2024 live music experiences
As the social media landscape undergoes continued volatility, with billionaire owners caving in to the interests of the right-wing and the corporate world, it’s difficult to know where a musician seeking to make public connections in written form should turn. Certainly there are currently few options for a platform that is well-suited to long-form posts. So I find myself for the first time in my professional life turning to the now old-fashioned blog format for things that I want to share with the world (aside from my musical compositions) without the constraints of a character limit or pop-up ads!
As 2025 gets going, but in Boston the “new music” concert scene has yet to take off after the holiday hiatus, it seems like a good time for me to revisit my musical adventures as a listener in 2024, focusing mostly on live concerts I attended this past year. So that’s what this first blog post is. I’m a composer first and foremost, but being an avid listener is absolutely at the core of my professional and personal life. So here are some notable moments and lists of my listening experiences of the past year (mostly but not all in Boston-area):
MOST MIND-WARPING LISTENING EXPERIENCE of 2024:
Vocalist Charmaine Lee’s solo set at the Goethe-Institut Boston on 9/24! Time and sound sliced very thinly and disorientingly through electronic manipulation, including sounds picked up by what may have been contact microphones embedded in a stretchy wrap around the performer’s neck. Impressions of an incredibly precisely controlled and calibrated human-animal-technological hybrid. On the same concert in the same intimate space, violinist Biliana Voutchkova’s amazing solo improvisational performance with skittering fragmented phrases & guttural vocalizations was more immediately identifiable as coming from a mortal being, and when Biliana and Charmaine played a duo, a dazzling 2-headed ever-morphing creature was created that I am fearful of but would like to hear again!
MOMENTS WHEN I (quietly) CRIED AT CONCERTS in 2024 (not comprehensive!):
Guitarist/Composer/Singer Wendy Eisenberg performing her song “In the Pines” with her band at Union Pool in Brooklyn 11/14, after introducing it by saying something about how we’re “still allowed to have protest songs for now.”
Palaver Strings playing Lili Boulanger’s “Nocturne” at Longy 11/21 - Something about the lyrical chromaticism played by strings that surrounded us on the balconies of the room, coming as a big contrast after a whole lot of diatonicism, just unleashed an uncontainable reaction in me.
Radius Ensemble playing Mary Kouyoumdjian’s “Sea of Two Colors” at Longy 11/23. Very heavy, dense, profound, emotionally high-stakes and intense. I had the weird illusion in the short 2nd movement for violin & piano that I could feel individual small melodic and harmonic choices being made as if I was the one making them, a bizarre and unsettling but also valuable sort of out-of-my-own-composer-mind-and-body experience I can’t quite account for.
{hmm, any reason my typical emotional volatility might have been even a little more topsy-turvy than normal in late November??]
NOTABLE SPINE-TINGLING MOMENTS (not comprehensive!):
several fleeting passages from Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the BSO in January
ephemeral passages where Mary Halvorson’s guitar alternately emerged and receded from the texture during her band’s set at Regattabar in February (This experience likely was intensified by my relief/joy at the reopening of a venue I thought might not come back post-pandemic..)
recurring chord sequences about halfway through Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerilla” as played by pianists Adam Tendler & richard valitutto at the Gardner Museum on 11/24
hearing Lee Hyla’s early String Trio performed by members of Dinosaur Annex on 11/24 in West Newton, a piece which was new to me and is angular modernism of the best sort, but also contains very subtle hints of the utterly unique composer he would become.
PORTRAIT CONCERTS:
I really appreciate getting a whole program of work by a single composer! Without exception I was incredibly moved and nourished by concerts I heard that zeroed in on an individual’s ouevre in 2024, and there were a good number of these! Composers whose work I got to spend time with this way included good close friends and departed strangers alike, including Adolphus Hailstork, Julia Werntz, Julia Perry, Derek David, Julius Eastman, Wayne Shorter, and Stratis Minakakis.
In the case of Julia Werntz, who is absolutely one of my favorite living composers, it was incredible to hear both a vivid cross-section of her microtonal instrumental and vocal music AND exciting re-interpretations of some of her work by students. By contrast, Julia Perry’s work was completely new to me and I immediately noted that hers is a distinctive modernist voice who should be widely known. (In every one of the last several years, the organization Castle of Our Skins has introduced me to intensely rewarding repertoire by living and departed composers I had not previously known.) I was bowled over by Derek David’s astonishing vocal performance as a prelude to his own compositions performed with compelling intensity by Semiosis Quartet. And it was thrilling to hear Stratis Minakakis’ fiery music at the Lilypad in Cambridge alongside a set of vividly exploratory improvised music (see more about the Lilypad below!)
At the BSO’s program of Wayne Shorter’s music, I was able to really appreciate another side to the saxophonist/composer/improviser whose work I thought I knew quite well, and that was largely thanks to esperanza spalding’s superhuman singing and playing and acting as a kind of spectral guide. The journey was compelling, even as the reluctance of some BSO players to commit fully was an obstacle she didn’t allow to get in her way.
Finally, pianist/composer Kevin Harris’s December CD release show at Regattabar was a kind of portrait concert as well, even as it showcased his remarkable collaborative relationship with his bandmates as much as it did his distinctive and varied voice as a composer.
(As it happens, 2024 was also a year that included 2 events focused on my own music that meet at least some definition of “portrait concert” - but I will address that in a separate post!)
WHAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF A PORTRAIT CONCERT?
I also love a well-curated concert that encompasses considerable stylistic diversity and puts composers you wouldn’t expect to find together on a single program. Among my favorites in this category, Steph Davis’s marimba recital on 10/7 at Ashmont Hill stands out, and I also particularly love it when concerts string together multiple works without a pause for applause and/or setup, creating the effect of a multi-composer suite. I can think of several organizations that did this especially well this year, e.g. Palaver Strings on 11/21, New Gallery Concert Series on 11/2 (in which connective interludes by Aaron Trant on drums were the essential glue), and Winsor Music on 3/10 and on 9/10. (I unfortunately missed the 2nd half of that concert and am told that I really should have heard the Brad Balliett composition I missed!)
PLACES/GETTING AROUND
From year to year, it seems to me that the center of gravity of the Boston area’s “new music” scene often shifts quite a bit. Once upon a time the beating heart of the scene was firmly rooted at New England Conservatory. There was a period in the mid-to-late 2010s when Boston Conservatory seemed to have new music more nights of the week than anyplace else. In 2024, I think I heard the largest volume of “new music” at Longy School of Music, perhaps because they host so many ensembles and events (e.g. Radius Ensemble, New Gallery Concert Series, Collage New Music, Palaver Strings) as well as their in-house new music events.
I also found myself at the Goethe-Institut Boston more than ever before, and those events tended very much towards the most edgy/adventurous. Nina Guo’s radio program taping there, “The Entertainment,” was simultaneously one of the best comedy performances I’ve ever heard AND a profoundly rich new music concert (featuring the recently formed violin/cimbalom duo Lamnth). Also at the Goethe I had the privilege of hearing my own music (played superbly by Lilit Hartunian and Rafael Popper-Keizer) on a Dinosaur Annex program, outstanding performances by Ludovico Ensemble, a•pe•ri•od•ic, and more.
Oh but I should probably mention the place that messed up my budget the most: The Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Concerts there are a lot more pricey than at other venues that tend to program new music, the seating is limited and often sells out early, and (adding to the rarified air) concerts are almost exclusively on Sunday afternoons, when there are often LOTS of other things going on around town! Yet I went over-budget and attended lots of concerts there because many of them were, simply, unmissable. Case in point: The JACK Quartet on 3/10. Xenakis’ “Tetras” is what brought me there, but new works by Amy Williams and Jeffrey Mumford made this one of the biggest highlights of the year.
You might think that the bank-breaker would be Symphony Hall, but I actually didn’t spend much money getting there this year. I think the most exciting concert I heard there this year was actually free (featuring Callithumpian Consort), and on one other occasion I had the rare treat of an amazing, *free* seat WAY in the front balcony, partially suspended over the stage, thanks to a chance encounter with a generous BSO subscriber, and from that vantage point I got to hear some earth-shattering recent music by Sofia Gubaidulina.
At least once a month on average, I tended to find myself at the Lilypad in Cambridge, mostly to hear improvised music & jazz of distinctly avant-garde leanings, a distinct overlap in my mind with what more commonly consitutes “new music,” often as part of the point01percent series. Freely improvised music definitely stimulates my composer-brain when played by consistently inventive people like Eric Rosenthal, Pandelis Karyorgis, Noah Campbell, Jorrit Djikstra, Brittany Karlson, Gabe Boyarin, Charlie Kohlhase and others who I heard live in this tiny room, usually while slowly nursing a session beer. (The Boston-area needs about a half-dozen more Lilypads!)
Of course, it wouldn’t be Boston if disfunction at the MBTA didn’t frequently complicate my attempts to get around. (The effect of problems with the T on the music scene will be the subject of a different post.) But I sometimes made it difficult on myself, dashing around only to miss certain things altogether. Concert hopping can be a thrill… There was the night that I got to hear one set at Passim featuring my high school classmate Nate Borofsky and then hightailed it to the Somerville Armory in time to stand right up close to the stage for an intimate solo performance by Laetitia Sadier (of Stereolab). I wouldn’t have wanted to miss either of these! (Especially when I actually got to meet Laetitia, and she signed a CD I picked up with the words “Your heart is the leader Curtis.” It was so wonderful to hear a musician with so many accomplishments in her career taking new risks, finding ways to (as she put it) “make it difficult for herself.”)
LISTENING TO COLLABORATORS/LOCAL ENSEMBLES
It’s a particular thrill for me to hear performances by individuals and ensembles that I’ve collaborated with in the past, and as a longtime Boston-based composer, I had numerous chances to do this in 2024. I once served as composer-in-residence for Collage New Music and it was a thrill to see this veteran group reborn this year under the new artistic directorship of Eric Nathan, whose music I’ve really enjoyed getting to know, especially when it provided the occasion to bring soprano Tony Arnold back to town this past fall. As with Tony, or with stalwarts of the Boston scene like Semiosis Quartet in different iterations, or Transient Canvas (groups I heard thrice in 2024!), I’m tuned in very intensely to distinctive characteristics of their playing, having been previously immersed in hearing what they bring to my own work. That adds to the fun element of surprise when a group I’ve collaborated with does something that brings out a whole new side of them I hadn’t encountered before, such as this year when Hinge Quartet gave a knockout concert highlighted by music of Sam Pluta and Anthony Braxton. Perhaps most exciting of all is when someone I knew as a student evolves into an accomplished professional. While on faculty at Boston Conservatory, I had the privilege of writing music for soprano Rose Hegele back when she was a student, so to hear her in Symphony Hall singing with eerie and beautiful precision in Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” was especially inspirational.
VISITORS
Though Boston is not always a major destination for people who specialize in taking “new music” on the road, I did catch some great performances by out-of-towners in 2024. Among them, I’m really glad I heard New York’s Exceptet playing Laure M. Hiendl’s “In Abeyance,” which will stick in my memory for being the “animated still life” it has accurately been described as. Departure Duo playing the late Sarah Gibson’s exuberant music in Cambridge’s Gallery 263 on a program with other relentlessly inventive works was also a high point for me; I enjoy the distinct memory of sitting mere inches from where icy sharp harmonics and other unearthly sounds were propelled from Edward Kass’s bass.
CERTAIN OTHER COMPOSITIONS/PERFORMANCES THAT MADE A BIG IMPRESSION
(in no particular order) Most of these are pretty new pieces, some were premieres, some were new to me and some older ones definitely were not new to me!
Emily Koh’s “unheard” at a Dinosaur Annex concert; Per Bloland’s “Los Murmollos” played by pianist Keith Kirchoff; Hannah Kendall’s “Network Bed” played by Castle of Our Skins; Sarah Nemtsov’s “Deconstructions” played by Lilit Hartunian and Yoko Hagino at the Goethe; Texu Kim’s “Ominous Omnibus” played by Collage; Brahms’ Requiem at Handel & Haydn Society; Ryan Suleiman’s “Snow Day” played by Sakurako Kanemitsu; Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion & Celeste” played by A Far Cry (and clearly coached to perfection by Gabriela Diaz); Shelley Washington’s “Middleground” played by an all-star string quartet from Castle of our Skins; Sid Richardson’s “which was the dream, which was the veil?” played by Lamnth; Bahar Royaee’s “Two sands engraved an image in the corner of my memory” ALSO played by Lamnth; Nomi Epstein’s “sound 9/23/24” played by the composer with Forbes Graham; 2 different works by Younghi Pagh-Paan that were on a Ludovico Ensemble concert; (and I’m sure others that will come to me as soon as I post this!)
P.S. I should also mention Kevin Madison’s entrancing “Who Rules everything around me?,” played by Rane Moore and Sarah Bob on a virtual New Gallery Concert event, even though that wasn’t, strictly speaking, “live.” A brief period in which I was recovering from my most recent bout of Covid and tuned in to a couple of concert livestreams reminded me very quickly that I don’t generally enjoy livestreams even when the concert itself is great. But this was different, in that it was conceived from the start as a virtual event, and actually felt very “alive.”
A CERTAIN COMPOSER
There’s one composer whose work I heard more than any other in 2024, and who may in fact be the living “art music” composer whose music is programmed in the Boston area more than any other: my colleague and friend Marti Epstein, whose work has meant a great to deal to me over many years, and who I will always go out of my way to hear. Any year is a good one in which I get to hear my favorite work of hers, “Troubled Queen,” which was played by Callithumpian Consort in Symphony Hall. It is, however, to my everlasting regret that I MISSED the premiere of “In Praise of Broken Clocks,” a large scale new work for Sound Icon. But I DID get to also hear Marti’s music played by: BocoCelli (large cello ensemble!), Duo Axis (on a great program with Feldman’s “Why Patterns”), Sakurako Kanemitsu (piano), Emmanuel Music, by Marti herself (piano and electronics) at Jordan Hall, and on a fantastic concert which I should add to my list of favorite visiting performances: Violist Wendy Richman’s recital at Boston Conservatory in April, which also featured 2 more of my favorite compositions/performances of the year. (Christian Carey’s “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and Jeffrey Mumford’s “Through the Filtering Dawn of Speaking Daybright” with Randall Zigler on bass!)
Suffice it to say, if someone is performing Marti Epstein’s music, I’m going to want to be there.
NOT “NEW MUSIC”
While I do manage a local “new music” calendar (more on that another time), I’m also at lots of concerts that don’t, strictly or even loosely speaking, belong on that list. 2024 was a great year for other concerts I managed to catch! Some of my favorites I haven’t mentioned elsewhere included 2 different shows I caught at Roadrunner [Sampha in April, and Crumb in September], a show by Deerhoof at the Somerville Armory, and A.C. Newman (of the New Pornographers) at City Winery. (He signed my record!) In June I got to hear the rather young band English Teacher at Sonia in Cambridge, at what I’m guessing might be the final time one can go to hear them in a small club before they start filling bigger venues! Meanwhile, the most scintillating new-music-adjacent-but-really-uncategorizable show I went to was given by the extroardinary L’Rain at the Sinclair.
Finally, I also got to witness the birth of an awesome new metal band playing their first public gig in December in Medford, fronted by composers Aaron Jay Myers and Steven Moreno. Rhizaria might just be the heaviest thing I heard all year, and I can hardly wait for more.
CONCERT-GOING PAST and FUTURE
Conspicuously absent from all the above descriptions and lists is the person who went with me to a great many concerts in 2024, to whom I’ve been married since 1996: the one and only Doria Hughes. There’s a lot of overlap between her musical taste and mine, so we’ve gone to lots of musical events together! But that’s going to be a subject of a different post… And I’m excited for lots of live music in 2025!
2024 was a year in which I was able to go and hear live music significantly more than in some other years. So the above list is the result of my desire to seize the moment, to go and hear as much as I can, while I can! We all remember what it was like when live music went away almost entirely for a year or more. And, believe it or not, I’m extremely picky. I do not go to hear things that I don’t want to go hear. I used to attend a certain number of concerts out of a sense of professional obligation, but that is seldom a motivator for me now. In the future I’ll be sharing some thoughts here about concert-going as it relates to the lifestyle and professional needs of a composer, as it relates to employment status, family, and personal health, etc. In the meantime, I’m getting ready to go hear some 2025 live music right now…
— Curtis
(January 2025)
ADDENDUM
Though it makes this epic-length inaugural blog post even longer, I’m tacking on a list of some of my favorite albums that were released in 2024 (in no particular order). A high proportion of my music listening is to music that isn’t so hot off the press! But it’s interesting to zero in on the newest of the new, so here goes (most or all available on Bandcamp):
Patricia Brennan - Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic Records)
Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal (Top Dawg/Capitol)
Wild Up - Julius Eastman Vol. 4: The Holy Presence (New Amsterdam)
Arthur Levering - OceanRiverLake (New Focus)
Jihye Chang - Boston Etudes (New Focus)
The Smile - Cutouts (XL Recordings)
Kim Gordon - The Collective (Matador)
AMAMA - Crumb (Crumb)
English Teacher - This Could be Texas (Island)
Nomi Epstein - shades (Another Timbre)
Laetitia Sadier - Rooting for Love (Drag City)
Brittany Howard - What Now (Island)
Mary Halvorson - Cloudward (Nonesuch)
Greg Saunier - We Sang, Therefore We Were (Joyful Noise)
Cheap City - Blue Dancers (Dollhouse Lightning)
Feldman Edition 14: Complete Music for Cello & Piano (featuring Stephen Marotto & Marilyn Nonken (Mode)
Joel Roston: We’re Able (Joel Roston)
Yu-Hui Chang: Mind Like Water (New Focus)
LJ White: Songs from The Best Place for This (LJ White)
Brian Church - Violabajo 2 (Brian Church)
RAHA Duo - Swirl (New Focus)*
The Good-by Number - The Good-by Number (Ethan Parcell)
Wendy Eisenberg - Viewfinder (American Dreams)
The Fully Celebrated Orchestra - Sob Story (Relative Pitch)
Rempis/Karyorgis/Heinemann/Harris - Truss
Hiatus Kaiyote - Love Heart Cheat Code (Brainfeeder/Ninja Tune)
* - Yes I DO like to listen to albums that include my own compositions!