Once again this year during the first weeks of May, rather than attending the Seattle International Film Festival, and the all-things-metal Northwest Terror Fest, I will be in the city of cities partaking in all that New York has to offer. As the month begins, the 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, cutting edge electronic music, and modern classical explorations. The festival is best epitomized this year by "Kali Malone's Search for the Sublime" in her piece "Does Spring Hide Its Joy" featuring Lucy Railton and Stephen O’Malley at Pioneer Works. This performance 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 most significant figures of 20th century theater, with a new production of "Moby Dick" from the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus featuring music by Anna Calvi and direction, design and lighting by Robert Wilson.
In cinema, there's the always essential calendars on offer at The Metrograph, Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, IFC Center, The Museum of the Moving Image, as well as the conclusion of the annual "Film Festival that Should be Known Better" series New Directors/New Films which screens at MoMA. Film at Lincoln Center is also currently celebrating the multitalented Chinese actor, “The Grandmaster: Tony Leung”, and there's a rarely seen assembly of "Kazuhiko Hasegawa’s Anarchic Ethos" at Japan Society. Theater is always alive and well in New York, with ongoing runs of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders" in a new adaptation by Danya Taymor at Bernard Jacobs Theatre, and Rachel Chavkin's award-winning Myth of Orpheus inspired “Hadestown” continues 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, AD 93, XL Recordings, Warp Records and beyond. Sets comprising 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 performance from Arca, who spoke with The Guardian on their recent return to form, "How Iconoclastic Musician Arca Beat Burnout with Frenzied Painting". Within days another AD 93 label artist, James K, will be performing at Webster Hall followed by Wire Festival hosting a night of cutting edge audio-visual electronics in a showcase curated by Mutek from Raster-Noton founder, Alva Noto, alongside 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 have assembled an A-list lineup at Brooklyn Paramount of classic and new sounds in the genre heard from Chapterhouse, Nothing, Lovesliescrushing and Hum. As a concert I will be attending in the company of 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.