Music
Highly Selective Listings
Brooklyn Rail Highly Selective Music Events
A thoughtful, discerning and carefully compiled list of the most notable, promising and unique musical events for the month of April in New York City.
THE OUTSIDER
Allen Lowe Against the Jazz Tradition
By George Grella
Fine arts and literature each have a well-established academic and commercial establishment that defines—through teaching, curating, buying and selling, and criticism—what it means to be working inside them. “Outsider Art” for them could be something as innocuous and tautological as a painting or a book that was created beyond the limits of what the establishment has set as normative.
ROMANO DROM
By Marshall YarbroughRomano Drom’s performance at Roulette on February 22nd, part of the World Music Institute’s World to Brooklyn series, was remarkable not only for the group’s virtuosic playing, but also for the casual atmosphere the organizers were able to create.
WILLIAM TYLER
By Christopher NelsonAbout folk guitarist William Tyler, a notable musician within the "revival of American primitivism in the post-Fahey landscape."
Muzak for the Manic
By Taylor DafoeA review of Marc Weidenbaum's book on Selected Ambient Works Volume II, the landmark album by Aphex Twin. The book is an installment in the 33 1/3rd series, published by Bloomsbury, which looks at a different classic album with each release. April marks the 20th anniversary of the album.
Outtakes
By Steve DalachinskyOk. Here’s how two recent days went.
Tinariwen at Brooklyn Bowl
By Enrica FerreroThe first thing I think when the six members of Tinariwen come on stage is that they are a good-looking band. Not in a teen heartthrob kind of way—indeed, after watching them play for over an hour, I still don’t know what most of the musicians look like—because they’re wearing the traditional long robes of the Tuareg people of Northern Africa.
Christian Wolff @ 80
By Kurt GottschalkTwo nights at the end of March served both to celebrate the 80th birthday of the composer Christian Wolff and to remind that connections to the New York School of composers—those responsible for some of the most radical and influential American music of the 20th century—are still very much with us.
