Stem Tide
Friday, January 6, at 8:30
721 Franklin Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Oracles, the Herberer/Niggenkemper Duo, and XMTWRFS play consecutive sets, heavy on the improv, at the Brooklyn Launch Pad. Prominent among the players will be abstract improvising upright bassist Sean Ali, experimentalist composer of electronic, microtonal, and rock-influenced sounds Paul Pinto, surrealist cellist and singer/songwriter Valerie Kuehne, breathtaking in her agonized dream worlds, and violinist/composer Jeff Young.
The Knights with Mischa Bouvier
Sunday, January 8, at 3:00
The Church of St. Ann & The Holy Trinity
157 Montague Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Successful polystylism can be likened to a Bach chorale setting: just as Bach was a virtuoso at tonicizing distant and surprising keys using a single common chord or pivot tone, taking the listener on a journey to far more exotic harmonic climes than the melody would normally imply, a good composer can use the barest whiff of association or convergent gesture to travel from one stylistic or historical reference point to another, or eschew connections in favor of striking juxtapositions between material, deepening the emotional narrative. Mohammed Fairouz excels at this. His Furia will be sung by warm-voiced and energetic baritone Mischa Bouvier, who has a good sense for the appropriate spirit with which to imbue Mr. Fairouz’s work. Furia is a three-movement work for baritone and chamber orchestra, exploring orientalism and East/West fusion and dichotomy from verying perspectives. The first two movements range from the impassioned and defiant to the sinewy and intimate. The third is a setting of Rudyard Kipling that effectively both exploits and mocks, albeit sympathetically, the exoticist fantasy of Kipling’s words in Anglophilic pastiche. Even those who know better can lose their critical distance and get caught up in the fervor of the music.
The Knights is a chamber orchestra conducted by Eric Jacobsen, the cellist for the exciting and compelling string quartet Brooklyn Rider, which specializes in fusing diverse idioms of new music and crossing aesthetic and cultural divides. The Knights are comprised of musicians from across a wide spectrum of New York music scenes, and have collaborated with classical stars Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, and Gil Shaham. Also on the program is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and two Schubert Lieder, arranged by Knights members.
Admission: $20
Kile Smith's Vespers with Piffaro and The Crossing
Monday, January 9, at 7:30
1010 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10028
Smoothly virtuosic Renaissance band Piffaro commissioned, and premiered in 2008, Kile Smith’s Vespers. Monday, with new music choir The Crossing, they perform it for the first time since. Vespers celebrates the Renaissance origins of Lutheran liturgical music and makes savvy use of its chosen forces. While the vocal writing is reminiscent in its treatment of voice leading and dissonance of other American choral composers such as Eric Whitacre, Mr. Smith’s work boasts greater structural attention and cohesion. The use of the Renaissance instruments sometimes calls on the character of the music from their time, yet deconstructed and exploded into its component gestures. At its best it is intriguing and ethereal.
Admission: $35/50
[This article has been corrected to expand the description of the entirety of Furia]
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