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 June in New York City.
Brooklyn Rail Spring Mix
by the EditorsSpring is here! But there’s a theme running through a lot of our favorite tracks released since the solstice: death. What is it about the zeitgeist that has musicians and listeners turning toward that inevitable figure? I’m sure we all have our opinions.
In Conversation
Relexifying the Canon of Black Music
Nicholas Payton with Vilde Aaslid
Nicholas Payton’s once-fiery blog has been quiet lately. After his provocative 2011 rejection of the word “jazz” in favor of Black American Music, Payton has mostly retreated from the volatile jazz internet.
Continuous Variable Harmonics
By MV CarbonTony Conrad has been an influential figure in the art and minimalist music scenes since the early 1960s. He graduated from Harvard University in 1962 with a degree in mathematics.
In Conversation
Say Goodbye to Reality
Nicholas Smith (I Cut People) with Matthew Ackerman
The cut-up is a literary technique that involves rearranging either printed or recorded content to create a new work. It’s been around since the Dada movement and was revived in the ’50s and ’60s when it caught a second wind with the beat generation.
Loony Tunes
By Richard KlinThe lion’s share of Dan Hicks’s musical renown came during his stint, in the 1960s and 1970s, as the front man of the sometimes madcap ensemble Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks.
Outtakes
By Steve DalachinskyFor many, jazz has been viewed as a dirty word, particularly among musicians. Roland Kirk preferred to call it “Black Classical music.” Duke Ellington said there’s only two kinds of music, good and the other kind. Mingus hated the term, as did Max Roach and so many other great composers/musicians.
