TAK Ensemble’s SWOONFEST is a true community initiative, emphasizing the ethos of an experimental mentality and offering a new platform for New York City’s musical ecosystem. Free spirits, creative thinkers, and trailblazers — the folks TAK promotes — need places to test their ideas. SWOONFEST offers a flexible, kind, and riotously genre-inclusive space for friends and colleagues to perform, workshop, and take big swings without judgement — even if a swing doesn’t quite hit the mark. And at a time where explicitly gender-inclusive and politically assertive artistic spaces feel vulnerable, SWOONFEST saw TAK standing radically firm in their values with the inclusion of neo-afro post-punk band Blasé and New York’s queer and trans salsa band Las Mariquitas. Political outrages — by “heinous tyrannical hydras” that fear the power of art — are precisely why TAK must be applauded for their bold embrace of the artists who act as transgressive voices of sanity — and their invitation for people to scream, shake, and dance in support.

The annual Music at the Anthology (MATA) Festival connects courageous composers and listeners through daring works from the global compositional community. Since Lisa Bielawa, Eleonor Sandresky, and Philip Glass founded the festival in 1996, the New York City staple has evolved to not only offer composers a flexible platform but also attract an audience bold enough to trade sonic risk for the reward of fresh perspective. ... In addition to familiar faces from contemporary music, the audience included people who teach meditation, nanny, consult, and support BIPOC authors with no affiliation to music other than an experimental spirit. MATA succeeds as a place for compositional experimentation and fresh camaraderie among those open to expansive experiences.

For her Composer Portrait at Miller Theatre on March 6, Miya Masaoka presented a substantial, cohesive, and emotive demonstration of how she has mastered illusory chaos. ...the program of fragmentary, exposed writing cohered into solid and effective statements through Masaoka’s compositional prowess. Music is “really a way of communication — on a very primal level,” she tells Tim Munro in the program notes. “With each work I am trying to get to a kernel of truth.” It is a bold ambition to find the contours of truth in wisps and shadows. But Masaoka succeeds.

In their stunning processional opera, co-creators Paola Prestini and Magos Herrera and director Louisa Proske present the story of Sor Juana, a 17th-century proto-feminist nun whose passion for knowledge pitted her against powerful men – and her own voracious intellect. Many of Sor Juana’s intellectual and political battles are operatic material, but Primero Sueño dramatizes her creative process as a radical act: she reconciled her creative doubts by believing that her work would echo across the ages, and Prestini and Herrera prove that true, honoring her vision as a triumph over the men who burned her books. In this striking dialogue, it is fitting that Prestini and Herrera focus on Sor Juana’s process of writing her magnum opus poem, Primero Sueño. “For women,” wrote Audre Lorde, “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence… Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so that it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

After expanding economic resources for basic survival, and reclaiming time from day jobs and hustle culture, Catalytic aims to document and promote the artistic practices of its members, which take place specifically in contemporary improvised and experimental music. “The hopes for Catalytic are essentially to get as many people excited and subscribing to our platform so that we can sustain our community,” Lopez wrote, “as well as create an open blueprint that other musician collectives can utilize.” ... Catalytic Sound has a bold vision, fearless music, and a strategic plan to advocate for worldclass talent: it just needs to share it.

Piano Spheres’ 30th anniversary concert season is an exceptionally inspiring portrait of the piano and a vision for its future. To mark their 30th anniversary, Piano Spheres launched an ambitious “30 for 30” commissioning project to power a season-long marathon of newly commissioned works ranging from local community perspectives to rich international dialogue. Mikhail Johnson, a Wisconsin-based composer, is hopeful for the future of piano repertoire. Not only because it is an expansive treasure trove, but more importantly because “we are having more amazing works representing many cultures and voices that were once excluded from the repertoire,” he writes over email. “Furthermore, the scholarly works and performance practices wrought from these works will fortify a pianist’s way of playing and provide a more well-rounded approach to the ways the piano can speak…properly amplifying underrepresented voices gives a true representation of the stories and ideas that exist in the greater world around us.”

León and Mackey’s decision to showcase colleagues only enhanced their own contributions to the program: their distinct compositional voices came into sharper focus through such varied contrast. Ed Gazouleas’ support at the TMC created a flexible and porous container for their breadth of vision, and the generous programming gave performers and audiences an example of collaboration where more was absolutely more.

Every year since 2018, ChamberQUEER throws the music festival everyone wants to be: impeccably designed by classical musicians who know all the etiquette rules to break and presented with the warmth and wisdom fueled by lived queer experience, everyone in attendance feels like they got inside the clubhouse. That kind of bold artistic vision, individuality, and a strong queer classical community is what ChamberQUEER champions. Beyond the reach of corporations, political pandering, and trauma porn, ChamberQUEER’s festival is New York City’s shining example of jubilant Pride, genuine hospitality, and world-class art.

In writing a concerto for pipa and orchestra, Du Yun wanted to give her soloist the biggest possible vehicle. “Wu Man is a diva in the best possible way, so I wanted to write a diva piece,” Du Yun said while laughing. “Wu Man commands the stage. I wanted to bring out soloist moments, and you will hear a very long trio between pipa and the two orchestral percussionists…” It is clear that Ears of the Book is not any kind of “East meets West” event or exoticized curio piece. Rather, it is an experimental approach to sound that is pushing the capabilities of a centuries-old instrument. Wu Man hopes that the pipa’s unusual timbres can provoke the audience to listen and live more imaginatively. “It’s more than entertainment,” she says. “Something can change deeply inside of us.”

Much attention has been paid to Hildegard von Bingen in recent years as the first named woman composer in Western music history. But she was also a religious and political contender, corresponding with influential male leaders of the day, who eventually gave in to her demands to run religious communities as she saw fit. Her cloister may not have featured whirling dance and stomping boot percussion, but Terce: A Practical Breviary resurrects something of the creative energy that can be found when Divine Femininity is expressed without fear.

“Infinite Staircase” was a marathon of canonical music and new works that displayed exquisite programming, stupendous technique, and forward-thinking expansion of classical music’s best traditions. Inspired by György Ligeti’s 18 Piano Etudes (composed between 1985 and 2001), which Chen recently recorded, 18 living composers were invited to celebrate Ligeti’s centennial by responding to a specific etude with a new piece. The range of artistic responses from Chen’s collaborators created a fascinating dialogue between modern and slightly less modern, influencer and the influenced.

This real-time experimentation was the unique reward of the evening: the audience was invited not only to an immersive sonic experience, but also into the creative process. Acevedo Klein led an energetic discussion after her first piece, explicitly seeking feedback and boldly inviting the audience into her considerations for future iterations. This kind of session is a precious opportunity for artists and audiences alike — the kind of futuristic thinking we all need.

Darius Jones, MATA’s inaugural Artist-In-Residence, set a precedent for the residency with his Colored School No. 3 (Extra Credit), a riveting music-theater piece rooted in predominantly American music styles that retells local stories of lives cut short by racial violence. Found Sound Nation honored that localized approach this year by expanding it, zooming out from the American context and presenting multimedia stories from communities around the world. The polished, cohesive performances moved beyond the purely sonic experimentation that MATA is known for; their residency invited artists and contemporary composers to imagine new methods, collaborators, and intentions for working with sound.

“I’ve had conversations about developing projects here, and I keep telling composers, ‘Bigger!’ Or, if not bigger, imagine you can do anything.” That is unlike most artistic projects, Regucera concedes, which usually have technical, time, or budget restrictions, and it’s hard to avoid a scarcity mindset. “Here it’s kind of the opposite,” Regucera says. “This place is geared towards realizing artists’ most epic dreams, and getting artists to expand their thinking is part of my mission. Fill the space with your imagination, and then I’ll tell you when we can’t do something.” They list a few characteristics of the ideal EMPAC musician: an artist who knows what they want, what they’re trying to get after, who is mid-career or at a turning point, and who needs a team to realize that one big idea. “I’m basically walking around with a toolbox,” says Regucera. “My job is just to find who needs the tools.”

Over the past decade, the invaluable festival has been one of New York City’s few homes for experimental music drama. Although two of its shows, Angel’s Bone and p r i s m, have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the festival has continued to specialize in chamber pieces, presenting works in various stages of development and allowing for flexible production timelines. In the shadow of lockdown memories, the 2023 program grappled with isolation, death, and breaking free of confinement; but the festival’s atmosphere was celebratory, especially when co-artistic directors Kristin Marting and Beth Morrison welcomed audiences back each night.

Creating a private artistic incubator — free of performative pressures or intrusive observations — was one of Crespo’s main goals for the project. Isabel Crespo Pardo presents 6., open to audiences on November 16, was the only public window into this process. Entering Roulette Intermedium, screen printed redacted conversations hung on a wire sculpture in the middle of the room, and the entire event was oriented toward this emotional center. Presented in week five of the six-week residency, the evening had clear conceptual terms — perform a theatrical version of real togetherness while maintaining intimacy — and it succeeded on these terms.

The history of rope and string is one of composer Liza Lim’s obsessions. It’s a ubiquitous technology throughout human history, inextricable from our storytelling: we weave themes together; we tangle ourselves up in knots; our nerves fray at the edges. String was the throughline — sometimes literally — at a September 29 concert dedicated to Lim, part of Columbia University’s flagship Composer Portrait series at Miller Theatre.

The concert was indeed “Up Close:” Audience members could sit in a semicircle of chairs around the periphery or on benches in the center. Two decorated projection screens framed the piano, and to open the program, Hawley transformed two analog projectors into a live-animation installation by placing trays of water over the glass platens and mixing in dyes and bits of plastic printed with poetry. As Hawley created the projections, Rebecca Fischer ambled through the hall reading the poetry aloud and playing her violin.

When spring arrives in New York City, so does the MATA festival. Each year, Music at the Anthology (MATA) places a free global call for submissions and presents emerging composers and multimedia artists working in a super-wide aesthetic range. Usually unified only by experimental efforts and occasionally wacky sounds, composer and saxophonist Darius Jones pulled the threads of the festival together by curating three programs and composing a fourth headlining event of his own.

As with his opera An American Soldier or the quasi-improvisational test of boundaries in Resonant Theatre: The Sonic Great Wall, Huang Ruo’s Book of Mountains and Seas showcases his signature ability to draw from a variety of classical traditions and craft cohesive, compelling music-theater. Book of Mountains and Seas never forgets its human audience, arousing a surprising amount of connection to its mythical characters and honoring nature through elegant, sensual storytelling. This is its triumph.