New Ear Festival 2024 | Bklyn Sounds 1/3/2024—1/9/2024

On Fridman Gallery's great annual celebration of new music + Shows: Mary Halvorson / Hieroglyphic Being / 'DCB Day - Celebrating the music of David Berman' / 'El Maestro Fundraiser Jam' / and more

There are few things I enjoy more while covering music culture than successful cross-disciplinary work: Whether that’s when musicking is taking place in visual art spaces, when visual artists and/or writers insightfully incorporate musical works into their own, or when dancers, choreographers and sound artists collaborate. Basically, whenever the arts are in direct conversation and collaborations, and getting somewhere together that they couldn’t get to on their own. Maybe it’s an off-shoot of growing up in New York’s golden “downtown” era, of regarding hip-hop as a multi-disciplinary culture from a young age, or thinking that clubs — and DIY performance spaces in general — carry the same cultural weight as galleries. This shit always geeks me, and I am always on the lookout for it.  

According to its artist statement, Fridman Gallery’s New Ear Festival was basically founded in 2016 to scratch the same itch. It’s committed to “bold exploration of avant-garde sound and contemporary art,” “a diverse lineup of artists pushing the boundaries of sonic innovation,” and “to help restore the creative, experimental spirit of downtown Manhattan.” Now, while my fondness for Manhattan may wax and wane, I recognize clearly what Fridman, and various other small institutions involved in this kind of work — whom you see in Bklyn Sounds week-in week-out, being shouted-out as loudly as possible — are trying to do. In fact, the more informed and grassroots their curatorial choices, the more likely that creative music culture continues to have new audiences and spaces. It’s back to my argument for the overall ecology. 

Fridman is obviously thinking along the same lines. Among the curators of New Ear 2024, set to take place at the gallery on Bowery this upcoming weekend, is Amani Fela, whose Still/Moving events all over Bklyn and Manhattan are not only going into those very spaces, they’re bringing a heady cross-generation mix of improvised music, dance beats, noise and rap there. (Cut me out as the middle-man man and follow Still/Moving directly.) And based on Still/Moving’s Saturday night program, it’s obvious Amani knows an opportunity to use institutional money well — even a small institution’s. On Saturday night, New Ear will feature a pretty large-scale bill: the legendary Soulquarian singer-songwriter Bilal, alongside one of noise-rap underground’s great voices Pink Siifu, and the Bklyn-based electronic songwriter T’nah. All for a very reasonable ticket price. (Dada Strain readers are also offered a discount code - see below.) 

The other nights of New Ear will also feature tight line-ups on the experimental side of the musical spectrum: Friday’s sets will be by the local trio Alaara (Grey McMurray on guitar, Sonya Belaya on piano and Nicole Patrick on drums) who are creating “long form improvisations that prioritizes patience, effortlessly traversing the spaces of jazz, experimental minimalism, and ambient music.” There will also be a first-time collaboration between the “classicaltronic” duo Larum (Micah Frank and Chet Doxas) and the electronic composer/sound designer Taylor Deupree, mixing woodwinds and electronics, including compositions from a graphic score by Cornelius Cardew.

Sunday’s program takes improvised music into the sonic nether regions. There will be a set by Nepenthae, the great free-jazz-meets-doom-metal trio of Zach Layton on 17-string electric bass, Henry Fraser on contrabass, and drummer Greg Fox; and one by the mighty HxH, Chris Williams and Lester St. Louis, who take electro-acoustic improvisation into an interstellar machine-jazz space. Also appearing is Le Son 7, a French sound art gallery, will present a one-hour guided listening session of multi-channel and stereo pieces.

In-between the sets, the gallery will be screening a pair of sound-related, multi-channel installations: The Institute of Queer Ecology’s mega-timely Hysteria, “an ecofeminist retelling of the poorly understood ‘dancing plagues’ that swept through Europe between the tenth and the seventeenth centuries”; and a rough cut of Lithuanian film-maker Emilija Škarnulytė’s Visions in the Desert, a portrait of Abshalom Ben Shlomo, a saxophonist for Sun Ra’s Arkestra who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s.  

All three nights will be streamed live on the great Upstate New York radio station Wave Farm Radio, on their Live from Fridman Gallery channel; and Friday and Saturday night performances will be broadcast live on WGXC 90.7-FM.

(New Ear Festival @ Fridman Gallery, 169 Bower, Manhattan, Friday 1/5—Sunday 1/7, 7:30p - $15-$25 each night, Dada Strain readers can use the discount code, “dstrain,” for a $5 reduction on nightly tickets.)      

This Week’s Shows:

Poodle Name Tiger is the goofy pseudonym drummer Kenny Wollesen uses for his electronic experiments. At this gig, it also encompasses Yusuke Yamamoto and Will Shore, Wollesen’s semi-regular colleagues from Butch Morris’ Nublu Orchestra (and elsewhere), as well as veteran top-notch NYC improvisers in their own right. Lots of synths and electronics will be in tow. No idea what it might sound like, but the line-up makes it a great punt, especially in the friendly confines of LunAtico. (Wed 1/3, 9p & 10:15p @ Bar Lunatico, Bed-Stuy - $10suggested) 

Guitarist Mary Halvorson is beyond prolific in the variety of contexts she presents her music, which is mostly filed under “jazz” but exhibits an overflow of ideas and energies one would expect from a decorated MacArthur fellow. At The Stone residency this week, she has some doozys for duo and trio partners — the electronics-happy trombonists Kalia Vandever and Weston Olencki (on Wed.), saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins (Thurs.) and guitarist Joe Morris (Fri.) — before reconvening her early-’00s Sterno quartet to cap the week. (Wed 1/3—Sat 1/6, 8:30 @ The Stone, New School, Manhattan — $20)