this week in music

MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK 2020

make music new york

Who: Amateur and professional musicians from around the world
What: Annual Make Music New York festival
Where: Make Music New York online
When: Sunday, June 21, free, 7:00 am – 11:00 pm
Why: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there,” Sufi poet Rumi wrote. His words ring true now more than ever, with so much of the city still in lockdown mode because of the Covid-19 pandemic. With clubs, theaters, bars, and restaurants closed for live entertainment, the fourteenth annual Make Music New York festival, in which hundreds of free performances are held throughout the five boroughs in celebration of the longest day of the year, had to reinvent itself, so it has gone virtual, with shows being streamed online from wherever people are sheltering in place, with a few unique outdoor concerts as well, but not open to crowds. The list of performers is long and varied; here are just some of the participants: Janice Brown, Regina Opera Company, Andrea Frisch-Hara, Allan Harris, James Nyoraku Schlefer, Cheryl Grau, Vignesh Ravichandran, Brittany Santacroce, Leah Shaw, Muswell Hillbillies, Al Barcelon, Ensemble Ipse, Blair McMillen, Eleonor Sandresky, Robin Greenstein, Axiom Addicts, Mischief Boys, Melody Loveless, Wild Turkey Surprise, Murphy’s Big Idea, Rachel Lee Walsh, Jackson Dempsey, Ella Kronman, Ethan Liang, Emily Tong, gamin, Natie, Robin Rich & Willie Allen, Garrin Benfield, Social Robot, Peace of Heart Choir, Gwendolyn Fitz, Maurice Cobb, Salvo, R.E.D, Jared Lamenzo with Eddie Barbash, Renaissance Street Singers, Kate Theis, iSZ, PartyOwl, Airee, DECOSTER, It’s Just Another Pleasant Valley Monday, Adele & Felipe, Inner Gypsy, Carolyn Enger, and Sopio Murusidze.

Below are 2020’s special projects, a few of which are participatory not only online but, yes, in person.

#MySongIsYourSong, global song swap with Aaron Banes, Annie Nirschel, Barry Kay, Chris Oledude, Deborah Anne Karpel, Elaine Akins, Gary Newton, Hasani Arthur, Jascha Hoffman, Joel Landy, John Plenge, Jonny Leal, Kama Linden, Kenneth Murphy, Laela Giovanna, Rew Starr, Russ Stone, Stephanie Jeannot, Steven Blane, others, 7:00 am – 10:00 pm

#MusicMeAndMyKid, livestreamed home concerts by children, 7:00 am – 10:00 pm

Live from Home, with Tower of Power, Adryana Ribeiro, Becky Buller, Fiona Ross, Gloria Stanley, Isabella Manfredi, Josh Pyke, Laurence Juber, Lee Oskar, Lenka Kripac, Michael Barnum, Roberto Kuelho, Van-Anh Nguyen, Zachary Castille, Zuill Bailey, more, 7:00 am – 10:00 pm

Global Livestream, music from as many as 120 countries, 9:00 am – 11:00 pm

25 x 12: Live Online Lessons, for twenty-five instruments, including banjo, bassoon, cello, drum, flute, and voice, 10:00 am – 10:00 pm

Young Composers Contest, winning pieces set to William Carlos Williams’s poem, “By the road to the contagious hospital,” performed by the Make Music Quarantet, 10:00 am – 10:00 pm

Harold O’Neal: Virtual Performance at the New York Botanical Garden, 11:00 am

Flowerpot Music, performances from around the world using flowerpots, score by Elliot Cole, directed by Peter Ferry, 11:00 am – 8:00 pm

Mozart’s Requiem, third annual group performance, Requiem, K626, conducted by Douglas Anderson, noon – 1:00

Sounds from Scotland, with Jamie McGeechan, Alan Frew, Craig Weir Gleadhraich, Colin Hunter, John Rush, Laura McGhee, and Mike Nisbet, noon – 4:30

Bash the Trash, workshops creating instruments from recycled materials, followed by performances of “Ode to Joy” and/or “Baby Shark,” 1:00 – 3:00

32 for Third, Part 1, Beethoven sonatas performed by students, teachers, and guests of the Third Street Music School Settlement, 1:00 – 3:00

Bedroom Studios (aka Street Studios), with Nathalie Barret-Mas (2:00 – 5:00), Aaron Lazansky (5:00 – 8:00), and DJ Al Medina (8:00 – 11:00)

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by the Oxford Philharmonic, with Anna-Liisa Bezrodny, Charlotte Scott, Yuri Zhislin, and Natalia Lomeiko, 3:00 – 3:50

Rumi Suite and Livaneli Songs, featuring Zülfü Livaneli, with Demet Sağıroğlu, Henning Schmiedt, Tara Nome Doyle, Tamara Jokic, Ara Dinkjian, Ismal Lumanovski, Engin Kaan Günaydin, Panagiots Andreou, Tamer Pinarbasi, Ahu Güral, and Arda Türegün, 3:00 – 4:00

Mass Appeal Harmonicas, with Jiayi He, beginners at 3:00, advanced at 4:00, everyone at 5:00

Make Music Ditmas, a Neighborhood Porch Music Celebration, 4:00 – 5:00

Songs of Struggle from the Stoop, with Paul Stein, 4:00 – 5:00

Concerts from Cars, by CenterPoint Arts, in front of Brooklyn Crepe & Juice, 274 Flatbush Ave., 4:14-4:45 PM

The World Wide Heart Chant, interactive performance of Pauline Oliveros’s “Heart Chant” with IONE, Claire Chase, and Raquel Acevedo Klein, 5:00 – 6:00

Porch Stomp!, socially distanced singalong in Brooklyn neighborhoods, 6:00 – 7:00

Harmonicas in Solidarity, performers playing the health-care anthem “The Oceans” on balconies surrounding Sasaki Garden by Washington Square, led by Dr. David Schroeder, 6:45 – 7:00

#SummerSolsticeSingalong, “Imagine,” by John Lennon, 6:55 – 7:00

Songs for Our City, finale, 8:00 pm

Touchy Subjects, by Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars, by Patrick Grant, 8:00 pm

Joe’s Pub Virtual Block Party, archival performances by Kiah Victoria; Gary Lucas, Feifei Yang, and Jason Candler with special guest Yao Wang; Migguel Anggelo; Treya Lam; Martha Redbone; and AJOYO, 8:00 – 9:00

Track Meet, creative music relay, 9:00 – 11:00

WORLD MUSIC DAY — THAPELO MASITA AT THE MET CLOISTERS

On World Music Day, MetLiveArts will premiere a concert by South African cellist Thapelo Masita recorded earlier this week in the empty Met Cloisters Unicorn Tapestries Room

Who: Thapelo Masita
What: MetLiveArts digital world premiere
Where: Facebook and YouTube
When: Sunday, June 21, free, 7:30
Why: In celebration of World Music Day, the Met will livestream the world premiere of a performance by South African cello virtuoso Thapelo Masita recorded June 15 at the Met Cloisters, in the Unicorn Tapestries Room. “In times of turmoil, we all choose to focus on that which is most essential in our lives. Our species has survived this way for thousands of years. Only once all danger has subsided do we try to heal,” Masita explains on the Met website. “For me, the challenges the world faces today demand that we rethink this process. I believe that it is during this time, while we are in the fiery furnace, that we must transform our thinking so that we might come out better than we were before. The alternative is far too dangerous.” The thirty-minute concert features songs chosen very specifically for these difficult times, amid the coronavirus crisis and national protests decrying police brutality against people of color. Masita adds, “The music you will hear is a meditation on this very idea. A conversation between J. S. Bach, Negro spirituals, South African hymns, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, this program is a metaphor for the kind of transformation we so deeply need. If all this music can work together to create a sound-world full of love, joy, peace, and belonging, then so can we. After all, we wrote it.” Masita will perform “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” Bach’s Solo Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 (Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuet I/II, Gigue), “Ha Le Mpotsa Tshepo Yaka” (“When Asked Wherein My Hope Lies”), “Amazing Grace,” and the Perpetual Motion section of Perkinson’s Black/Folk Song Suite for Solo Cello (“Lamentations”).

STREAMING LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD: THE VIJAY IYER TRIO

Vijay Iyer returns to the Village Vanguard with his trio for a live performance during the pandemic lockdown

Vijay Iyer returns to the Village Vanguard with his trio for two live performances during the pandemic lockdown

Who: The Vijay Iyer Trio featuring Nick Dunston and Jeremy Dutton
What: Livestreamed concerts direct from the Village Vanguard
Where: Village Vanguard online
When: Saturday, June 20, $7, 7:00, and Sunday, June 21, $7, 2:00
Why: On May 29, the Boston-based Irish punk band the Dropkick Murphys performed a blistering live set from an empty Fenway Park, joined for two songs by Bruce Springsteen from his home in New Jersey. (You can watch the show here.) It was absolutely exhilarating; frontman Ken Casey and the band were thrilled to be able to blast out no-holds-barred music again, and their enthusiasm was contagious. I imagined that the tens of thousands of other viewers from around the world were dancing just as wildly as I was in my Manhattan apartment, making the most of this communal moment. Over the last few months, I’ve enjoyed many short concerts with singer-songwriters playing from their living rooms or groups getting together over Zoom, but the Murphs took it all to another level, for more than two nonstop hours. Live music is meant to be a shared experience; we cram into stadiums, arenas, and clubs, seeking the camaraderie of strangers who have the same great taste as we do. We might not know when concerts will come back given the pandemic lockdown, but our opportunities to gather together online are expanding, as evidenced by the Village Vanguard, the ever-shining beacon of jazz.

Since 1935, the Vanguard has been hosting live shows in its cramped, intimate downstairs space at 178 Seventh Ave. South. But with the coronavirus crisis, it has been closed since March 16 — until last week. On June 13-14, the oldest continuously operating jazz club in the city opened its doors to the Billy Hart Quartet, which performed live sets on the Vanguard stage, playing Saturday night and Sunday afternoon without any fans in person; hungry jazz aficionados tuned in to the livestream, forming a unique music community. This weekend the new series hosts the Vijay Iyer Trio, with pianist Iyer, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Jeremy Dutton. Last month, New York native Iyer released InWhatInstrumentals: Music from In What Language?, consisting of songs from a 2003 performance at Asia Society, about selective security enforcement at airports, inspired by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s pre-9/11 detention at JFK while traveling from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires.

vijay iyer

“The airport is not a neutral place. It serves as a contact zone for those empowered or subjugated by globalization,” Iyer and his collaborator, Mike Ladd, wrote in the liner notes back in 2003. “It is a center of commerce and a crossroads of cultures, as well as a place that enforces its own globo-consumer culture. It is a frontier, a place of conflict and quarantine, reception, departure, and detention.” Those words ring truer than ever in 2020; on the new release, Iyer, who helped inaugurate the Met Breuer in 2016 with his “Relation” residency, explains, “Poet-producer Mike Ladd and I created In What Language? in 2003, in post-9/11 New York City. We were just coming to terms with the facts on the ground, which today seem frighteningly ordinary: mounting intolerance and hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and other nonwhite people; traumatic raids of immigrant communities by the INS (later Homeland Security); the prospect of endless, amoral war waged under false pretenses; the callous neoliberal agendas of globalization and disaster capitalism; and an unprecedented power grab enacted under cover of jingoism and feigned incompetence.” He continues, “For us as travelers of color, the swift transformation of international airports made it all too plain. These formerly optimistic spaces of encounter and adventure swiftly devolved into irrational zones of anxiety, suspicion, surveillance, and the hyperpolicing of Black and brown bodies, even as the labor force in these spaces mostly comprised the same people being surveilled…. Something about 2020’s rolling tragedy has led me back to these old, haunted, nearly empty rooms of sound. In 2003, I hadn’t imagined that this music, so tied to its original context, could mean something seventeen years later. In the darkness of that moment, we weren’t so sure that the world would hold together for this long. But somehow back then, [producer and engineer] Scotty Hard and I chose to preserve these instrumental mixes anyway, setting them aside for a rainy day.” That rainy day is here. All proceeds from the sale of the album go to immigrant organizations and communities of color disproportionately affected by Covid-19.

The Vijay Iyer Trio might not be kickass in the same way as the Dropkick Murphys, but they will dig deep into your soul, especially as you’re sheltering in place, seeking respite from our insane world. They will be playing two sets of about seventy-five minutes each, at 7:00 on June 20 and 2:00 on June 21; online admission is a mere seven bucks, and you can set your own food and drink minimum at home. Streaming Live continues June 27-28 with the Joe Martin Quartet featuring Mark Turner, Kevin Hays, and Nasheet Waits, July 4-5 with the Joe Lovano Trio Fascination featuring Ben Street and Andrew Cyrille, and July 11-12 with the Eric Reed Quartet featuring Stacy Dillard, Dezron Douglas, and Jeremy Bean Clemons.

TO MY DISTANT LOVE (AN DIE FERNE GELIEBTE) VIA TELEPHONE

to my distant love

Who: On Site Opera
What: One-on-one telephone-based opera
Where: Your personal telephone
When: June 18 – July 6 (extended through August 23), $40
Why: New York City-based On Site Opera specializes in staging immersive opera productions at unique locations; in recent years it has brought Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw to Wave Hill in the Bronx, Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors to the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen on Ninth Ave., and the world premiere of Michi Wiancko and Deborah Brevoort’s Marasaki’s Moon to the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Met. So what’s the company to do while the pandemic lockdown has closed indoor places and public gatherings are extremely limited? On Site has decided to take the opera right to the audience with To My Distant Love, a show tailor made for this time of longing and isolation, presenting Beethoven’s six-song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Distant Beloved”), over the phone, every performance uniquely delivered to one person. At scheduled times between June 18 and July 6, a singer and pianist will call the ticket holder and perform the twenty-minute piece over the phone; the duo will be either soprano Jennifer Zetlan and pianist David Shimoni or baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco and pianist Spencer Myer. (Each pair already lives together, so social distancing is not an issue.)

The cycle features music by Beethoven and text by Austrian doctor, journalist, and writer Alois Isidor Jeitteles, who served in the fight against the cholera epidemic; the piece will be sung in German, with additional English dialogue by playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza. (The English text will be emailed to you in advance, as if you and the singer are long-lost lovers looking to finally reconnect.) “During this unprecedented pause, almost every aspect of our lives — even the way we are consuming art — has been through our computer or tablet screens,” On Site Opera general and artistic director Eric Einhorn said in a statement. “This production will untether people from their computers and bring back the feeling of live theater, where anything can and will happen. We have brought audiences to more than twenty engaging sites across four states in these last seven seasons. We now invite our audiences to bring us to their favorite sites and be a part of revolutionizing the ways in which opera can be heard, experienced, and evolved.” Tickets for the one hundred performances are $40 and going fast if you want to experience what could end up being one of the most entertaining phone calls you’ll ever receive. [Ed. note: The run has been extended through August 23, so sign up now!]

IMMEDIATE TRAGEDY

Xin Ying, Lloyd Knight, Lorenzo Pagano, and Leslie Andrea are among the Martha Graham dancers collaborating from their homes on reimagined Immediate Tragedy (photo by Ricki Quinn)

Who: The Soraya, Martha Graham Dance Company, Wild Up
What: World premiere of digital dance
Where: The Soraya Facebook page, Martha Graham Dance Company YouTube channel
When: Friday, June 19, the Soraya, free, 7:00; Saturday, June 20, MGDC YouTube, 2:30
Why: During the pandemic, Martha Graham Dance Company has opened up its vast archives — the troupe was founded in 1926, and Graham created 181 ballets throughout her long, legendary career — presenting fabulous footage of classic recorded works, followed by live discussions with special guests. On June 19, MGDC is taking its next step with the world premiere of a new piece designed specifically for online viewing. Joining forces again with the Soraya, the California-based multidisciplinary performing arts organization, and chamber group Wild Up, the LA-based modern music collective, MGDC will be debuting Immediate Tragedy, a virtual reimagining of Graham’s lost 1937 solo, which was her artistic response to the Spanish Civil War. The ten-minute work will be performed by fourteen dancers (So Young An, Alessio Crognale, Laurel Dalley Smith, Natasha Diamond-Walker, Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Landreau, Jacob Larsen, Lloyd Mayor, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Lorenzo Pagano, Anne Souder, Leslie Andrea Williams, Xin Ying) and five musicians (Jiji, Richard Valitutto, Jodie Landau, Brian Walsh, Derek Stein) performing from wherever they are sheltering in place, set to a score composed and conducted by Christopher Rountree, the founder, conductor, and creative director of Wild Up.

Rare photograph of Martha Graham performing lost 1937 solo Immediate Tragedy (photo by Robert Fraser, 1937. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources)

Choreographed by MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber and the dancers based on remnants of the 1937 original, including photos, musical notations, letters, and reviews, the work features digital design and editing by Ricki Quinn as it explores the current tragedies the world is experiencing; it will premiere June 19 at 7:00 on the Soraya’s Facebook page, followed June 20 at 2:30 on MGDC’s YouTube channel as part of the weekly Martha Matinees program, which has previously presented Lamentation, “Birth of the Modern: Martha Graham’s Revolution,” Letter to the World, and more. Each dancer was given four photos from which to develop their movement, while the musicians received snippets of notations from Cowell’s original, all using as inspiration a letter Graham wrote to Cowell in which she explained, “Whether the desperation lies in Spain or in a memory in our own hearts it is the same — I had been in a valley of despair, too. I felt in that dance I was dedicating myself anew to space, that in spite of violation I was upright and that I was going to stay upright at all costs.” Rountree said in a statement, “While the piece is really located in a ‘post Henry Cowell’ space, another big inspiration is: this moment itself, and the immediate tragedy of us all being apart. What are our modes of being together in this moment? What does it look like, what does it sound like and how do we deal with being apart like this?” The thirty-minute program will also include interviews with the collaborators and a screening of Graham and Cowell’s 1937 companion solo, Deep Song.

YES! REFLECTIONS OF MOLLY BLOOM

molly bloom

Who: Aedín Moloney of the Irish Repertory Theatre
What: Livestreamed performances adapted for onscreen viewing
Where: Irish Rep onine (link sent after RSVP)
When: Tuesday, June 16, 7:00; Wednesday, June 17, 3:00 & 8:00; Thursday, June 18, 7:00; Friday, June 19, 8:00; Saturday, June 20, 3:00, advance RSVP required (suggested donation $25)
Why: The Irish Rep has become one of the busiest theater companies in New York City during the pandemic, presenting a brand-new coronavirus-related work and hosting the Meet the Makers and The Show Must Go Online series. On May 27 it premiered The Gifts You Gave to the Dark, Darren Murphy’s short, heartbreaking work about a man (Marty Rea) in Belfast with Covid-19 unable to visit his dying mother (Marie Mullen) in Dublin, who is being cared for by her brother (Seán McGinley). Directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, the play gets right to the heart of the crisis as only Irish tales can; it will be available online through October 31.

The Irish Rep now turns its attention to adapting several recent stage productions for the internet, beginning with Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom. The award-winning seventy-five-minute one-woman show, based on James Joyce’s epic Ulysses, was adapted by Aedín Moloney and Colum McCann, directed by Kira Simring, and features music by Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains (and Aedín’s father); it originally ran at the company’s home on West Twenty-Second St. in June and July of last year, with Moloney as Molly Bloom in the early morning hours of June 17, 1904, as she considers love, loneliness, and isolation. The full team has now reimagined the play for onscreen viewing, with Aedín Moloney reprising her role; it will be performed live from June 16 — Bloomsday, when Joyce’s iconic tome takes place — through June 20. Admission is free with advance RSVP, with a suggested donation of $25.

The Irish Rep continues its online foray with “Meet the Maker: Frank McCourt . . . And How He Got That Way: A Conversation with Ellen McCourt and Malachy McCourt” on June 18; “Meet the Maker: Conor McPherson” on July 2; a special gala screening with new video of Frank McCourt’s The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way on July 13; “Meet the Makers: John Douglas Thompson and Obi Abili on Breaking Barriers in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones” on July 16; Dan Butler, Sean Gormley, John Keating, Tim Ruddy, and Amanda Quaid in an online version of Conor McPherson’s The Weir from July 21 to 25; and a virtual version of Barry Day’s Love, Noël, a musical about Noël Coward starring Steve Ross and KT Sullivan, from August 11 to 15. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but I can’t wait to be at my computer to experience the joy of live theater, even if it’s through a screen.

BANG ON A CAN MARATHON 2020

Digital sphere with blue network connection lines in technology concept isolated on black background, 3d abstract shape illustration

Who: Rhiannon Giddens, Arlen Hlusko, Ken Thomson, Alvin Curran, Ted Hearne, Robert Black, Nik Bӓrtsch, Iva Bittová, Roscoe Mitchell, Dana Jessen, Vicky Chow, Nico Muhly, Nick Photinos, Don Byron, Gregg August, Tim Brady, Nadia Sirota, Pamela Z, Eliza Bagg, David Cossin, Carla Kihlstedt, Conrad Tao, Mark Stewart, Terry Riley, more
What: Annual Bang on a Can Marathon
Where: Bang on a Can Marathon website
When: Sunday, June 14, free (donations of $10 or more accepted), 3:00 – 9:00
Why: Since 1987, the Bang on a Can Marathon, cofounded by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, has been showcasing a wide range of relatively lesser-known music. “We started this organization because we believed that making new music is a utopian act — that people needed to hear this music and they needed to hear it presented in the most persuasive way, with the best players, with the best programs, for the best listeners, in the best context,” they explain on their website. “Our commitment to changing the environment for this music has kept us busy and growing, and we are not done yet.”

This year the marathon goes virtual, running online from 3:00 to 9:00 on June 14. The roster features Rhiannon Giddens, Arlen Hlusko, Ken Thomson, Robert Black, Iva Bittová, Roscoe Mitchell, Dana Jessen, Vicky Chow, Nico Muhly, Nick Photinos, Don Byron, Nadia Sirota, Pamela Z, Terry Riley, and many others performing, from wherever they’re sheltering in place (USA, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania), more than two dozen works, among them ten specially commissioned world premieres. Be on the lookout for Helena Tulve’s Without love atoms would stop spinning, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė’s Abyssal Zone, Susanna Hancock’s Everything in Bloom, Ailie Robertson’s The Bells Are All Silent, and Leila Adu’s Black-Crowned Night-Heron. Admission is free, but donations are accepted, with 10% of each virtual ticket (matched by the Bang on a Can board of directors) going to the Equal Justice Initiative, which is committed “to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting the basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.” The complete schedule and more information about the artists and commissions can be found here.