8 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY SOPHY HOLLINGTON
It seems paradoxical, to say the least, that an initiative intent on revivi-
fying the chamber-music concert experience should be called Death of
Classical—a play, of course, on the presenter’s two chosen venues. “The
Crypt Sessions,” hosted in a subterranean space under Harlem’s Church
of the Intercession, comes back to life, on Sept. 18, with the cellist Joshua
Roman and the pianist Conor Hanick, who connect for sublime Arvo
Pärt works and a contemplative sonata by Alfred Schnittke. In the cata-
combs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, the “Angel’s Share” series
follows suit, Sept. 24-27, alternating the intrepid pianists Jenny Lin and
Adam Tendler at one piano, under a constellation of mirrors, to divide
the labors of “Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses,” a seldom encountered
ten-movement cycle of metaphysical solo pieces by Liszt. All the events
are prefaced with a complimentary wine or whiskey tasting.—Steve SmithRECITALS
hours earlier, at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cul-
tural and Educational Center.—J.R. (Sept. 24.)
Ambar Lucid
Mercury Lounge
A teen-ager writing a song called “A letter to
my younger self” could, upon first inspection,
seem indulgent and even a little callow, but the
eighteen-year-old Ambar Lucid approaches her
music with mature and levelheaded sincerity.
The track is a pained return to her childhood,
during which her father was deported to Mex-
ico, and she alternates between English and
Spanish, consoling herself with quiet memories
and gentle encouragement. The melody is un-
varnished and understated, an embodiment of
the sensitive dream pop that propels her début
EP, “Dreaming Lucid.”—J.L. (Sept. 24.)
Pop Smoke
Sony Hall
In December, Pop Smoke released his first track;
this year, he had a song of the summer. The
gravelly snarls of the Brooklyn rapper’s single
“Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” which translates
a little boy’s awe at the perfection of a warm
Tennessee evening spent with his family into
rose-colored washes of sound.—Oussama Zahr
(Sept. 18-19 at 7:30 and Sept. 20-21 at 8.)O
Opera Philadelphia
OUT OF TOWN Opera Philadelphia’s boldly curated
September festival, held at various venues in the
city, is designed to make a splash while other
companies are still rubbing the summer from
their eyes. To open the festival, Philip Venables
and Ted Huffman—whose production of “Psy-
chosis 4.48” left a searing mark at this year’s Pro-
totype Festival—team up for “Denis & Katya,” a
new opera based on the true story of two teen-
age runaways who, in 2016, live-streamed their
tragic standoff with police. Joseph Keckler’s “Let
Me Die,” which obsesses over operatic death
scenes, is the other world première. Prokof-
iev’s deeply wacky modernist fairy tale, “The
Love for Three Oranges,” featuring Barry Banks
and Wendy Bryn Harmer in a production by
Alessandro Talevi, and Handel’s sumptuous
“Semele,” starring Amanda Forsythe in a stag-
ing by James Darrah, are as close as the festival
gets to the operatic canon.—O.Z. (Sept. 18-29.)Anastasia Clarke
The Old Stone House
Opening the seventh year of the composer
Dan Joseph’s thoughtfully curated sympo-
sium and concert series Musical Ecologies,
the performer and audio technologist An-
astasia Clarke presents the newest iteration of
“Crushed Matrices,” an ongoing site-specific
project that mixes crystal singing bowls—both
intact and shattered—with electronic accompa-
niment. Despite the requisite destruction, the
resulting music sings, throbs, and sparkles to
transfixing effect.—Steve Smith (Sept. 19 at 8.)Félicia Atkinson
Le Poisson Rouge
The French composer and performer Félicia
Atkinson refers to her powerful recent album,
“The Flower and the Vessel,” as “not about being
pregnant but a record made with pregnancy.”
Alongside keyboard reveries influenced by her
early exposure to Debussy, Ravel, and Satie, At-
kinson uses electronics to evoke melancholy and
isolation in tandem with close-miked ASMR
vocal methods that fashion an intimacy that
verges on invasive. The Brooklyn-based flutist
and synthesizer player John Also Bennett, who
earlier this year issued an otherworldly solo
album, “Erg Herbe,” opens.—S.S. (Sept. 22 at 8.)Five Boroughs Music Festival
Judson Memorial Church
Founders, an idiosyncratic quintet featuring
versatile chamber-music players who double
as singers and songwriters, offers a program
inspired by Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of
Time.” In a faithful yet fresh rearrangement, the
group interpolates elements of Gregorian chant,
folk music, and indie rock and underscores the
iconic work’s fundamental influences, such as
birdsong and apocalyptic scripture. In “Songs1
CLASSICALMUSIC
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
The New York Philharmonic and its music
director, Jaap van Zweden, open the season
with a world première and a bout of nostal-
gia. Shakespeare bookends the program, with
Philip Glass’s newly commissioned “King Lear
Overture” and movements from Prokofiev’s
striking “Romeo and Juliet” orchestral suites.
In between, the Tony Award-winning soprano
Kelli O’Hara explores classical repertoire that
complements her lyric voice with Barber’s“Welcome to the Party” have been blaring from
car speakers for months, but he is only now step-
ping into the spotlight—his début EP, “Meet the
Woo,” from July, officially introduced his infec-
tious brand of street rap to a steadily growing fan
base and yielded another surefire record in the
alluring “Dior.” His music encapsulates gran-
deur and menace, which is to say, it sounds ex-
actly like New York.—Briana Younger (Sept. 24.)