Student Prince,” and Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”

Charlie Judkins and Miss Maybell will perform as part of book event at Ceres Gallery

On September 11 at 6:30, in conjunction with the Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project, Garber (My Melancholy Baby: The First Ballads of the Great American Songbook, 1902–1913) will be at the nonprofit feminist Ceres Gallery for a free book talk with live performances by Jazz Age artists Miss Maybell and Charlie Judkins, surrounded by Carlyle Upson’s nature-based “Submerged” watercolors and Marcy Bernstein’s “Evocative Abstractions” paintings, which Bernstein says “invite viewers to look inward. They’re filled with allusions to the raw energy of creation itself,” a fitting sentiment that applies to Garber’s book as well. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $15.

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

LOVE AND JEALOUSY: SEVEN SCENES AT LITTLE ISLAND

Miriam Gittens, Doug Letheren, and Alexander Bozinoff form a trio as Mikael Darmanie plays the piano and Danni Lee Parpan watches in Seven Scenes at Little Island (photo by Matthew Placek)

SEVEN SCENES
The Amph at Little Island
Pier 55, Hudson River Park at West Thirteenth St.
August 22-28, $10 standing room, $25 seats, 8:30
littleisland.org

A pair of real-life and professional partners bring an infectious passion to Seven Scenes, a lovely hourlong work continuing at the simultaneously spacious yet cozy outdoor Amph at Little Island through August 28.

The dance theater piece was conceived, choreographed, and directed by the Iowa-born Bobbi Jene Smith and Jerusalem native Or Schraiber, who met while dancing for Ohad Naharin’s Batsheva Dance Company, became founding members of the American Modern Opera Company in 2017, got married in 2018, and have a child together. The score, ranging from classical to country, is performed live by the electro-pop duo Ringdown, consisting of real-life couple Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan on vocals, keys, and synths, accompanied by Mikael Darmanie on keyboards and electronics, Keir GoGwilt on violin, and Coleman Itzkoff on cello. Smith and Schraiber are joined by dancers Alexander Bozinoff, Jonathan Frederickson, Payton Johnson, Doug Letheren, and Ophelia Young.

Seven Scenes comprises a series of interconnected vignettes about love, jealousy, and sexual exploration. Victoria Bek’s costumes feature the men in black or gray dress pants, black or white shirts, and shiny black shoes while the women, each with long hair, wear dark, low-cut outfits. The instruments are at the Hudson River end of the bare wood stage, which remains otherwise empty save for a few moments when the cast brings out a table and chairs. Shaw, Parpan, GoGwilt, and Itzkoff occasionally wander around the dancers, singing and playing their instruments before taking seats in the first row in between audience members. Whenever someone is not performing, they are closely watching what is going on, as if they are voyeurs waiting for their moment to participate.

Payton Johnson, Miriam Gittens, and Bobbi Jean Smith line up in Seven Scenes at Little Island (photo by Matthew Placek)

The evening is highlighted by solos, pas de deux, and trios in which the performers enact primarily romantic scenarios to a score that begins with Jean-Louis Duport’s Étude No.7 and then ranges from Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, op.87: andante con moto, Bach’s Violin Sonata in E minor P. 85: I. Allegro, Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E-Flat Major, D. 929: II. Andante con moto, and Handel’s Keyboard Suite No. 1 (Set II) in B-Flat Major HWV 434 IV. Minuet to Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” and Ringdown’s “Hocket,” “Fantasia,” and “Thirst,” highlighted by guttural sounds.

Smith and Schraiber’s movement language is inspired by Naharin’s Gaga, focusing on the full body, from fingers to toes, interspersed with just a few runs, jumps, and throws; dancers often remain in place as they interact with one another, but the relationships are always powerfully dynamic. (You can find out more about Smith and Schraiber in the films Bobbi Jene and Aviva.) A man and a woman converge, then are interrupted by a second man, the first man interested in both of them. The three women form a line, moving in unison before breaking free.

Classical ballet and ballroom meld with contemporary dance as the men sit around a table, put on and take off jackets, and one of the men stretches across the table. The men later form a row before sitting in chairs, evoking Naharin’s Minus 16 and Jerome Robbins’s bottle dance from Fiddler on the Roof. Individuals fall to the floor and remain there, as if having been rejected, or exhausted by the chase. Johnson excels in a solo to “Thirst” as Ringdown sings, “Clenched jaw and furrowed brow / If you are the rain, then I am the ground / Don’t know what to do with this thirst for a time and place where I found you first / Where I found you first.”

The men shake hands with audience members. Near the end, Fredrickson thrills with a yearning solo to Darmanie’s gorgeous piano.

There’s a beautiful intimacy to Seven Scenes and how it tells its stories, weaving in sound and motion, dancers and musicians, both physically and emotionally, as bodies come together and are ripped apart, all under a glowing night sky.

Following select performances, the audience is invited to the nearby Glade for a free concert at 10:00, with GoGwilt and pianist Conor Hanick on August 27 and pianist Jeremy Denk on August 28.

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