6 THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY HOI CHAN
Following the success of her 2018 début, “Devotion,” the reserved English
singer-songwriter Tirzah retreated deeper into a newfound home life. She
and her partner, the producer Kwake Bass, had two kids and moved to the
London suburb of Sidcup. She quit her job and started making music full
time, continuing a lifelong collaboration with her best friend, the exper-
imental pop musician and film-score composer Mica Levi. For “Colour-
grade,” their second album together under Tirzah’s name, they expand the
brain trust to include their mutual collaborator Coby Sey. Color-grading
software is used to make a picture fuller, to give it greater depth and sharper
contrast, and Tirzah’s songs have undergone a similar treatment, with a
predetermined chromatic palette not only heightening the complexity of
her music but revealing more of its detail. Inside these tender, atonal songs
are discreet, cryptic ruminations on growing a family, building a little colony
all your own. They reach for the intimacy of communion.—Sheldon PearceEXPERIMENTALMUSIC
from Dinosaur during its stormy initial run.
Now deep into that band’s unlikely resurgence,
Barlow maintains his sideline as a rough-edged,
diaristic singer-songwriter. He recently released
the solo album “Reason to Live”; though it’s
stylistically akin to his nineties work as Se-
badoh, the record quenches the burning rage
of yesteryear with tenderheartedness—gentle
enough for the singer to be welcomed into the
homes of perfect strangers.—Jay Ruttenberg
black midi
ROCK When black midi operates at full blast—a
common occurrence—its music comes glutted
with abrasive guitars and sudden rhythmic
shifts administered with hair-raising dexterity
by the drummer Morgan Simpson. But on
“Cavalcade,” this challenging yet fast-rising
London band’s second album, the most arrest-
ing moments are less clamorous. Particularly
jolting is “Marlene Dietrich,” which has a dif-
ferent sort of drastic tempo change, trading
rock-and-roll bombast for retro balladry. The
whole affair is steered with supreme confidence
by the front man Geordie Greep, his old man’s
croon trapped in a young man’s body. At times,
black midi’s varied impulses can seem like an
incomplete jigsaw puzzle scattered across the
floor; when pieced together, they prove illu-
minating. The trio, joined onstage by a saxo-
phonist and a keyboardist, plays Webster Hall
(Oct. 19) and Pioneer Works (Oct. 20) this
week.—J.R.Joe Farnsworth: “City of Sounds”
JAZZ The drummer Joe Farnsworth is not a
household name, but it’s a sure bet that he can
be found on the speed dial of many a vaunted
jazz figure around town. Resolutely unflashy,
this most swinging of percussionists can spark
any band with his perfect time and unwavering
attention to detail. On his new album as a
leader, “City of Sounds,” the selfless journey-
man is joined by two expert players, the bassist
Peter Washington and Kenny Barron, the dean
of mainstream jazz piano. Unsurprisingly, the
session works like a dream: trim, skillful, and
as rhythmically vibrant as the metropolis that
the recording celebrates.—Steve FuttermanRenée Fleming: “Voice of Nature”
CLASSICAL “Voice of Nature: The Anthropo-
cene,” a new record from the soprano Renée
Fleming, uses Romantic and contemporary
songs to chart humanity’s evolving rela-tionship with the natural world in the face
of climate change. (Geologists use the term
“Anthropocene” to describe the epoch in which
humans started having a noticeable impact on
the environment.) The album begins at the
end, with songs about twilight, but it is the
opposite of a heavy-handed gesture: Yannick
Nézet-Séguin’s piano playing flickers like star-
light in rapturous songs by Kevin Puts and
Reynaldo Hahn, as Fleming’s voice floats and
blooms with its customary beauty. Her tone is
focussed and propulsive throughout the album,
and any preachiness is mercifully limited to a
single song (Nico Muhly’s “Endless Space”).
Ultimately, the tracks communicate awe more
than admonishment, wrapped as they are in a
voice of such loveliness.—Oussama Zahr“Tresor 30”
ELECTRONIC When an electronic-music label
issues an anniversary package, it’s typically
centered on well-known catalogue releases.
“Tresor 30,” a sterling fifty-two-track set cel-
ebrating the Berlin techno club Tresor, does
nearly the opposite—only eleven selections
have been previously released. Many of the
more familiar artists—Jeff Mills, Claude Young,
Terrence Dixon, Ectomorph, DJ Minx—are
from the Detroit area, techno’s birthplace and
prime artistic locus, and the collection acts as
a one-stop survey of that city’s defining stamp
on dance music, not just historically but in the
present tense.—Michaelangelo MatosVOCES
CLASSICAL “After silence,” the English author
and philosopher Aldous Huxley wrote, “that
which comes nearest to expressing the inex-
pressible is music.” That oft-quoted line might
have been a mission statement for the bright
English a-cappella group VOCES8 as they
assembled their fifteenth-anniversary project,
“After Silence,” initially issued between No-
vember, 2019, and June, 2020, as a quartet of
digital EPs. The series comprises works span-
ning five centuries, from Monteverdi and Tallis
to Roxanna Panufnik and Arvo Pärt, show-
casing the singers’ versatility and assurance;
this concert at Merkin Hall concludes with a
selection of jazz and pop arrangements.—Steve
Smith (Oct. 16 at 7:30.)1
DANCENew York City Ballet
The first in-person season since the beginning
of the pandemic closes with a week of dances
by Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Chris-
topher Wheeldon, and Justin Peck. The Clas-
sic NYCB II program (Oct. 14 and Oct. 16
matinée) is especially rich. It opens with “La
Valse,” a swooping, and rather spooky, ballet
by Balanchine (set to Ravel), in which a stylish
ball is interrupted by a dashing but dangerous
interloper. On the final matinée of the season
(Oct. 17), Maria Kowroski, a member of the
company since 1995 and a principal dancer
since 1998, takes her final bow in a program
that includes pas de deux from many ballets
she has performed, including Balanchine’s
dreamy “Chaconne” and his jazzy “Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue,” and Christopher Wheel-
don’s “Danse à Grande Vitesse.” Farewells are