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Sep 23, 2024 | 
villagevoice.com | Erin Maxwell |R.C. Baker |Ross Barkan |Ben Gambuzza
Gotham City is not for the weak of heart. It is the type of metropolis that can easily destroy anyone not willing to fight for what they have, or not fight back against those who wish to take it from them. And within that hellscape, an occasional hero might arise. But this isn’t a story about heroes. Welcome to the underworld of HBO’s The Penguin.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
villagevoice.com | Ben Gambuzza |Brad Spurgeon |Katherine Turman |Duncan Wheeler
Brooklyn-born LCD Soundsystem, fronted by the redoubtable James Murphy, recently headlined All Points East, an urban music festival in the multi-ethnic district of London’s Bethnal Green, part of a 14-date European tour. At Victoria Park, the Pixies opened for LCD; the bill also included younger acts, including another Brooklyn band, Nation of Language.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
villagevoice.com | Sally Eckhoff |Ben Gambuzza |R.C. Baker
It’s hard to hurl criticism at Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York, Marin Kosut’s new book, that the author hasn’t already anticipated, levied at herself, and responded to in the text. What do her editors at Columbia University Press think of the book? Oh, probably something about how Art Monster “isn’t the book I proposed to write,” as she admits in the acknowledgments. So what? “If my perspective seems shifty, it’s because I’ve changed.” What do her academic peers think?
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May 22, 2024 | 
radiofreebrooklyn.org | Ben Gambuzza
Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, is astounding. It’s a compendium of vocal techniques – huffs, puffs, hums, moans – built around baroque dance forms like the sarabande and the courante. I hear something new every time I listen. It’s what made me a fan. Her 2019 album with the Attaca Quartet, Orange, is also fantastic. Patient, thoughtful, human, and organic, her string writing is beautiful.
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May 11, 2024 | 
newyorkclassicalreview.com | Ben Gambuzza
Friday evening’s concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute by pianist Ian Hobson and friends was spirited and passionate. But there was a volume problem. Winces abounded, the man next to me covered his ears toward the end, and several people walked out onto West 13th St. saying as much. Hobson, who is in his fourth year of performing all of Schumann’s works for piano, has two years left.
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Mar 12, 2024 | 
villagevoice.com | Ben Gambuzza
The last thing you could hear was his breathing, and the squeaking of his stool, as drummer Jessie Cox ended the set. He had just played an hour-long improvisation with bassoonists Rebekah Heller and Joy Guidry last month at the Stone, an experimental music venue on West 13th Street. Guidry supplemented bassoon with synth, dueting and diverging with Heller, who scampered through spontaneous, anxious, spoken monologues and crafted beautiful melodies with her bassoon.
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
brooklynrail.org | Ben Gambuzza
Music Last October, Knitting Factory alumnus and bagpiper David Watson hosted the first concert of his inaugural Striped Light series in Long Island City. As with the two concerts since, anyone who wanted to attend had to direct message Striped Light (@striped_light) through Instagram to learn the address of the show’s location, which is kept secret. Striped Light’s stealth is due to landlord issues, according to Watson.
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Feb 12, 2024 | 
radiofreebrooklyn.org | Ben Gambuzza
The Brooklyn avant-garde music scene is no longer burgeoning; it is flourishing. Guitarist and New England Conservatory student Gabe Boyarin, who is sure to make waves in the scene when he graduates and moves to NYC next year, says it best: “Brooklyn’s really popping right now… Some say it’s the new Manhattan.” Boyarin first learned about this world by listening to music from the Tzadik label, created by downtown musician and bandleader John Zorn.
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Nov 25, 2023 | 
villagevoice.com | Ben Gambuzza
Jazzman Gerry Eastman, 78, cooks harder than ever. Every Friday he gigs fast and mean, nimble and soulful, experimental and tender at the Williamsburg Music Center, which he has owned and operated (and lived in) since he bought the building for $50,000, in 1981. Back then the neighborhood was Black and Puerto Rican, and Eastman, composer and virtuoso electric guitarist, was just one of many musicians who owned their own clubs.
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Oct 31, 2023 | 
brooklynrail.org | Ben Gambuzza
The first time I met Ben Manley, he told me he would sleep in his car for his next musical project. This was in September at a Blank Forms concert in Clinton Hill. We were both there to hear Swedish musician Marcus Pal experiment with just intonation on a prepared, open-faced, upright piano.
