Much new music in New York this weekend. Tonight the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center launches an all-embracing American Voices festival, which runs through Feb. 24. Works in the series include Benjamin Franklin's Quartet No. 2, Henry Cowell's Aeolian Harp (the pioneering strummed-piano-strings piece), Amy Beach's Piano Quintet, world premieres by Mario Davidovsky and Joan Tower, a new song cycle by Alan Louis Smith (with none other than Stephanie Blythe singing), Lukas Foss's Time Cycle, the rarely heard Ives Piano Trio, the august Ruth Crawford Seeger Quartet, and Anthony Philip Heinrich's Sylvan Scene in Kentucky, or the Barbecue Divertimento. Steven Mackey's Time Release is on the program for Marin Alsop's Carnegie Hall debut with the Baltimore Symphony on Saturday night. The Manhattan Sinfonietta gives concerts on Saturday and Sunday, the first celebrating the late James Tenney and the second celebrating the not at all late Milton Babbitt (look for Robert Hilferty's interview with the nonagenarian notesetter on Bloomberg TV this weekend). Also on Sunday evening, Red Light New Music plays an all-Italian/Italian-American program of Tiziano Manca, Lorenzo Pagliei, Christopher Cerrone, Nono, Sciarrino, and Scelsi at the Italian Academy at Columbia. If you want to make a marathon of it, you could also hear Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle played by the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday afternoon.
