Travels in pursuit of Gayby — I report from Provincetown, Mass. — will make me miss several notable NYC events in coming days. For one, there's the twenty-fifth edition of the Bang on a Can Marathon, on Sunday, kicking off the River to River Festival. The lineup is formidable, culminating in Talujon's rendition of Gérard Grisey's Le Noir de l'étoile. For the following night, So Percussion has announced a Night of Awesome(ness) at LPR. As the founding theoretician of Awesome Music I can only applaud this development. And the Chelsea Music Festival is under way, with a Debussy-Cage emphasis. In a lovely post on the New Yorker website about the Mendelssohn Octet, Russell Platt mentions that that piece is being done in Chelsea on Wednesday, with the soulful young violinist Augustin Hadelich in the lead.... Missy Mazzoli has been announced as the second composer-in-residence at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, joining Lembit Beecher. Mimi Stillman, at NewMusicBox, recounts the company's recent surge. A revised version of Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters is playing there now.... The tenor Nicholas Phan is raising funds for a second album of Britten songs. The first was very fine.... Christian Carey reviews Soundings for a New Piano by the late Ann Southam.... The New York Philharmonic is gearing up for its Park Avenue Armory appearances with a neat series of preview videos. Here, Kyle Zerna and Liang Wang play the opening of Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna while riding in a cab. And this video, with the assistance of advanced technology, takes us inside the fevered brain of Alan Gilbert.
