Live reviews
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I recall writing this review, which predates this blog by just over two years, but I don't remember for what outlet I wrote it. I located it today on a whim – after posting the image you see above on Twitter – on Acoustic Levitation, an online journal edited and published by Steve Koenig, a
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Change is upon us once again, and with it a fresh start for Night After Night—elsewhere. As of Thursday, April 23, the primary focus of my work has shifted over to a newly launched Substack newsletter, also called Night After Night. That title has provided my online identity – my "brand" – for more than
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ShotsBlank Forms, Brooklyn, NY February 27, 2020 General admission Personnel: Daniel DiMaggio, amplified objects, recordingsJohn Friberg, amplified objects, recordings Matthew Friberg, amplified objects, movement On Thursday night at Blank Forms, the intimate third-floor walk-up gallery space recently opened in Clinton Hill by the curatorial organization of the same name, the trio Shots played a brief
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Charles Curtis, Abigail Levine, Dancers, and Wind EnsembleIssue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY February 21, 2020 General admission Personnel: Charles Curtis, cello Abigail Levine, dancer, choreographer Amanda Brown, design Rob Besserer, Elena Demyanenko, Kentoria Earle, Ayano Elson, Maho Ogawa, Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal, dancers Michael Matsuno, Teresa Diaz de Cossio, flutes Nicolee Kuester, French horn Rachel Allen,
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Tiger Trio Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY January 4, 2020General admission Personnel: Joëlle Léandre, bass, vocalsMyra Melford, pianoNicole Mitchell, flute, alto flute, piccolo Back in the heyday of live jazz on New York City's 52nd Street, from the end of Prohibition in 1933 until the early '50s, the Three Deuces occupied a
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David Tudor: Forest SpeechPerformed by Lea Bertucci, John Driscoll, Ed Potokar, Margaret Anne Schedel, and Philip WhiteMuseum of Modern Art, New York, NYNovember 17, 2019 Sunday afternoon, after my daughter attended a performance of David Tudor's Forest Speech at the Museum of Modern Art with her mother and me, I asked her what she'd thought.
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Dead & Company Madison Square Garden, New York, NY November 1, 2019 Section 210, Row 12, Seat 2 Personnel: Bob Weir, guitar & vocals Bill Kreutzmann, drums Mickey Hart, percussion John Mayer, guitar & vocals Oteil Burbridge, bass, vocals, drums Jeff Chimenti, keyboards & vocalsMaggie Rogers, guest vocals (*) First set: Cold Rain and SnowHell
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Dead & CompanyCiti Field, Flushing, NYJune 23, 2019Section 122, Row 22, Seat 2 Personnel: Bob Weir, guitar & vocalsBill Kreutzmann, drumsMickey Hart, percussionJohn Mayer, guitar & vocalsOteil Burbridge, bass, vocals, drumsJeff Chimenti, keyboards & vocals First set: St. StephenCold Rain and SnowSamson and DelilahHigh TimeThey Love Each OtherRamble On RoseSugareeJack Straw Second set: Terrapin Station
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Up until about 15 years ago, I maintained a document whose existence I cherished: a near-complete listing of all the concerts I'd attended during my lifetime up to that point. "Near-complete," because I'm pretty sure it started with Spyro Gyra at the Agora Ballroom in Houston (Nov. 16, 1980) and not my actual first concert:
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I wrote for the Village Voice only one time, very early in my professional career, at the tail end of the full-time jazz journalism stage that preceded my return to classical music after around five years of estrangement. The article was published Feb. 27, 2001, or so the website tells me. That I never returned to
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THREE MINUTES until @DetroitSymphony live webcast of two new pieces, Roshanne Etezady's 'Diamond Rain' and @chriscerrone Violin Concerto (with the fabulous @JenniferKoh1), plus Tchaikovsky's 'Pathétique,' all conducted by @PeterOundjian here: https://t.co/78LDdjtX9F #DSOLive pic.twitter.com/GH8g0Yb7yf — Steve Smith (@nightafternight) May 26, 2018 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js That was a very fine spoken introduction @PeterOundjian just offered… informative, optimistic, funny when
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Originally published by National Sawdust Log on Sept. 30, 2016. David Lang: the loser Presented by BAM Next Wave FestivalHoward Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NYReviewed on Sept. 9, 2016 By Steve SmithPhotographs: Richard Termine If you’ve followed the career of David Lang, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of the revolutionary
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Brian Church and Aliana de la Guardia in 'Beowulf,' by Liz Linder Photography "In Hannah Lash's 'Beowulf,' an unconventional monster to grapple"Boston Globe, May 22, 2016 My review of Beowulf, the melancholy, moving new 80-minute chamber opera by composer Hannah Lash, presented by Guerilla Opera in its world premiere last Friday, ran in Sunday's Globe.
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"Jack Quartet, IRCAM prove electric company at ICA"Boston Globe, May 3, 2016 It's always good to catch up with the JACK Quartet, whose name I'll render here in its preferred all-caps-as-acronym form even if the newspaper declined to do so. (The group's fans know "JACK" = John Pickford Richards, Ari Streisfeld, Christopher Otto, and Kevin
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Courtenay Budd, David Del Tredici, and Gil Rose with BMOP, by Kathy Wittman "Rose, BMOP wax ecstatic in glorious, unsettling 'Alice'"Boston Globe, February 27, 2016 There are times, and they are not infrequent, when I worry that I've lost my knack for doing the things I used to do regularly at The New York Times,
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Coheed & Cambria, by Ben Stas for the Boston Globe "Coheed & Cambria, unmasked but still heroic at House of Blues"Boston Globe, February 24, 2016 Long months after I spoke with Claudio Sanchez about The Color Before the Sun, the revealing newest album from prog-punk quartet Coheed & Cambria, for the Rolling Stone website last
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Billy Sherwood, by Leslie dela Vega for Rolling Stone Yes + TotoFoxwoods Resort Casino, Mashantucket, MA, Aug. 7, 2015RollingStone.comAugust 8, 2015 My second piece of music writing for Rolling Stone, and a review I ought to have posted a long time ago… the very first show by Yes following the untimely death of founding bassist-vocalist
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