A Compelling, Translucent New Album and a Smalls Gig From Simon Moullier

Vibraphonist Simon Moullier burst on the New York jazz scene with an individualistic and sometimes breathtakingly articulate sound. He’s made a name for himself with his distinctive interpretations of standards but is now staking out fertile new terrain as a composer on his latest album Isla, streaming at Bandcamp. And he’s leading his quartet at Smalls on March 5, with sets at 7:30 and 9ish; cover is $25 at the door.

On the opening number, Empress of the Sea, bassist Alexander Claffy and drummer Jongkuk Kim lay down a lithe 12/8 groove beneath a distantly eerie modal vamp and similar harmonies between Moullier and pianist Lex Korten. The piano warms the atmosphere after the bandleader’s enigmatic solo, but the unease remains. It’s a strong opener.

The second cut is the title track, which could be vintage Bobby Hutcherson in an especially gritty but also slinky mood: the band really swing this hard as they move along. Kim’s hushed clave gives extra suppleness and mystery to You Go to My Head, Moullier’s tight clustering approach in contrast to Korten’s legato, with an electrifying vibraphone solo out.

The band reach for a more relaxed, syncopated shuffle rhythm in Enchantment, Korten’s loose-limbed solo at the center: Moullier’s incisive upper register riffs come across as guitar voicings, a cool touch. He builds the aptly titled Moon Mist around a spring-loaded, hypnotic vamp, Claffy stepping out for a stroll as Korten collects a dream nebula overhead which the bandleader then gives an extra jolt of voltage.

The band go back to early 60s Prestige Records terrain for This Dream, Kim loping along with a spring-loaded syncopation as Moullier riffs at high velocity over Korten’s steady insistence. Phoenix Eye is the album’s punchiest, most biting and allusively bluesy track, Korten scrambling, Moullier choosing his spots. They bring the record full circle with the simply titled Heart, a wary ballad: it’s the most allusively Lynchian and defiantly enigmatic track here. Moullier has really been on a creative roll lately: let’s hope that continues.

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Candles, Penlights and a Caroline Shaw Chorale Downtown

This isn’t a blog about religion, but as Paul Wallfisch has said – and he was a diehard atheist the last time anybody here checked – religion has given us a lot of beauty. While a lot of that beauty was snuffed out when houses of worship were summarily shuttered in the 2020 lockdown, a handful of venerable New York institutions have brought live music back to their services. One of many long-running traditions in this city that died that year was at St. Paul’s Chapel downtown, where their house ensemble had been performing Bach chorales and hymns at a lunchtime service and later shifted that to an early evening compline series.

Last night, Stephen Sands conducted the Downtown Voices in a welcome, warmly crepscular setting. Lit only by candles and the penlights of the choir and string section, they delivered a quietly electric, dynamic take of Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands.

Before the lockdown, Shaw’s music was ubiquitous in New York: this piece was especially robust early on, but then the voices held back with a stark, minimalist intensity. The chorale has Shaw’s trademark circular motives, but also a guarded optimism whose distant folksiness is more somber than wistful. The composer wrote it as a response to a Buxtehude piece whose central theme is “What are these wounds in the midst of your hands?” Obviously, the great Dane was referring to Christ; these days, it could be anyone.

That might have been reflected in the abundant use of space and frequent sense of abandonment, the women and then men of the choir opting to sync very closely with the work’s overall wary atmosphere and theme of global displacement. Shaw’s text quickly diverges from the original latin to Emma Lazarus and her huddled masses “yearning to breathe free” – if only she knew what crushing irony that phrase would resonate with now!

The choir’s emergence from a desolate, sparsely populated valley into an insistent march was unexpected but seamless. The strings returned with wispy, flitting harmonics in contrast to the increasing lushness of the voices. A hypnotic, enveloping ambience wafted behind an expressive soprano’s elegantly plaintive solo. Swells contrasted with sober lulls as the choir and instruments made their way into in the unexpectedly surreal and disjointed conclusion, bits and pieces of the baroque mingled within strangely circling violins behind the calm solidity of the voices.

Shaw has graciously made the entire score available for anyone who wants to sing or play it: hit her dropbox for the parts.

The next free concert at St. Paul’s Chapel is March 12 at 8 PM with the Trinity Youth Chorus and Trinity Baroque Orchestra performing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. This is not one of New York’s larger churches, so early arrival would be a good idea.

Another Gorgeously Cinematic New Mix of Accordion and Piano Jazz From Ben Rosenblum

Ben Rosenblum is one of the most electrifyingly eclectic voices in jazz. He’s as adrenalizing an accordionist as he is a pianist, but his strongest suit ultimately is his compositions. His earlier ones can be hard to find, but one place you can find him is at Smalls on March 2 where he’s playing the album release show for his new one A Thousand Pebbles – streaming at Spotify – with his brilliant Nebula Project septet. Sets are at 7:30 and around 9; cover is $25 cash at the door.

The opening tune, Catamaran, takes awhile to get going, but when it does, it’s breathtaking. Trumpeter Wayne Tucker hits a tantalizingly fleeting chromatic passage, with the bandleader, bassist Marty Jaffe and drummer Ben Zweig build a bustling high-seas tableau. Rosenblum switches to accordion for a spiritedly goofy Irish jig of an outro.

He sticks with that instrument over guitarist Rafael Rosa’s pulse in Bulgares while the band build an increasingly complex web of gorgeous Balkan tonalities, the wicked spirals of the accordion in contrast with the blistering conversation between Rosa and Tucker. It’s one of the best track released in 2023 so far.

The album’s title suite begins with a sentimental chorale between Tucker and saxophonists Jasper Dutz and Xavier Del Castillo. The second movement, Road to Recollection, is a genial, brassy swing tune where the ensemble sounds twice as large as they are behind Rosenblum’s piano rivulets, punches and pointillisms. Backward masked patches signal the segue to The Gathering, a spacious, increasingly acidic, moody accordion jazz tune that strongly evokes the Claudia Quintet, a calmly biting sax solo at the center and another electrifying Tucker solo on the way out.

Rosenblum opens the conclusion, Living Streams, with spare, wary gospel piano, Rosa and the horns enhancing the hymnal ambience as they bring the suite full circle.

Bookended with Jaffe’s somber, bowed bass, The Bell from Europe – a post WWII reflection on the legacy of violence – couldn’t be more relevant. Tucker’s solemn solo rises in tandem with the horns over a funereal pulse as the music brightens, Rosa channeling a sobering angst along with melancholy, chugging bass to remind that too little has changed since 1945.

The band pick up the pace with The Village Steps, Rosenblum’s pensive, pastoral accordion sailing over a churning, altered samba groove. The turn into shadowy noir with Lilian, a portrait of a femme fatale, is deliciously, understatedly lurid, with eerie reverb guitar, smoky horns, suspiciously genial bass clarinet from Dutz, a slithery bass solo, and enigmatically circling piano worthy of a classic Johnny Mandel theme from the 50s.

They reinvent Jobim’s Song of the Sabia as jaunty forro jazz with Rosenblum’s accordion at the center over the horns’ lustre: imagine Forro in the Dark at their most lithe and animated. Rosenblum closes with Implicit Attitude, a supple swing tune that looks back to Gil Evans-era Miles with simmering solos from Del Castillo’s tenor sax, Tucker’s muted trumpet and Dutz’s dynamically leaping bass clarinet. This rich and vastly diverse album deserves consideration for best jazz record of 2023.

A Colorful, Entertaining Solo Bass Album and a Chinatown Gig From Kyle Motl

At the risk of pushing the limits of esoterica, there’s an especially intriguing free jazz lineup on the 28th at Downtown Music Gallery. At 6:30 PM Gutbucket’s sometimes acerbic, sometimes way-out-there klezmer-influenced guitarist Ty Citerman teams up with Jen Baker on trombone and Shayna Dunkelman on bass. At 7:30 bassist Kyle Motl plays solo and then at 8:30 the Harmolodics with Ben Green on trumpet, Ben Wood on bass and David Ward on drums. It’s a pass-the-bucket situation.

Motl is one of the real draws on this bill (well, on a night that might pull two or three dozen people if the weather holds up). Not only does he play solo, he records solo. His latest solo album Hydra Nightingale – streaming at his music page – is a lot of fun if you’re open to strange and frequently amusing sounds, and pushes the envelope as far as solo bass can go. It’s a very diverse mix of solo compositions by a similarly eclectic lineup of composers.

First up is the title track, a Caroline Louise Miller composition that won the 2018 International Society of Bassists David Walter Solo Composition Competition. Motl opens it a shriek and a little coy bow-bouncing before setting up a conversation which in places is ridiculously funny. Using one extended-technique device after another, Motl gets his cartoon characters to scowl and flit around and peek out from around corners, and more. Yet, it’s more of a vintage New Yorker cartoon than Sunday morning Nickelodeon rerun.

Anqi Liu‘s Light Beams Through Dusts, Through a Mist of Moistures is the big epic here and could be described as more vigorous than the title would imply. These shafts of light filter down steadily on the wings of Motl’s gritty harmonics, a march of drones into the shadows lightened with dust-devil flickers until the truck engine turns over and then rumbles away. It’s a treat for fans of low-register sounds.

Motl’s one composition here is Phosphene (the phosphorus illumination one sees with eyes closed after looking at a very bright object). At first it’s wispy and whispery but then Motl goes on a jagged tear with his bow, building a roman candle of harmonics and then coming up with a tastily haphazard arrangement for them.

Nachklang, by Jessie Cox, is the album’s most evocative, poltergeist-ish piece, with the creaking doors and pregnant pauses you would expect from the title. The final work is Asher Tobin Chodos‘ Trickle Town, referencing to the dubious Reagan-era back-of-the-napkin economic theory via samples of that decade’s senile chief executive, plus shivers, slides and more fingerwork than on the rest of the record. It’s an irresistibly funny way to bring everything full circle.

Fun With New Pieces From the New York Composers Circle

Anyone who thinks contemporary classical music is stuffy wasn’t at the National Opera Center last night for a slate of new compositions from the far-reaching New York Composers Circle. The program was diverse, and picturesque, and sometimes ridiculously funny. Yet there were sublime moments as well.

Pianist Markus Kaitila opened the evening with David Picton‘s Sonata, which in the beginning threatened to be merely a doctrinaire, abruptly shifting twelve-tone piece punctuated by lots of space – or vice versa. But then, Kaitila hit a memorably icy, glacially paced interlude which grew to an unexpectedly fanged, marching attack and back, an ascending series of quasi-tritones and then an artful approximation of major-on-minor phantasmagoria. Precisely articulated, increasingly menacing cascades followed until Kaitila brought the next-to-last movement full circle with a careful, weighty composure. The final one could have been a total reprise of the first until a series of emphatic, surrealistically leapfrogging figures. It was as deep as it was devious.

Kevin McCarter‘s Responding Variations turned out to be a conversational duo played by Artie Dibble on viola and Lillian Copeland on oboe. It was a fun, puckish piece, sometimes following a baroque-inflected tangent, otherwise a sequence of brief, wry exchanges, pensively airy passages or jaunty harmonies.

Up next was Debra Kaye‘s Submarine Dreams, performed by Mary Barto on bass flute and Troy Rinker, Jr. on bass. Kaye had been unable to find any extant duo piece for these two instruments, so this may have been a world premiere on more than one level. The two followed a swaying 4/4, then diverging as Rinker put down his bow for a minute and beat out a rhythm on the bass body. A subtle interweave followed with more goofy percussion and then an allusively Indian, misterioso flute theme over low-key bass pedalpoint.

Pianist Nataliya Medvedovskaya debuted her lively, idiomatic Ragtime suite, “The most American composition I’ve ever written,” she grinned. The opening movement was a tongue-in-cheek, cartoonish take on a familiar genre; the second was closer to the fondness of a Scott Joplin piece like Solace. The third was more exuberant and Gershwinesque.

Katie Thomas played Ukrainian composer Olga Victorova’s Fung Hoan, the Magical Birds – based on an ancient Chinese mating myth – solo on violin. Although there were vivid, leaping motives and evocative, sometimes acidically expressive evocations of birdsong, there was no distinctive Asian quality. The drama of the courtship grew more optimistic as boy bird (or maybe not boy bird) grew more confident and drew bird #2 into the dance.

Tamara Cashour‘s original intention with her Two Short Pieces was to combine the highest and lowest orchestral instruments. Ultimately, she opted for solo works instead. Barto trilled her way through the first one on piccolo. Harry Searing followed, steady, thoughtful and serious on contrabassoon for the second: to the composer’s credit, she managed to avert the trap where a device like a fanfare or a jovial stroll can get unintentionally droll if you take it far enough down the scale.

Pianist Anthony de Mare seized the moment to max out the laughs, playing and narrating Timothy L. Miller‘s Two Settings of Ogden Nash Poems, the first a vaudevillian satire of early 20th century bankster excess. The night’s lone trio piece was David Mecionis‘ Trio in Two Parts with an Interval Between, for oboe, viola and bassoon. Just where that interval was located was beside the point. The partita may have been written as a commentary on the past thirty-five months of hell in New York, as Mecionis alluded to the audience. Dibble wandered pensively while Copeland and Searing harmonized, sometimes with subtle dopplers. The three diverged, reconvened with a persistent unease, paused and then resumed, tentative accents amid a general melancholy with the oboe gradually moving to the forefront. Searing’s solemn resonance amid shivers from the viola gave way to a disquieted, triangulated stroll; the three musicians ended it on a decidedly unresolved note.

Thomas and Kaitila closed out the concert with another piece by a Ukrainian composer, Andrey Bandura’s Spring Sonata. This particular spring was a plaintive one, the piano eventually rising to a steady, glistening series of brooklike phrases as Thomas sailed warily overhead. Kaitila worked his way upward toward an ice storm and then down to a gritty crescendo, Thomas holding the center resolutely. As the work went on through a couple of seemingly rather cynical, dancing themes, it brought to mind Bartok’s more acerbic Mikrokosmos miniatures. It’s definitely music for our time: maybe not Springtime for Zelensky, but it’s hard to imagine much optimism coming out of that part the world these days.

The New York Composers Circle have been staging performances of new works by their many members just about monthly. Their next one, featuring several electroacoustic works, is on March 27 at 7 PM at the National Opera Center at 330 7th Ave, just south of 29th St.

Leonard Slatkin Leads a Shattering, Careening MSM Symphony Orchestra Shostakovich Performance

Back at Manhattan School of Music last night for their Symphony Orchestra’s performance of George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. Student orchestras are like minor league ballclubs: champions one year, basement-dwellers the next as the stars graduate to the majors. From an audience perspective, you take your chances.

Here, guest conductor Leonard Slatkin went for a very precise interpretation of Walker’s brief, melancholy overture. A steady syncopation through circling motives reached a stern coda and then fell away abruptly. You could call it a more vigorous update on the Barber Adagio.

Five minutes in and it was clear that this class was playing for an honors grade.

There was a visceral electricity in the auditorium prior to the performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. This one was his response to the Soviet censors who couldn’t wrap their simple minds around his increasingly sophisticated sound world and wanted to silo him into a style they could make sense of – and, in a primitive 1937 style, surveil. It almost worked.

Classical music in Russia being an enduring pop culture phenomenon, the public’s enthusiastic reaction to the symphony probably saved the composer’s life at a time when Stalin was murdering his colleagues.

Slatkin – who looked none the worse for the physical problems that had sidelined him for a time with the Detroit Symphony – led the ensemble into the first movement tentatively, to a sad, windswept milieu, tiptoeing to sudden swells. Student orchestras seldom negotiate dynamics like this so subtly, with wary winds, harrowingly icy strings and spare brass. It was interesting to watch how even here, Slatkin was restless and wanting to cut loose, but didn’t. at least until his pianist signaled a warning and then they went into battle on a tight leash.

The venomous sarcasm of the march that followed only benefited from the group’s haphazard stumble into it, then the increasing horror as they sealed the counterpoint, through the series of bellicose crescendos that followed. Nikolas Rodriguez’s evocatively searching flute – leitmotif for the millions murdered by the communists – gave way to Naoko Nakajima’s plaintive violin to close out the first movement.

The danse macabre that opened the second had a deliciously understated but withering sarcasm, the orchestra nailing Slatkin’s stark contrasts between lush brass and icepick strings, There was more wounded bitterness than depleted horror as the third movement unwound, from tentative to determined and beaten down but bent on revenge. In 1937, the Russians wanted a reprieve from the Soviet regime; in 2023, the world wants reparations from the oligarchs, the Wall Street geeks and the Silicon Valley velvet mafia who engineered the plandemic.

The level of detail downward from there, flickering and fluttering, was meticulous and cinematic to the nth degree, evoking empty storefronts and desolate graves…and eventually a grim resistance. The reflective, shivery, low string-fueled crescendo brought to mind Ravel, but also Shostakovich’s even more haunted later works. Harpist Isabel Cardenes chose her spots in this grim spotlight with a delicate but weighty intensity.

Before the concert, Slatkin expounded at length at how different conductors had tackled the conclusion, and quickly answered that question with a defiant, brisk pace that pushed the orchestra to a ragged limit. But the effect paid off, driving home Shostakovich’s satire of Stalinesque pageantry. The lull after the opening martial bombast was all the more impactful for the nuanced, grimly dancing interplay between strings, winds and brass. From there, the aching, haunting, rootsy Russian theme and variations rose to something of a compromise, a semi-concealed raised middle finger to authoritarianism. The audience exploded seconds later.

There are a ton of unrestricted public concerts at Manhattan School of Music (the students reciprocate for an appreciative audience). The next are a series of concerto performances on Feb 13 and 14. And for lucky Detroiters, Slatkin is leading the DSO in a performance of Tschaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture, the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Glasslands, and this Shostakovich symphony on Feb 18-19. You can get in for $25.

Claudia Acuña Sings a Spellbinding, Spiritual Set at Lincoln Center

Chilean-born singer Claudia Acuña‘s distinctive sound spans the world of nueva cancion, American and latin jazz. Much as she’s known for the disarming clarity of her vocals – even non Spanish speakers find her easy to understand – she’s also a first-class songwriter. Last night at Lincoln Center, she led her quartet through a frequently gorgeous set that underscored their mutual strengths.

She opened the show solo on a standup drum with a brief, mystical under-the-moonlight tableau, singing in English and Spanish. Then the rest of the band – pianist Pablo Vergara, bassist Carlos Henderson and drummer Yayo Serka – joined her for a slow, achingly spiritual ballad: the impulse to hope for a messiah may be universal these days, but this one’s on us. Vergara’s long, pouncing solo set the stage for an optimism that would prevade the rest of the show despite an undercurrent of disquiet.

The future was a recurrent theme. As Acuña, explained, the night’s second song, Historia, was a shout-out to a yet-unborn godson, an undulating triplet groove beneath her picturesque, naturalistic lyric. The high point of the evening was a haunting take of the anthem Aguita de Corazon. which she dedicated to the people of the south of Chile. After a chillingly starry, modal piano solo, Acuña reached for the stratosphere with her vocalese. It was a vivid salute to a population under fire.

Then she took her time with a requiem for Chick Corea, singing in English at the bottom of her formidable range: “I let him slip away from the game he might have played.” Make of that what you will: Vergara’s piano rose emphatically but spaciously over a syncopated, chugging bassline, to an outro where he flicked chords off the inside of the piano like an autoharp

Acuña and the band did Victor Jara’s El Cigarrito as a brisk clave tune, with a crystalline, articulate cascading piano solo over Henderson’s elastic pulse. They took it out with a wry conversation between bass and vocalese, shamanic polyrhythms from the drums and then a goofy pop song quote appropriate for a thinly disguised ode about smoking a blunt.

Acuña explained that she’d written Futuro when she was pregnant, imagining a toddler amid the pleasing scents of onion, garlic and ocean air. This was definitely a theme for a healthy kid, in fact a heroic one, bouncing along on a tricky, shapeshifting beat, rising to a darkly triumphant chorus, a fanged neoromantic piano solo and finally another spine-tingling wordless vocal coda.

Serka kicked off the Grady Tate tune Sack Full of Dreams with a woody, jungly cajon solo, then the quartet worked a slinky, vampy nocturnal groove that they very subtly took doublespeed after a cheery bit of salsa. Acuña delivered it with the utmost seriousness, an apt echo of the song’s Vietnam War-era hope in the midst of trouble and turmoil.

She closed the show with Hey, her brisk clave-fueled anthem for female empowerment, a no-nonsense entreaty to reconnect with the earth below and the moon above. A gospel-infused interlude was an unexpected treat, followed by a bit of You Are My Sunshine and an unexpectedly successful, tongue-in-cheek dive into audience participation.

The next free concert at the Lincoln Center Atrium is Feb 17 at 7:30 PM with all-purpose Dominican dance band Afro Dominicano. You might want to get there by 7 because the space sells out fast, especially for the dance parties here.

A Deviously Entertaining Avant Garde Archival Treat by Pauline Oliveros and James Ilgenfritz

One of the most irresistibly fun sonic explorations released this year so far is Altamirage, a collection of late-period duo recordings by Pauline Oliveros with bassist James Ilgenfritz, part of which is streaming at Bandcamp. Oliveros sadly went to the great deep listening well in the sky in 2016, but she left behind one of the most individualistic bodies of work of any composer, ever. On this one she plays a duo with Ilgenfritz on two extended tracks from a collection of relatively rare works from the early 1960s. Much of this, as you would expect, is a feast of strange textures and timbres. Ilgenfritz has a gig coming up that she would no doubt approve of, improvising with guitarist Sandy Ewen and saxophonist Michael Foster at Downtown Music Gallery on Feb 11 at 6 PM.

The first piece on the record, Outline for Flute, Percussion and String Bass is classic longscale Oliveros (or put another way, classic Bernard Herrmann) with its sepulchral flickers and sudden bursts of phantasmagoria from flutist Martha Cargo and percussionist Chris Nappi. But it’s equal part cartoon score. Try listening all the way through without at least grinning a little: it’s a lost cause.

Oliveros’ tart electric accordion accents contrast with Ilgenfritz’s exuberance and frequent buffoonery (via some meticulously goofy harmonics) in part one of the album’s title suite. The album concludes with parts five, four and and three, in order. Ilgenfritz  bows starkly and lighting into a sleek glissando or two in number five as Oliveros airs out the gremlins in various electronic patches.

Part four is an unexpectedly steady, rhythmic, practically swinging pitch-and-follow sequence. The last on the list is the most distinctly ambient yet allusively melodic, and in that sense disquieting number here.

The Trio For Trumpet, Accordion and String Bass appears uninterrupted, Ilgenfritz joined by Stephanie Richards and Nathan Koci in a playful five-part suite of miniatures. Subtle dopplers, low drones, spritely wisps and the occasional chirpy hint of a fanfare all figure into the mix.

Predictive Programming For the Future of Big Band Jazz From the MSM Jazz Orchestra

Last night at Manhattan School of Music, the MSM Jazz Orchestra and a slightly smaller ten-piece unit played an all-Jim McNeely program worthy of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the group the composer pretty much singlehandedly vaulted into the uppermost echelon of big band jazz. When they’re playing for a grade (or for their peers), student orchestras can be spectacular. This performance was often poignant, aptly sleek and symphonic, in keeping with McNeely’s sensibility. To what extent these musicians will grace the stage beyond academia is not a function of talent but of more pressing current unknowns.

Introducing the show, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen said this would be a “Michelin star sampling” of McNeely’s compositions. He began at the podium for the night’s first number, Thad, a plushly swinging, characteristically shapeshifting Thad Jones tribute from the VJO’s first album under that name. McNeely wove innumerable Jones riffs into the piece, resulting in a comfortable trad familiarity. It was clear that this crew were out for honors credit: perfectly synchronous brass, seamless execution of unexpected syncopation and bursting accents, a long, genial Bruno Tzinas trombone solo, a jubilantly articulated alto sax solo from Erena Terakubo and an expansive, expressive Kellin Hanas trumpet solo that dipped to a striking flicker of unease. Special guest trumpeter Scott Wendholt took it from there steadily, choosing his spots to punch in or flurry upward.

McNeely moved to the piano and Mike Holober took over conducting for The Tightrope Walker, which imagines Paul Klee’s solitary highwire artist getting some company out there. A momentary, pensively looping intro brightened with the brass, dipping for a pointillistic, bubbling Jonah Grant bass solo in contrast to the persistent, airy gloom. McNeely then brought the sunshine in with his own solo, mirroring what the bass had done before bringing the song full circle. Such is this guy’s conceptual artistry: if Del Bigtree wants a more ambitious theme, this would work.

McNeely then switched the big band out for a tentet, beginning with Lost, a catchy, steadily syncopated tune fueled by cheery call-and-response, a piano solo pulling against the center before breaking loose with a gritty insistence. A balmy Maxwell Bessesen alto sax solo rose from balmy to brightly articulate, the brass joining with drummer Christian McGhee’s vaudevillian theatrics.

Group Therapy, true to its title, was full of brief individual features, taking a turn from sweeping majesty to modal moodiness and wryly chattering exchanges. The full orchestra returned with a mighty string section for In This Moment (a world premiere of this symphonic arrangement), McNeely establishing a hauntingly wintry mood with his opening solo, Jensen moving unexpectedly from sheer devastation to a unassailable triumph. McNeely led the orchestra out with a distantly contented quasar pulse.

Big Red Thing made a good segue with its brisker, punchier pulse and a brassy vigor punctuated by moments of starriness and stark string accents. Trumpeter Grace Fox racewalked and rippled; guitarist Ryan Hernandez added bite and more spacious accents over the lush symphonics. The bordering-on-frantic parade out was irresistibly fun.

Amanda Addleman sang The Lost and Found, a Dayna Stephens/Gretchen Parlato tune, with nuance and calm disquiet echoed with understated impact from alto saxophonist Mackenzie McCarthy.

McNeely explained to the sold-out crowd that he’d written Threnody as a requiem for victims of the plandemic. Woundedly if methodically, the group moved from an airy, stately, baroque-tinged theme to a somber pedalpoint with tense, troubled riffage throughout the ensemble as a Messiaenic chill drifted into clearer focus. Notwithstanding general somberness and a viscerally plaintive Bryan Cowan alto sax solo, Team Humanity seemed to win.

They closed with Extra Credit, a gusty number with equal hints of New Orleans and latin jazz, a suave tenor sax solo and a lithely tumbling piano break. Fox, Wendholt and Jensen took it out in a jauntily triangulated blaze.

The next public concert at Manhattan School of Music is this Friday night, Feb 10 at 7:30 PM at Neidorff-Karpati Hall, 130 Claremont Ave, with special guest conductor Leonard Slatkin leading the MSM Symphony Orchestra in George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Shostakovich’s venomously sarcastic Symphony No. 5. Admission is free; early arrival is a good idea. Take the 1 train to 125th and then walk back uphill (Claremont runs parallel to Broadway, one block to the west).

A Stormy, Thrilling Carnegie Hall Return For Kariné Poghosyan

Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, pianist Kariné Poghosyan picked where she left off after a meticulously intuitive and thunderously applauded performance of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky there in November, 2019. That New Yorkers had to wait so long for a reprise is a crime. Undeterred by the past almost three years, she delivered a similar amount of fireworks and detailed insights to another packed house and several ovations.

The material drew from her latest album, understatedly titled Folk Themes: she is a fierce and articulate exponent of music from her Armenian heritage. Poghosyan’s well-chronicled, dazzling technical prowess is matched by a remarkable attention to content: her performances are akin to a jazz singer who takes the lyrics line by line for maximum emotional impact, not to mention unexpected mirth.

One of the evening’s early highlights was a tender and spacious but playful version of Komitas’ Shushiki, which contrasted with an alternately thunderous and suspenseful version of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Waltz No. 6.

Four lyric pieces by Grieg rounded out the first half of the concert: the alternately hopeful and foreboding To the Spring, the deliciously phantasmagorical March of the Gnomes, the angst-fueled, Rachmaninovian Minuet for Vanished Days, and a rewardingly lithe, understated take of Wedding at Troldhaugen.

There was majesty to match the requisite shreddy intensity in her performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12. Yet she found a coy flirtatiousness in how she held back her phrasing, particularly before the lithely dancing music-box interlude, whose dynamics she worked with a similarly dynamic charm. As she played, she would look up, completely overjoyed, leaving no doubt that this was a love song with a happy ending.

By contrast, his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 was much more stately and somber. In the beginning, moments of triumph were subsumed in an pervasive pensiveness, Poghosyan exercising considerable restraint with the lefthand and the rhythmic drive while opting for glitter and gleam. Still, she found a swinging passage where she was literally bouncing on the piano bench in the seconds before throwing caution to the wind and driving it to a careening coda.

Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole fell somewhere in between. This time out, Poghosyan had picked an irridescent green gown instead of the red Trans Am of an outfit she’d worn at the 2019 concert – and she didn’t give the crowd the big bicep flex this time around.

The encores were arguably the highlight of the night. The first was a briskly kinetic, crystalline romp through Babajanian’s gorgeously chromatic Dance of Vagharshapat. The second which has become a signature piece in her repertoire, was an opulent, ecstatic, pointillistically pristine rendition of Kachaturian’s Toccata.

Poghosyan’s next concert in the tri-state area is on March 12 at 2 PM where she joins the Wallingford Symphony Orchestra on a program including works by Prokofiev plus Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Tix are $30.