June 11 thru June 21

THE BOX IS EMPTY’S UPCOMING TOP PICK:

Make Music New York – All over NYC. June 21, 2012, all day. We’re posting this one early to give you plenty of time to decide which events you’re going to and how much NYC ground you want you want to cover. It’s going to be a great day!

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Now in its sixth year, Make Music New York, “the largest music event ever to grace Gotham” (Metro New York), is a unique festival of free concerts in public spaces throughout the five boroughs of New York City, all on June 21st, the first day of summer. From 10 in the morning to 10 at night, musicians of all ages, creeds, and musical persuasions — from hip hop to opera, Latin jazz to punk rock — perform on streets, sidewalks, stoops, plazas, cemeteries, parks and gardens.

We at The Box Is Empty hope you’ll check out Eric Frederic’s Gradient vs. Drone with percussionist Tom Peyton et al.. The piece examines the relationship between rhythmic and melodic consonance and dissonance through a pair of drums sets and programmed tones. As one pair of drums and tones stays constant in pitch and tempo throughout the piece, the other pair slowly modulates up creating varying moments of friction and connection between rhythms and tones. It’s a glorious exercise in phasing and rhythmic relationships, and not to be missed live. Check this video from a recent New York performance…

Gradient vs. Drone will take place on the Lower East Side at Allen and Stanton in the pedestrian mall. Catch the piece twice! They’ll play it once at 5:30 p.m. and again at 6:30 p.m..

Other MMNY highlights include New York’s first open-air performance of Xenakis’s Persephassa (with the audience listening from rowboats in the Central Park Lake, surrounded by percussionists) and Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus played from the balconies of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. And there is much more happening, so whatever you do…GO LISTEN!

HAPPENING THIS WEEK – 6/11/12-6/17/12 – Seattle

The Fisher Ensemble – Magda G Score Reading. The Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, WA. June 15, 2012, 8:00 p.m..

HAPPENING SOON

Kate Moroney – Soloist with Yale Choral Artists and Mark Morris Dance Company. Arts and Ideas Festival, New Haven, CT. June 19-22.
Table and Chairs – Operation ID. Columbia City Theater, Seattle, WA. June 20, 2012, 7:30 p.m..
Tom Peyton/Make Music New York – Gradient vs. Drone by Eric Frederic. All over NYC. June 21, 2012, all day.
Parnassus Project – Music at Tully’s Flagship. Tully’s Flagship Store, Seattle, WA. June 23, 2012.
The Inverse Opera – TIO In the Tuplis. The Trumpeter, Mt. Vernon, WA. June 27, 2012, 7:30 p.m..
The Box Is Empty – Music by Van Der Aa, Gordon, Gendel, Evans, and Kirsten. Century Ballroom, Seattle, WA. June 29, 2012, 8:00 p.m..
Parnassus Project – Music at the Design Commission Gallery. Design Commission Gallery, Seattle, WA. July 5, 2012.
Lindsay Kesselman – Louis Andriessen’s The New Maths and Amy Beth Kirsten’s L’ange Pâle with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. City Theater, Pittsburgh, PA. July 13-14, 8:00 p.m..
Nat Evans – Sound installation in the online gallery Violet Strays. July 13-19, 2012.