March 2017

By the Editors

• March 7: Charlemagne Palestine Tony Conrad tribute at St. Thomas Church. Rarely does one venture to Midtown in search of the sublime, and yet one can expect just that on the 7th, when Palestine returns to St. Thomas Church, where he served as carillonneur from 1963 to 1970, to pay tribute to his late friend Tony Conrad. For an hour or so, the “Quasimoto of 53rd St.” will unleash the beauty of the bell tower for avant-garde pilgrim and homeward-bound corporate stooge alike. Listeners are advised that the “performance can best be heard from the street around St. Thomas.”


• March 11: Inn-Fest at National Sawdust. Spanning two sets (7:00 and 9:00 p.m.), Inn-Fest is a compact celebration and showcase from Innova recordings, one of the most important and free-wheeling new music labels on the scene. Innova has a national scope, but this event is all about NYC, with performances from Miya Masaoka’s Double Quartet, the Bohemian Trio, pianist Kathleen Supové, and more, and guests will include Hans Tammen, Gordon Beeferman, Bernd Klug, and Jennie Oh Brown.


• March 11: Landing, Fat Heaven, Grist, the Mells at Moffat. Connecticut band Landing headlines this all ages basement show, presented by Gimme Tinnitus. Landing plays slowly unfolding downtempo guitar rock that surprises you; Fat Heaven’s record Tough Luck opens with a song called “Amphetamines,” to give you a sense of the contrast. If you’re the kind of person who gets to the show early to check out the openers—and you should be—then you’ll find out what Grist and the Mells are like yourself.



• March 16: Tortoise and Mind over Mirrors at (le) poisson rouge. Long-running Chicago post rock band Tortoise are back with their first album in seven years, The Catastrophist, out on Thrill Jockey. Tortoise will be joined on tour by Mind over Mirrors, whose latest record, Undying Color, on Paradise of Bachelors, is an early Rail favorite of 2017 and boasts a unique mix of minimalism and electronic music.


• March 17 and 18: Tristan Perich at the Kitchen. Tristan Perich, artist, composer, and pioneer of 1-bit electronics as a versatile musical instrument, presents five works, some of them debuts, over two nights at the kitchen, to be performed by So Percussion, JACK Quartet, Mariel Roberts, DUO X88, ACME, and DITHER.



• March 23: Carl Stone with Akaihirume and Ilan Volkov at the Brooklyn Music School. Electronic music has always promised an entirely new way forward that could unselfconsciously combine abstraction, art music structures, experimentation, and the sonic pleasure of pop. One of the few who have fully and fruitfully explored this path is Carl Stone, and any chance to hear his dazzling treatment of audio and form is a treat.



• March 23: Pontiak at Alphaville. With a new record, Dialectic of Ignorance, out on Thrill Jockey, Pontiak brings its gritty, driving brand of rock—it has the hypnotic but also vaguely sinister quality of an extended Led Zeppelin deep cut, just chooglin’ on down the road waiting for the bombs to fall—to Alphaville, where the band is joined by Rhyton.


• March 24: New releases from Diamanda Galás. While we normally don’t list record releases, this is a special event. After a multi-year absence from the scene, the unclassifiable and unparalleled Galás has two new recordings coming out: All The Way and At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem. Just advising you to set aside your cash ahead of time.



• March 30: Hush Point at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Trumpeter John McNeil’s quartet is celebrating the release of their third album on Sunnyside, Hush Point III. McNeil’s music is a quiet and intimate exploration of the avant-garde possibilities of West Coast cool jazz from sixty years ago, mixing abstraction with a swinging songfulness. This is some of the finest and most individual jazz on the scene.



• April 1 - Arbouretum at Trans-Pecos. Arbouretum, led by Dave Heumann, plays mournful classic rock, and if the “classic” descriptor turns you off, rest assured this is more Magnolia Electric Co. than Wilco, not that Wilco’s all that bad—let’s say you found an old CD of A Ghost Is Born under the car seat during a long drive; you’d dig it. Anyway, Arbouretum’s latest, Song of the Rose, is out later this month on Thrill Jockey.


• April 1: SFJAZZ Collective, A Tribute to Miles Davis, at Miller Theatre. Upfront, this has two things we usually shy away from in jazz: an all-star group (they rarely mesh), and a tribute (incipient zombification). But then again, the tribute is to Miles Davis, and the only way to do that is to speak your own mind. And the band features the voices of Miguel Zenón, David Sánchez, Robin Eubanks, Warren Wolf, and Edward Simon, so expect the unexpected, along with excellent, fiery playing.