THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021 5
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MUSIC
Cal Performances
CLASSICAL This performing-arts presenter
traditionally brings top-calibre talent to Bay
Area audiences at its home base, the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley; now, with
its pay-per-view streaming series, “Cal Per-
formances at Home,” it offers artists to the
world in prerecorded performances from far-
flung locations. With the spring season under
way, the fierce harpsichord advocate Mahan
Esfahani plays Bach’s canonical Goldberg
Variations at the Bach Archive, in Leipzig,
Germany (March 4). The luminous pianist
Mitsuko Uchida performs two Schubert im-
promptus and his gently unfurling Sonata in
G Major, D. 894, at the renowned Wigmore
Hall, in London (March 18).—Oussama ZahrCHUNG HA: “Querencia”
K-POP Originally a bit player in the elev-
en-member, reality-show-born K-pop girl
group I.O.I., Kim Chung-ha, known monon-
ymously as CHUNG HA, has blossomed into
a solo star since the group’s disbanding, in 2017,
after only a year of promotion. Her proper
début, “Querencia,” is a kaleidoscopic survey of
dance music the world over, dipping in and out
of Korean, English, and Spanish. The album’s
concept, inspired by a metaphysical Spanish
term for a place where one’s real identity is
revealed, concerns a young woman seeking her
true self through song, scanning tropical house,
synth pop, Afrobeats, and Latin pop along her
journey of discovery. In its brightest, most
colorful moments—the Rina Sawayama-esque
mashup pop of “Bicycle,” the vogue-friendly
house of “Stay Tonight,” a lively urbano duet
with the Puerto Rican rapper Guaynaa, “De-
mente”—the music finds personal revelations
in global aspirations.—Sheldon PearceCloud Nothings:
“The Shadow I Remember”
ROCK A line like “The world I know has gone
away, an outline of my own decay,” off of Cloud
Nothings’ new album, “The Shadow I Remem-
ber,” slots almost too easily into the dense gloom
of the pandemic era. With its stifled discordance
and biting existentialism, the record does seem
to be an artifact of the moment, but it’s also a
survey of where the Cleveland band has been
for the past decade: the group reunited with
the producer Steve Albini, returning to studios
from earlier in its career and pulling in some of
the most intense, belligerent sounds of its past.
Yet streaks of brightness come often, as when
OHMME’s Macie Stewart buoys the melodies
on “Nothing Without You.”—Julyssa LopezDMX Krew: “Loose Gears”
ELECTRONIC The moniker DMX Krew is a clue
to where the London electronic musician Ed-
ward Upton is coming from—the golden age
of electro and early techno, with its rubbery
grooves and vintage synthesizers at the fore.
(The Oberheim DMX was an early drum
machine.) On “Loose Gears,” Upton crafts
jumpy rhythms and arranges them with antic
bass lines and the squeaky-toned instrumen-
OPPOSITE: tation of an eighties arcade game. The pas-
© LORRAINE O’GRADY / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK / COURTESY
ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES, NEW YORK; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY HARRISON FREEMAN
Recent years have seen monstrous surveys compiling every incendiary note
of the mythic 1966 tour and studio trail leading to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on
the Tracks.” “Bob Dylan—1970” again examines his construction process, not
of a masterpiece but of a pair of minor LPs: the unloved “Self Portrait” and,
especially, the quirky “New Morning.” Dylan’s workshopping here emits a
vibe akin to his home-recording touchstone “The Basement Tapes” as he
plays through elegantly rumpled renderings of American music authored
by himself and others. The well-worn band includes George Harrison,
who joined for a handful of songs weeks after the Beatles finalized their
divorce. Throughout these sessions, Dylan returns to a new composition,
“If Not for You,” chasing an elusive sublimity that would finally be realized
months later—when the song was covered by Harrison.—Jay RuttenbergROCK
tiche works because Upton writes engaging
tunes that come across as proper songs, al-
beit wordless ones, rather than the kind of
shapeless tracks that tend to dominate the
dance-music realm.—Michaelangelo MatosMelissa Aldana Quartet
JAZZ When the Chilean player Melissa Aldana
cuts loose on her original tunes, it becomes
obvious that she’s dissected and expertly ab-
sorbed any number of post-bop influences
while developing a distinct voice of her own
on the tenor saxophone. Her continued evo-
lution during the past decade—as with other
prodigiously talented players who surround
her on the contemporary jazz scene—has be-
come a compelling narrative in itself. She’s also
fostered a limber rapport with the guitarist
Charles Altura, a similarly incisive improviser
and a key element of the quartet that Aldana
brings to the Brooklyn club Bar Bayeux for this
live-streamed performance.—Steve Futterman
(March 3 at 7:30; barbayeux.com.)New York Philharmonic
CLASSICAL Missing from the streaming throngs
throughout most of the pandemic, the New
York Philharmonic finally entered the crowded
field in February, with NYPhil+. The new
initiative—now accessible online, with plat-
form-specific apps due in the spring—arrived
bearing treasures from the orchestra’s rich au-diovisual archives, as well as a newly produced
concert that placed familiarity before innova-
tion. The platform’s second original offering
provides a welcome infusion of new blood,
showcasing Tito Muñoz, a substantial young
conductor making his Philharmonic début,
and Aaron Diehl, an elegant improvising pia-
nist, in selections from Mary Lou Williams’s
“Zodiac Suite” and works by Copland, Ives,
and Still.—Steve Smith (March 8; nyphil.org.)1
TELEVISIONBarb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
At first, this wacky lime Daiquiri of a comedy,
written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie
Mumolo, feels like a long setup for a “Satur-
day Night Live” sketch. Barb (Mumolo) and
Star (Wiig) are middle-aged best friends from
an unnamed Midwestern town who share a
house, a hair style, and an unceasing passion
for discount culottes; after losing their jobs as
salesclerks at Jennifer Convertibles, they decide
to go on a big trip to Florida to shake things up.
There are solid jokes from the get-go—Vanessa
Bayer steals an early scene as the dictatorial
leader of a local women’s “talking club”—but
as the movie unfolds its quirky heroines feel
less and less like stand-ins for a certain type of
T. J. Maxx shopper. Instead, the film goes for
something far more specific, silly, loving, and