CD Review, File Under?, Pop

Swimming Bell’s Early Summer Serenade

Swimming Bell

Somnia EP

Perpetual Doom

 

Summers have been getting progressively hotter in much of the world. Here in the Northeast United States, we have had a mild Spring, but anticipate that summer will be a scorcher. Happily, singer/songwriter Katie Schottland ‘s project Swimming Bell has returned to serenade the season.  

 

Swimming Bell’s latest EP, Somnia (Perpetual Doom, 2025) adopts a summery vibe. “95 at Night” both embraces the heat with fevered blur and seeks to assuage it with soothing vocals, pedal steel, and an undulating beat. The end of a summer romance could find little better to accompany burgeoning tears than the ballad “I’m Always Down,” with honeyed vocal harmonies and the twang of loping surf guitar. “Found it at the Bottom of the Ocean” has a seaside ambience of gentle singing, guitar glissandos, and supple rhythm courtesy of bongo drums. The closer, “Mushrooms in July,” seems self-explanatory. 

 

Somnia concludes after sixteen minutes, and many listeners will want more. Swimming Bell has recorded two full length albums, Charlie (Adventure Club/Permanent, 2024) and Wild Sight (Adventure Club, 2019), both well worth seeking out. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Concert review, Contemporary Classical, early music, Festivals, File Under?, New York

Alisa Weilerstein’s Fragments 3 Program at Zankel Hall (Concert review)

 

Photo: Richard Termine

Fragments 3: Alisa Weilerstein at Zankel Hall

May 20th, 2025

Published in Sequenza 21

By Christian Carey

 

NEW YORK – Alisa Weilerstein is a supremely gifted cellist, and it is hard to imagine being anything less than riveted by her playing. At Zankel Hall last Tuesday, she made decisions for her Fragments project that seemed to be needlessly distracting. 

There are six Fragments programs all told, each based on one of the Bach Suites, joined by new pieces commissioned for the project. Fragments 3 featured the third cello suite alongside pieces by Joseph Hallman, Thomas Larcher, Jeffrey Mumford, and Carlos Simon. A design team helped to bring Weilerstein’s concept to life. The set, by Seth Reiser was elegantly simple, a multi-sided screen behind Weilerstein, and costume designer Molly Irelan did a fine job creating a chic yet downtown look for the cellist. The effective lighting, also by Reiser, included various spotlights as well as a moving magic lamp that accompanied moments of intensity. Director Elkanah Pulitzer did not seem to overtly interfere with Weilerstein’s usual performing demeanor. Perhaps ordering and pacing were part of her remit. 

 

The fragmenting of the pieces themselves is where things got challenging for listeners. Instead of presenting each of them in toto, individual movements of all of the pieces, Bach included, were excerpted out of order. In addition, audience members weren’t given a listing of the ordering of these sections, having to wait until after the concert to download a program, using a QR code found in the booklet. In remarks that were printed for consumption beforehand, Weilerstein exhorted the audience to “just listen.” This, by the way, is every reviewer’s nightmare – playing “name that tune” with pieces that you have never yet heard. 

 

It is laudable that so many new works for solo cello have come from this project. However, one feels for the composers, who, instead of being given a bow, were represented by the fragmenting of their pieces into a mix without metadata. It can be said with confidence that all four of the commissioned composers know cello writing authoritatively, including a catalog of extended techniques that featured Weilerstein’s adventurous streak and admirable facility to excellent advantage. Indeed, Simon and Hallmark seemed to invigorate their writing with extra doses of well-integrated 21st century virtuosity.

 

It was a bit disorienting to hear the Allemande, the second movement of Bach’s suite, appear as the penultimate fragment. Out of order though its movements may have been, the performance of the Bach suite was engaging, played with consummate care and thoughtful phrasing. Most of the program relied on the juxtaposition of old and new music. Only Mumford, with a few ostinatos in an otherwise dazzlingly modernist endeavor, provided a hat tip to Bach. Weilerstein finished the recital with the third movement of Thomas Larcher’s now here, which culminated with a rocket-fueled flourish, dazzling lamplight included. 

Photo: Richard Termine

In the bygone times of analog mixtapes, curation seemed a prerequisite. Playlisting mixes has now become the way that many people usually listen on digital platforms, often passively and without worrying about the aforementioned metadata. When it comes to music consumption, an encroaching facelessness of content seems to be what’s trending. Revising the recital is a welcome endeavor, and annotating program booklets needn’t be an ossified affair. When engaged, just listening is fine, and may be preferable to constantly rifling through the program notes instead of fully attending to the performance. Perhaps supertitles briefly listing who is being played could be a compromise, a mix without undue preconceptual baggage. 

 

All six installations of Fragments will be presented this week at the Spoleto Festival  over four nights: May 26, 28, 29, and 31. Bring your cell phone and click on those QR codes as soon as the applause concludes. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Concert review, File Under?, Minimalism

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall

Simone Dinnerstein and Baroklyn Perform Glass at Merkin Hall

Photo by Lisa Marie-Mazzucco.

 

Kaufman Music Center

Piano Dialogues

Simone Dinnerstein with Baroklyn

May 12, 2025

Published on Sequenza 21

 

NEW YORK – Last Monday, the pianist Simone Dinnerstein brought her Baroklyn project to Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall to perform an all Philip Glass program. Baroklyn is a string ensemble, augmented at the concert by harp and celesta, assembled by Dinnerstein from musician friends with an eye towards a mostly, but not exclusively, female group. 

 

The concert opener was The Hours Suite, excerpted from the film score and arranged by Michael Riesman, a longtime musical director for Philip Glass. Unlike many film score segments, which are brief vignettes, the three movements here are substantial, evocative of the film but transcending it to morph into a symphonic triptych. Conducting from the piano, Dinnerstein’s gestures were clear, and Baroklyn’s musicians were responsive and performed in a well-coordinated fashion, even when in the midst of myriad metric shifts at high speed. The group’s keen intonation afforded the harmonies a lustrous quality.

 

Mad Rush is one of the most abundantly virtuosic of Glass’s piano pieces, and it has become a showcase for Dinnerstein’s superlative chops. The piece contains furious fast runs, with a concomitant sense of blissful austerity in the slower passages. Dinnerstein inhabited both demeanors authoritatively.  

 

The concert concluded with Tirol Concerto, the composer’s first piano concerto. Prior to the performance, I had some misgivings about whether Baroklyn’s lithe approach had the requisite heft for the piece. However, I was won over by the powerful performance they mounted, right-sized for Merkin Hall but resolute and often jubilant. An interpretive challenge in the piece is the shaping of its dramatic arc. The first movement begins with a slow introduction and then picks up steam, and the finale is a brisk moto perpetuo, both straightforward in design. It is the central movement, a sprawling and content-filled quarter of an hour, that can all too easily imbalance the proceedings. Not so here, where the interpretation sliced it into a series of tableaux that would fit right in as passages for a Glass opera. 

 

On May 30th, Baroklyn will release Complicité, a recording of J.S. Bach for the Supertrain imprint. They are joined by guest artists Peggy Pearson, who plays oboe d’amore, and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano. Dinnerstein’s graceful arrangements of Bach arias for piano and ensemble are adroit tropes on cantata movements. The Keyboard Concerto in E major is an excellent vehicle for Dinnerstein, who plays it in period-informed fashion while suiting her touch and tempos to the modern grand. Johnson Cano’s mezzo-soprano voice is the centerpiece of Cantata 170, which is presented in full. She sings with rich tone and judicious use of vibrato, sumptuously phrasing long legato lines and dexterously performing melismatic passages. In the Air, composer Philip Lasser’s reworking of Bach’s Air on a G-string, is replete with tender ornamentations, and a pleasant valediction. Complicité is a recital disc that, even in arrangements and on modern instruments, shows Dinnerstein and Baroklyn to be gifted advocates for Bach.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Quatuor Diotima Plays Boulez (CD Review)

Pierre Boulez – Livre pour quatuor

Quatuor Diotima

Pentatone Record CD/download

 

The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth has been celebrated with concerts, books and recordings. The Diotima Quartet’s Pentatone CD of Livre pour quatuor (1948-1949, 2017) is a distinctive offering in that it includes a previously unperformed version of the piece. With permission and supervision of Boulez, the composer Philippe Manoury assisted in completing the fourth movement for Diotima. Thus, this is the first complete recording of Livre pour quatuor. At nearly an hour long, it is one of the largest of Boulez’s early compositions.

 

Pizzicato and glissando are liberally applied in discrete sections, as are aggressive angular attacks in others. All of these can be traced back to the Second Viennese School. Often, there is a particularly Webernian pointillism at work, but elsewhere there are explosive gestures and effusive passages that recall Schoenberg and Berg. The use of complex rhythms likely was in part learned from Messiaen. Influences are distinctive, but so is the burgeoning individuality of Boulez’s compositional aesthetic. 

 

To Manoury’s credit, the fourth movement is consistent with the rest of the work. At twelve minutes in duration, it is the longest movement, with a number of passages that recall music from previous sections. It serves as a summary of the quartet’s materials and climax of its dramatic arc. 

 

Quatuor Diotima plays with extraordinary attention to the details of the score. At the same time, they also provide a rendition of the piece that is emotive and expressive, avoiding the mechanics one sometimes hears in performances of post-tonal works. 

 

It seems hard to countenance, but Livre pour quatuor was first drafted when Boulez was only twenty-four. A highly personal and evocative piece, built with an organicism that allows it to hold, even command, interest for an entire hour, it is a great work from the early postwar avant-garde. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Choral Music, Concert review, early music, File Under?, New York

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s

Photo: Eduardus Lee.

Stile Antico Sings Palestrina at St. Mary’s

March 29, 2025

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

 

NEW YORK – Celebrating their twentieth year, the vocal ensemble Stile Antico brought a program dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s birth to Miller Theatre’s Early Music Series. The concert was held at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in midtown, a space that Miller has employed to host a number of Renaissance music performances.

 

Stile Antico appeared with only eleven singers, instead of their usual complement of a dozen. Baritone Gareth Thomas was ill and couldn’t perform. Between numbers, several of the singers hid surreptitious coughs, leading one to think that a bug had plagued the group en route. The quality of the performance didn’t suffer: they still sang sublimely. 

 

The centerpiece of Stile Antico’s latest recording, The Golden Era: Palestrina (Decca, 2025), is perhaps his most famous piece, Missa Papae Marcelli. A great deal of lore has grown up around it, with a story that Palestrina wrote it in part to convince the more conservative members of the Council of Trent that they needn’t ban polyphony and revert exclusively to plainchant in services. Composers could write in multiple parts and still clearly convey the text. While it is unlikely that the Pope Marcellus Mass served as a test piece, Palestrina took pains to write polyphony that never obscured the words. Many composers, some even generations later, imitated what had come to be called the stile antico style of declamation and use of dissonance. 

 

Stile Antico’s performance of Missa Papae Marcelli on the recording is impressive, a standout that is among the best in a crowded field. Their diction is crystal clear, and the tone and blend of the ensemble is particularly beautiful. At St. Mary’s, the mass’s Credo was featured, and it was an expansive display that was well-paced to express the drama inherent in various passages of the piece. 

 

A number of motets by the composer were also included on the program. Tu es Petrus and Exsultate Deo displayed fleet runs and ricocheting exchanges. Sicut servus was performed with fetching delicacy, and Nigra sum sed formosa was imbued with stately elegance. 

Photo: Eduardus Lee.

Composers besides Palestrina who also served in Rome were on the program as well. Josquin’s Salve regina, with a stark bass motive and a texture frequently divided into duets, represented one of the most prominent elder statesmen of the early Renaissance. Jacques Arcadelt’s Pater noster is an example of the florid writing and frequent use of extra-liturgical texts and tunes that contributed to the aforementioned controversy at the Council of Trent. It is hard to lay blame at Arcadelt’s doorstep when hearing his music, which is pleasing in its bustling rhythms and multihued chords. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Trahe me post te and Orlando de Lassus’s Musica dei donum represented works by esteemed contemporaries. The former has an austere yet attractive manner and the latter, a six-voice motet, is more intricate in presentation. Christus resurgens was by Gregorio Allegri, a composer of the next generation, who continued in Palestrina’s footsteps, composing music in stile antico style. The piece’s use of antiphony is particularly striking. Another later composer, Felice Anerio, who succeeded Palestrina in the Papal Choir, combined passages of relatively homophonic declamation with expressive chromaticism in his Christus factus est.

 

The program also included a new work, A Gift of Heaven by the English composer Cheryl Frances Hoad, who used the preface to a publication by Palestrina, in which he flattered the dedicatee, as the text for her piece. Sumptuous polychords undergirded a solo tenor imparting what Frances Hoad describes as “buttering up a patron.” 

 

Sadly, Stile Antico at eleven could not finish the program with the impressive 12-voice motet Laudate Dominum a 12. They substituted another Palestrina work, Surge Propera Amica Mea, with corruscating runs and an impressive final cadential section, creating an exuberant finale. The group returned to offer something completely different for an encore, “The Silver Swan,” a madrigal by the English composer Orlando Gibbons. It provided a delicately lyrical close to an evening of exquisitely well-performed music. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Miguel Zenón – Golden City (CD Review)

Miguel Zenón 

Golden City

 

Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s seventeenth album, Golden City has been well-received, its plaudits including a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. The  eleven original compositions are excellent vehicles for soloing.

 

A standout is “Acts of Exclusion.” After a hocketing opening from the horns – Diego Urcola, Alan Ferber, and Jacob Garchik – and pianist Matt Mitchell, there is a robust essay by the alto saxophonist that combines the quick syncopation of the tune with undulating lines. He trades licks with Mitchell and then cedes the stage to guitarist Miles Okazaki, who returns to the narrower band of the opening, repeating tart, staccato attacks and finally moving up the guitar’s neck with a glissando and the tune in its upper register. Mitchell, bassist Chris Tordini, and drummer Dan Weiss, provide a transition back to the head, with saxophone and winds returning to the hocketing, repeated notes from Mitchell, and Okazaki presenting a fiery recapitulation.

 

The horn section is showcased on “Wave of Change,” with an extended blues opening that coalesces on the head in octaves, then the rhythm section roaringly arrives. Zenón, an octave higher, joins the rest of the horns. An outro features the saxophonist soloing over Mitchell’s accompaniment. 

 

“SRO” begins sinuously, with on-the-beat punctuations set against syncopated riffs and Latin-tinged drumming. A quick tempo bass and drums duet introduces a new section on which Zenón paces them note for note and, late in the piece, the rest of the horn section adds mercurial interjections, followed by an ambience that recalls the beginning, but with a fuller presentation. Okazaki gets a brief solo turn to conclude. 

 

Surrounded by dyadic horns and a stealthy bass line doubled in the piano, “Displacement and Erasure” contains Zenón’s most extended and effusive playing. His use of bends, repeated notes, and angular leaps through modal patterns culminates in a feverish altissimo register climax. Ferber also gets a memorable solo turn that features clarion high notes and breathless long phrases. 

 

The final track, “Golden,” opens with telegraph signal reiterations from Mitchell and call and response in the horns. The main section has a layered arrangement that Zenón interacts with before trading fours with Urcola and Ferber. Three different ostinatos in horns, piano, and bass conclude the proceedings.

 

The praise for Zenón is well-earned: Golden City features superlative playing and artful arrangements. It will be tough to top, but I would bet this saxophonist just might. 

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
Contemporary Classical

Seattle Symphony announces 2025–26 season

Seattle Symphony unveiled its 2025–26 season today, the first under incoming Music Director Xian Zhang, who—not coincidentally—is in town this week to conduct The Planets: An HD Odyssey. Having yet to officially assume her new role, her influence over the Symphony’s calendar won’t be fully seen for another year. But she will be on hand for ten mainstage concert series, conducting mostly standard repertory by the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler and Rachmaninov (my prediction of more Bruckner at the Symphony may have to wait—the only Bruckner symphony on the agenda is the Fourth, conducted by guest David Danzmayr).

Xian Zhang by Fred Stucker

Zhang brings a direct, plainspoken but enthusiastic style to her interactions with audiences and musicians. Her habit of conducting mostly on the beat puts her in the minority of today’s top-flight conductors (a factor that might require some adjustment from the Symphony musicians, accustomed as they’ve been since Thomas Dausgaard’s sudden resignation in January 2022 to a succession of guest conductors that generally conduct well ahead of the beat).

Steven Mackey by Michael Schell

The contemporary music offerings, while still lackluster compared to the bountiful Ludovic Morlot/Simon Woods/Elena Dubinets era of the 2010s, at least show signs of positive movement, with the naming of Steven Mackey as one of the season’s two “Artists in Focus”. A guitarist by trade, he’s one of the most interesting composers working in the crossover space shared with musicians like Gabriel Prokofiev and the late Steve Martland. He’ll perform his own RIOT concerto in a season-closing event alongside Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and will also debut a new saxophone concerto written for Timothy McAllister. Also on the docket is the young Seattle transplant Gabriella Smith,  a mentee of John Adams who’ll bring more of a postminimalist sensibility to some slated collaborations with cellist Gabriel Cabezas, the other Artist in Focus.

There’ll also be a newly-commissioned violin and percussion concerto from Christopher Theofanidis, representing the neoclassical lineage of John Harbison and Joan Tower (the latter also reaching the Symphony’s mainstage for the first time ever with a new Suite fashioned from her 1991 Concerto for Orchestra), plus the inevitable portion of grandiloquent mediocrity that’s prevalent in American orchestral programming nowadays. Alas, Northwest audiences will have to look elsewhere to hear music by such late standouts as Kaija Saariaho, George Crumb and Sofia Gubaidulina, or to celebrate the centenaries of Berio, Feldman and Kurtág, the 90th birthdays of Riley and Pärt, or the 80th of Anthony Braxton (arguably the most influential living American composer who’s not a minimalist). Wayne Horvitz, Seattle’s most prominent exploratory musician, is missing on his 70th birthday, as is Bright Sheng (instead of the latter’s Lacerations or Zodiac Tales we will hear Zhang conduct Franco-Chinese composer Qigang Chen’s ambitious but saccharine Iris dévoilée for Chinese singers, instruments and orchestra).

The most striking omission, though, is Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot, who after serving as something of a custodial grandparent for the Symphony following Dausgaard’s departure (including leading the past two season openers), will be taking a breather from Benaroya Hall next season to “leave space for Xian Zhang in the first season of her tenure”, as his manager told me. He’s still slated to conduct in June of this season, and will lead Carmen in May 2026 at Seattle Opera (whose orchestra is drawn largely from the Symphony’s roster). Associate Conductor Sunny Xia is returning next season, though, to help provide some day-to-day operational continuity.

Thus begins the Zhang era. After the tumult of Krishna Thiagarajan‘s just-ended seven-year reign as President and CEO—during which he guided the organization through the COVID pandemic and a period of declining arts support in the Northwest, but also chased away an internationally-recognized Music Director and a Vice President who went on to assume the Artistic Directorships of the London Philharmonic and Concertgebouw orchestras—the arrival of a steady if unglamorous leader who can cultivate the patronage of Seattle’s Asian community (demographically the most reliable supporter of classical music organizations in the US) might be the most propitious way forward for the region’s most prestigious arts institution.

Addendum: Timing the season announcement to coincide with a three-concert series featuring Zhang conducting The Planets (accompanied by projected images of the cited celestial objects, and paired with Billy Childs’ Diaspora concerto for saxophone and orchestra) proved to a spectacular success, with full houses and enthusiastic crowds greeting her arrival. The inter-movement applause heard during Holst’s sprawling masterpiece on Saturday night revealed the presence of new and infrequent audience members in the house. I spoke to several guests who professed genuine curiosity about the new Music Director, and seemed engaged by the broad but unexaggerated gestures emanating from her diminutive frame clad in baggy black concert attire. One hopes we will soon see the kind of signature strokes that characterized Morlot’s early years (such as the fondly-remembered [untitled] concerts in Benaroya Hall’s Grand Lobby that featured Symphony musicians in small ensembles performing mostly avant-garde music). But whatever ensues, it seems that Zhang can look forward to a sincere honeymoon period with her new constituents.

Xian Zhang conducting The Planets by James Holt/Seattle Symphony
by Michael Schell
CD Review, File Under?, Opera, Twentieth Century Composer

Michael Tippett – New Year (CD Review)

Michael Tippett 

New Year

Rhian Lois soprano

Ross Ramgobin baritone

Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano

Roland Wood baritone

Robert Murray tenor

Rachel Nicholls soprano

Alan Oke tenor

BBC Singers

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, conductor

NMC Recordings

 

Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year (1988) has finally been recorded. The work was produced in Houston in 1989 and Glyndebourne in 1990 and then fell out of the repertoire. The Birmingham Opera performed it last year, and the NMC double-CD recording is of a 2024 live semi-staged production by the BBC Scottish Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. 

 

New Year’s reemergence is propitious in timing. Combining elements of sci-fi, time travel, and fairy tales, it seems readily approachable for the streaming generation, with shows like Stranger Things, Time Bandits, and Severance providing a suitable backdrop. The opera also takes on social issues that remain important today, such as urban decline, poverty, racism, and Tippett’s ubiquitous concern for pacifism. However, the vernacular elements are the least successful of the piece, and the Jamaican accent adopted by one of the characters, Donny, played by baritone Ross Ramgobin, is cringeworthy today, and perhaps was back in the eighties too. 

 

Even by the composer’s standards, New Year is abundantly eclectic. Electric guitars, a large percussion section, and electronics combine with a traditional orchestra. Pop styles from the late eighties, notably rap and reggae, are enfolded in an otherwise modernist score with complexly chromatic parts for both soloists and chorus. The narrative itself is circuitous, with one part featuring a time traveling spaceship and the other a dystopian urban landscape. Thus, the challenges, never mind the costs, for any production are substantial.

 

Brabbins and company surmount most of them in a dedicated and well-prepared performance. The soloists are excellent, in particular soprano Rhian Lois, who plays the principal character Jo Ann, and Robert Murray, who plays the time traveller Pelegrin, both vibrant singers with considerable charisma to match their voices. Susan Bickley, the foster-mother to Jo Ann and Donny, is a warm presence, perplexed by their challenging behavior, agoraphobia for the former and misbehavior for the latter, and yet as nurturing as she can manage. The other time travellers, Merlin, played by baritone Roland Wood, and Regan, played by soprano Rachell Nicholls, provide excellent characterizations of their roles. Tenor Alan Oake as the Voice, the presenter of the action, is an authoritative presence. 

 

New Year is a multifarious and, in places, problematic piece. But one can scarcely imagine a better effort to present it to best advantage than this recording.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
Canada, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, New York

Preview: Pianists Adam Sherkin and Anthony de Mare: “Composers in Play XV”

Pianists Adam Sherkin and Anthony de Mare (courtesy of the artists)

The Canadian pianist/composer Adam Sherkin shares music from his home country on an extensive program at Merkin Hall in New York on March 15, 2025. “Composers in Play XV” is presented by Piano Lunaire, an organization launched by Sherkin and his colleagues in 2018. On this occasion he joins forces with the American pianist Anthony de Mare.

Together the two perform music by (mostly) living Canadian composers for one and two pianos.

Each of the performers has connections with some of the creators. In Sherkin’s case it is himself as the composer of Ink from the Shield for two pianos, which has its world premiere performance this program. De Mare has a 30+ year friendship with Rodney Sharman, and was one of the people who encouraged the composer to write a series of “Opera Transcriptions,” three of which are on this program.

The composers represent a geographical cross section of Canada: Vivian Fung hails from Edmonton; Ann Southam (the sole non-living composer on this program) was from Winnipeg; Kelly Marie-Murphy from Calgary, and Linda Catlin Smith and Sherkin from Toronto.

by Gail Wein
CDs, File Under?, Premieres, Video

New Single: Khruangbin remixes Arooj Aftab

Khruangbin remixes Arooj Aftab

Arooj Aftab’s Night Reign was one of my favorite recordings of 2024. Released today, the Thai funk by way of Texas artists Khruangbin have made a remix of one of the album’s most memorable tracks, “raat ki rani.”

 

As a bonus, here is another favorite from Aftab, live in London playing with Anoushka Shankar:

 

 

____

 

Aftab’s Night Reign Tour 2025 begins late March in North America, Brazil and UK/EU: 

  

NORTH & SOUTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

3.27.25 | Union Stage | Washington, D.C

3.29.25 | Big Ears Festival 2025 | Knoxville, TN

5.22.25 | C6 Festival | São Paulo, Brazil

5.29.25 | Spoleto Festival 2025 | Charleston, SC

6.15.25 | Bonnaroo | Manchester, TN

6.21.25 | Fine Line | Minneapolis, MN

6.22.25 | Old Town School of Folk Music | Chicago, IL **2nd show added**

6.24.25 | Toronto Jazz Festival | Toronto, Canada

6.25.25 | Ottawa Jazz Festival | Ottawa, Canada

6.26.25 | Festival International De Jazz De Montreal 2025 | Montreal, Canada

 

UK/EU TOUR DATES

4.4.25 | House of Music | Budapest, Hungary

4.5.25 | Rewire Festival | Den Haag, Netherlands

4.7.25 | WOW Festival | Kallithea, Greece

4.12.25 | Sogodbe X Kino Šiška | Ljubljana, Slovenia

4.14.25 | Auditorium Parco Della Musica | Roma, Italy

4.15.25 | Teatro Della Triennale | Milan, Italy

 

5.2.25 | Polygon Live 360º | London, United Kingdom

5.5.25 | Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival | Belfast, United Kingdom

5.7.25 | Brighton Music Festival 2025 | Brighton, United Kingdom

5.9.25 | Norfolk & Norwich Festival | Norwich, UK

5.11.25 | Jazz à Liège 2025 | Liège, Belgium

7.6.25 | Love Supreme Festival | East Sussex, United Kingdom

7.9.25 | Ravenna Festival | Cervia, Italy

7.31.25 | Midzomer Festival Openair | Leuven, Belgium

8.2.25 | All Together Now 2025 | Waterford, Ireland

 

 

by Christian Carey