At the first-ever retrospective of the work of sound artist Ryoji Ikeda, recently put together by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the artist presented eight pieces concerned with the limits of perception and the edges of knowledge

Since the venue’s inception in 2005, a constant and ever-changing stream of new music has been flowing from the Stone, an intimate space nestled on the Lower East Side. Conceived by composer/improviser John Zorn, the Stone has a staunchly DIY ethos.

“Words cannot proxy for the experience of knowing—of seeing and hearing.

American composer David Del Tredici, often referred to as “the father of Neo-Romanticism,” writes music that is full of sentiment and humor. A masterful orchestrator and a wizard at setting music to text, he composes with a clarity of ideas, both musical and social. His music is at times subtle and refined, at others blatantly over-the-top.

It’s a little after eleven on a Sunday night in mid-January as people crowd into the second floor of Issue Project Room, an abandoned silo overlooking the Gowanus Canal in industrial Carroll Gardens.

In an age bored by concert halls, swamped with CDs, and constantly bombarded noise, there comes a need for critical rethinking of how to present music so that the audience is actively involved in the sound.