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2 weeks ago | 
star-revue.com | Kurt Gottschalk
The rhythm, the rebels. The smart assault of clipping. returned last month with a full-on assault. Dead Channel Sky is the hip-hop crew’s first album in five years (CD, LP, download on Sub Pop Records) and only their fifth full-length since their 2014 debut. It was worth the wait.
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2 weeks ago | 
star-revue.com | Kurt Gottschalk
\Sultry haze of balmy nights. The Egypt-born, Quebec-based singer/composer/producer Nadah El Shazly has built a following in recent years with a blend of club music experimentation and Arabic tradition. She’s been a big part of the rich and exciting music coming out of the Beirut / Cairo / Istanbul triangle (Karkhana, Praed Orchestra!) as well as a variety of Montreal projects spearheaded by Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush in particular).
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1 month ago | 
bachtrack.com | Kurt Gottschalk
The awakening of Lincoln Center in recent years has been something to behold. If the pendulum swung a little far, so be it. Pendulums have a way of swinging back again, and mid 2025 shows a level of balance in programming has been attained. In December, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli and Kate Soper were named New York Philharmonic Kravis Emerging Composers, an award which comes with a commissioned performance.
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1 month ago | 
bachtrack.com | Kurt Gottschalk
New York City’s small and dedicated Heartbeat Opera closes its 11th season with a staging of Faust and a bit of (likely) unintentional historical parallel. The production, at Baruch Performing Arts Center in Manhattan, comes on the heels of their modern-day take on Salome in March, a couple of months before the Metropolitan Opera opened its own new production. And Faust, as it happens, was the Met’s inaugural production in 1883. These are, of course, coincidences.
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1 month ago | 
star-revue.com | Kurt Gottschalk
Punk’s not dread. Back in the ’90s, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon had “Girls invented punk rock, not England” emblazoned on a t-shirt. Photos of her sporting the slogan circulate every so often—I’ve been seeing them again lately on social media. I’m not sure what it means, I’m not sure if I agree, but I’m not about to argue the point. Paradoxically, though, if someone wants to say that English girls invented punk rock, I’m ready to sign on.
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2 months ago | 
bachtrack.com | Kurt Gottschalk
Curtis Stewart has become something of a force in New York City in recent years, not just for his virtuosic musicianship but as a voice for diversity in classical music and recognition of past contributions by Black composers. The still-under-40 Grammy-nominated violinist is a professor at The Juilliard School, artistic director of the American Composers Orchestra and a member of PUBLIQuartet, a string quartet dedicated to making contemporary music inclusive and accessible.
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2 months ago | 
thewire.co.uk | Kurt Gottschalk
Two trips charted much of the 40 years that John King has spent as a composer and performer. One was a visit to the Middle East as Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s resident composer; the other, a New England family fishing trip. Back in the 1980s, King stopped at a bait and tackle shop with his brother-in-law, when he imagined the fishing line as a violin string and started considering musical possibilities in the lures and sinkers and bobbers.
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Mar 26, 2025 | 
bachtrack.com | Kurt Gottschalk
The stage at 92NY was set with four violins, two violas da gamba, two cellos, harp, harpsichord and chamber organ, nearly twice as many instruments as there were musicians for the last of a weekend run by the Los Angeles ensemble Wild Up and with, notably, violinist Andrew McIntosh performing in all of them. Biber’s virtuosic Rosary Sonatas would be his final spotlight of the trip.
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Mar 24, 2025 | 
star-revue.com | Kurt Gottschalk
Apparitions of the Eternal Earth. On their monolithic 2022 debut, Eyes Like Predatory Wealth, the Houston, TX trio Apparitions set forth a slow burn with three tracks running, in sequence, 10, 20 and 30 minutes. The fire has been spreading ever since. In 2023, they issued the digital-only Semel, with three poundingly untitled tracks, and this month comes Volcanic Reality (CD and download from Deathbomb Arc March 24).
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Mar 16, 2025 | 
bachtrack.com | Kurt Gottschalk
With the 20th century a quarter century behind us, it’s now possible to program a concert of greatest hits around the daring white men of the era who have at length settled somewhere along the edges of convention. The JACK Quartet framed its concert at Symphony Space on Manhattan’s Upper West Side around the Pierre Boulez centennial and around – violinist Austin Wulliman explained from the stage – posing a conversation between the composer and his contemporaries.
