Here comes a grand weekend for music new and old in New York. The NOW Ensemble appears at VIM Tribeca tonight: premieres by Missy Mazzoli, Judd Greenstein, and David Crowell, slightly older works by Gregory Spears, Matt McBane, Mark Dancigers, and David Kant. Also tonight, the Emerson Quartet begins a Beethoven survey at Carnegie Hall, in the course of which the sacred sixteen quartets will be coupled with all manner of interesting repertory: Mozart's "Dissonance," Ives's Second, Webern's Five Pieces, Bartók's Third, Rihm's Fourth, Shostakovich's Fifteenth, and a new piece by Kaija Saariaho. And at the New York Philharmonic Lorin Maazel kicks off the last weekend of his Brahms festival with the Third and Fourth symphonies. Down at The Stone on Friday night, Chris McIntyre inaugurates a month-long series called Trombonophilia, in which the René Pape of the brass section takes center stage in composed and/or improvised programs. Note a Ne(x)tworks series coming up later in the month. Also on Friday, counter)induction presents a folk-inflected concert at Tenri. Saturday night sees the onset of the immense, twenty-six-hour Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Financial Center, details of which I've blogged below. On Sunday afternoon the American Symphony Orchestra offers a rare chance to hear works of Shostakovich's colleague Mieczysław Weinberg. Same afternoon the Imani Winds pay tribute to Josephine Baker at the Apollo. And on Saturday and Sunday the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble begins a Notable Women festival, curated by Joan Tower; the opening program, which is heard first at the Chelsea Art Museum and then at DIA:Beacon, includes a premiere by Asha Srinivasan and Ruth Crawford Seeger's extraordinary String Quartet 1931.
