The perpetually groundbreaking Kronos Quartet welcomes a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of guest artists and ensembles to celebrate its 50th anniversary at Carnegie Hall, including a preview performance of Michael Gordon’s gfedcba, which receives its world premiere in March by the Kronos Quartet at Cal Performances in Berkeley.

Michael Gordon’s mesmerizing concert-length work, Rushes for 7 bassoons, receives its New York City premiere on October 23 at the Park Avenue Armory performed by The Rushes Ensemble.

Released last year on Cantaloupe Music, Rushes takes its place alongside Gordon’s Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instrument’s repertoire into hitherto unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces…

When a Critic Hosts the Premiere
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Zachary Woolfe
February 14, 2020

“Please silence your cellphones.”

There are few phrases I hear more often in my life as a music critic. But it was strange — like a child playing dress-up — to speak the sentence myself, and in the incongruous setting of my own living room on a rainy evening earlier this week…

NYT Review: A B-Movie Starlet Becomes an Opera Diva in ‘Acquanetta’

By Seth Colter Walls
January 10, 2018

A large screen looms over the stage. Projected onto it is a black-and-white close-up on an eyeball, fluttering in a state of nervous distress.

An overture, powered by distorted electric guitar and staccato strings, accompanies this sooty B-movie-style image. A choir grasps toward high-pitched wails…