Relentless, Starkly Exhilarating Microtonal String Music From the Apollo Chamber Players and Vanessa Vo

Of all the albums released this year, the Apollo Chamber Players‘ collaboration with Vanessa Vo, Within Earth – streaming at Spotify– perfectly fits the zeitgeist. It’s a meticulous yet robust and relentlessly uneasy collection of stunningly acerbic pieces for strings and the elegantly warptoned Vietnamese dan bau. It would not be hubris to call this music Bartokian. It’s easy to read the album as a suite: the short segments and otherworldliness bring to mind the work of the late, great microtonal composer Ben Johnston, the more rhythmic sections evoking Julia Wolfe‘s string quartets. And the slides, and pings, and swoops of the dan bau are the icing on the cake.

The group – violinists Anabel Ramirez Detrick and Matthew Detrick, violist Whitney Bullock and cellist Matthew Dudzik – open the album with Leo Brouwer’s Nostalgia de las Montañas, beginning with deliciously pulsing, disquieting close harmonies, descending to almost total silence, then the cello guides the music upward to a brooding intensity. Subtle microtones invade those terse riffs, raising the angst. The ensemble really embrace that as the music grows more surreal. The second movement balances catchy counterpoint against moments of fleeting terror, starkly airy textural contrasts, and a flurrying disquiet.

Christopher Walczak’s Four Dreams is a triptych. Bullock’s viola adds spiky textures as the first part pulses darkly on the wings of the cello, the rest of the ensemble negotiating the music’s persistent relentlessness, intermingled with subtle, Asian-tinged riffs. Part two is somewhat calmer, more about fleeting exchanges, furtive flickers and simple, direct motives, with a funereal pulse at the end. The final one has similar, more lively counterpoint balanced by shimmery, sustained harmony – but also an siren riff and unresolved bluster.

Vo and Vũ Nhât Tân’s considerly more lighthearted, picturesque epic Cloud opens with keening, lapsteel-like swoops from the dan bau. As the strings behind Vo take a rhythmically staggered, microtonal stroll behind her, the effect is deliciously disorienting. This skyscape takes many shapes: imperturbable wisps dancing above massed grey washes, then the rest of the strings join Vo in a joyous, celestial ballet. Is that a theremin, or just a pitch pedal? There’s a lone cirrus cloud, cumulo-nimbus on the horizon, and a parade of varying shapes passing through the frame, coalescing and then receding. What a strange, fun piece of music!

The album’s final piece is Alexandra du Bois nocturnal tone poem, Within Earth, Wood Grows. The group rise from warm, verdant resonance, bolstered by clarinet, horn and low-key percussion, then recede to starry stillness. The timbres are pure Beethoven, the composition closer to Gerard Grisey. A brief march dissolves in a wash of microtones; a spare, deep-space conversation between oboe and dan bau is one of the album’s most unselfconsciously beautiful moments. What an incredible find!

Saluting a Century of the Wacky, Versatile First Electronic Instrument

Now that live music – and movies, and sports, and museums, and galleries – in New York have been shut down by the coronavirus scare, what can a person do for entertainment? Spring is here: you could go for a good, long run…or listen to a creepy fifty-one track album of theremin music. Or do both at once – it’s on Bandcamp.

To be fair, the NY Theremin Society’s compilation album Theremin 100 isn’t always creepy. While Russian scientist Leon Theremin’s 1920 invention may be most readily recognized for its uncanny evocations of creaky doors in a million horror movies, there are thousands of artists from around the world who have mastered the granddaddy of all sci-fi instruments’ magical force field for both good and evil. A lot of them are on this record. And one of the best, Pamelia Stickney – who’s surprisingly not on it – had a scheduled gig on March 20 at the Owl, but like pretty much everything going on around town, it’s been cancelled.

The album’s first track, Christopher Payne’s Somnambulist is a loopy, swoopy, chromatic nocturne that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie: are those strings and bass real, or an expert theremin imitation? Other tracks in the same vein include Herb Deutsch’s Longing – one of many with just theremin and darkly neoromantic piano, and Ei and Kuli Schreiber’s surreal tunnel narrative Train Jumper, at the top of a substantial list.

Often the theremin will evoke a violin, as in Peg Ming’s Therexotica, a gentle, brisk bolero with retro 50s twinkle; About Aphrodite’s lustrous Membran Music; or where Gregoire Blanc adds just a hint of shudder over eerily glimmering piano in Waves – with a bridge that’s too gleefully grisly to give away.

Therminal C’s Sputnik Crash powerfully demonstrates the instrument’s vast range and little-used percussive potential, as does Thorwald Jorgenson’s epic seaside tableau Distant Shores. The theremin gets backward masked in Hekla’s Twin Peaks pop tune Indenderro, used for squiggles and ominous banks of sound in Aetherghul’s Fire in the Sky, and an imploring vocal analogue in Jeff Pagano’s The Ancient Sea.

Some of the acts here employ a theremin for laughs. The Radio Science Orchestra contribute Atom Age Girl, a wry space-surf theme; Everling throws in his droll, bloopy Playing Theremin Is My Madness. The joke is simpler yet subtler in Hyperbubble’s I’m Your Satellite, while Robert Meyer’s deadpan teutonic boudoir groove Taxi is pretty ridiculous. Matt Dallow’s circus rock theme Tailor Made Destination isn’t far behind.

A handful of these pieces are massively orchestrated, like the Nightterrors’ macabre, Alan Parsons Project-ish Megafauna. Others, including Dorit Chrysler’s atmospherically circling Murderballad and Elizabeth Brown’s desolate March 21, are more spare. Twenty-nine tracks in, an electric guitar finally appears in Veronik’s Anomala, which is sort of House of the Rising Sun with a theremin. Song number 38, by the Keystone, is a strangely drifting duet for lapsteel and theremin. The most atmospheric track here, Gabriel and Rachel Guma’s Balloons Tied Up in the Sky, evokes whalesong. The weirdest one, Aileen Adler’s Piezoelectric Dreaming, is a mashup of Balkan reggae and spaghetti western themes.

Much of the rest of this material is classically-tinged: Japan Theremin Oldschool’s take of Ave Maria; Tears of Sirens’ Under the Milky Way (an original, not the Church classic), and Lydia Kavina’s In Green, a pretty piano-and-theremin ballad that wouldn’t be out of place in the ELO catalog if that band had a theremin. Maurizio Mansueti does a great job getting his contraption to emulate bel canto singing in the moody Blindfolded, while there’s a real aria in Robert Schillinger’s Bury Me, Bury Me Wind. The compilers who put this thing together deserve enormous credit for the consistently high quality, vast scope and imagination of most everything here.

Rapturous, Innovative String Music All Over Midtown

When she first formed the Momenta Quartet, violist Stephanie Griffin probably had no idea of how many hundreds of premieres the group would play, a list that continues to blossom. That same fascination with brilliant obscurities and new ideas has informed her work outside the classical world, as one of the few conservatory-trained players who’s just as comfortable and acerbic in jazz improvisation (some would call that “creative music,” but all good music is creative). Her next scheduled New York gig was scheduled for March 20 on a killer triplebill that starts at 7:30 PM at Metro Baptist Church at 410 W 40th St. past 9th Ave.) but is now cancelled. Jazz guitarist Amanda Monaco, who lately has been exploring klezmer infuences, was slated to open the night with her trio, followed by flutist Cheryl Pyle‘s Musique Libre trio, and then Griffin with a chamber jazz quartet, along with pianist Gordon Beeferman playing the world premiere of her first-ever work for solo piano.

One of Griffin’s most interesting recent New York performances was last month, as a member of the Argento Ensemble, on a characteristically diverse, edgy program featuring works by Schoenberg and Erin Gee. It was more than a little embarrassing to get to the show almost an hour late, but the friendly folks at the Austrian Cultural Forum had saved a seat, even though the show was sold out: thanks, guys! And fortuitously, there was still time to catch the group playing a deliciously dynamic, sometimes velvety, occasionally chilling version of Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht as well as the world premiere of Gee’s Mouthpiece 29b.

Throughout the former, the sense of the composer aching to break free of late 19th century conventions was visceral. Contrasts between starkness and lushness, Debussyesque bittersweetness and the strange new world that Schoenberg would open the floodgates for were consistently striking. The sting of Mari Lee’s violin was a standout, from the work’s almost frantically volleying crescendos, to the somber lullaby at the end. The rest of the group, which along with Griffin also included violinist Doori Na, violist Jocelin Pan, cellists Michael Katz and Serafim Smigelsky and bassist Tristen Kasten-Krause, dug in just as deeply.

Gee explained to the crowd that she’d written her playful, dauntingly innovative piece in the International Phonetic Alphabet rather than in any extant language. Just witnessing her command of flittingly crisp, almost backward-masked syllables as the ensemble echoed her with sepulchral wisps and glissandos was breathtaking. It’s a very entertaining piece of music, just as challenging for the strings as for Gee, involving both singing and occasional whistling from what seemed to be most of the group. Gee’s surreal, individualistic sound world is like no other on this planet because there isn’t one, other than maybe Meredith Monk’s, as a point of comparison.

Argento’s next scheduled performance is April 18 at the Tenri Institute, with works by Bethany Younge, Yotam Haber and Alma Mahler; cover is $tba.

Iconic Violinist Alicia Svigals Brings Her High-Energy Erudition to a Familiar East Village Haunt

Pretty much every Thursday night, there’s a dance party in the spacious social hall at the Town & Village Synagogue on 14th St. just east of Second Ave. For over a decade, the New York Klezmer Series has featured a vast range of music from across the Jewish diaspora, the connecting thread being energy. And it isn’t just the same old shtetl, either: the groups tend to be on the original side, with string ensembles, brass bands, the occasional rock act or Yiddish song night. Showtime is 8 PM; cover is $15. There’s also a dance lesson beforehand and a jam afterward for those who want to shell out for the whole megilla.

This Thursday, March 12 promises to be exceptionally good since the woman widely considered to be the world’s foremost klezmer violinist, Alicia Svigals, is joining forces with similarly exhilarating accordionist Patrick Farrell. Svigals is fresh off an absolutely delightful show late last month, when she teamed up with a frequent collaborator, pianist Donald Sosin for a live score to E.A. Dupont’s 1923 German silent film The Ancient Law at Temple Ansche Chesed on the Upper West.

Beyond the movie – which is very sweet, and progressive even by the Weimar era’s avant garde standards – what was most impressive was what a fantastic classical violinist Svigals is. Following the film’s narrative, the music begins in a little village somewhere in the Pale (Sosin starts out on accordion, appropriately), then suddenly shifts to cosmopolitan mid-19th century Vienna. That’s where the plaintive dirges and bristling freylachs suddenly make way for melancholy Schubert ballads, lively Mozart and, for verisimilitude, a few detours into Johan Strauss cheesiness.

It was there that the split-second change in Svigals’ intonation and attack was most striking. All of a sudden those bracing overtones, and doublestops, and glissandos disappeared in favor of a crystalline, legato approach…and then made a welcome return when the plotline shifted back to the ghetto. Those old Jewish folk tunes have survived for a reason: they’re just plain gorgeous. Beyond the action onscreen, the moments when the duo were obviously jamming out solos over familiar minor-key changes were arguably the evening’s most adrenalizing, entertaining passages. That kind of intensity is most likely what’s on the bill for this week’s show, with a focus on wedding and party music from the early 20th century catalog of musicologist Wolff Kostakovsky.

Svigals and Sosin have been touring their live movie score along with a screening  since shortly after the film was rescued from oblivion, digitized and sequenced to match the original print during what must have been a daunting restoration process. Without giving too much away, the main story concerns a rabbi’s son who runs off to the big city to become an actor. Tensions between father and son, tradition and modernity simmer and bubble, but the movie is basically a comedy: the moment where the rabbi finally picks up the forbidden volume of Shakespeare that the fiilm’s Falstaff character has smuggled in is priceless. Could it be that dad is kind of jealous of his son? Maybe that particular apple didn’t fall so far from the tree after all. No spoilers here.

A Smashing Debut by Percussion Ensemble Pathos Trio

It takes a lot of nerve for a group to play four world premieres at their first-ever concert together. Friday night at Arete Gallery, Pathos Trio validated both their confidence in choice of composers as well as their mutual talents, making a debut to remember. That may be all the more impressive in that they didn’t even have all their regular members. Peter White, playing vibraphone, bells and a vanload of other bangable objects, subbed manfully for percussionist Marcelina Suchocka.

This may be a new ensemble, but each of the members has extensive credits in the world of new music. The three opened with Alyssa Weinberg‘s dynamically churning Delirious Phenomena, a surreal portrait of a factory haunted by mischievous ghosts, or so it seemed. White, Felix Reyes and Alan Hankers worked the guts of a meticulously prepared piano, using mallets for murk and looming swells, then piano wires wrapped around individual strings inside for timbres that ranged from keening, to whispery, to a spot-on facsimile of a french horn. Hypnotically circling patterns and atmospheric washes rose and fell, up to a sudden, coy ending.

Thundering bursts from bass drum and gongs contrasted with eerily tinny resonance emanating from bowed bells, vibraphone and spare piano in Finola Merivale‘s Oblivious Oblivion, a macabre, apocalyptic global warming tableau. A long, cruelly crushing study in wave motion and long, ineluctable upward trajectories, it also ended suddenly, but 180 degrees from where Weinberg’s piece had landed. It was the showstopper of the night.

Evan Chapman‘s Fiction of Light came across as the kind of piece a group can have fun playing, but that didn’t translate to the audience. Reyes and White really got a workout keeping its machinegunning sixteenth notes on the rails, but ultimately this loopy triptych didn’t cohere despite a rather compelling, minimalist rainy-day piano interlude midway through.

The three closed by employing the entirety of their gear throughout Alison Yun-Fei Jiang‘s spacious, vivid Prayer Variations, an increasingly majestic depiction of the vastness of cathedrals the composer’s been visiting lately. As with Merivale’s work, the group nimbly developed its series of long, meticulously interwoven crescendos, from White’s rippling, gamelanesque vibraphone, to Hankers’ tersely plaintive piano, to Reyes’ triumphant accents on the drums and cymbals.

Over the past ten years or so, New York has become a hotbed of good percussion ensembles who’ve drawn the attention of similarly innovative, ambitous composers. With just one show under their respective belts, Pathos Trio have elevated themselves into those elite ranks alongside Yarn/Wire, So Percussion, Tigue, Iktus and Ensemble Et Al. Pathos Trio’s next show is a free concert at 7 PM on March 16 at the New World Center, 500 17th St, in Miami Beach.

Live Music Calendar for New York City and Brooklyn for February 2020

At this point all official NYC concerts are cancelled   Be well and stay home. 

The Greenwich Village Orchestra have cancelled their March 15 concert

The Owl concerts are cancelled through March 21

Miller Theatre events are cancelled through March 23

Scandinavia House events are cancelled through March 25

Flushing Town Hall concerts are cancelled through March 28.

Juilliard events are cancelled through through March 29

The Shed and Morgan Library events are cancelled through March 30

Concerts at Bowery Ballroom, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the NY Philharmonic, Irish Arts Center, NY Opera Center,  Mercury Lounge, Bric Arts, CUNY’s Elebash Hall, Manhattan School of Music, National Sawdust, St. Thomas Church, People’s Symphony Series and all Columbia University concerts are cancelled through March 31

Symphony Space events are cancelled through April 1

The Kitchen, Green Space, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Metropolitan Museum of Art events are cancelled through April 3

Merkin Concert Hall events are cancelled through April 7

Baruch College Auditorium events are cancelled through April 8.

NJPAC in Newark is closed through April 13.

Events at the New School and the Stone are cancelled thorugh April 15.

The Americas Society, Arete Gallery, Asia Society, Barbes, Jazz Standard, Pioneer Works and People’s Voice Cafe events are cancelled until further notice

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! This winter’s agenda is Childhood Classics: A series of three evenings featuring the music we were forced to play – music composed expressly for children, Bach to Kurtag, like it or not, and conversation about that experience, about the piano, and about ongoing musical growth…4 PM on February 16, and March 15, 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 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.

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 March, 6 PM Big Lazy  noir guitar legend Steve Ulrich plays with a rotating cast of suspects at Barbes. Evil horn arrangements! Creepy guitar jams! Heaven for fans of dark sounds.

Sundays in March, 1 PM  brilliant, fearlessly political B3 organist Greg Lewis plays Monk tunes at Bar Lunatico. He’s also there with Brianna Thomas and the Juke Joint Jelis on the 19th

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 in March 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 in March,, 8/11 PM the fearlessly relevant, toweringly intense Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, at Birdland, $30 at the bar

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.

3/1, 4 PM avant garde klezmer with pyrotechnic clarinetist David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg’s Breath + Hammer at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

3/1, 7 PM singer Jennifer Walshe and the Mivos Quartet play her surreal, dystopic soundtrack to an unfinished film by reclusive artist Caoimhín Breathnach, contemplating the intrusion of datamining and surveillance in our most private moments at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/1, 8ish the hauntingly improvisational Muhr/Hashimoto/Mattrey Trio: Luisa Muhr – voice, movement; Sae Hashimoto – vibraphone; Jonna Mattrey – viola followed by pianist Santiago Liebson leading his trio at the Owl

3/1, 8 PM  perennially tuneful, pensively lyrical Americana janglerocker Mike Ferrio of Tandy and Good Luck Mountain at 11th St. Bar

3/1. 10ish izzling electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at the Treehouse at 2A

3/2, 7ish noir-inspired honkytonk crooner Sean Kershaw at Cowgirl Seahorse

3/2, 7 PM trombonist/composer Ryan Keberle and lyrical French pianist Frank Woeste play the album release show fortheir new one Reverso at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex,

3/2, 9:30ish Gato Loco bass saxophone monster Stefan Zeniuk’s new slightly less crazy band Green Mambo – a Perez Prado tribute – at Barbes

3/2, 10 PM intense, cinematic, politically fearless jazz flutist Elsa Nilsson and band at LIC Bar

3/3, 6 PM violiist Johnna Wu plays works by Bartok and Luciano Berio at Elebash Hall at CUNY, free

3/3, 7 PM intense Balkan chanteuse and Dolunay frontwoman Jenny Luna‘s other haunting, traditional Turkish band Seyyah followed at 9:30 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

3/3, 7:30 PM pianist Adam Kośmieja plays a rare program of works by contemporary Polish composers K. Serocki, Sikorski, Kornowicz, and Zubel at Myers Recital Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

3/3, 7:30 PM the NYC debut of Danish chamber ensemble the Kegelstatt Trio playing a program TBA at Flushing Town Hall, free. They’re also at Scandinavia House on 3/5 at 7 for free

3/3-7 7:30 PM the Tyshawn Sorey Sextet with Sasha Berliner on vibes at the Jazz Gallery, $25

3/3. 8 PM ferociously dynamic, tuneful,female-fronted power trio Castle Black at Berlin, $tba

3/3-7, 8:30 PM purposeful guitarist/Monk reinventor Miles Okazaki leads a series of bands at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: the Friday night quartet show wih ) Steve Cardenas (guitar) Kate Gentile (drums) Jerome Harris (bass

3/3. 8 PM Asian Sound Revolution, the new supergroup of gaegeum player Jin Hi Kim, pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen, and pioneering, gamelanesque drummer/composer Susie Ibarra. at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/3. 8:30 PM irrepressible, transgressively funny postbop saxophonist Jon Irabago with Peter Brendler on bass and Jimmy MacBride on drums at the Bar Next Door, $12 at Elebash Hall at CUNY

3/3, 9 PM wickedly torchy noir songwriterJ ulia Haltigan at 11th St Bar

3/3, 9 PM otherworldly French-Algerian singer Ourida with her combo at Bar Lunatico

3/3 9:30 PM alto saxophonist Caroline Davis leads a quintet at Seeds

3/3, 10 PM rising star trumpeterAdam O’Farrill‘s colorful, cinematic Stranger Days Quartet at 55 Bar

3/3, 10 PM epically ferocious art-rock jamband Planta at Terraza 7, $10

3/4, 1 PM the Elysian String Quartet play a program tba at the Greene Space, free, rsvp req

3/4. 6:30 PM the adventurous Lisa Hoppe on bass with Chris Williams on trumpet and Santiago Gibson on drums at the Bar Next Door,free

3/4. 7 PM violinist Ludovica Burtone‘s Little Sparks followed by singer Sofia Kriger‘s Solos de Ave quartet at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

3/4, 7:30 PM pianist Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń plays an all Chopin program at Myers Recital Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

3/4. 7;30 PM haunting, kinetic, hypnotic Yemeni jazz sounds with pianist Tarek Yamani and his trio at Joe’s Pub, $15 adv tix rec

3/4, 8 PM psychedelic klezmer/bluegrass mandolin and clarinet legend Andy Statman at Barbes, $10.

3/4, 8 PM a wild brass band triplebill: Hot Hand Band, Brass Monkeys, and Dingonek Street Band playing second line, Afrobeat, Ethio-jazz at Drom, $10 adv tix rec

3/4, 8 PM group improvisations: pianist Rema Hasumi with Henry Fraser (bass); Raf Vertessen (drums) and at 9 Kazuki Yamanaka (alto saxophone); Santiago Leibson (piano); Carmen Rothwell (bass) Billy Mintz (drums) at Scholes St Studios, $20

3/4. 9 PM 20s hot swing jazz revivalists Cait and the Critters at Radegast Hall

3/4, 10 PM drony Irish gothic: singer Katie Kim and the more ornate Lankum at the Mercury, $20

3/5, 1 PM pianist Jessica Xylina Osborne plays works by Lutoslawski, Britten, Saint-Saens/E. Ysaÿe, Schönberg, and Schubert.at Elebash Hall at CUNY, free

3/5, 6:30 PM a free screening of the awesome 1969 Aretha Franklin gospel concert film Amazing Grade at NJPAC in Newark

3/5, 7 PM poignant, nuanced jazz singerAmy Cervini leads her trio at 55 Bar

3/5, 7:30/9:30 PM sharp latin jazz drummer/composer Dafnis Prieto leads his killer sextet with Peter Apfelbaum on sax at the Jazz Standard, $30

3/5, 7:30 PM, repeating 3/7 at 8 and 3/10 at 7:30 PMs Louis Langrée conducts the NY Philharmonic in French masterworks. Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun; Met Opera star Isabel Leonard (Marnie) sings Ravel’s exotic song cycle Shéhérazade plus, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, expensive, $38 tix avail

3/5, 7:30 PM the Argus Quartet play a program tba at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

3/5, 8 PM the Orchestra of St. Luke”s play a lavish, all-Beethoven program: Leonore Overture No. 2; Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Op. 112; the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80; Mass in C Major, Op. 86 at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, $30 seats avail, wow

3/5. 8 PM International Contemporary Ensemble play a “composer portrait” of Dai Fujikura at the Miller Theatre, $20 tix avail

3/5, 8 PM charismatic, gruff-voiced Jewish folksinger Ilya Shneyveys’ “Electrocord” w/Max Kutner at Town & Village Synagogue, Social Hall, 334 East 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

3/5. 8 PM explosive, creepy, colorful psychedelic rembetiko metal band Greek Judas, downtown avant rock vets God Is My Co-Pilot and haphazard dark punkish female-fronted band Cruel Children at Niagara, Ave A/8th St

3/5, 8 PM brilliantly eclectic Ameriana guitarist Jason Loughlin‘s String Gliders play western swing followed at 10 by dynamic, subtle all-female klezmer band Tsibele at Barbes

3/5, 8:30ish psychedelic supergroup the Elgin Marbles feat. members of Love Camp 7, Dervisi and Peter Stampfel’s jug band at Troost

3/5, 8:30 PM rapturous Indian carnatic singer Mitali Banerjee Bhawmik with the Women’s Raga Massive at the Jalopy, $15

3/5. 9 PM Soul Gnawa – the psychedelic/downtempo project from Innov Gnawa‘s Samir Langus and guitarist Daniel Freedman – at Bar Lunatico

3/5, 9 PM darkly psychedelic Dominican band Jobo at Shrine

3/5, 9 PM uneasily eclectic, shapeshifting art-rock/chamber-pop/Americana band Ellen Siberian Tiger at Footlight Bar $10

3/5, 10 PM the great unsung NYC hero of darkly purposeful, noir-tinged jazz guitar,Saul Rubin leads his Zebtet at the Fat Cat

3/6, 5:30 PM intense, brilliantly relevant oldtime gospel/Africa Africana music maven Vienna Carroll at the American Folk Art Museum

3/6, 7 PM pyrotechnic vocalist Roopa Mahadevan‘s adventurous Indian avant garde project Roopa in Flux at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

3/6, 7 PM indie classical group Blackbox Ensemble play new works by Bethany Younge, Fjola Evans, George Lewis and others at Shapeshifter Lab, $10

3/6, 7 PM otherworldly, atmospheric Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo and band at Elebash Hall at CUNY, $25

3/6 ,7:30 PM Ewa Pobłocka plays piano works by Bach and Chopin at Mikowsky Recital Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

3/6, 8 PM playfully lyrical, fearlessly political superduo Kill Henry Sugar– guitar/banjo mastermind Erik Della Penna and drummer Dean Sharenow – followed at 10 by Pangari & the Socialites playing classic ska and rocksteady– most of it from the 60s Skatalites catalog –at Barbes

3/6-7, 8 PM the reliably entertaining, adventurous Chelsea Symphony play a potent, politically relevant contemporary program: Tim Kiah: Truth unto the People (world premiere); Mike Boyman: Concerto for Two Horns and Wind Ensemble (world premiere) with Jess Santiago and Emily Wong, horns; Missy Mazzoli: River Rouge Transfiguration; Gabriela Lena Frank: Elegia Andina; Joan Tower: Made in America at at St. Paul’s Church, 315 W 22nd St., $20 sugg don

3/6, 8 PM Departure Duo play repertoire written especially for soprano and double bass; string madness with violinist Marina Kifferstein + cellist Meaghan Burke at Scholes St Studios, $15

3/6, 8 PM the NYC debuts of music and performance outlet Porest and feminist noise reggaeton duo Las Sucias, relating “how sounds change in the diaspora: how they tether to their environment, accumulate, synthesize, and adapt at each location, use composition and improvisation to address origin, inherency, and borders and obfuscate the “othering” that often surrounds their work,” at Issue Project Room, $15

3/6. 9 PM ubiquitous,moodily lyrical, politically savvy Irish folk-rocker Niall Connolly at the small room at the Rockwood

3/6, 9 PM playfully upbeat original swing jazz crew the Doggy Cats at Sunny’s

3/7, 11:30 AM (in the morning) the Nightingale Farm – Mary Spencer Knapp as narrator and singer, Teagan Taylor on trumpet & vocals, Doug Berns on bass and vocals, Sean Salant on guitar, and Ethan Meyer on percussion.- present their original adaptations of the classic baseball poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer plus Wilhelmina Harper’s “The Gunniwolf.” These stories follow a family singalong. At Greenlight Bookstore: 632 Flatbush Ave, Ft. Greene, free for kids of all ages

3/7, 4 PM cinematic, psychedelic quirk-pop keyboardist Michael Hearst presents “Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary” songs from his many bands followed by 6 PM by Big Lazy noir guitar mastermind Steve Ulrich, at 8 by eclectic, electric, guitarishly excellent C&W/blues band the Jug Addicts and at 10 by epic ranchera/bolero brass crew Banda de los Muertos at Barbes

3/7, 6 PM thoughtful, imaginative saxophonist Peyton Pleninger‘s Biotonic at Shrine

3/7, 7 PM exhilarating all-female Arabic/Iranian/Jewish band Divahn at Joe’s Pub, $20 adv rix rec

3/7, 7:30 PM the Jack Quartet play the album release show for their new one with works by Sky Macklay, Cenk Ergün and Oscar Bianchi at the fourth floor auditorium at the New School, 55 W 13th St., res req

3/7. 8 PM women songwriters’ night at the People’s Voice Cafe: sprightly, pensive Pat Lamanna, ex-Red Molly multi-instrumentalist Carolann Solebello,, and the politically, historically astute Sharleen Leahey at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

3/7, 8 PM trippy, dubby roots reggae and ska sounds with Avo & Skalopy at the Jalopy Tavern

3/7, 8 PM hauntingly resonant clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen and her tropical Quartetinho at the Miller Theatre, $25 tix avail

3/7, 8 PM guitarist Tal Yahalom and Quintet & poignantly lyrical, eclectic pianist Marta Sanchez with her quintet at Scholes St Studios, $10

3/7, 8 PM MWE play orchestral works by Charles Ives, Julie Giroux, John Mackey, Frank Ticheli and David R. Holsinger at the DiMenna Center, $12

3/7, 8 PM ten-piece country/carnivalesque/acoustic rock powerhouse M Shanghai String Band at theJalopy, $!0

3/7, 8 PM darkly lyrical psychedelic pop songwriter Jennifer Hall at Petes. The following night, 3/8 at 8 PM she’s at the small room at the Rockwood

3/7, 9 PM Unsteady Freddie‘s monthly surf rock extravaganza at Otto’s begins at 9 PM with the deliciously creepy, Balkan-tinged  Plato Zorba followed by Link Wray cover band the Wraycyclers, at 11 Atomic Mosquitos spinoff Killers From Space and at midnight majestic, darkly cinematic surf instrumentalists the TarantinosNYC

3/7, 9ish linky, darkly psychedelic instrumentalists the Ghost Funk Orchestra at Out Wicked Lady, $10

3/7, 9 PM powerpop band Giftshop– the missing link between Blondie and the Distillers – at the Parkside

3/7, 10ish sludgy, catchy metal band Vesssel of Light at Blackthorn 51, $15

3/8. noon mostly-female, kinetic klezmer/cumbia/cinematic jamband Isle of Klezbos at City Vineyard for brunch, $10, no niminums, kids 12 and under free!

3/8, 2 PM violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Orion Weiss play works by Debussy,Beethoven, Ysaye, Brahms, John Adams and more at the Town Hall, $17

3/8, 2 PM pianist Olga Kern and tenor Nick Phan sing works by French composer Nadia Boulanger, singer Lucy Dhegrae and the Vuillaume Trio perform a piano trio by Amy Beach at the Greene Space, $20

3/8. 4 PM oldschool-style high plains C&W singer Hope Debates & North 40 at Skinny Dennis

3/8. 5 PM viola virtuoso/film composer Ljova with soaring, riveting klezmer singer Inna Barmash and accordion monster Patrick Farrell at Bar Thalia adjacent to Symphony Space, free

3/8, 5 PM, repeating 3/18 at 6:30 Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin; Yelena Grinberg, piano play a marathon program of Beethoven sonatas at Grinberg’s upper westside piano salon, reception to follow, $35, close to the 1/2/3 train at 96th St.,deets here.They repeat with a similar but different program on 3/22 at 5 and then 3/26 at 7

3/8, 6 PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo leads his trio at 55 Bar

3/8, 6 PM Darren Johnston on trumpet / Peter Hess on woodwinds / Adam Dotson on flugabone followed at 8 by oudist Tom Chess and bassist Zach Swanson at Downtown Music Gallery

3/8, 7 PM roots reggae group the Far East at Pioneer works, free

3/8, 7 PM allstar Indian music collective the Women’s Raga Massive and “members of the all-women STARR Ensemble — whose music blends Indian classical, jazz, Western classical, and bluegrass — present Lakshmi Shankar: A Musical Evolution in One Night, a multimedia tribute to the Hindustani singer who helped bring Indian music to the West,” at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/8, 7 PM soaring, politically relevant, brilliantly purposeful alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon leads his “Berklee Quintet” at Birdland, $20 at the bar

3/8, 7 PM sci-fi surf band Future Relics followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

3/8, 7 PM gritty downtown rocker Diane Gentile, dark blues/folk noir/oldschool soul songwriter Kelley Swindall and well-liked, fearlessly political LES soul-rock songwriter/chanteuse Dina Regine at 11th St Bar

3/9, 6 PM the Greenpoint Songwriters Exchange – a diverse bunch playing everything from folk noir to Costelloesque, literary rock to Indian ragas and oldschool soul – at Pete’s

3/9, 7 PM tuneful postbop pianist Jim Ridl leads his group from behind the Rhodes at 55 Bar

3/9, 8 PM saxophonist Aaron Burnett plays a duo set with the always adventurous drummer Tyshawn Sorey at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/9, 10ish the NYC Gaita Club – a Bulla en el Barrio spinoff – play rustically pounding Afro-Colombian trance-dance music at Barbes

3/10, 8 PM chamber orchestra Metropolis Ensemble, appropriately enough plays Ricardo Romaneiro’s live score to the Fritz Lang dystopic silent classic Metropolis at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/10, 7 PM countertenor Labros Filippou leads his Greek rembetiko band followed at 9:30 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

3/10, 7 PM the Vienna Yiddish Duo at the Austrian Cultural Center free w rsvp

3/10, 7 PM eclectic, hard-hitting, lyrical composer/tenor saxophonist Stan Killian at 55 Bar

3/10, 7 PM eclectic, cinematic keyboardist Frank LoCrasto and psychedelic latin soul tinged band Garcia Peoples at Union Pool, free

3/10. 7:30 PM cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist Michael Brown play works by Ginastera, Grieg, Sibelius, Glière, and Michael Brown, and Bulgarian folk tunes at the Baruch College Auditorium, $36 BUT buy one get one free with code BOGO

3/10, 8 PM Soul Gnawa – the psychedelic/downtempo project from Innov Gnawa‘s Samir Langus and guitarist Daniel Freedman, Los Cumpleanos – with Nestor Gomez – vox/percussion; Lautaro Burgos – drums; Eric Lane – keyboards; Alex Asher – trombone and others playing trippy, dubwise tropical psychedelia,  and the Mauskovic Dance Band playing psychedelic tropicalia and dub at the Sultan Room, $12

3/10, 8 PM Palestinian kanun virtuoso & composer Firas Zreik at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Fulton St at Washington, C to Clinton-Washington, sug don

3/10, 10:30 PM allusively haunting, minimalist folk noir singer Belle-Skinner at Pete’s

3/10, 8 PM pensively intense microtonal violinist/singer Sarah Bernstein leads her quartet with Ron Stabinsky on piano at Scholes St. Studios, $10

3/11, 8 PM JP Schlegelmilch’s Organ Trio – essentially psychedelic surf/cinematic trio Hearing Things with a different drummer – at Barbes

3/10, 8 PM hypnotically explosive live bhangra dance band Red Baraat at Symphony Space, $30 tix avail

3/10-14, 8:30 PM star indie classical composer-vocalist Lisa Bielawa leads a series of bands at the Stone at the New School, $20. Choice pick: Saturday night with the Parhelion Trio Andrea Christie (piano) Sarah Carrier (flute) Ashleé Miller (clarinet) (who are also there by themselves the following night, 3/15

3/10, 9 PM NZ noiserockers Swallow the Rat followed by swirly, hypnotic, totally 80s 4AD dreampop/shoegazers Dead Leaf Echo at Littlefield, $10

3/10. 10 PM charismatic, adventurous postbop/avant garde trombonist/crooner Frank Lacy leads his group at Smalls He’s also here on 3/17

3/10-14, 11 PM rising star bassist Endea Owens and the Cookout jam out classic and new soul grooves at Dizzy’s Club, $5

3/11, 1 PM pianist Eugene Marlow’s Heritage Ensemble mash up klezmer and salsa themes at St. Peter’s Church, 54th/Lex, sug don

3/11, 7 PM edgy jazz violinist Zach Brock and band at 55 Bar

3/11, 7:30 PM pianist Han Chen plays works by Chopin, Beethoven and Lei Liang at Elebash Hall at CUNY, free

3/11, 8 PM baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket leads a quintet at Seeds

3/11-12, 8 PM first-wave British new wave band Wire at the Music Hll of Williamsburg, $30 gen adm but will sell out

3/11, 8:30 PM Dervisi feat. psychedelic guitarist George Sempepos play “exotic Greek gangsta blues” and Middle Eastern flavored hash smoking anthems at Troost .3/19, same time they’re at Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street (just off of 37th Ave), Jackson Heights

3/11, 9 PM exotic vibraphone-driven surf band the Vibro-jets  at LIC Bar. They’re also at Troost on 313, 8:30is

3/11, 10 PM atmospheric, cinematic drummer/composer Tim Kuhl and his group at Pete’s

3/11, 10 PM uneasily eclectic tropically-influenced singer Renata Zeigeur and band at C’Mon Everybody, $10

3/11, 10 PM savage female-fronted garage punks Thee Minks at the Knitting Factory, $12

3/12, 7 PM soaringly explosive jazz composer/torch singer Nicole Zuraitis at 55 Bar

3/12, 7:30 PM hard-rocking, electric tres-driven Cuban band band Los Hacheros at Ginny’s Supper Club, $20

3/12, 7:30 PM hotshot bluegrass band Mile 12 at Symphony Space, $20 for30 and under, $20 otherwise

3/12, 7:30 PM Swedish pianist Helge Antoni plays a spring-themed program of works by C. Sinding, J. Sibelius, E. Grieg, W. Stenhammar, and T. Rangström. at Scandinavia House, $25

3/12, 7:30 PM Edward Forstman (piano), Jacob Elkin (trombone), Adam Bowles (piano), Jay Rodriguez (clarinet and soprano saxophone), Ammon Swinbank (flute), and Miolina Duo — Mioi Takeda and Lynn Bechtold (violins).play microtonal, overtone-rich works by Monroe Golden at Scholes St. Studios, $10

3/12, 8 PM plush, balmy, oldtimey uke swing band Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies followed at 10 by intense Balkan chanteuseJenny Luna‘s haunting, traditional Turkish band Dolunay at Barbes

3/12, 8 PM accordion/piano genius Shoko Nagai jams with Hans Tammen (Buchla) Satoshi Takeishi at Arete Gallery, $tba

3/12, 8 PM perennially interesting piano/percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire, vocalist Nina Dante, and composer Ben Vida play his new suite Always Already at Issue Project Room $20

3/12, 8 PM accordionist Patrick Farrell & whirlwind klezmer violin icon Alicia Svigals play old wedding dances from the Kostakovsky archive at Town & Village Synagogue, Social Hall, 334 East 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

3/12, 8 PM lustrous pianist Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn play an all-Bach program at the Miller Theatre, $30 tix avail

3/12, 8:30 PM the harrowing, immigration-themed multimedia performance Ask Hafiz – the story of Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from a Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, Sahar, following an age-old practice, asks questions to the book of poetry by Hafiz. Theanswers are revealed through songs composed and sung by Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein,at the Jalopy,$15

3/12, 9 PM catchy folk noir/Nashville gothic songwriter Emily Frembgen at Pete’s

3/12, 10 PM wild, intense, frequently satirical newgrass/oldtimey hellraisers the Dustbowl Revival at Rough Trade, $18 adv tix rec

3/13, dusk, a screening of the classic 1972 reggae film The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff as its gangster star, in Battery Park

3/13, 6 PM powerfully hypnotic soul and Indian carnatic singer Saraswathi Jones at the American Folk Art Museum

3/13, 6 PM crystalline-voiced, noir-tinged third-stream jazz chanteuse Tessa Souter at 55 Bar

3/13, 7 PM Irish no wave/postpunk band the Murder Capital at Rough Trade, free w/album purchase

3/13, 7:30/9:30 PM bassist Harish Ragavan’s Calls for Action band with Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet at the Jazz Gallery, $25

3/13. 8 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka with a string section followed at 10 by feral singer Carolina Oliveros’ mighty 13-piece Afro-Colombian trance/dance choir Bulla en el Barrio at Barbes

3/13, 8 PM oldschool flamenco puro with the José del Tomate Group at Drom, $20 adv tix rec

3/13, 8 PM amazing string quintet Sybarite5– who are also the world’s coolest Radiohead cover band – at the Cell Theatre, $28. They’re also at the at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, for free on 3/29 at 4

3/13, 8 PM the Jack Quartet play the John Zorn string quartet cycle at National Sawdust, $30 adv tix rec

3/13, 8 PM American Contemporary Music Ensemble perform music by atmospheric electroacoustic cellist Clarice Jensen at the Tenri Institute

3/13, 8;30 PM darkly lyrical, Aimee Mann-ish songwriter Andrea Wittgens at the basement room at the Rockwood $12

3/13, 9:30 PM twangy altcountryAmericana/psychedelic crew American String Conspiracy at Freddy’s

3/13, 10ish explosively trippy instrumentalists Dub is a Weapon at the Gutter, $7

3/13, 10:30 PM cutting-edge, often psychedelic sax player Wayne Escoffery leads his quartet at the Fat Cat

3/14, 4 PM darkly torchy southwestern gothic/Europolitan songwriter/guitarist Miwa Gemini at Branded Saloon

3/14, 5 PM moody lo-fi keyboardist/singer Anni Rossi at Pete’s. She’s also there on 3/29 at 3:30 and at Troost on 3/25, 8:30ish

3/14, 6 PM the world’s creepiest, slinkiest, most psychedelic crime jazz/film noir band, Big Lazy with Brain Cloud lapsteel wiz Raphael McGregor followed at 8 by poignant, eclectic, lyrical jazz bassist/composer Pedro Giraudo’s tango quartet followed at 10 by psychedelic salsa bandleader Zemog El Gallo Bueno at Barbes

3/14, 7 PM the annual Stop the Raids annual family gathering at the Jalopy, $20 sugg, all proceeds to the cause nobody turned away for lack of funds” It has been nearly four years since the Bronx 120 Raid in the Eastchester Gardens section of the Bronx—in that time, the NYPD has continued raiding public housing across the city, tearing our loved ones from our communities en masse on bogus conspiracy charges. We are hoping to build as much support as possible for all those returning home, those who are still inside, and their families.

3/14, 7 PM organist Gail Archer plays works by women composers Joan Tower, Mary Howe, Jennifer Higdon, Nadia Boulanger at St. John Nepomucene Church, 411 E 69th St, (1st/York), free

3/14, 7:30 PM ethereal yet powerful parlor pop/goth singer/composer Kristin Hoffmann at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $20

3/14, 7:30 PM chamber orchestra Metropolis Ensemble play “music for an extremely broken consort” with “murder ballads, riddle tunes, and other lurid and gruesome pastimes featuring Fiona Gillespie, Paul Morton of Chivalrous Crickets, with Loren Ludwig of Acronym and Sian Ricketts & Tracy Cowart of Alkemie” at 1 Rivington St, $15/$10 stds

3/14, 7:30 PM anthemic Iron Maiden-style metal band the Blackfires at the Mercury, $15

3/14, 8 PM composer and multi-instrumentalist John Krausbauer in collaboration with Tokyo composer Kaori Suzuki perform “intensely ritualistic free drone music” at issue Project Room, $15

3/14, 8 PM jazz chanteuse/guitarist Yooni Choi with pianist Jacob Sacks at I-Beam, $15

3/14, 8 PM avant singer Charmaine Lee with wild extended-technique trumpeter Peter Evans at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

3/14, 8 PM wild Hungarian band Eletfa and Boston street brass band Kotoko Brass at Flushing Town Hall, $18, $12 18 and under, students w/NYC school id under 19 get in free

3/14, 8 PM political, fearless acoustic songwriter Shawna Caspi at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

3/14, 8 PM brilliantly improvisational pianist Mara Rosenbloom‘s philosophically-inspired FLYWAYS with bassist Adam Lane and singer/percussionist Anais Maviel play the album release show for their new one at Speyer Hall, The Performance Project @ University Settlement, 184 Eldridge St, $15/$10 stud/srs. 3/21, 7:30 they’re at I-Beam, same deal

3/14, 10 PM sizzling electric bluegrass and C&W with Demolition String Band at Skinny Dennis

3/15 ,11 AM classical pianist Lara Downes plays a program tba at Subculture, $20 adv tix rec

3/15 3 PM the Greenwich Village Orchestra play Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; Rachmaninoff – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue and Enescu – Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 at All Saints Church, 230 E 60th St (2/3rd Aves), $25

3/15, 2 PM Tatev Amiryan, piano; Anna Hayrapetyan, soprano; Laura Navasardian, cello perform an all-Armenian program TBA at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, $25

3/15, 3 PM Mayuki Fukuhara, violin; Liuh-Wen Ting, viola; Benjamin Larsen, cello play trios by Mozart, Schubert and Schoenberg at Concerts on the Slope, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 139 St. John’s Place downhill from 7th Ave, sugg don

3/15, 4 PM the Brooklyn Conservatory Orchestra play Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at St. Ann’s Church in downtown Brooklyn, $25/$15 stud/srs

3/15, 4 PM the Cassatt String Quartet plus bassist play a quintet program tba at the Dreck Center at the Brooklyn Public Library, free, no under-sixes.

3/15, 6ish sharply lyrical southwestern gothic/Americana songwriter Tom Shaner  at LIC Bar

3/15, 6 PM slinky noir/retro rock bassist/songwriter Amy LaVere at the Mercury, $12. 3/18 she’s at Skinny Dennis at 9 for free

3/15, 7 PM adventurous cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and Butoh master Dai Matsuoka under the direction of Jessica Grindstaff perform their nw piece We Were Fridays at National Sawdust, $20 adv tix rec

3/15, 7 PM New York’s most charismatic, darkly compelling lyrical songwriter/storyteller/keyboard genius Rachelle Garniez plays the album release show for her new all-covers album Gone to Glory, a salute to dead rock n rollers with music by Prince, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, and Glen Campbell at Dixon Place, $15

3/15, 7 PM machinegunning metal trio Toxic Ruin, the screamier Stonecutters and supersonic thrash metal band Lich King at St. Vitus, $10

3/15, 7 PM an Ides of March show with spine-tingling, darkly mystical art-rock/avant-garde/chamber pop songwriter Carol Lipnik– pretty much everybody’s choice for best singer in all of NYC – and pianist Mara Rosenbloom at Pangea

3/15, 7 PM indie classical guitarist Gyan Rileys Elixir – basically Riley fronting the Bang on a Can Allstars – followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

3/15, 7:30 PM three female composers intensely bridging jazz and other genres: guitarist Amanda Monaco with her quartet, flutist Cheryl Pyle and her trio and wildfire polymath violist Stephanie Griffin (Momenta Quartet) leading a semi-improvisational quintet with Gordon Beeferman, piano Hilliard Greene, bass Jake Charkey, cello; Lee Odom, clarinetat Metro Baptist Church, 410 West 40th St, (between 9th & 10th Ave.), $20/$15 stu/srs

3/15, 7:30 PM Korean artists Ki Young and Gamin, on piano and piri, with classical avant-punk violin duo String Noise pushing the boundaries of Korean traditional music at the Tenri Cultural Institute, $20

3/15, 7:30 PM improvisational alchemy: guitarist Loren Connors, a cappella accents by distinctive vocalist Suzanne Langille; intimate yet fierce guitarist and vocalist/storyteller Dora Bleu; veteran experimental guitarist and sonic artist Alan Licht; and intense, purposeful, scorching guitarist Ava Mendoza at the Windjammer,552 Grandview Ave in Ridgewood, $10

3/15, 8 PM new works by Maya Verlaak, Grzegorz Marciniak and Assaf Gidron performed by bassist Rachel Mangold and pianist Teodora Stepančić at Arete Gallery, $tba

3/15, 8:30 PM exhilarating acoustic guitar instrumentalist Lyle Brewer– like John Fahey on steroids – at Pete’s

3/15, 10 PM deviously entertaning pianist Jinjoo Yoo leads her trio at Birdland, $20 at the bar

3/16, half past noon Elad Kabilio (cello), Inbar Goldmann (mezzo soprano), and Avigail Malachi-Baev (clarinet) play synagogue music from Jewish cultures around the world at Central Synagogue, $18

3/16, 2 PM the Viano Quartet play works by Haydn, Dvorak and a Jordan Nelson world premiere at the New School auditorium at 66 W 12th St, $18

3/16, 6:30 PM powerful jazz belter – and Gil Scott-Heron reinventor – Charenee Wade at Elebash Hall at CUNY, free

3/16. 8:30 PM Romany jazz violinist Marissa Licata at Birdland, $20 at the bar

3/16, 9 PM elegantly eclectic, tuneful pianist Angelica Sanchez leads her trio at Bar Lunatico

3/16, 9 PM legendary dual-reedman George Braith– who can play two saxes at once better than most guys can play one – with his quartet at the Fat Cat

3/16, 9:30 PM fearless, insurgent, amazingly spot-on comedienne/vocal impersonator Tammy Faye Starlite plays Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English at Joe’s Pub, $15 gen adm

3/16, 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

3/16, 11 PM eclectic pan-latin and Middle Eastern-inflected acoustic songwriter Miriam Elhajli at the big room at the Rockwood

3/17, starting in the early afternoon at Connolly’s a daylong free Irish music show with Jameson’s Revenge, Shilelagh Law, the Prodigals and more, hell yeah, none of the amateurs can start this early

3/17, 7 PM a rare reunion of NYC Irish punk legends (and Pogues reinventors) Joe Hurley and Rogue’s March at Hill Country, $20

3/17, 7 PM veteran Irish crooner Pierce Turner– at one time he was doing a mashup of the Pogues and the Moody Blues – at Joe’s Pub, $25

3/17, 7 PM the Ekstasis Duo – cellist Natasha Farni and pianist Eliran Avni – play a program tba at Revelation Gallery, 224 Waverly Pl, $20

3/17, 5 PM sarodist/guitarist Camila Celin and singer Melvis Santa jam out Indian raga and latin themes at the Assemblage at John St., 17 John St., financial district,

3/17, 7:30 PM the all-female Clarion Quartet play banned music by orks by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, and Weinberg at the Baruch Performing Arts Ctr, $26/$15 stud

3/18, 8 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 at Barbes

3/18, 8 PM probably the best bill to ever play Arlene Grocery: third-gen Sabbath types Sleeping Village, deliciously sludgy heavy psych band Grass, doomy stoner boogie bands Grandpa Jack and Shadow Witch at Arlene’s, $10

3/19, 7:30 PM lyrically provocative mashups of Ethiopiques, parlor pop, hard funk and psychedelia with Meklit at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

3/17, 7:30/9:30 PM the haunting, smokily cinematic Michael Leonhart Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, $30

3/17. 8 PM otherworldly Norwegian folk singer Marja Mortensson and band play ancient reindeer herding songs at Nublu 151, $15

3/17, 8 PM edgy oldschool and newer soul styles with singer Maya Sharpe at the small room at the Rockwood

3/17, 9ish wild Irish band the Narrowbacks at Bowery Ballroom, $15 adv tix rec avail at th e Mercury

3/18, noon Benjamin Baker, violin and Daniel Lebhardt, piano play works by Brahms, Tania Ko, Lili Boulanger and Beeethoven at the Morgan Library, $25

3/18, 7:30/9:30 PM historically-informed, lyrical trumpeter Josh Lawrence & Lost Works at the Jazz Standard, $35

3/18, 8 PM Irish revolutionary songs with the Druids at Connolly’s, $tba

3/18, 8 PM energetic delta blues/Romany swing guitaris Felix Slim at LIC Bar

3/18. 9;30 PM poignantly lyrical, eclectic pianist Marta Sanchez leads her quintet at Seeds

3/19, 7 PM rapturousy subtle tropicalia drummer/bandleader (and former Chicha Libre timbalera) Karina Colis leads her quintet at the Fat Cat

3/19, 7 PM saxophonist Berta Moreno (who titled her debut album “Little Steps”) leads her Afro-Jazz Soul Project at the Bronx Music Heritage Center at 1303 Louis Nine Blvd, $7

3/19, 7:30 PM conversational pianist Jeffrey Siegel plays music of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt at Scandinavia House, $25

3/19, 7:30/9:30 PM OMG what a killer band: the NEC All-Stars – Fred Hersch – piano; Miguel Zenón– alto saxophone Donny McCaslin – tenor saxophone; Jorge Roeder – bass; Richie Barshay – drums at the Jazz Standard, $30

3/19, 7:30 PM the Israeli chamber Project play early Beethoven works plus Bartók’s epic Piano Quintet., at Carnegie Hall, $30 seats avail

3/19, 7:30/9:30 PM trumpet powerhouse Jeremy Pelt leads his band at Minton’s, $20 at the bar

3/19, 7:30 PM Cuban-American cellist Tommy Mesa and pianist Yoon Lee play works by Jonathan Chenette, George Holloway, Lydia Pugh, Elizabeth Start, and Ben-Yee Paulson as well as Debussy’s Sonata in D minor at the DiMenna Center, $25

3/19, 8 PM cellist Scott Ballantyne and pianist Hiroko Sasaki play works by Bach, Barber Haydn and others at Merkin Concert Hall, $25

3/19-20. 8 PM bassist Simon Hanes and Pianist Anthony Coleman at Scholes St Studios

3/19, 8 PM fiery celtic/klezmer violinist Lisa Gutkin and her band at Town & Village Synagogue, Social Hall, 334 East 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

3/19, 8:30 PM ambient electroacoustic sitarist/composer Ami Dang at the Jalopy, $15

3/20, 5:30 PM plaintive Yorkshire/Appalachian singer Jan Bell –whose gloomy chronicles of Brooklyn gentrification are spot-on – at the American Folk Art Museum

3/20, 7 PM magically lustrous jazz singer/composer Aubrey Johnson and her sextet play the album release show for her new one at the big room at the Rockwood, $20

3/20, 7 PM eclectic blues singer Fay Victor with cellist Marika Hughes, and alto saxist Darius Jones play the album release show for her stark new Barn Songs at Joe’s Pub, $15

3/20, 7 PM Tibetan composer/activist Tenzin Choegya with intense, eclectic cellist Rubin Kodheli at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

3/20, 7:30 PM Todd Phillips, violin with guest Rachel Yunkyung Choo, piano play an all-Beethoven program at Greenfield Hall at Manhattan School of Music, free

3/20, 7:30 PM salsa flutist Andrea Brachfeld y Su Charanga at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

3/20, 7:30/9:30 PM lyrical piano icon Fred Hersch with mesmerizing singer Dominique Eade at the Jazz Standard, $35

3/20-21, 8 PM one of the most consistently interesting improvisers out there, trombonist Steve Swell and group at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

3/20, 8 PM theremin virtuoso Pamelia Stickney‘s Jatakas at the Owl

3/20, 8 PM dusky, rustic Brazilian jungle guitar-and-accordion sounds with Regional de NY followed by psychedelic Afrobeat band Super Yamba at Barbes

3/20, 9 PM Hollow Engine – who do a decent enough dreampop take on Radiohead – at the Delancey, $10

3/20 10ish hard-hitting Bronx metal band Lost Legacy at Blackthorn 51, $12/

3/20-21 Windhand at St. Vitus is sold out, bummer

3/20-3/21 Mdou Moctar at the Sultan Room is sold out – what were they thinking

3/21, 2 PM drummer Sylvia Cuenca leads her quartet at Poe Park in the Bronx

3/21, 2 PM a special NY Philharmonic Young People’s Concert on music creating change with exerpts from politically-fueled works by Shostakovich, Beethoven, Verdi and others, $16 tix avail

3/21 4 PM the rapturous, mighty Navatman Music Collective – this continent’s only Indian carnatic choir, and one of only three in the world – at Flushing Town Hall, $18, $12 18 and under, students w/NYC school id under 19 get in free

3/21, 4 PM the Erik Satie Quartet – Ron Hay (trombone), Max Seigel (bass trombone),Ben Holmes(trumpet), and Andrew Hadro (bari sax) –reinvent classic and obscure Satie chamber pieces as well as rare compositions by his obscure contemporaries, followed at 6 PM by Big Lazy noir guitar mastermind Steve Ulrich, followed at 10 by the haphazardly funny Eastern Blokhedz – who dopsychedelic covers of 60s Russian psychedelic pop songs and specialize in the catalog of legendary Polish singer Edita Piaha –at Barbes

3/21, 5:30 PM a Nowrooz celebration with percussionist/vocalist Kamyar Arsani and vocalist Mina Omidi at the Center for Remembering and Sharing, $25 adv tix rec, incl. delicious Persian food,

3/21, 7:30 PM the legendary Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio play an all-Beethoven program at Irving Auditorium, Irving Pl/17th St., $16

3/21, 7:30 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Ed Cherry leads an organ trio at the Bar Next Door, $12

3/21, 8 PM not a music event but cool: Elizabeth Jennings: A play by Lionelle Hamanaka about the schoolteacher who desegregated the New York City streetcars by jumping aboard a “whites only” car in 1854, at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”

3/21, 8 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven’s Piano Concertos #2-4 with soloist Louis Lortie at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

3/21, 8 PM the Afro-Dominicano Band play perico ripiao, palo, merengue de orquesta, bachata, Afro-beat, reggae, calypso, samba, funk, punk rock and other Caribbean rhythms at Buunni Performance Space, (4961 Broadway btw 207th Street and Isham in Inwood), $15

3/21, 8 PM the Long Island Concert Orchestra with violin soloist Kyoung-Joo Sung play Beeethoven’s Violin Concerto in D and Symphony No. 2 at Merkin Concert Hall, $25 tix avail

3/21, 10 PM Super Yamba play their bracingly psychedelic Afrobeat jams at Footlight Bar, $10

3/21, 11 PM stark southwestern gothic jangle and clang with And the Wiremen at Petes

3/22 11 AM the Ulysses Quartet play a program tba at Subculture, $20 adv tix rec

3/22, 2 PM the verdantly atmospheric Treesearch (bassist Kyle Motl and violinist Keir GoGwilt) at Arete Gallery, $10

3/22, 3:30 PM jazz singer Nancy Kearin with her Quartet at Scholes St Studios, $10. Followed at 7 (separate $10 adm) by guitarist Nicholas Rousseau and his quintet recording a live album inspired by Jean-Jacques Roussesu (relation?)

3/22, 4:30 PM music by Ravel & Gershwin performed by Luba Poliak (piano) and Anna Elashvili (violin) at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery,

3/22, 7 PM all-female Armenian vocal trio Zulal – Teni Apelian, Anaïs Alexandra Teke Zulalrian, and Yeraz Markarian, and Perspectives Ensemble reinvent Armenian traditional music at St. James Chapel, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th St north of St. John the Divine, free

3/22, 7 PM noisepunks Sub Space, Namatay San Ingay, riff-rocking punks Filth Hound, stomping female-fronted metal/new wave band Shadowland and the mighty, fast High Command at St. Vitus, $10

3/22 7 PM Germán López – leading virtuoso of the uke-like Canary Island timple – at Joe’s Pub, $20 gen adm

3/22, 7 PM balmy, sardonically individualistic vocal jazz stylist Dorian Devins and her trio at Bar Thalia adjacent to Symph0ny Space

3/22, 7 PM the Honkytonk Heroes – a NY All-Star of sorts, featuring Charlie Giordano, Gene Yellin, Andy Statman, Tim Kiah followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

3/22, 7:30/9 PM sweeping, swinging vibraphonist Behn Gillece featuring Rick Germanson on piano & Paul Gill on bass at Mezzrow, $20

3/22, 8 PM flamenco jazz saxophonist Antonio Lizana with his band at Drom, $20 adv tix rec

3/22, 10 PM noir-inspired alto saxophonist/composer Nick Hempton leads his ensemble at Smalls

3/23, 7 PM Melissa Gordon of Melissa & the Mannequins, one of the best purist janglerock songwriters in NYC, at the basement room at the Rockwood, $10

3/23, 7:30 PM epic orchestral instrumental art-rockers Kitt Wakeley and the Symphony of Sinners and Saints at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall,$25 tix avail

3/23, 9:30 PM Kuye with Juan Ospina (vocals), Isaac Matus (huitar), Andres Fonseca (drums), and Mohamed Sharhabil (bass) play psychedelic Caribbean rock at Barbes

3/24, 7 PM indie classical chamber ensemble Latitude 49 play the album release show for their new one with works by Gabriella Smith (a homage to the Beatles’ “Revolution 9”), Viet Cuong’s whimsical showpiece “Wax and Wire,” plus ruminant works by Annika Socolofsky and Chris Sies at Arete Gallery, free w rsvp

3/24, 7 PM violinist Sam Bardfeld leads a trio followed at 9:30 by clever, fiery, eclectic ten-piece Balkan/hip-hop/funk brass maniacs and Ellington reinventors Slavic Soul Party at Barbes

3/24, 7 PM cinematic bassist Mark Wade and ambitious, tuneful trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson lead their trios at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, sug don

3/24, 8 PM the String Orchestra of Brooklyn play Sarah Kirkland Snider’s achingly tense Penelope suite at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec is this 3/24 o4 26

3/24, 9 PM wickedly jangly surf/twang/country instrumentalists the Bakersfield Breakers at 11th St Bar

3/24 10 PM darkly glimmering Cretan psychedelic electric lyra/drums duo Xylouris White at the Bell House, $15

3/25, 6 PM pianist Ari Livne plays works by Ligeti, Ryan Francis and more at Elebash Hall at CUNY, free

3/25, 7 PM female-fronted brass band madness: the Brass Queens, Pussy Grabs Back Brass Band and Brassdom at Barbes

3/25, 8 PM sitar virtuoso Gaurav Mazumdar with bansuri flutist Rupak Kulkarni & tabla player Hindole Majumdar at Merkin Concert Hall, $25 tix avail

3/25, 7:30/9:30 PM the Claudia Quintet– the chamber jazz group that started it all, and did a killer 9/11 memorial album – at the Jazz Gallery, $25

3/26, 7 PM pianists Hafez Babashahi, and Mira Gill play works by Schubert, Mozart, Kurtag, Chopin and Larcher at the Austraian Cultural Center, free, rsvp req

3/26, 7 PM Quintet of the Americas play James Cohn’s Klezmer Fantasy plus music by Lembit Beecher, Harold Gutiérrez, Robert Deemer and José Raul Bernardo at the National Opera Center, 330 7th Ave, $20/$10 stud/sts

3/26, 7:30/9:30 PM Latvian composer/singer Arta Jēkabsone with her quintet at the Jazz Gallery, $15

3/26, 7:30 PM pianist Per Tengstrand and Opus 21 play Chopin’s First Piano Concerto at Scandinavia House, $25

3/26, 7:30 PM, repeaitng 3/28 at 8 the NY Philharmonic play Lalo’s Spanish Symphony, Janacek’s Taras Bulba Suite, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and works by Berlioz, $32 tix avail

3/26, 7:30 PM kinetic Chicago postrock/acid jazz bnad the Necks at the Poisson Rouge, $20 adv tix rec

3/26, 7:30 PM Oruco (flamenco dancer and percussionist), Eduardo Trassierra (guitarist), and Kiko Peña (vocalist) re-create a traditional Flamenco Tabla at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

3/26, 8 PM accordion genius Shoko Nagai’s haunting Tokala Silk Road/klezmer mashup project at Barbes

3/26, 8 PM Sarah Kirkland Snider’s monumental work Penelope, performed by soprano Eliza Bagg, percussionist Victor Caccese, and the Manhattan Chamber Players at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/26-28, 8 PM “an operatic realization of the rarely heard Compositions No. 279-283 for comedian and improvising musicians by a giant of American music, composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, featuring Rob Reese, actor/director; Nate Wooley, trumpet; Jessica Pavone, strings, Ingrid Laubrock, saxophones; Kamala Sankaram, vocals; Elizabeth Saunders, vocals at the Flea, 20 Thomas St, Tribeca, $30

3/26, 8 PM exhilarating klezmer/latin/cumbia jamband Metropolitan Klezmer at Town & Village Synagogue, Social Hall, 334 East 14th St.(between 1st & 2nd Ave.), $15

3/26, 8 PM a “composer portrait” of trombonist George Lewis performed by Laura Cocks, Seth Parker Woods, Dana Jessen, Conrad Harris & Pauline Kim at Issue Project Room, $15

3/26, 8:30 PM hauntingly mesmerizing Iraqi classical singer Zahra Zubaidi (of Safaafir) at the Jalopy, $15

3/27, 6:30 PM flamenco chanteuse Rocio Marquez and band at Elebash Hall at CUNY, $30

3/27, 6:30 PM folk noir duo the Tall Pines at the American Folk Art Museum

3/27, 7:30 PM succinct, lyrical Americana road warrior Peter Mulvey at City Vineyard, $20\

3/27, 8 PM trumpeter Ben Holmes’ broodingly Middle Eastern/klezmer-tinged Naked Lore trio at Barbes

3/27-8, 8 PM unpredictable, intense improvisational jazz trombonist Josh Roseman at Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, $20

3/27, 8 PM the String Orchestra of Brooklyn play works by by Caroline Shaw, Shelley Washington and Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/27, 7:30 PM Cuban pianist Dayramir González and band put an Afro-Cuban spin on Bowie and Blondie tunes at Joe’s Pub, $25 adv tix rec

3/27, 8 PM the NJ Symphony Orchestra play Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Christopher Rouse: Bassoon Concerto and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony at NJPAC in Newark, $20 tix avail

3/27, 8:30 PM Korean oboeist/flutist Gamin and the traditional Korean Nangye Gugak Orchestra at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, $35, expensive, but could be super cool

3/27, 8 PM baritone sax sage Dave Sewelson leads his quintet at the old Nublu; 3/30, 9 PM he’s at Bar Lunatico

3/27, 9 PM haunting flamenco/Sicilian folk chanteuse Julia Patinella.at the basement room at the Rockwood, $12

3/27, 9:30 PM majestic, darkly cinematic surf band the TarantinosNYC at Freddy’s

3/27, 10 PM psychedelic Afrobeat jammers Underground System at the Sultan Room, $15

3/28. 6 PM Big Lazy noir guitar mastermind Steve Ulrich followed at 10 by slinky, hypnotic percussive Moroccan trance band Innov Gnawa at Barbes

3/28, 7 PM soprano Lucy Dhegrae sings works by Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Alison Knowles, Pamela Z, Meredith Monk, Kate Soper, and Luciano Berio on themes of post-traumatic stress disorder at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/28, 7:30 PM purist postbop jazz guitarist Jocelyn Gould leads a trio at the Bar Next Door, $12

3/28, 7:30 PM pianist Conrad Tao‘s Junction Trio play works by Haydn, Ives and Dvorak at Irving Auditorium, Irving Pl/17th St., $16

3/28, 8 PM gospel singer Robert Gibbons, trombonist poet Demetrius Daniel and politically-inspired bluesy songwriter Fred Arcoleo at the People’s Voice Cafe, sugg don, $20, “more if you choose; less if you can’t; no one turned away.”’

3/28, 8 PM Irish concertina/accordion player Christy McNamara returns from Ireland to reprise last year’s concert with guitarist David Sidman, plus a special opening set by Jerry O’Sullivan, arguably America’s premier master of the uilleann pipes at the Jalopy $15 adv tix avail at the theatre

3/28, 8 PM flamenco crooner Rancapino Chico – “torchbearer of flamenco puro and heir to the cantes of Cadiz” – at Roulette, $30

3/29, 7PM noir guitar legend Jim Campilongo with fellow six-stringer Steve Cardenas duo followed at 9:30 by Romany jazz/psychedelic rock guitar mastermind Stephane Wrembel at Barbes

3/28 9 PM haunting French-Tunisian saxophonist Yacine Boulares’ Ajoyo project with singer Sarah E. Charles at Bar Lunatico

3/28 9ish eclectic violinist Dana Lyn’s protean, psychedelic, ecologically woke jazz project Mother Octopus at the Owl

3/28 9 PM honkytonk guitarslinger Danny Weiss and charming singer Mary Olive Smith’s oldschool C&W band Stillhouse Serenade at the Jalopy Tavern

3/28, 8 PM edgy Middle Eastern-inspired alto saxophonist Uri Gurvich leads an electric quintet at Nublu 151, $15

3/28, 8 PM lush, intense, artfully orchestrated psychedelic rockers Aunt Ange at the small room at the Rockwood

3/28, 8 PM the Fonema Consort play new works by Jessie Cox, Fjola Evans, Louis Goldford and Laure Hiendl.at the DiMenna Center, $tba

3/28, 8 PM first-class improvisers: jazz bassoonist Sarah Schoenbeck’s duo SSWH with Dana JEssen and violinist Jason Kao Hwang‘s Sing House at Soup & Sound

3/28. 8 PM sax duo Hocket: Alastair Wright and Dylan Ward play music by Augusta Read Thomas, Meredith Monk, Kirsten Broberg, Ken Thomson, David Biedenbender, Lei Liang and Marc Mellits at Scholes St Studios, $10

3/29, 11 AM intense, fearlessly relevant Middle Eastern clarinetist Kinan Azmeh‘s City band at Subculture, $20 adv tix rec, that’s worth getting up early for on a Sunday!

3/29, 4 PM soul songwriter Sandra Small – who brings the passion of oldschool soul into the hip-hop era – at the small room at the Rockwood

3/29, 7 PM ambient electroacoustic improvisation by violinist Daniel Pioro and Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson at National Sawdust, $25 adv tix rec

3/29,. 7 PM a jazz piano twinbill w/ Erez Aviram Trio & Shai Portugaly and the Band at Scholes St Studios, $10

3/29, 7ish  catchy folk noir/Nashville gothic songwriter Emily Frembgen at LIC Bar

3/29, 8 PM flamenco cantante Elena Andujar and band at Drom, $15 adv tix rec

3/29, 10:30 PM apocalyptic psychedelic circus rock with Frogbelly & Symphony at the Sultan Room, $12

3/30, 7 PM the Raga Maqam ensemble with rapturous Middle Eastern trumpeter Amir Elsaffar, violinist Arun Ramamurthy and an all-star Indian ensemble at the Rubin Museum of Art, $30

3/30 8 PM lush, elegant, classically-informed jazz with the Vadim Neselovskyi Nonet feat. trumpeter Dave Douglas and magically haunting singer Sara Serpa at Roulette, $18 adv tix rec

3/31, drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, the new generation’s most eclectic jazz harpist, Brandee Younger & bassist Dezron Douglas at the Miller Theatre, free

3/31, 7:30/9:30 PM vocal jazz supergroup Duchess -Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylyianou with Jesse Lewis on guitar at the Jazz Standard, $30

3/31, 7:30 PM violin duo Milolina play their US debut with works by Ann Rosén, Finnish composer Tomi Räisänen, and Lynn Bechtold, as well as other featured works by Norwegian composer Ketil Hvoslef and Swedish composers Cecilia Franke, Mauro Godoy Villalobos, and Katarina Leyman, at Scandinavia House, $25

3/31, 7:30 PM Belarusian-American cellist Mark Prihodko, with pianist Tatiana Goncharova play works by Beethoven, Franck, Mark Mico and others at Merkin Concert Hall, $15 tix avail

3/31, 8 PM one of New York’s most eclectic, interesting oudists, Brian Prunka and his Egyptian-style band Sharq Attack at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Fulton St at Washington, C to Clinton-Washington, sug don

4/2, 7:30 PM pianist Gabriele Baldocci plays a program tba at St. Johns Church, 218 W 11th St.,

4/3, 8 PM the NY Philharmonic play a $5 concert featuring music by Bernstein, Copland, Shostakovich, Nina C. Young, andNew York Philharmonic Very Young Composer Paloma Alonso as well as music chosen by ticketholders.

4/4, 8 PM Yemeni oudist Abdulrahman Al-Akhfash with mesmerizing Omani oudist/singer Amal Waqar and multi-instrumentalist Zafer Tawil at Roulette, $30

4/8, 7 PM everybody’s favorite downtown NYC soundtrack band, Morricone Youth followed by a screening of Kire Papputs’ suspense film The Last Porno Show – about a kid who inherits a porno theatre and hopes to close it but gets sucked into a more and more twisted world – at Nighthawk Theatre in Williamsburg, $18

4/9, 7:30 PM the HEO Trio blend Korean and French sounds into jazz at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

4/13. 7;30 PM pianist Vasily Primakov plays sonatas by Franck and Chopin at St. Johns Church, 218 W 11th St.,

4/14 drinks at 5:30 PM, show at 6, indie classical supergroup the Hands Free – James Moore, guitar & banjo; Caroline Shaw, violin Eleonore Oppenheim, bass; Nathan Koci, accordionat the Miller Theatre, free

4/16, 8 PM the NY Scandia Symphony play works by Carl Nielsen, Hugo Alfven, Emil Hartmann at Symphony Space, $25

4/16, 7:30 PM adventurous jazz singer/trumpeter Linda Briceño and band at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

4/16-18 haunting composer/pianist Michael Hersch with eclectic vocal/chamber ensemble Cantata Profana at the Irondale Center

4/17, 7:30 PM Son Del Monte play low brass-driven salsa dura at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

4/18, 8 PM haunting tanbour virtuoso Ali Akbar Moradi with ubiquitous Iranian percussionist Pejman Hadadi, the innovative at Roulette, $30

4/24, 8 PM Debapriya Adhikary and Samanwaya Sarkar play a rare duet with vocal and sitar at Roulette, $30

4/25, 8 PM oudist Brahim Frigbane and sintir player Hassan Hakmoun duel it out at Roulette, $30

4/28, 7 PM violinist Asi Matathias and pianist Matthew Graybil play works by Vitali, Beethoven and Saint-Saens at Revelation Gallery, 224 Waverly Pl, $20

4/30, 7:30 PM the Heath Quartet play an all-Beethoven program at the Lincoln Center Atrium, free, early arrival advised

5/1, 7:30 PM Soul Science Lab duo, Chen Lo and Asanté Amin “recreate the year 1963 in a live performance with artists whose work breathes new life into the sights and sounds that shaped the music of an era—allowing a modern audience to rethink, renew, and remix their conceptions of the past. From the Black empowerment songs of James Brown to the outcries for justice in Ferguson, Soundtrack ’63 highlights pivotal moments in America’s history and illustrates why they remain relevant today” at Alice Tully Hall, $25

5/19. 7 PM pianist Asiya Korepanova leads a trio playing works by Tschaikovskky and a trio version of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 at Revelation Gallery, 224 Waverly Pl, $20

Melody Fader Channels the Deepest Side of Chopin and More in Manhattan and Brooklyn

Pianist Melody Fader’s favorite composer is Chopin. And it shows. The audience at her intimate, solo Soho Silk Series show last month gave her a standing ovation that went on and on, after she’d ended the program with a characteristically intuitive take of the composer’s famous Fantasie-Impromptu op. 66. Maybe that’s because she didn’t play it as if it was the Minute Waltz, as certain hotshot players tend to do.

Instead, revealingly, she took her time, letting the gritty Romany chromatics of those daunting cascades gleam, rather than just leaving momentary flickers behind in a race to the finish line. That was just one of the concert’s innumerable gorgeous details. On one hand, that’s to be expected on a program of music by a classical icon or two; still, Fader seems especially dedicated to finding those delicious bits and spotlighting them. She’s a pioneer of the house concert circuit (not to be confused with the evil and intrusive Groupmuse); her next Soho loft show is Feb 25 in a duo set with Momenta Quartet violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron playing  music of Ravel, Brahms and Schumann. You can rsvp for location and deets; for the Brooklyn posse, they’re repeating the program (from their forthcoming album) the following night, Feb 26 at 7 PM at Spectrum for a modest $15 cover.

The rest of the January bill was just as much of a revelation. It’s impossible to remember anyone playing more emotionally attuned versions of the E Minor and B Minor preludes. They’re standard repertoire, they don’t require virtuoso technique, but what a difference Fader’s subtle rubato and resoluteness in the face of sheer devastation meant to the former. Same with her crisp but muted arpeggios, bringing out all the longing in the latter. The dynamics in the rest of the first eight of Chopin’s preludes were just as vivid, from the warm cantabile she brought to the C major prelude, to the catacomb phantasmagoria of the one in A minor and a welcome suspense in A major later on.

From there, there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of depth, and gravitas, but also in many places unselfconscious joy. Fader averred that as a kid, she didn’t like Bach: she found his music mechanical. These days, she’s done a 180, validating that with a dazzling, harpsichord-like precision but also fierce ornamentation throughout a rousing take of his French Suite in E, no. 6.

Kaija Saariaho is also a big Bach fan, so following with her Ballade was a great segue, even if the rhythms tended toward the tango Fader had found lurking inside the early part. The stygian boogie and jaunty cascades afterward were just as intense.

The wary, muted melancholy as she launched into the Chopin Ballade no. 2 in F major was a feature that sometimes gets lost in more ostentatious hands. By contrast, she pulled out an almost grand guignol attack for the Andante Spianato op. 22, yet pulled back with a guardedly hopeful understatement afterward. Amd the glittery tumbles of the Etude op. 25 no. 1 got the same kind of articulacy she’d given the Bach. By the time this was all over, pretty much everybody was out of breath.

Distantly Creepy, Bite-Sized Cinematics From Pianist Akira Kosemura

Pianist Akira Kosemura‘s has a darkly resonant new ep of brief, memorable solo pieces, titled Romance, streaming at Bandcamp.

The title cut is an elegantly brooding, chromatically incisive, somewhat minimalist waltz. It’s an opening theme for a suspense film waiting to happen…and it doesn’t have a happy ending.

Kosemura takes its series of precisely articulated broken chords and makes more of an angst-fueled ballad out of them with the second movement, In the Middle of a Bridge. The clouds lift somewhat with the more enigmatic yet hopeful harmonies of the final movement, Reach Into the Sky. Third time’s a charm: about nine minutes of first-class grey-sky music from an expert in the field.

 

Steal This Composition Book

Soul singer Zeshan B once told an audience that whenever he’s at a loss about where to go with a tune, he just rips a riff from the Indian raga repertoire. Thelonious Monk would loop a phrase and play variations on it until he found something he liked. Iggy Pop’s advice is to take three favorite songs and mash them up. Another good option for the musically stuck would be to dial up the double vinyl album Diary 2005–2015: Yuko Yamaoka Plays the Music of Satoko Fujii, which unfortunately isn’t online yet. It’s a historic release: up to now, no one has ever put out a cover album of material by Fujii, widely considered one of the greatest improvisers of our time, but also underrated (and somewhat undiscovered) as a composer.

Since the mid-90s, Fujii has released over a hundred albums of her own and played on many others: solo, with small groups and several improvising orchestras. She has a Bach-like sense of the seemingly endless permutations that can be built from a simple phrase. This album is sort of the greatest hits from her sketchbook, Some of these ideas morphed into pieces she’s released over the years, but most of them just sat in a box until her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, suggested pulling the best of them together for a record.

Since Fujii and Tamura spend so much of their time on the road, they enlisted Yamaoka, whose background is classical music, to record them. The result is something worth…um…emulating. You can hear some of those emulatable ideas when Fujii, who’s been coming to town a lot more in recent months, plays Roulette on Feb 11 at 8 PM with her Kaze quartet; $18 advance tix are highly recommended and available at the venue on showdates.

Some of these ideas are barely twenty seconds long; others go on maybe a minute. It becomes clear early on that this is a great mind at work, and Yamaoka’s elegant phrasing does it justice. Fujii has a Pauline Oliveros-class sense of pure sound, but this is straight-up keyboard material without any of the inside-the-piano otherworldliness that Fujii inevitably brings into her live performance.

Each piece is titled by date: the darkness is pretty relentless. Among the most gorgeous are 021205, an understatedly majestic chromatic theme; the one from the next day, with its eerie belltones, is just as tantalizingly brief. A brooding waltz from December of that year could be the start of something beautiful, as could an intriguing series of interlocking phrases from the spring of 2006. A forlornly saturnine 3/4 ballad from the end of 2011 is another highlight. The most fully developed number is an allusive yet stunningly catchy quasi-bolero from 2014.

There are studies on the black keys, in whole-tone and twelve-tone scales and tense close harmonies. Contrasts abound: lively/still, low/high, spare/intricate and warm/icy. Flickers of Debussy, Stravinsky at his most phantasmagorical, Monk, Dave Brubeck, acoustic Steely Dan and Japanese folk melodies filter in and out. Fans of Bartok’s similarly fascinating and inspiring Mikrokosmos will find this a goldmine of useful ideas.

A Landmark Weeklong Celebration of Brilliant Women Composers at Juilliard

If you follow this page, you’re familiar with the ugly truth that as recently as 2015, this country’s major symphony orchestras were performing music written by women less than two percent of the time. For a lot of those orchestras, that’s about once a year. That 25% of the New York Philharmonic s programming this year will be writtten by women – as part of the orchestra’s Project 19 initiative – is enough to bump that dial significantly. It’s about time.

And just as significantly, Juilliard devoted the entirety of their Focus 2020 series, which wound up last week, to women composers. Just think: some of the rising-star talent there may take some of those pieces with them when they graduate. This blog was not present for the full seven days, but did devote an entire work week to discovering some of the most riveting rare repertoire played in this city this year.

You can’t find most of this material on youtube, or anywhere on the web, either. The amount of work that Juilliard’s Joel Sachs and his crew put into casting a net for more than a century’s worth of scores is mind-blowing. But a global network answered his SOS, and the result was not only a consistently strong mix of mostly undiscovered treasures, but also some very smartly conceived programming. As closing night last Friday at Alice Tully Hall proved, it was possible to pull together a whole night of percussion-driven, noir-tinged symphonic material, all written by women. That these works aren’t already famous testifies to the barriers their creators had to overcome.

Tragically, some of them didn’t. One of the festival’s most eye-opening and darkest works was the solo piano suite Pages From the Diary, a more brief but equally carnivalesque counterpart to Pictures at an Exhibition written in 1949 by Israeli composer Verdina Shlonsky. We don’t know if it was ever performed in her lifetime; she died in obscurity in 1990. It was part of the Monday night program, played with dynamic verve by Isabella Ma. One has to wonder how many thousands of other Verdina Shlonskys there may have been.

Was the highlight of the Tuesday night program Vivian Fine’s Emily’s Images, a vividly jeweled suite of miniatures for piano and flute, or the saturnine blend of gospel gravitas and Gershwinesque flair in Florence Price’s Piano Sonata, played with steely confidence by Qilin Sun? It was hard to choose: it also could have been Young-Ja Lee’s dynamically bristling, subtly Asian-tinged, intriguingly voiced piano trio Pilgrimage of the Soul. The night ended with a couple of early Mary Lou Williams piano pieces, reminding that before she reinvented herself as a composer of gospel-inspired jazz and classical music, she was a big draw on the jazz and blues circuit, a formidable counterpart to James P. Johnson.

Without question, the high point of the Wednesday program was the Ruth Crawford Seeger String Quartet, violinists Courtenay Cleary and Abigail Hong, violist Aria Cherogosha and cellist Geirthrudur Gudmundsdottir working its meticulous hive of activity with barely repressed joy. Its subtly staggered mechanics have the complexity but also the translucence of Bartok; it may also be the most clever musical palindrome ever written.

Otherwise, pianist Keru Zhang voiced the Balkan-tinged edge of Viteslava Kapralova’s 1937 mini-suite April Preludes. Harpist Abigail Kent won a competition of sorts among Juilliard harpists to play Germaine Tailleferre’s jaunty, Debussyesque sonata. And the night’s great discovery was Australian composer Margaret Sutherland’s alternately angst-ridden and ebullient suite of neoromantic art-songs, sung with acerbic power by Maggie Valdman over Brian Wong’s elegant piano.

It was also hard to choose a favorite from Thursday night’s bill. The easy picks would have been Amy Beach’s Piano Trio in A Minor, a richly dynamic nocturne, or organist Phoon Yu’s lights-out savagery throughout Ruth Zechlin’s Fall of the Berlin Wall-era protest piece Against the Sleep of Reason. But pianist TianYi Lee‘s incisive, intense interpretation of Louise Talma’s often ominously biting Alleluia in the Form of a Toccata made a powerful coda before the intermission.

Also on the bill were Tiffany Wong’s graceful performance of Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ solo Sonata for Harp, a picturesquely late Romantic trio of Lili Boulanger miniatures played by flutist Helena Macheral and pianist Ying Lee, and the rather sardonic, contrapuntally clever, carefully cached but no less vivid chamber work Des-Cantec, written by Romanian composer Myriam Marbe in 1986.

The big Friday night blowout was everything it could have been: stormy, explosive, often harrowing. What a thrill it was to witness the Juilliard Orchestra reveling in the wide-eyed, spooky percussion and foreboding Bernard Herrmann-esque swells of Betsy Jolas’ 2015 A Litlle Summer Suite. They echoed that with more distant Cold War-era horror in Grazina Bacewicz’ 1963 Cello Sonata No. 2, soloist Samuel DeCaprio drawing roars of applause for tackling its daunting glissandos and wildfire staccato.

The lush, epic Ethel Smyth seascape On the Cliffs of Cornwall made a good launching pad for wave after harrowing wave of Thea Musgrave‘s 1990 Rainbow.

Ironically, throughout the history of folk music, women have always played an integral role, from Appalachian balladry, to the Bulgarian choral tradition and the Moroccan lila ceremony. If Project 19 and Juilliard’s herculean efforts are successful in jumpstarting a nationwide movement, it will merely mean that we’ve come full circle.

Concerts and solo recitals at Julliard continue throughout the end of the academic year. The next installment of the Philharmonic’s Project 19 series is tonight, Feb 6 at 7:30 PM with a Nina C. Young world premiere alongside Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Mozart’s “Great” Mass. You can get in for $35, or if you’re feeling adventurous (no guarantees, good luck), you can try scoring rush tickets a little before curtain time.