Once again this year rather than attending the Seattle International Film Festival, and the all-things-metal Northwest Terror Fest both of which transpire the first weekend in May, I will be in the city of cities partaking in all that New York has to offer. As the month begins, much hailed composer Kaija Saariaho will be completing the short run of their "Innocence" at Metropolitan Opera, which is being performed posthumously, as “A Composer’s Final Masterpiece Heads to the Met Opera Without Her”. Across the bridge, the annual abundance of Long Play Festival takes over Brooklyn for four days of jazz, experimental rock, electronic music, and modern classical explorations. The festival is best epitomized this year by "Kali Malone's Search for the Sublime", of her piece "Does Spring Hide Its Joy" with Lucy Railton and Stephen O’Malley, at Pioneer Works. Which represents one small stop along the trajectory to notable recognition within modern minimalist circles, from her rural beginnings, "Kali Malone Studied Farming. Fate Brought Her to Avant-Garde Music". Also in Brooklyn, BAM presents one of the notable figures of 20th century theater, with a new production of "Moby Dick" from the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus with music by Anna Calvi and direction, design and lighting by Robert Wilson.
In cinema, there's the always essential calendar on offer at The Metrograph, Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, IFC Center, The Museum of the Moving Image, the conclusion of the annual "Film Festival that Should be Known Better", presented by Film at Lincoln Center seen in New Directors/New Films at MoMA, Lincoln Center's celebration of the multitalented Chinese actor, “The Grandmaster: Tony Leung”, and a rarely screened assembly of "Kazuhiko Hasegawa’s Anarchic Ethos" at Japan Society. Theatre is always alive and well in New York, with ongoing runs of Adam Rapp's novel "The Outsiders" in a new adaptation Danya Taymor at Bernard Jacobs Theatre, and Rachel Chavkin's award-winning adaptation of the Myth of Orpheus in “Hadestown”, at Walter Kerr Theatre. Dance will be seen at the world class New York City Ballet's annual offering of Contemporary Choreography to accompany pieces by György Ligeti and Dmitri Shostakovich. Jazz on offer for the week includes the multi-day celebration of Ron Carter's 89th Birthday at the legendary Blue Note, and late late night sets of varying duos, trios and quartets at Midtown's Tomi Jazz. No time in New York would be complete without time spent at MoMA with the museum's sweeping survey of Marcel Duchamp acting as an arresting reminder of what The New York Times called the "And the Most Influential Modern Artist Is...". Alongside which MoMA is also presenting an exhibition of the work of Naufus Ramírez- Figueroa and across town at The Guggenheim, the rotunda has been reconceived by Carol Bove.
Brooklyn becomes the locus of the larger part of the music to be seen during the remainder of the week. With the astounding US edition of C2C Festival hosted by the Knockdown Center, presenting a 21st century array of new music hybrids from labels like Hyperdub, AD93, XL Recordings, Warp Records and beyond. Sets of some of the most notable albums of the past year will be heard from Los Thuthanaka, Aya, YHWH Nailgun, Nourished by Time and a rare live set from Arca, who spoke with The Guardian on their return to form, "How Iconoclastic Musician Arca Beat Burnout with Frenzied Painting". Similarly, the Wire Festival hosts a night of cutting edge audio-visual electronics in a showcase curated by Mutek from Raster-Noton founder, Alva Noto, alongside minimal ambient techno from Voices from the Lake, and Dopplereffekt's electro minimalism. The following night, "Shoegaze: The Genre that Could Not be Killed" is presented in the most explicit festival of its kind. In three editions, spanning Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, Slide Away Festival has assembled a paramount lineup at Brooklyn Paramount of classic and new sounds in the genre heard from Chapterhouse, Nothing, Lovesliescrushing and Hum. As a concert to spend with my parents, you couldn't conceive a more relevant event this year than Bruce Springsteen. Reported in the Los Angeles Times, “This is a tour that we never planned,” Springsteen said. Yet the way he tells it, the actions of a “corrupt, incompetent, reckless and treasonous” president and his administration spurred him back into action. In response he conceived the Land of Hope & Dreams tour: two months of U.S. concert dates that began last week in Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents killed two American citizens in January, and concluding on the east coast with multiple dates at Madison Square Garden.
