The Neave Trio Play Transcendent Works by Women Composers at Subculture

Earlier today, was the Neave Trio’s most sublime moment when violinist Anna Williams broke out an aching vibrato during a plaintive solo over a single raptly resonant Eri Nakamura piano chord? Or was it when Nakamura played a savagely sarcastic “charge” motif in the lefthand while whirling through evilly glittering circles with her right?

All that and a lot more happened during their performance of Rebecca Clarke’s 1921 Piano Trio. It’s a shatttering work, as good as anything Bartok or Shostakovich ever wrote at their most translucent. How rewarding it was to discover it on the group’s new album Her Voice, a collection of pieces by women composers. How much more of a thrill it was to see the group play it live at Subculture as part of the ongoing weekly GatherNYC series.

Built around a haunting minor-key chromatic riff, it was the one piece on the bill that gave cellist Mikhail Veselov the most time in the spotlight, particularly when he wove a battlefield haze of harmonies with Williams as Nakamura receded. An unexpectedly puckish coda to the second movement drew spontaneous applause; the danse macabre reprised at the end was even more chillingly vivid.

Likewise, disquiet remained at the forefront throughout most of another work from the new album, Amy Beach’s lushly cantabile Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 150, from 1938. Nakamura’s glimmering phrasing seemed both more crepuscular and muscular than on the album, up to a striking coda to wind up the first movement. The quasi-nostalgic waltz of the second and the echoes of Debussy and boogie-woogie woven into this shapeshifting nocturne at the end also had a welcome vigor.

As an encore, the trio rushed through a burst of Piazzolla, a momentary deviation from the album concept. Before the performance, Williams related how the trio were originally going to title the record 1.8, reflecting the percentage of women composers’ work being programmed by major orchestras  according to a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra survey. Things may have improved since then, but not enough.

There was also storytelling, a jarring interruption that brought to mind a song by a brilliant female composer who wasn’t on the bill, Americana tunesmith Karen Dahlstrom. The protagonist in the first number on her new album finds herself in a New Orleans bar, sitting across from a guy who unbuttons his shift to show her his scars. She doesn’t say anything, but thinks to herself, “I’ve weathered storms worse than these.”

The Neave Trio’s next performance is Nov 16 at 7:30 PM at the Chandler Center for the Arts, 71 N Main St. in Randolph, Vermont, including these works along with music by Cécile Chaminade and Jennifer Higdon. Cover is $25.

Next week’s installment of the GatherNYC series at Subculture (downstairs from the Culture Project Theatre at the corner of Bleecker and Lafayette) is at 11 AM on Nov 17 with chamber brass ensemble the Westerlies. Seemingly modeled on Lincoln Center’s hourlong Sunday morning “coffee concerts” at the Walter Reade Theatre, there’s java and breakfast snacks (before the show rather than after)…and possibly storytelling as well. Cover is $20.

An Elegantly Insightful, Unselfconsciously Vivid Performance by Pianist Melody Fader and Cellist Elinor Frey in Soho

“I don’t do intermissions,” Melody Fader grinned, almost breathlessly. She’d just played two Beethoven sonatas and a ravishing, opulent Chopin work, pretty much nonstop. During the reception after the latest performance at her intimate Soho Silk Series earlier this month, she explained that once she gets on a roll, she doesn’t like to quit. Maybe that’s because she and cellist Elinor Frey were obviously having so much fun, in an insightful, meticulously dynamic performance of Beethoven’s two Op. 5 cello sonatas as well as Fader’s literally transcendent performance of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27, no. 2 in D flat.

“These are really piano sonatas,” Fader laughed, introducing Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major. She and Frey bantered about the innovations Beethoven had introduced to a format that until after the baroque period had often been a springboard for improvisation. But as much as both pieces come across as works for piano with cello accompaniment rather than the other way around, there’s plenty of room for convivial interplay, and the duo’s sympatico performance more than validated that.

As Sonata No 1 gathered momentum, Fader parsed the work judiciously, with a muted staccato in the lefthand early on. As the two built to an effervescent romp, she gave the ornamentation considerable dignity, elegant flourishes not simply tossed off as grace notes. From there the two joined in a vivacious pulse that grew more acerbic as the allegro second movement and its bracing shift to minor kicked in.

Frey’s ambered lines as Cello Sonata No. 2 got underway underscored the first movement’s bittersweet cantabile sensibility. Fader’s vigorous, stilletto insistence and balletesque clusters followed in contrast up to a real hailstorm of a coda, with unwavering precision and power as Frey held the center.

But the real piece de resistance on the bill was the Chopin. Other pianists go for starry ripple, but Fader took her time, bringing out all the longing and angst in the opening movement, setting the scene for a big payoff when the starlight really started beaming down and the famous hook from all the excerpts you hear in movies first appears:, ironically where other pianists often pull back. Fader parsed the melodies with rubato to spotlight ideas and transitions instead of going for drama. Imbuing the finale with lingering tenderness, Fader left no doubt that this is a love song. Which made even more sense considering that Fader had dedicated it to her girlfriend, Laura Segal, a woman with a wry sense of humor and unselfconscious joie de vivre.

Fader’s next performance in the southern part of Manhattan is Nov 13 at 8 PM at Greenwich House Music School, where she’ll be joined by violinist Sophie Ackermann and cellist Nicolas Deletaille,, playing works by Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Dalit Warshaw. Cover is $20/$15 stud/srs. and there’s a reception afterward.

The Neave Trio Rescue Obscure Treasures by Women Composers

The Neave Trio – violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura – go looking more deeply for obscure treasures than most classical ensembles. Their previous album comprised the only known piano trios by Debussy, Fauré, and Roussel. Their new album Her Voice – streaming at Spotify  – is a rare recording of three pieces by pioneering women composers Louise Farrenc, Amy Beach and Rebecca Clarke. The ensemble are bringing those rarely performed works to life at Subculture on Nov 10 at 11 AM. Cover is $20; breakfast snacks (and presumably coffee) are included.

The first work on the album is Farrenc’s Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 33. The first woman to teach at the Paris Conservatory, she was highly regarded as both a pianist and composer throughout the mid-19th century. Don’t let the relentless cheer of the opening movement fool you into thinking that this is just faux-Schubert: proto-Jeff Lynne is more like it. The devious playfulness of the piano and cello underneath Williams’ emotive phrasing is hard to resist.

The second movement has the same translucent appeal, more sedately at first; the Bach-like counterpoint midway through is a neat trick. Movement three shifts abruptly from a generic minuet to a nocturnal theme, rising from steady and muted to a bracing variation on the triumphant opening theme, Nakamura’s icepick precision contrasting with Williams’ phantasmagorical broken chords. The trio vigorously synopsize this confidently mainstream piece of mid-1800s classicism with Farrenc’s dynamically shifting final movement

Beach’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 150, written in 1938, is her last major work. Nakamura’s eerily starlit phrasing sails over the similarly uneasy strings, fueling a stern, striking crescendo in the first movement. The three musicians waltz with a ghostly calm through the opening of the second movement. It’s nostalgia in disguise, followed by lively, early Debussy-esque quasi-ragtime. They wind it up with propulsive allusions to boogie-woogie juxtaposed with unsettled nocturnal gleam.

As an early 20th century orchestral violist, Clarke broke the gender barrier in more than one ensemble. Her only piano trio, from 1921, is a stunningly powerful piece of music, a major work that deserves to be part of the standard repertoire. It begins with the same restless, rippling intensity as Beach’s trio, only more so, quickly receding to a brooding, Ravel-esque theme anchored by a belltone pulse. Veselov gets to play a more acerbic, prominent role here more than in the two previous works. Maybe because Clarke was a violist, Williams is similarly enabled to air out her incisive midrange for maximum impact.

The second movement has a gorgeous menace, coldly jeweled piano against stark string harmonies, along with an unlikely, Dvorak-like homesick quality. The marionettish dance and wounded longing in the final movement are as impactful as anything Stravinsky ever wrote. What a treat it is to discover this via such an impassioned performance.

Karine Poghosyan Finds the Holy Grail with Russian Romantics at Carnegie Hall

“You’re not going to believe how funny this is,” Karine Poghosyan alluded as she lit into a puckishly rhythmic passage in La Semaine Grasse, from Igor Stravinsky’s solo piano arrangement of Petrouchka at Carnegie Hall last night. She didn’t say that in as many words, relating that information with her fingers and her face instead. By comparison, practically every other pianist’s version of the piece seemed at that moment to be impossibly tame.

On the surface, Poghosyan’s modus operandi is simple. Like a good jazz singer, she approaches the music line by line, sometimes teasing out the meaning, other times illuminating it with the pianistic equivalent of fifty thousand watts. Art for art’s sake is not Poghosyan’s thing. She’s all about narratives, and emotional content, and good jokes – even in the case of the evening’s program of Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff works from her latest album, where humor is so often fleeting. Matching a buttery, perfectly articulated legato to a thunderous lefthand attack, Poghosyan reaffirmed the album’s fullblown angst, and glory and triumph. She’s found her holy grail with this repertoire.

Poghosyan wears her heart on her sleeve: her features are just as entertaining to watch as her fingers. When her eyes grew wide and the muscles of her jaw grew taut, that was a sign to hang on for dear life. That held especially true in the encore, a machinegunning romp through the lightning cascades and jackhammer intensity of Khachaturian’s Toccata, not to mention the most demanding, intricately woven staccato passages of the Stravinsky. But there was just as much rapturous, closed-eyed cantabile reverie (Poghosyan played the whole program from memory) in Rachmaninoff’s six Moments Musicaux, which she delivered as a contiguous suite.

Her approach underscored how these relatively early works comprise some of the composer’s most ravishingly beautiful, shapeshifting melodies. But Poghosyan was just as attuned to momentary glee or sudden stressors as longscale thematic development. A sotto voce strut and a couple of emphatic “Take THAT!” riffs stood out amid spacious, achingly anticipatory resonance, several tributaries of ripples that would eventually coalesce to rolling rivers of notes, and eerie proto-Satie close harmonies and chromatics. Her gentle, endearing take of Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5 made considerable contrast, a rare carefree moment in the notoriously angst-ridden Rachmaninoff catalog.

She went deep into that with his Piano Sonata No. 2, spotlighting its persistent, unsettled quality. She really let the introduction breathe, taking her time, parsing the dichotomy between struggle and guarded optimism. Similarly, when the clearing finally came into view in the first movement, the effect was viscerally breathtaking. Others tend to interpret it as sentimental. To her, it seemed like genuine relief, knowing that the turbulence would return in full force, if balanced by moments of relative calm and even dancing ebullience.

Poghosyan’s precision throughout the daunting, icepick staccato of the trio of pieces from Petrouchka was astonishing. Other pianists with the virtuosity to play the Danse Russe tend to make a Punch and Judy show out of its relentless phantasmagoria. Generously employing the pedal, Poghosyan approached it as the grandest guignol imaginable, Stravinsky’s sardonic call-and-response notwithstanding. And her take of the first three movements of the Firebird was unselfconsciously revelatory: the famous symphonic hooks seemed practically muted amid the rest of the bustling, sometimes stampeding, often starkly distinct countermelodies.

The spectacle didn’t stop with the music. After big codas, Poghosyan didn’t throw her arms up quite as dramatically as she usually does, but she had her usual striking stagewear. This time, it was shimmery black slacks and a matching top for the first half, then after the intermission she switched to an ornate red gown. And she could have started a wholesale florist business with all the bouquets after the encore: in a world where people onstage and off are too often expected to behave sedately, this fan base didn’t hold anything back.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for November and December 2019

Daily updates – if you go out a lot, you might want to bookmark this page and check back regularly.

If you’re leaving your hood, don’t get stuck waiting for a train that never comes, make sure you check the MTA delays and out-of-service page for service cancellations and malfunctions, considering how unreliable the subway is at night and on the weekend.

If you don’t recognize a venue where a particular act is playing, check the comprehensive, recently updated list of over 200 New York City music venues at New York Music Daily’s sister blog Lucid Culture.

This is not a list of every show in town – it’s a carefully handpicked selection. If this calendar seems short on praise for bands and artists, it’s because every act here is recommended if you like their particular kind of music. Many different styles to choose from.

Showtimes listed here are set times, not the time doors open – if a listing says something like “9ish,” that means it’ll probably start later than advertised. If you see a show listed without the start time, that’s because either the artist, their publicist or the venue in question sent incomplete info – those acts are usually listed last on a particular date.  Always best to check with the venue for the latest information on set times and door charges, since that information is often published here weeks in advance.

If you see a typo or an extra comma or something like that, remember that while you were out seeing that great free concert that you discovered here, somebody was up late after a long day of work editing and adding listings to this calendar ;)

Weekly events first followed by the daily calendar:

On select Wednesdays and Sundays, an intimate, growing piano music salon on the Upper West Side featuring iconoclastically insightful, lyrical pianist Nancy Garniez – a cult favorite with an extraordinarily fluid, singing, legato style – exploring the delicious minutiae of works from across the centuries, beverages and lively conversation included! sug don, email for details/address

Mondays at 7 PM multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman’s popular western swing band Brain Cloud at Barbes followed at 9:30 PM by a variety of tropical bands playing cumbias, boogaloo, salsa, maybe all of the above.. Brain Cloud are also playing their 10th anniversary show on Nov 22 at 9 PM at the Jalopy for $20

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: as jazz goes, it’s arguably the most exhilarating show of the week, every week. The first-rate players always rise to the level of the material. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Mondays at the Vanguard the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra – composer Jim McNeely’s reliably good big band vehicle – plays 9/11 PM, $35 per set plus drink minimum.

Mondays in November, 9 PM eclectic, cinematic, funky jazz pianist Henry Hey leads a series of ensembles at the small room at the Rockwood

Mondays starting at 9:30 PM Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play two sets at Union Pool. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically woke, sexy original songs and is one of the most charismatic, intense live performers of our time. It’s a crazy dance party. Paula Henderson from Burnt Sugar is the usual lead soloist on baritone sax, with frequent special guests. Sizzling guitarist Binky Griptite – Sharon Jones’ lead player – is also often there.

Mondays at 10 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at the big room at the Rockwood, $10

Tuesdays at 9 PM, clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes (check the club calendar), $10 cover.

Wednesdays at 9ish the Binky Griptite Orchestra (formerly Sharon Jones’ brilliant oldschool soul backing band) at Threes Brewing Outpost, 113 Franklin St (Greenpoint/Kent Aves) in Greenpoint, free

Most Thursdays at 8:30, the Brooklyn Raga Massive – a rotating cast of A-list Indian, jazz and rock musicians who love to jam out classic Indian themes from over the centuries to the present day – play the Jalopy, $15 adv tix at the bar at the main space. Tons of special guests followed by a wild raga jam!

Fridays at 7:30 PM tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser leads his band at the Django. Jukebox jazz in a JD Allen vein but not as dark and more straight-ahead/groove-oriented: as postbop party music goes, nobody’s writing better than this guy right now.

Saturdays in November at 4 PM free concerts at Bargemusic;  usually solo piano or small chamber ensembles. If you get lucky, you’ll catch pyrotechnic violinist/music director Mark Peskanov and/or the many members of his circle. Early arrival advised.

Sundays in November, 5 PM hypnotic, whirlwind oudist and ngoni player Brandon Terzic  leads a series of Middle Eastern and West African ensembles at Barbes

Most Sundays at 5:15 PM starting in late September, a free recital on the amazing, powerful, dynamic new organ at St. Thomas Church at 5th Ave and 53rd St. featuring some of the world’s greatest organists. The space is magnificent and the music usually is too. Right now the church fathers are programming pretty much everybody who used to work here and play the mighty old Aeolian-Skinner organ that finally had to be replaced. Check the concert calendar for details.

Sundays at 8 PM purist guitarist Peter Mazza – who gets the thumbs up from bop-era legend Gene Bertoncini – leads a series of groups at the Bar Next Door

Sundays at 8:30/11 PM the epic, intense, politically fearless Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra at Birdland, $30 bar seating avail

Sundays at 9:30 PM paradigm-shifting Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel leads his band at Barbes – check the club calendar just to make sure.

11/1, 7 PM pianist Domenika Robe & violinist Simon Popovski play works by Franck, Kreisler, Ravel and Manuel Ponce at Gallery MC

11/1, 7 PM pianist Daniel Tendler and a chamber ensemble plays works by American composers Benjamin Lees, Margaret Mills, Charles Ives, Meredith Monk, Cheri Lee and others at Third St Music School Setttlement, free

11/1, 7:30/9:30 PM Erica Seguine conducts saxophonist Remy LeBoeuf’s big band Asssembly of Shadows playing the album release show for their new concept album – sort of the jazz equivalent of Stephen king’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon – at the Jazz Galley, $20

11/1, 9 PM hauntingly noisy/ambient cellist Leila Bordreuil with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo debuting an improvised duet, then joined by sound artist Stephan Moore at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

11/1, 8 PM the Sarah Weaver Ensemble with a phenomenal lineup including jane Ira Bloom on soprano sax, Min Xiao-Fen on pipa and Ned Rothenberg on reeds play the album releasr show for their lavlishly improvisational new one at the DiMenna Center,$20,$15 stud

11/1, busker legends the Xylopholks in their furry suits followed by the irrepressible, erudite, deviously funny Wade Ripka’s horn band Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for 89, a revolutionary date in case you missed it) playing Little Rascals theme music at Barbes

11/1-2, 8 PM avant violin star Pauline Kim Harris of String Noise at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

11/1, 9 PM dark lyrical soul jamband the Woes at Sunny’s

11/1, 10 PM Hollywood’s Dan Finnerty leads his savagely hilarious top 40 parody group the Dan Band at Joe’s Pub,, $25

11/1. 10:30 PM tuneful oldschool soul/jazz trombonist Dave Gibson leads a nonet at the Fat Cat

11/1-2, 10:30PM hard-hitting postbop tenor saxophonist Ralph Bowen leads his quartet at Smalls

11/2, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed at 8  by pyrotechnic singer Kamala Sankaram’s slinky, surfy, cinematic cumbia/Bollywood band Bombay Rickey and at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

11/2, 4 PM pianist Per Tengstrand plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Scandinavia house, $25

11/2, 7 PM the Adelphi Orchestra play works by Borodin, Prokofiev and Dvorak at Good Faith-Sheperd Church,152 West 66th St, $30

11/2, 7:30 PM Elliott Smith-esque chamber-pop band the Morning Sea play the album release show for their new one at the basement room at the Rockwood, $12. At 9 PM ubiquitous, moodily lyrical, politically savvy Irish folk-rocker Niall Connolly is at the small room and edgy, uneasy female-fronted retro new wavers the New Tarot play next door at the big room an hour later for $10. If you can’t get enough of the Rockwood,  haunting flamenco/Sicilian folk chanteuse Julia Patinella. is at the basement room at 10 for separate adm $tba

11/2, 7:30 PM latin soul guitarslingerDamian Quinones and his electric power trio at Silvana followed eventually at 10 by Argentinian dub reggae band Sessiones. 11/13 at 9 PM Quinones is at Bar Chord

11/2, 7:30 PM carnatic singer Namami Karmakar and ensemble at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

11/2, 8 PM trippy, dubby roots reggae and ska sounds with Avo & Skalopy at the Jalopy Tavern

11/2, 8:30 PM allstar violinis Jenny Scheinman and drummer Allison Miller’s Parlour Game trio with formidable pianist Carmen Staaf at Birdland, $30 seats avail

11/2, 9 PM Greg Lewis’ brilliant, fearlessly political Organ Monk Trio – who do a lot more than just B3 reinventions of Thelonoius Monk – at Bar Lunatico. He’s also there for brunch at 1 PM on 11/10 and 11/24

11/2, 9 PM pastoral guitarist duo Charlie Rauh & Cameron Mizell at Bar Thalia adjacent to Symphony Spae

11/2, 9:30 PM comedic, legenday SoCal first-wave punks the Dickies  at Coney Island Baby, $20. Smallest venue they’ve ever played in NYC, maybe ever, anywhere

11/2, 10 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at the Jalopy, $!0

11/2, midnight ferocious mariachi violinist Mireya Ramos leads her band playing a Day of the Dead celebration at Joe’s Pub, $20 av tix rec

11/3, 1 PM low-key deep-Brooklyn sounds with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens playing a gospel brunch show at Bar Lunatico. They’re also here on 11/17

11/3, 3 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play the Grieg Piano Concerto wit pianist Juho Pohjonen plus Brahms Symphony No 2 at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

11/3, 3 PM haunting, politically fearless, soaring Great Plains Gothic/psychedelic songwriter Rose Thomas Bannister at Bill’s Studio, 100 Observer Hwy in Hoboken, free

11/3, 4 PM fiery, deviously fun oldtimey swing guitarist/crooner Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band followed eventually at 9 PM b y intense noir Americana/honkytonk bandleader Karen Jonas at Skinny Dennis /

11/3, 4 PM a rare performance of subversive mid-20th century Zimbabwean chimurenga protest songs with Tanyaradzwa A. Tawengwa and ensemble, plus readings from Zimbabwean novels at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

11/3, 5 PM intense, pyrotechnic oudist and ngoni virtuoso Brandon Terzic plays Middle Eastern and west African sounds followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

11/3, 5 PM, repeating 11/6 at 7 irrepressible classical pianist and impresario Yelena Grinberg and Momenta Quartet violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron celebrate Clara Schumann and her contemporaries with a program including works by Cecile Chaminade, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Mendelssohn, Pauline Vardot, Amy Beach and Dame Ethel Smith at Grinberg’s upper westside piano salon, reception to follow, $35, close to the 1/2/3 train at 96th St., deets here 

11/3, 6 PM energetic delta blues/Romany swing guitaris Felix Slim followed by darkly torchy southwestern gothic/Europolitan songwriter/guitarist Miwa Gemini at LIC Bar

11/3, 7 PM Middle Eastern-inflected guitar improviser Ayman Fanous plays two sets: with Jason Hwang on violin and Ken Filiano on bass, the second at 8:30 with Ned Rothenberg on reeds at Scholes St. Studio

11/3, 7 PM dynamic, sizzling new jazz quartet Landline (Chet Doxas, Jacob Sacks, Vinnie Sperrazza and Zack Lober) play the release show for their debut album at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music $20

11/3, 7:30 PM  sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece and group at Smalls. 11/5 at 9 they’re at the Fat Cat

11/3. 8 PM haunting, multisylistic psychedelic soul/Americana bandleader Jenifer Jackson at the Owl. 11/4 same time she’s at the small room at the Rockwood

11/3, 8 PM lush, snidely lyrical parlor pop/new wave band Office Culture at Union Pool $12

11/3, 8 PM perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar.

11/3, 9 PM cleverly lyrical, edgily funny, soaring-voiced powerpop/acoustic rock singer Tamara Hey  at the small room at the Rockwood

11/4, 7 PM Greg Connors-  sharply lyrical janglerocker and first-class lead guitarist – at LIC Bar

11/4, 7 PM the Mercantillers sing sea chanteys at Cowgirl Seahorse – an apt choice at the South St. Seaport

11/4,, 7:30 PM riveting, charismatic, intuitive pianist Karine Poghosyan plays works by Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, $20 tix avail. She’s a force of nature, larger than life, the real deal.

11/4, 8 PM Dervisi Dervisi feat. guitar god Steve Antonakos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” and Middle Eastern flavored hash smoking anthems with special pyrotechnic guests singer Jenny Luna and reedman George Stathos at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Washington St at Fulton, C to Clinton-Washington. 11/6 at 8:30 Dervisi are at Troost

11/4, 8 PM popular classical violinist MIdori plays works by Vivian Fung, Sofia Gubaidulina, Olga Neuwirth and Tamar Diesendruck: at the Poisson Rouge, $25 adv tix rec

11/4, 9 PM edgy Russian minor-key stadium rock with Swanky Tiger at the Mercury, $10

11/4, 9:30ish Gato Loco bass saxophone monster Stefan Zeniuk’s new slightly less crazy band Green Mambo – a sly Perez Prado tribute – at Barbes

11/4, 9:30 PM new classical works for saxophones from the Mana Sax Quartet at Pete’s

11/5, 6 PM Carrie Bean Stute, cello and Domenic Salerni, violin play Bach cello suites plus works by Theofanidis and Schulhoff’s brilliant/obscure Duo for violin and cello at Elebash Hall , 365 5th Ave, free

11/5, 7 PM new string quartet Invoke play originals and new music by American composers including Takuma Itoh, Paul Wiancko, and Jessie Montgomery at Joe’s Pub, $20 adv tix rec

11/5, 8 PM explosive, theatrical, phantasmagorical indie/metal band A Deer A Horse plus the Art Gray Noizz Quartet feat Lydia Lunch plus members of Live Skull and Twin Guns at Brooklyn Bazaar, $12

11/5, 8 PM”sound artists Tania Caroline Chen and Ikue Mori “present an astro-electronic acoustic dream dialogue with special guest trombonst Jim Staley.” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

11/5-8, 8:30 PM wildly virtuosic jazz improv trumpeter Peter Evans leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: opening night with Joel Ross (vibraphone) Nick Jozwiak (bass) Savannah Harris (drums)

11/5-10, 8:30/10:30 PM lyrical jazz piano icon Fred Hersch leads a different trio (for him) with Drew Gress and Joey Baron at the Vanguard

11/5, 9:30 PM charismatic, sultry, torchy Americana songwriter/chanteuse Julia Haltigan and her fiery band at 11th St. Bar

11/6, 7 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10

11/6, 8 PM epic jazz guitarist Joel Harrison joins forces with Talujon Percussion Quartet for rapturous Indian sounds at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

11/6, 9 PM psychedelic soul band Frankie Sunswept and the Sunwrays at the Jalopy Tavern

11/6, 10:30 PM elegantly serpentine postbop jazz protest songs with drummer Rob Garcia‘s quintet with Leo Genovese on piano and Christopher McBride on sax at Smalls

11/6, 9 PM oldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Bar Chord. They’re also at 55 Bar on 11/23 at 7

11/6 10 PM Mingus Big Band drummer Clarence Penn leads a quintet with Donny McCaslin on tenor, sweet, at 55 Bar

11/7 7 PM actress Cécile Nordegg & Band “combine Edith Piaf and Frank Zappa in celebration of French jazz with a rock’n roll-twist” hmmm at the Austrian Cultural Center, free, rsvp req

11/7, 7 PM the High Low Duo – guitarists Cameron Greider and Jack Petruzzelli play “original surf and western swing instrumentals, but also venture into classical music. Tonight they team up with violinist Joel Lambdin for a set of haunting French music—Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite,” followed at 10 by slinky, hypnotic percussive Moroccan trance band Innov Gnawa at Barbes

11/7, 7:30 PM All-female Korean band The Tune combines shamanistic traditional music with art-rock at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

11/7, 7:30 PM string quartet Decoda play works by Mozart, Johann Christian Bach, Thomas Ades and Webern’s arrangement of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $32

11/7, 7:30 PM sizzling all-instrumental soul with the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio at Symphony space, $20 for 30 and  under, $30 otherwise\

11/7, 7:30 PM brilliant dark postbop piano jazz with the Arco Sandoval Asylum septet at Smalls

11/7, 8 PM pianist Ramin Amir Arjomand plays works by Bach, Giacinto Scelsi and an improvisation at the Italian Academy at Columbia, 1161 Amsterdam Ave just south of 118th, free

11/7, 8 PM oldschool latin soul and upbeat Americana with Nikki and the Human Element at Otto’s

11/7, 8 PM long-running 90s alt-country favorites Rusty Truck at Hill Country, free

11/7, 8:30 ish psychedelic supergroup the Elgin Marbles feat. members of Love Camp 7, Dervisi and Peter Stampfel’s jug band at Troost

11/7, 8:30 PM eclectic Italian folk group Ensemble Lucidarium with recorder player Avery Gosfield at Town & Village Social Hall, 334 E 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

11/7, 9 PM ferociously catchy. fearlessly populist ska-punk/latin rock band Outernational at Bar Chord

11/7, 10 PM the great unsung NYC hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar, Saul Rubin at the Fat Cat. He’s also here at here on 11/12 and 11/19 at 7

11/7, 11:30 PM vicious noiserock jamband the the Skull Practitioners– led by Steve Wynn sparring partner/genius guitarist Jason Victor at the Gutter, $7

11/8, 5:30 PM brooding cello slowcore songs with Meaner Pencil , skronky jazz guitarist Katy the Kyng, and  irrepressible multi-instrumentalist Joanna Sternberg wearing her front-porch folk guitarist hat at the American Folk Art Museum

11/8, 7 PM unusually adventurous indie classical ensembles Hotel Elefant playt play a Kamala Sankaram portrait concert, plus Sankaram’s slinky, surfy, cinematic cumbia/Bollywood band Bombay Rickey at Shapeshifter Lab, sug don

11/8, 7 PM psychedelic ambient Hungarian postfolk band Bajdázó make their US debut at Hungarian House, 213 E 82nd St, free

11/8, 7:30 PM hilarious, ageless hair metal parody band Satanicide at the Mercury, $10

11/8-9, 7:30 PM explosive vibraphonist Mark Sherman leads his quartet at Smalls

11/8, 7:30 PM Mexican folk-punk band Jenni & the Mexicats at the Posson Rouge, $15 adv tix red

11/8, 7 PM cellist Emily Brausa leads an emsemble playing works tba at Third St. Music School Settlement, free

11/8, 9 PM in reverse order at Footlight Bar: the irrepressible Ellia Bisker’s explosive Balkan/New Orleans flavored Funkrust Brass Band playing the album release show for their new one, psychedelic funksters the MK Groove Orchestra, and the Plaster Cramp – a darkly lyrical mashup of post-Velvets jangle and Talking Heads- $10

11/8 8 PM less of a bizarre twinbill than you might think: the Toomai String Quintet play works by Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, and Hermeto Pascoal, plus new string renditions of piano works by Heitor Villa Lobos. Followed at 10 by  Los Cumpleanos – with Nestor Gomez – vox/percussion; Lautaro Burgos – drums; Eric Lane – keyboards; Alex Asher – trombone and others playing trippy, dubwise tropical psychedelia at Barbes

11/8. 8:30 PM trumpeter Aaron Shragge leads a sextet playing brass versions of Tom Waits songs at Bar Lunatico

11/8, 10 PM hard-hitting bassist Dawn Drake & Zapote‘play  the album release show for her wildly psychedelic Afrobeat-flavored new one at Club Bonafide $15

11/8, 10 PM slashing lo-fi guttar blues songwriter/guitarist Breanna Barbara at the sultan Room, $10

11/8, 10:30 PM darkly cinematic, ornate surf instrumentalists the TarantinosNYC. at the Gutter, $7

11/9, 5 PM Persian sufi music with percussionist/vocalist Kamyar Arsani at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $20

11/9, 6 PM the all-female Quartetto Tomassini, play string arrangements of Astor Piazzolla classics at Club Bonafide, $15

11/9, starting at 6 PM “a Celebration of the Moldvai Csángó ethnic group: dance, music, songs, gastronomy, and the most archaic Hungarian dialect (Csángó dialect )” at Hungarian House, 213 E 82nd St, free

11/9, 6 PM  latin drum maven and West Side Story soundtrack reinventor Bobby Sanabria and band at Bethany Baptist Church,  275 W Market St, Newark, free

11/9, 7 PM brilliantly lyrical janglerock songwriter Florence Dore – who had a great run in NYC in the late 90s and early zeros before she became a fulltime unviversity professor and Faulkner specialist –  at Pete’s

11/9, 8 PM the world’s darkest, slinkiest, most blackly funny crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy play the album release show for their danceably creepy new one Dear Trouble at the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St. in Gowanus with special guests Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Slavic Soul Party’s Peter Hess on saxes and Miramar’s Farfisa sorceress Marlysse Rose Simmons, $20. Be aware that the 11/8 show is sold out

11/9, 8 PM atmospheric, psychedelic violinist/singer Concetta Abbate with the even more ambient Kris Wettstein at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

11/9 8 PM Snehesh Nag – sitar with Naren Budhakar – tabla at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, $20

11/9, 8 PM NY Polyphony sing works by England’s first great composer, John Dunstable and other early Albionic composers at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W 46th St,  $30 tix avail

11/9, 8 PM wildly diverse pastoral jazz/Americana violinist Skye Steele‘s Glorious Sunshine Band followed at 10 by psychedelic salsa bandleader Zemog El Gallo Bueno at Barbes

11/9 8 PM famous Indian carnatic violinist L Shankar at Roulette, $30

11/9 ,9 PM cellist/violinist Shana Tucker at the Apollo Music Cafe just east of the Apollo, upstairs, $22 tix avail at the Apollo box ofc (don’t buy thru ticketbastard because they datamine you online and rip you off especially if you;ve bought from them before)

11/9, 9:30 PM  catchy, slinky psychedelic funk/punk band Eliza & the Organix followed eventually at 11:30 by the similar but more sardonic and punky Hard Nips at the Gutter, $7

11/9, midnight brooding cello slowcore songs with Meaner Pencil aka Lenna M. Pierce at Muchmore’s

11/10, 11 AM the Neave Trio play material from their new album of works by 19th century women composers at Subcultrue. $20

11/10, 11 AM pianist Kit Armstrong plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center, $25, breakfast snacks/coffee after included

11/10,1 PM the perennially pioneering  Momenta Quartet play music by Mozart, Ligeti and Christopher Stark at the Andrew Freedman Home, 1125 Grand Concourse, between McClellan and E166th St in the Bronx,, 4/B/Dto 167th St

11/10,, 3 PM Monica Davis, viola; Benjamin Larsen, cello; David Oei, piano play George Antheil: Sonatina for Violin and Cello; Herbert Howells: Piano Quartet in a minor, op 21; Beethoven: Serenade, opus 8  at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

11/10, 4 PM An Die Musik play chamber works works by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel/Halvorsen and Schubert for oboe and strings at Merkin Concet rt Hall, $16

11/10. 4 PM pianist Eleonor Bindman plays Suites by J. S. Bach and Isaac Albeniz. at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, $20/$10 stud srs

11/10, 4:30 PM Sounds of America play works by Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla, Luis Laguna, Henry Martínez, and Rafael Hernández with violinist Eddy Marcano and guitarist/cuatro player Jorge Polanco at Greenwich House Music School, 415

11/10. 5 PM hypnotic, whirlwind oudist and ngoni player Brandon Terzic followed at 7 by tuneful avant gatde guitarist Gyan Riley and then at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

11/10, 5 PM trumpeter Matt Lavelle’s improvisational outfit 7 Houses followed at 8 PM ($15 separate adm) by new string music by Georgia Rae with Rose Kow Xiu Yi and Karl Henry at Arete Gallery

11/10, 5 PM Ensemble Connect play works by Poulenc, Mozart, & Beach at Out Savior’s Atonement, 178 Bennett Avenue (one block west of Broadway at 189th Street), free

11/11, 6 PM the Greenpoint Songwriters Exchange – a diverse bunch playing everything from folk noir to Costelloesque, literatry rock to Indian ragas and oldschool soul  –  followed at 10:30 by pastoral guitarist duo Charlie Rauh & Cameron Mizell at Pete’s

11/11, 7 PM tuneful postbop pianist Jim Ridl leads his group from behind the Rhodes at 55 Bar

11/11. 7 PM classy, cinematic, purist NZ jazz pianist Alan Broadbent  leads a trio at Mezzrows

11/11, 7 PM Toot Sweet play twisted theatrical accordion glam rock at the small room at the Rockwood.

11/11, 7:30 PM Terra Nostra Ensemble play their Suite Terra Nostra – original arrangements of traditional songs from Spain and different countries in Latin America, as well as the Piano Quintet Op. 49 by Enrique Granados at Greenwich House Music School, $15

11/11, 9:30 PM “the Slippery Fish “pay tribute to the Mexican pedal steel master Tõno Quirazco, who in the 1960’s combined the new sound of ska music out of Jamaica with country twang to invent a twist on the Caribbean sound. With Ari Folman-Cohen – bass and John Echelay – pedal steel,” at Barbes

11/11, midnight boisterously funny oldschool 60s C&W and brooding southwestern gothic with the Jack Grace Band at the Ear Inn

11/12, 6:30 PM Catalan composer Josep Prohens and pianist Andreu Riera team up for a retrospective celebration of Prohens’ piano works. at Elebash Hall, 365 5th Ave, free

11/12, 7 PM eclectic, hard-hitting, lyrical composer/tenor saxophonist Stan Killian at 55 Bar

11/12, 7 PM one of the year’s most haunting, relevant classical bills: the Daedalus Quartet play music by Viktor Ullman, Gabriel Bolaños and Mieczyslaw Weinberg at the Baruch Colllege Auditorium, pricy, $36/$16 stud but could be worth it

11/12, 7 PM pianist Giorgi Gigashvili plays works by Chopin, Ginastera, Prokofiev and others at the Americas Society, free, rsvp sug 

11/12, 7:30/9:30 PM the haunting, smokily atmospheric Michael Leonhart Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, $30

11/12, 7:30 PM whirlwind accordionist Matti Pulkki plays Finnish music for solo accordion by Einojuhani Rautavaara, Cecilia Damström and Magnus Lindberg with a premiere by Reiko Füting.at Scandinavia house, $15

11/12, 7;30 PM violinist Grace Park and ensemble play a program tba at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $20

11/12, 7 PM the Bushwick Book Club – a lit-rock collective including both some of NY’s smartest songwriting talent along with some dorky open mic lifers – followed at 9:30 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party

11/12, 7 PM the Vera Quartet and pianist Meng-Chieh Liu play a program tba at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

11/12, 7:30 PM Rogers & Butler – powerpop aces Ed Rogers and Steven Butler’s new duo project – and  perennially sharp;, wickedly tuneful, jangly Americana band Mary Lee’s Corvette at City Vineyard, $18

11/12, 8 PM rising star Middle Eastern singer Jennifer Grout with an allstar cast: Sami Abu Shumays – violin John Murchison – qanun Brian Prunka – oud Johnny Farraj – Riq Gilbert Mansour – darbuka play classic Egytian vocal tunes by including Oum Kalthoum, Asmahan, Souad Mohammed, and others at Siterss Brooklyn, 900 Fulton St. at Washington, C to Clinton/Washington

11/12-16, 8:30 PM lyrical latin jazz pianist Aruan Ortiz leads a series of ensembles at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick:: 11/14 his Pygmalion Project with Melanie Dyer (viola) Michaël Attias (sax) Arooj Aftab (voice)

11/12, 9:30 PM satirical German new wave/funk-punk band Die Goldenen Zitronen at the Mercury, $15 adv tix rec

11/13, 7 PM one of this era’s most vividly bustling, entertaining big bands, Miho Hazama & M-Unit at at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rc

11/13, 8ish brand new Brookliyn honkytonk band Lissy & The Jacks at the Jalopy Tavern

11/I3, 8 PM ish Iron Kingdom – British Columbia’s female-fronted answer to Iron Maiden – at Blackthorn 51, $12

11/13, 8 PM intuitive, lyrical pianist  Melody Fader with Sophie Ackerman and cellist Nicolas Delataille play works by Mendelssohn, Debussy, Ravel and Dalit Warshaw at Greenwich House Music School, $20/$15 stud/sra

11/13, 8 PM the Nouveau Classical Project play works by Paul Pinto, Bethany Younge and Mieko Shiomi at Arete Gallery, $15

11/13. 9 PM unpredictably fun, funny  art-rock/psychedelic soul band the Academy Blues Project at LIC Bar

\11/13, 9 PM dark, new wave-ish lit-rock bandleader Dalton Deschain  at Arlene’s, $10

11/13, 10 PM wildfire neo-klezmer violinist/composer Ben Sutin leads his quartet at Pete’s

11/13, 10 PM psychedelic funk/Afrobeat jammers the People’s Champs at the Sultan Room, $12

11/14, 7 PM the Orchestra Now play the first NYC performances in over 50 years of rarely-heard pieces by Arthur Honegger and Dimitri Mitropoulos, along with the Divertimentosuite from Stravinsky’s ballet score The Fairy’s Kiss at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, $25

11/14. 7 PM  soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar at 55 Bar

11/14-15, 7:30/9:30 PM reliably tuneful postbop piano vet George Cabless leads a trio at Mezzrow

11/14, 7:30 PM, repeating 11/15-16 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet Overture, $34. Be aware that there’s also a modern work by a precious wannabe goth-rock boy on the bill which you will want to avoid

11/14, 730 PM clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party at Symphony Space, $20 for under 30, $30 otherwise

11/14, 7:30 PM the Attacca Quartet with Caroline Shaw (prexumably on vocals and violin) at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

11/14, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies at Barbes

11/14, 8 PM perennially interesting piano/percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire  lead an ensemble playing an all Annea Lockwood program at the Miller Theatre, $20 tix avaial

11/14,8:30 PM ferocious klezmer violinst Jake Shulman-Ment’s Fidl Kapelye town &

11/14, 9 PM  quirky, jangly psych-pop band Rancho Cowabunga  at Pete’s

11/14, 9 PM fiery 19th century style oldtimey string band the Four O’Clock Flowers  at Sunny’s

11/14, 9 PM newschool honkytonk band Sarah Shook & the Disarmers at the Knitting Factory, $15

11/15, 6:30 PM haunting, fearsomely powerful soul belter and noir Americana songstress Karen Dahlstrom at the American Folk Art Museum

11/15, 7 PM magical Balkan accordionist Merima Ključo and contralto vocalist Jelena Milusic at Elebash Hall, $25

11/15, 7 PM violinist Chiu-Chen Liu plays a program tba at Third St. Music School Settlement, free

11/15, 7:30 PM conguero Edwin Bonilla leads his salsa dura band at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

11/15, 8 PM avant garde trumpeter Nate Wooley leads an ensemble works by Eva-Maria Houben, Katherine Young: and Ryoko Akama at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

11/15-16, 8 PM fearlessly relevant, genuinely riveting, populist tenor sax visionary/improviser Matana Roberts at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

11/15, 8 PM rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY followed at 10 by ferocious, creepily enveloping, kinetic psychedelic tropicalia band Yotoco at Barbes

11/15, 8 PM at  Our Savior’s Atonement Lutheran (178 Bennett Ave.), repeating 11/16 at 3 at Fort Washington Collegiate Church (729 W. 181st St.) the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra play Valerie Coleman: Afro-Cuban Concerto; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581; Arnold Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9, $7

11/15, 8:30 PM brilliant retro blues/New Orleans soul/Americana songwriter Pokey LaFarge solo at the Bell House, $20 gen adm

11/15, 10ish popular fuzztone psychedelic rock road warriors the Mystery Lights at the Market Hotel, $15

11/15, 11:30 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful, female-fronted power trio Castle Black at the Gutter

11/16, 8 PM West Virginia musicologists/musicians Carrie & Michael Kline and oldtime front porch folk band Triboro at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away”

11/16, 8 PM  poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo’s tango quartet followed at 10 by  feral singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Barbes, who are also here on 11/25 at around the same time. Giraudo is also at Bar Lunatico on 11/20 at 8:30

11/16 ,8 PM bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck joined by an ensemble playing new works by iconoclast composers Eva-Maria Houben, Sarah Hennies, Katherine Young, and Ryoko Akama at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

11/16, 8 PM  the new generation’s most eclectic jazz harpist, Brandee Younger leads a quintet with Chelsea Baratz on sax at the Miller Theatre, $20 tix avail

11/17, 11 AM brass chamber ensemble the Westerlies at Subculture. $20

11/17. noon jazz violinist Majid Khaliq leads a quartet plus choir in a tribute to Grover Washington Jr.’s violinist John Blake Jr. at Joe’s Pub, $15

11/17, 4 PM the Catalyst Quartet play music of African-American composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

11/17, 5 PM hypnotic, whirlwind oudist and ngoni player Brandon Terzic  followed at 7 by brilliant steel guitarist Mike Neer’s Steelonious – who do Monk covers in the same vein as Buddy Emmons –  followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

11/17, 5 PM, releating 11/20 at 7 irrepressible classical pianist and impresario Yelena Grinberg  and pianist Elena Kuschnerova celebrate Clara Schumann and her contemporaries plus works by Schubert, Brahms and Robert Schumann at Grinberg’s upper westside piano salon, reception to follow, $35, close to the 1/2/3 train at 96th St., deets here 

11/17, 6 PM first-class indie classical pianist Zosha DiCastri plays the album release show for her new one at the Tenri Institute, $15/$10 stud/rs lncludes copy of the album

11/17, 7 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez and guitar wizard Erik Della Penna of Kill Henry Sugar play NY-centric songs at Pangea, $25

11/17, 7:30 PM sharpy lyrical pianist Kelly Green leads a trio at Mezzrow

11/17, 8 PM fearlessly relevant, genuinely riveting, populist tenor sax visionary/improviser Matana Roberts airs out “the fourth chapter of her innovative and profoundly iconoclastic COIN COIN project” at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

11/18, 7:30 PM new wave era nostalgia: Runaways frontwoman and solo artist Cherie Currie and Fanny drummer and singer Brie Darling at the Poisson Rouge, $20 ad tix rec. Where’s Marie Currie when we need her?

11/18, 9 PM surreal, amusingly bombastic heavy psych band Howling Giant at the Kinitting Factory, $10; avoid the lame 8 PM and 10 PM acts

11/18, 9:30ish ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach at Barbes

11/18, 9:30 PM legendary dual-reedman George Braith – who can play two saxes at once better than most guys can play one – leads his quartet at the Fat Cat

11/19, 7 PM ish  allstar Americana jammers the Honky-Tonk Heroes,, featuring Springsteen pianist Charlie Giordano, Gene Yellin, Trip Henderson, Tim Kiah and some surprise guests  at the Jalopy Tavern

11/19, 7 PM Brooklyn Brassens: “Georges Brassens, anarchist, provocateur and French poet, gets his repertoire re-arranged for a Nigerian-influenced quartet. With Francis Jacob – guitar, Vocals; Bennett Paster – keyboard; Derek Nievergelt – bass and AJ Olusegun – conga followed at 9:30 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

11/19, 7:30 PM the best singing pianist (and the best piano-playing singer) in jazz, Champian Fulton in a rare duo wih bassist Hide Tanaka at Mezzrow

11/19, 7:30 PM the Irish Chamber Orchestra play works by Mozart, Mendelsssohn and Weber at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Halll, $30

11/19, 7:30 PM a wildly good acoustic blues twinbill:  Jontavious Willis & guitar/banjo/piano genius Jerron Blind Boy Paxton at City Vineyard, $20

11/19-24, 7:30/9:30 PM  guitar icon Bill Frisell at the Jazz Standard, $35. 11/19 with his long-running trio with Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen; 11/21-22 solo; 11/23-24 leading a chamber jazz quartet with Hank Roberts on cello

11/19, 8 PM crystalline-voiced noir Americana songwriter Jessie Kilguss with her excellent band  at 11th St. Bar

11/19 ,8:30 PM quirky, smartly lyrical avant cello-rock band the Icebergs at Pete’s

11/19, 9 PM all-female pan-latin jazz jamband Cocomama at the Fat Cat

11/19, 9 PM intense, multistylistic blues guitarist/singer Will Scott  at Sunny’s

11/20, 630 PM Chinese pipa virtuoso Zhou Yi at the China Institute, 100 Washington Str $20

11/20, 7 PM the irrepressible, cinematic, comedic Broken Reed Saxophone Quartet at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, $10

11/20, 7:30 PM the Alexander String Quartet play Mozart Quartet, KV 465, “Dissonant”; Shostakovich Quartet No. 12, Op. 133; Mendelssohn Quartet, Op. 13, at the Baruch Colllege Auditorium, pricy, $36/$16 stud but could be worth it. They’re also playing a free show featuring Beethoven: String Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3; Beethoven: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59. No. 3 the following day, 11/21 at 2:45 PM, free tix req 

11/20, 8 PM singer Dida Pelled salutes obscure and cult favorite women songwriters including Connie Converse, Elizabeth Cotten, Molly Drake, Vashti Bunyan and Norma Tanega at Barbes

11/20, 8 PM Nick Podgurski and his ensemble Feast of the Epiphany play keyboard-driven punk art-rock at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

11/20, 8 PM postbop saxophonist Michael Blake and his quartet the Digging at Erv’s, 2122 Beekman Place, Crown Heights, sug don

11/20, 10 PM smartly tuneful oldschool soul/psych-pop songwriter Mimi Oz  at the small room at the Rockwood

11/20, 10:30 PM trippy downtempo keys/trumpet/drums improvisation with Covered in Peanut Butter at the basement room at the Rockwood, free

11/21. 7 PM fhe Geenwich Vilage Chamber Music Society play works by Rachmaninoff & Brahms at te Tenri institute, free

11/21, 730 PM, repeating 11/23 at 8 the NY Philharmonicl with solist Alisa Weilerstein play Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto, Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 and Dvorak’s Symphony No 4, $32 tix avail

11/21, 7:30 PM soca hall of famer Mighty Sparrow in a relatively intimate show, omg, at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

11/21. 7:30 PM pianist Per Tengstrand and ensemble Opus 21 play a chamber version of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 plus Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G Minor at Scandinavia House, $25

11/21, 8 PM Rena Anakwe “presents the third and final work of her 2019 residency with the premiere of Ogwu (the healing), an immersive purification ritual sculpted through a visual, sound, and scent bath inspired by the element of fire” at Issue Project Room, free

11/21 ,8 PM kinetic improvisational rapture: bassist Luke Stewart with dancer Miriam Parker followed by bracing singer Amirtha Kidambi and sound artist Lea Bertucci at Fridman Gallery, 169 Bowery, $15

11/21. 8:30 PM spirited Yiddish songs wih Susan Leviton and Lauren Brody at Town & Village Social Hall, 334 E 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

11/21, 9 PM satirical punk rocker and Freddys’ legend Paranoid Larry in a now-rare live gig on his old/new home turf

11/22, 7 PM pianist Mira Gill plays a program tba at Third St. Music School Settlement, free

11/22, 7:30 PM the Mannes Chamber Orchestra play Penderecki’s Threnody To The Victims of Hiroshima plus 20th century works by George Rochberg, Henry Cowell and Johanna Beyer’s Music of the Spheres at the first-floor New School auditorium at 63 5th Ave, free

11/22, 7:30 PM flute/violin/cello trio Eight Strings and a Whistle play works by CPE Bach, Siegfried Thiele, 8SW Featured Composers Pamela Sklar and Douglas Anderson, at te tenri institute, $tba

11/22-23, 7:30 PM the perennially intense, tuneful godfather of edgy, lyrical, anthemic downtown NYC rock, Willie Nile at the Mercury where he made that sizzling live album all those years ago, $25

11/22,  8 PM intense Balkan chanteuse Jenny Luna‘s haunting, traditional Turkish band Dolunay followed at 10 by followed at 10 by the world’s darkest, slinkiest, most blackly funny crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy at Barbes

11/22, 8 PM pianist Matthew McCright performs piano works from a diverse set of living composers: Kirsten Broberg, Kyong Mee Choi, Christopher Coleman, Sean Friar, Dorothy Hindman, Mike McFerron, Ingrid Stölzel, and Robert Voisey. at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $20

11/22. 8 PM the Kyle Simpson Chamber Orchestra and Red Line String Quartet play a live score to Georges Méliès’ most famous French silent films A Trip to The Moon (1902) and The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903). at the DiMenna Center, $10

11/22, 8 PM pianist and composer Gustavo Casenave plays with his eclectic quartet including bassist Pedro Giraudo,  saxophonist Alejandro Aviles and drummer guru Franco Pinna, playing Casenave’s original jazz, tango, and classical works at Flushing Town Hall, $16/$10 srs/under 18 free w/ID

11/22, midnight  bass sax monster Stefen Zeniuk’s punk mambo crew the NY Fowl Harmonic at  at Branded Saloon

11/22, midnight black metal spoof band Witch Taint at the Mercury, $12

11/23, 5 PM cellist Paul Brantley plays works by Anonymous, 14th Century plus his own compositions and pieces by Buxtehude, Tina Davidson, Shemaria, and Joseph Zawinul, Brantley will perform the beloved Suite in D minor for solo cello by J.S. Bach. At Out Savior’s Atonement, 178 Bennett Avenue (one block west of Broadway at 189th Street), sug don

11/23. 8 PM gritty Iraqi maqam music icon Hamid Al-Saadi with trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s hypnotic, incisive classical Iraqi music ensemble Safaafir  at P at Roulette, $30

11/23, 7 PM soprano Lucy Dhegrae sings a program in solidarity with women who’ve survived violent sexual assault;, works include a  world premiere of Osnat Netzer’s Philomelos, plus pieces by Jason Eckardt, Bethany Younge, Maria Stankova, Vinko Globokar, and Caleb Burhans at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

11/23, 8 PM the Attacca Quartet   play the album release for Nathan Schram’s latest electroacoustic release, Oak and the Ghost at 1 Rivington St, 2nd fl, $20/$10 stud/srs

11/23. 8 PM edgy oldschool and newer soul styles with singer Maya Sharpe at the small room at the Rockwood

11/22, 8:30 PM eclectic stoner folk with Odetta Hartman followed by enigmatic psychedelic funk guitarist/singer Aubrey Haddard and her band at C’mon Everyody $12

11/22-23, 7:30/9:30 PM vibraphonist Joel Ross’ genuinely Good Vibes band at the Jazz Gallery, $25

11/22. 9 PM oldschool 80s downtown postpunk legends Disturbed Furniture at the Way Station

11/22, 9:30 PM rambunctious newgrass band Goodnight Texas at the Knitting Factory, $10

11/23, 4 PM a rare NYC concert by Japanese koto and shamisen player Yoko Reikano Kimura at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $30

11/23, 7 PM works by Schoenfield, Piazzolla, and Haydn performed by  Yu Jeong Lee on violin, Min Park on flute, Na-Young Baek on cello, and Edwin Sungpil Kim on piano.at Flushing Town Hall $16/$10 srs/free for students 19-under w/ID

11/23, 7 PM new music for string quartet by Pan, Swidler, Selin, Grosshandler and Vigneau-Britt performed by the Xanthoria Quartet at Scholes St Studios

11/23, 8 PM choral folk traditions in concert: Wyndborne and the even more globally-inspired Asaran Earth Trio at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

11/23. 8 PM pioneering French musique concrete composer/performers Beatriz Ferreyra & Christine Groult at Issue Project Room, $15/$12 stud/srs

11/23, 8 PM the Manhattan Wind Ensemble play works by Vaughan Williams Viet Cuong, mark camphouse and others at Sypohnny Space, $12 adv tixavail

11/23. 8 PM 80s goth icons Clan of Xymox at the Poisson Rouge, $25 adv tix rec. Watery chorus-box bass! Synthesized strings!

11/23, 9 PM multi-instrumentalist Brian Carpenter’s noir, cinematic, epic Ghost Train Orchestra at the Jalopy, $12 adv tix avail at the venue

11/23. 9 PM searing, fearlessly political gutter blues songwriter/guitarist Molly Ruth at Bar Chord. If she’s solo, she’s a force of nature; if she’s with the band. be aware that the Bleecker Street hacks in it can’t figure out how to do her stuff smooth and hippie-friendly

11/23, 10 PM awesomely slinky, psychedelic Israeli Ethiopiques groove instrumentalists Anbessa Orchestra at Barbes

11/23, midnight anthemic Iron Maiden-style metal band the Blackfires at the Mercury, $12

11/24, 11 AM pensive, eclectic, tuneful jazz songwriter/chanteuse Becca Stevens at Subculture. $20

11/24, 2 PM fiery ecological activist/bandleader Rev. Billy and his massive original gospel-style choi at Joe’s Pub, $15, Followed eventually at 9:30 by choreographer Miguel Gutierrez’s Sadonna project – sad versions of Madonna songs – for $20 separate adm

11/24, starting at 2 PM the annual Mannes Chamber Bash featuring classical ensembles of various sizes playing a program tba in various spaces throughout the building at 55 W 13th St., free

11/24, 3 PM the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine with Olga Kern on piano play Berezovsky: Symphony in C; Tchaikovsky: Polonaise (Eugene Onegin); Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 at NJPAC in Newark, $30 tix avail

11/24, 3 PM  the Greenwich Village Orchestra play Beethoven Symphony No. 6, Pastoral and the Dvořák Cello Concerto Prokofiev Selections from The Love for Three Oranges*; Mussorgsky Songs and Dances of Death; Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade at All Saints Church, 230 E 60th St (2/3rd Aves) $25 sug don

11/24, 4 PM genre-busting, pioneering string ensemble the Turtle Island Quartet at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

11/24, 4 PM early music ensemble Alkemie jam out medieval British themes at Arete Gallery, $15. Followed at 8 ($15 separate adm) by Ghost Ensemble playing works by Pauline Oliveros, Ben Richter, Kevin Kay and others ghostensemble.org

11/24, 5 PM violist Jessica Thompson (Daedalus Quartet) and pianist Andrea Lam (Claremont Trio),team up for works by Bach, Britten, Kurt Rohde, and Schumann at the Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 128 Pinehurst Ave @ W 183rd St, A train or #1 train (to 181st St) or the M4 bus (to 183rd St), $15/$12 stud/sr

11/24, 6 PM guitarslinger Mallory Feuer’s fiery band the Grasping Straws – sort of a mashup of Patti Smith and Hole’s first album – followed by the similarly dark, more eclectic, psychedelic  enigmatic Lorraine Leckie and her killer band at the Mercury, $10

11/24, 7 PM Jimbo Mathus’ Incinerator (ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers guitar monster) at the big room at the Rockwood, $15

11/25, 10 PM tuneful drummer/composer Ben Perowsky, leads his group at 55 Bar

11/26, 7 PM  ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s new psychedelic tropicalia project CAMPOS  followed by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

11/26, 7:30 PM hauntingly psychedelic folk noir/art-rock multi-instrumentalist songwriter  Holly Miranda at City Vineyard, $15

11/26, 7:30/9:30 PM hard-charging postbop tenor saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins leads a quartet at the Jazz Galery, $20

11/26, 7:30 PM salsa jazz grooves with Cuban pianist Dayramir González & Habana enTRANCé at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

11/26, 6 PM TAK ensemble play works by Taylor Brook, Erin Gee, Tyshawn Sorey and others at the Miller Theatre, free

11/26, 8 PM accordion genius Shoko Nagai and trumpeter Ron Horton’s improvisational Fido Quartet at Arete Gallery, $15

11/26-30, 8:30/10:30 PM the reliably electrifying Jason Moran & the Bandwagon at the Vanguard, this is gonna sell out, get there early

11/26, 9 PM drummer Kate Gentile‘s Batterie with Jon Irabagon on sax and Matt Mitchell on pianoi at the Sultan Room, $!2

11/26, 10:30 PM charismatic, adventurous postbop/avant garde trombonist/crooner Frank Lacy and band at Smalls

11/27, 7 PM  perennially entertaning Irish party band Shilelagh Law at Connollly’s, $tba

11/27, 10 PM high-voltage psychedelic cumbia/Afrobeat jamband MAKU Soundsystem play the album release show for their new one at the Sultan Room, $12

11/29-30, 7:30/9:30 PM darkly colorful, perennially interesting bassist Linda May Han Oh leads her band at the Jazz Gallery, $25

11/29, 7:30 PM Glass Farm Ensemble plays duos for violin (Pauline Kim Harris) and piano/toy piano (Yvonne Troxler), with music by Louis Andriessen, Willy Burkhard, Stefano Gervasoni, Elizabeth Hoffman, Denis Schuler and Yvonne Troxler at Symphony Space, $20 adv tix rec

11/29-30, 8 PM lyrical, cerebral pianist Matt Mitchell at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

11/29, 10 PM Terapia & Verbena play oldschool and newschool champeta at Barbes

11/24, 5:30 PM Albanian Romany guitarist Taulant Mehmeti‘s Gypsy Quartet at Birdland, $30

11/30, 2 PM Jaap Van Zweden conducts he NY Philharmonic in the Mozart Wind Serenade and Tschaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, $34 tix avail

11/30, 9 PM Amayo’s Fu-Arkist-Ra mash up Afrobeat and ancient Chinese grooves at Bar Lunatico

12/2, starting at 6ish the annual Winters Eve festival at and around the triangla where Broadway meets Columbus Ave, some surprisingly good acts show up and play in the cold. Klezmer under the xmas tree, maybe?

12/2, 7 PM Colombian-Haitian roots dance band Strings & Skins at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, note early showtime

12/2, 7:30 PM percussionist/composer Qasim Naqvi, violinist Jennifer Koh and singer Davóne Tines perform Naqvi’s compositions plus works by J. S. Bach, Hildegard of Bingen, Isang Yun, and traditional African-American spirituals at Music Mondays, Advent Church, northwest corner of 93rd and Broadway, free

12/3 7 PM Venice-themed “madrigals for cello, choir, and city” by Andrea Liberovici performed by Aaron Wolff, cello with the Fractio Modi vocal quartet at the Italian Academy at Columbia, 1161 Amsterdam Ave just south of 118th, free

12/3 7 PM soprano Lucy Dhegrae and the Talea Ensemble play David Adamcyk’s new composition, Father, My Father, a reflection on the #MeToo movement at the Americas Society, free, rsvp sugg

12/10, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, badass harp virtuoso Bridget Kibbey plays works by Bach, Gershwin, Albeniz and Tschaikovsky at the Miller Theatre, free

12/12, 7:30 PM Indian and latin-tinged jazz improvisation with the Karuna Trio featuring Hamid Drake, Adam Rudolph, and Alexis Marcelo at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free

12/14, 7:30 PM ruthlessly funny, politically satirical faux-folk duo Friends Who Folk (Rachel Wenitsky and Ned Riseley) at Union Hall, Union St. north of 7th Ave in Park Slope, $10

12/19 730 PM Los Rumberos del Callejón bring their salsa out of the alley at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, get there early

Jessie Montgomery Brings Her Potently Relevant New Compositions Back to Her Home Turf

Oldtimers reminisce about the glory days of the East Village in the 1970s, but as violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery reminded last night, the blight of gentrification had already begun to infest the area. Greedy landlords were already hell-bent on evicting residents of the multicultural artistic neighborhood, whose poets, musicians and artists by then were predominantly Puerto Rican. Montgomery’s show last night at the Metropolis Ensemble’s intimate Rivington Street digs with a series of ensembles, just a few blocks south of where she grew up, sent an acerbic shout-out to the LES’s defiant, determined people. It was a cosmopolitan party for the right to fight.

Joined by soprano Mellissa Hughes on vocals, Jessica Meyer on viola, Gabriel Cabezas on cello and Eleonore Oppenheim on bass, Montgomery led various permutations of the ensemble through a series of edgy, incisively melodic recent works. To begin the evening, Hughes’ regal, steady delivery imbued LES poet Bimbo Rivas’ bittersweet mid-70s tribute to his home turf with unexpected gravitas over the strings’ terse counterpoint.

Montgomery’s Duo for Violin and Cello had a similarly concise interweave. She likes to use the entirety of the violin’s range, and that vivid sense of color extends to other instruments as well. Unexpectedly, what was possibly the most riveting interlude of the evening was a still, stygian soundscape which she played with her duo Big Dog Little Dog with Oppenheim. Montgomery’s silken high harmonics contrasted with Oppenheim’s big muddy river, slowly fading out as the bassist bowed her strings right at the tailpiece for a sepulchral wash of overtones that finally vanished into silence. It’s hard to imagine another piece for bass that calls for so much in the upper registers.

Meyer’s Space in Chains, for soprano and viola, shifting from steady, swaying, incisive riffage to clenched-teeth flurries, giving voice to another neighborhood poet, Laura Kasischke, whose contention was that music is “The marriage of rhythm and antisocial behavior.” After Montgomery and Oppenheim’s twin canine project – “We switch off,” Oppenheim deadpanned, explaining who’s the big dog in the band – the group closed with Montgomery’s enigmatically lilting Lunar Songs, utilizing texts by J. Mae Barizo. Whoever thinks that new chamber music doesn’t have any social relevance missed this show.

The ongoing series of concerts at the second-floor space at 1 Rivington St. just east of Bowery continues on Nov 23 at 8 PM with the Attacca Quartet playing the album release show for their new recording of Nathan Schram‘s Oak and the Ghost; admission is $20/$10 stud/srs.

A Darkly Glorious, Poignant New Album of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky and a Carnegie Hall Gig by Pianist Karine Poghosyan

It’s as validating for an audience or a critic to watch an artist move in a direction that maximizes that musicians’s talent, as it ultimately is for the artist. One ravishing example of an artist who followed her muse to a nirvana state is pianist Karine Poghosyan‘s new recording of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, which hasn’t hit the usual streaming spots yet. It’s repertoire she may not have been destined to play – but choosing that destiny was a stroke of brilliance. “If it doesn’t have a story, it doesn’t exist,” Poghosyan asserts, and she goes deep into the dynamics of some of the most challenging material in the Romantic repertoire for all the poignancy and exhilaration of those narratives. She’s playing the album release show on Nov 4 at 7:30 PM at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall; you can get in for $25.

She begins the record with Rachmaninoff’s six Moments Musicaux, Op. 16. In the first, Andantino in B Flat Minor, a suspenseful, subtle rubato permeates the nocturnal lustre, Poghosyan’s starry triplets in contrast with the steady undercurrent. Then she eases the rhythm for the plaintive, Satie-esque theme that follows. The blend of bittersweetness and tenderness is exquisite. What a way to open the album.

Poghosyan plays the rivulets and daunting cascades of No. 2 in E Flat Minor with a dramatic sway, then lets the spaces in between the somber notes of No. 3, Andante Cantabile in B Minor resonate equally, ramping up the misterioso factor. But counterintuitively, she takes a muted, furtively scampering approach to the rapidfire chromatics of No. 4, Presto in E Minor, first in the righthand and then the left: the exchange of power throughout the piece is magnetic in every sense of the word.

With its understated wave motion, No. 5, Adagio Sostenuto in D Flat Major comes across as a genial canal boat theme – or Volga riverside promenade, maybe. The last in the series, Maestoso in C Major is clearly a triumphant love song, as Poghosyan sees it, rich with understatement and siklen legato, resisting any temptation to go for bombast as others might.

All that is a setup for the daunting virtuosity of Stravinsky’s own piano arrangement of three movements from Petrouchka, a Poghosyan concert favorite. The first, the Danse Russe, has a stunningly fleet-fingered pointillism: it’ balletesque in the best sense. Again, Poghosyan’s use of space to set up the phantasmagoria and funhouse-mirror disquiet of Chez Petrouchka is stunning, particularly as it sets the stage for her richly resonant approach as the music grows more lush and enveloping. So the return to pinpoint precision in La Semaine Grasse is a stark contrast – but an unexpectedly wry one. What a ridiculously funny romp some of this music is: Poghosyan can’t resist a good joke when she can find it.

As she also likes to do, she pulls out a rare gem: Rachmaninoff’s Lilacs, Op. 21, No. 5, a rare carefree moment from someone best known for his most haunting works. A growing storm lingers as Poghosyan makes her way cautiously into his Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Flat Minor, then turning the drama and angst loose before spaciously backing away again. The relative calm Poghosyan brings to the rest of the first movement is a rarity: was it hard for her to resist rampaging through it, or is this (more likely) the case of someone determined to create a full portrait rather than simply going for adrenaline?

Gentle hesitancy slowly moves toward joy in the similarly restrained second movement before Rachmaninoff darkens the skies: that grimly gorgeous theme is one of the album’s most striking passages. In the final movement, Poghosyan maintains the understatement, especially when the most Stravinsky-esque, distantly carnivalesque melodies appear.

Poghosyan returns to Stavinsky to close the album with the Agosti arrangement of three movements from the Firebird Suite: a glittering, gleefully precise tour of the carnivalesque Dance Infernale, a steady, portentous Berceuse and an almost allusively regal Finale.

Whatever slight imperfection might exist in this rich interpretation of some of the most difficult music in the repertoire disappears in light of Pogosyan’s erudite, richly insightful, crepuscularly thrilling interpretations. Fans of Vladimir Horowitz’s virtuosically passionate approach to this music will find Poghosyan’s own individualistic take on it to be equally rewarding.

Things Go Bump in the Night With the Momenta Quartet

It’s extremely rare that an artist or group make the front page here more than once in a single week. But today, because the Momenta Quartet play such stylistically diverse, consistently interesting music, they’ve earned that distinction – just like the Kronos Quartet have, on two separate occasions, since New York Music Daily went live in 2011. Some people are just a lot more interesting than others.

This year’s annual Momenta Festival is in full swing, with its usual moments of transcendence and blissful adrenaline. The Momenta Quartet’s violist Stephanie Griffin programmed night one; night two, violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron took charge. As she put it, the theme was “Lively things that happen at night.” She wasn’t kidding.

Maybe, to provide a little break for her bandmates – who also include violinist Alex Shiozaki and cellist Michael Haas – Gendron supplied a major portion of the adrenaline with an irresistible romp through Erwin Schulhoff’s rarely performed Sonata For Violin Solo. Throughout its eclectic shifts from evocations of Appalachian, Middle Eastern, Asian and rustic Romany music, she swayed and practically clogdanced at one point, and that vivacity was contagious.

The high point of the night was one of the group’s innumerable world premieres, Roberto Sierra‘s sublimely shapeshifting, relentlessly bustling Cuarteto Para Cuerdas No. 3. Flurrying, almost frantic interludes juxtaposed with brief, uneasily still moments and all sorts of similarly bracing challenges for the group: slithery harmonics, microtonal haze spiced with fleeting poltergeist accents, finally a wry series of oscillations from Haas and a savagely insistent coda. Distant references to boleros, and a less distant resemblance to restless, late 50s Charles Mingus urban noir drove a relentless tension forward through a rollercoaster of sudden dynamic changes. There were cameras all over the room: somebody please put this up on youtube where it will blow people’s minds!

There was even more on Gendron’s bill, too. The hypnotic horizontality and subtle development of playful minimalist riffs of Mario Lavista’s String Quartet No. 2 were no less difficult to play for their gauzy microtonality and almost total reliance on harmonics. Harry Partch’s Two Studies on Ancient Greek Scales have a colorful history: originally written for the composer’s own 88-string twin-box invention, the Harmonic Canon II, the Momentas played the string quartet arrangement by the great microtonal composer Ben Johnston, a Partch protege. Part quasi Balkan dance, part proto horror film score, the group made the diptych’s knotty syncopation seem effortless.

They closed with Gyorgy Ligeti’s String Quartet No.1, subtitled “Metamorphoses Nocturnes.” The ensemble left no doubt that this heavily Bartokian 1953 piece was all about war, and its terror and lingering aftershock (Ligeti survived a Nazi death camp where two of his family were murdered). The similarities with Shostakovich’s harrowing String Quartet No. 8 – which it predated by six years – were crushingly vivid. If anything, Ligeti’s quartet is tonally even harsher. In the same vein as the Sierra premiere, these dozen movements required daunting extended technique. Which in this case meant shrieking intensity, frantic evasion of the gestapo, (musical and otherwise) and deadpan command of withering sarcasm and parodies of martial themes. All that, and a crushing, ever-present sense of absence.

The 2019 Momenta Festival winds up tonight, Oct 19 at 7 PM at the Tenri Institute, 43A W 13th St., with a playful program assembled by Shiozaki, including works by Mozart, toy pianist Phyllis Chen (who joins the ensemble), glass harmonica wizard Stefano Gervasoni and an excerpt from Griffin’s delightfully adult-friendly children’s suite, The Lost String Quartet. Admission is free but you should rsvp if you’re going.

The Aizuri Quartet Launch a New Season at a Favorite Upper West Side Classical Institution

It wouldn’t be fair to let the month go by without mentioning the Aizuri Quartet‘s eclectically entertaining, dynamic performance earlier this month at the popular Music Mondays series of free concerts on the Upper West Side.

The ensemble – violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Ayane Kozasa and cellist Karen Ouzounian – began with an arrangement of a Hildegard Von Bingen diptych, its somber, stately, plainchant shifting artfully between the high strings and the cello, following a lengthy, aptly otherworldly introduction. The group’s take on Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, op. 77, no. 2 spotlighted those individual, intertwining voices in as high definition as anyone could have wanted, illuminating its innumerable (some might say interminable) moments of playful repartee.

Then they played Caroline Shaw‘s deviously Beethoven-influenced Blueprint, its tightly interwoven cellular motives eventually reaching a burst of quiet jubilation, in contrast with its airy, spacious accents. There was also an augmented Brahms work on the bill, after the interminssion, but sometimes sticking around for an entire evening of music ia a luxury. The Aizuri Quartet’s next New York concert is. December 4 at 7:30 PM at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, with works by Komitas, Haydn and Paul Wiancko.; tix are $30 The Music Mondays series at Advent Church at the northeast corner of 93rd St. and Broadway continues on Nov 18 at 7:30 PM with the Brass Project playing works by Bach, Reena Ismail, Gabriella Smith and a New York premiere by Kinan Abou-Afach

Transcendent Rarities and World Premieres to Open The 2019 Momenta Festival

A few months ago at a panel discussion at a major cultural institution, a nice mature lady in the crowd asked a famous podcaster – such that a podcaster in the 21st century serious-music demimonde can be famous, anyway – what new composers she should be listening to. Given a prime opportunity to bigup her favorites, the podcaster completely dropped the ball. She hedged. But if she’d thought about the question, she could have said, with complete objectivity, “Just go see the Momenta Quartet. They have impeccable taste, and pretty much everything they do is a world premiere.”

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the annual Momenta Festival, and the fifteenth for the quartet themselves. There was some turnover in the early years, but the current lineup of violinists Emilie-Anne Gendron and Alex Shiozaki, violist Stephanie Griffin and cellist Michael Haas has solidified into one of the world’s major forces in new music. Opening night of the 2019 Momenta Festival was characteristically enlightening and often genuinely transcendent.

Each of the quartet’s members takes a turn programming one of the festival’s four nights; Griffin, the only remaining member from the original trio that quickly grew into a fearsome foursome, took charge of the opening festivities. Each festival has a theme: this year’s is a retrospective, some of the ensemble’s greatest hits.

In a nod to their trio origins, Shiozaki, Griffin and Haas opened with Mario Davidovsky’s 1982 String Trio. Its central dynamic contrasted sharp, short figures with lingering ambience, the three musicians digging into its incessant, sometimes striking, sometimes subtle changes in timbre and attack.

The night’s piece de resistance was Julian Carrillo’s phantasmagorical, microtonal 1959 String Quartet No. 10, a piece the Momentas basically rescued from oblivion. Alternate tunings, whispery harmonics and a strange symmetric logic pervaded the music’s slowly glissandoing rises and falls, sometimes with a wry, almost parodic sensibility. But at other times it was rivetingly haunting, lowlit with echo effects, elegaic washes underpinned by belltone cello and a raptly hushed final movement with resonant, ambered, mournfully austere close harmonies.

In typical Momenta fashion, they played a world premiere, Alvin Singleton‘s Hallelujah Anyhow. Intriguing variations on slowly rising wave-motion phrases gave way to stricken, shivering pedal notes from individual voices in contrast with hazy sustain, then the waves returned, artfully transformed. Haas’ otherworldly, tremoloing cello shortly before the coy, sudden pizzicato ending was one of the concert’s high points.

After a fond slideshow including shots of seemingly all of the violinists who filtered through the group in their early years, conductor David Bloom and baritone Nathaniel Sullivan joined them for another world premiere commission, Matthew Greenbaum’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a setting of Walt Whitman poetry. The program notes mentioned that the text has special resonance for the composer, considering that he grew up close to where the old ferry left Manhattan and now resides across the river near the Brooklyn landing. Brain drain out of Manhattan much?

It took awhile to gel. At first, the music didn’t seem to have much connection to the text, and the quartet and the vocals seemed to be in alternate rhythmic universes – until about the time Sullivan got to the part cautioning that it is not “You alone who know what it is to be evil.” At that point, the acerbic, steady exchange of voices latched onto a tritone or two and some grimly familiar, macabre riffage, which fell away for longer, rainy-day sustained lines.

The Momenta Festival continues tonight, Oct 16 at 7 PM at the Americas Society, 680 Park Ave at 70th St. with works by Harry Partch, Mario Lavista, Roberto Sierra, Gyorgy Ligeti and Erwin Schulhoff programmed by Gendron. How much does this fantastic group charge for tickets? Fifty bucks? A hundred? Nope. Admission is free but a rsvp is very highly advisable.

[for any strange creatures looking for today’s Halloween month piece, this is it: that Carrillo quartet would be perfect for any serious Halloween playlist]