As a reader of music criticism, I usually distrust blatant comparisons in record reviews, which often seem only to obscure any accurate description of the music itself. As a writer of music criticism, I try to avoid loaded juxtapositions at all costs. In the case of Seattle indie band The...

On Saturday, November 5 at 8 pm at Roulette in Brooklyn, singer-songwriter Gelsey Bell presents the premiere of her song cycle Scaling at this year's Vital Vox Festival, a two-day series dedicated to expectation-defying vocalists as composer-performers. In an attempt to defy our own expectations for our interview, Bell and...

"[Music is] one of those beautiful forms of human expression that actually brings people together. I think if we all adopt music as our religion, we'll be in a really great place." --Maya Beiser

It is no secret that the new music community has found a vital home in New York City in recent years. The creative minds behind what is known as "contemporary classical music" are innumerable, and gaining prespective can be an overwhelming task for audiences.

Beginning on October 14, however,...

It is no secret that the new music community has found a vital home in New York City in recent years. The creative minds behind what is known as "contemporary classical music" are innumerable, and gaining prespective can be an overwhelming task for audiences.

It is no secret that the new music community has found a vital home in New York City in recent years. The creative minds behind what is known as "contemporary classical music" are innumerable, and gaining prespective can be an overwhelming task for audiences.

Beginning on October 14, however,...

It is no secret that the new music community has found a vital home in New York City in recent years. The creative minds behind what is known as "contemporary classical music" are innumerable, and gaining perspective can be an overwhelming task for audiences.

Chamber music ensembles tend to form because of a palpable chemistry felt between the individual players. But yMusic isn't quite like many of its contemporaries. The New York-based sextet -- clarinetist Hideaki Aomori , trumpeter/French horn player CJ Camerieri, cellist Clarice Jensen, violinist/guitarist Rob Moose, violist Nadia Sirota, and flutist...

On September 13, the composer/singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane unleashes what is typically considered one of the trickiest of musical creatures -- the sophomore album. Conventional thought might dictate that an artist has two options: one, continue with the proven dynamic of the first album, but with added compositional devices or embellishments...

The Autumn influx of new albums is nearly upon us, and I'm not quite ready. I'm still thinking about two on-the-margin releases from the previous 12 months that made me listen differently while revealing something significant about how the artists approach sound. In late 2010 and early 2011 respectively, the...

On July 31, the Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) closed out its 2011 New Play Workshop Festival with a first-ever marathon day of all three featured plays -- Michael Mitnick's Elijah, Michael Golamco's Build, and Molly Smith Metzler's Carve.

I would not normally recommend seeing three plays in the span...

It was eleven short months ago that Sufjan Stevens effectively returned to songwriting. A five-year hiatus had separated the venerated indie singer-songwriter/composer from what many considered to be his last "proper" studio album, but in late August of 2010 he released the All Delighted People EP, an album-length appetizer to...

Perhaps the initial appeal of the documentary film Make, for some, comes from the promise of a soundtrack that in part features music by Sufjan Stevens (his 2010 album The Age of Adz cites one of the film's featured artists, Royal Robertson, as inspiration). Perhaps it stems from the curiosity...

Labeling ambient music as "cinematic" is like saying a poem is "descriptive" -- those facile observations may very well be true, but they hardly begin to explain why the music moves us, or why the words resonate. The truth is that words don't have to be descriptive to be effective,...

The Morgan Library & Museum might very well be the last New York City venue one would expect to host the world premiere of a series of works called Drumkit Quartets. But Glenn Kotche, composer, percussionist, and drummer for the rock band Wilco, sees the drum set as more than...

The Sea from Letters to Distant Cities from New Amsterdam Records on Vimeo.

It seems considerably more than coincidental that on the day after the conclusion of the Ecstatic Music Festival -- curated by New Amsterdam Records co-founder Judd Greenstein -- the label would issue its latest release, a divergent work that is equal parts audio and visual.

Released on March 29, Letters to Distant Cities is not just the newest addition to the burgeoning indie classical genre. First and foremost, Letters is a poetry album, with Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond lending her silken voice to the recitation of poetry by Mustafa Ziyalan. The poems are in turn connected by wordless musical interludes written and performed by multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose.

Ziyalan displays the delicate ability to conjure vivid mental images out of minimalist material; his poems offer lucid vignettes that are romantic without being sentimental. Phrase by vivid phrase burrows into the memory like a fever dream -- from "A sugar cube in rain" to "a blindfolded balloon waiting for the slingshots" -- but the effect is somehow one of emotional reticence. There is at once a palpable yearning at work and an omnipresent sense of alienation to counteract its positive progress. The world Ziyalan lays before us is one in which the solitary "she" present in the poems seems to meld into the landscape, into the earthly elements of wind and water and sky, all while retaining her distinctive qualities. Her implicit resilience is the one constant, the foundation upon which the poems are built.

Worden's vocal delivery is as versatile spoken as it is sung -- at times Ziyalan's words dance with warm and knowing whimsy; elsewhere, Worden emits an icy intimacy dominated by startling detachment. Moose's music is a set of effective miniatures imbued with intrigue, holding their own fascination while sowing anticipation for the next poem.

Interestingly, Letters is most revelatory in its approach to the liner notes -- featuring photography by album producer Murat Eyuboglu -- which provide the visual linchpin that tethers Ziyalan's poetry to a tangible central character, modeled by an enigmatic Jamie Ansley ("She is the most unknown fruit."). Eyuboglu's stark black and white images elicit a kind of condoned voyeurism from the viewer, as Ansley is pictured in various indoor and outdoor scenes that inexplicably meld the forlorn and the hopeful. But rather than pursue this imagery through the conventional album booklet, the liner notes consist of what are essentially 24 postcards, each containing a poem and its corresponding photograph. Here, liner notes are not merely a servile addendum to the audio, but rather they constitute a distinct experience in and of itself.

The poems are bookended by two songs, providing structural balance. The opener, entitled, "The Sea," by My Brightest Diamond, finds Worden at her most ethereal yet, her voice hovering mellifluously over a somber drone, before segueing into the kind of indelible rhythmic groove Worden's fans have come to enjoy. The closer, Clare and the Reasons' "Invisible," is a hazy concoction of floating harmonies and gently persistent banjo that reinforces the dreamlike state that permeates the project.

Invisible from Letters to Distant Cities from New Amsterdam Records on Vimeo.

Letters to Distant Cities achieves a rare feat -- it gifts the listener with a truly multimedia experience that one can rarely access through a conventional album in the privacy of home. The willingness of New Amsterdam Records to venture into multiple artistic disciplines simultaneously reaps great rewards here, challenging the listener-viewer to engage ever more deeply.

For more information about the Letters to Distant Cities project, visit https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Album/Letters_to_Distant_Cities.
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On Wednesday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. composer Sarah Kirkland Snider partners with vocalist/composer Shara Worden of the art rock band My Brightest Diamond and the ensemble yMusic in what is arguably the quintessential concert of the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall in New York City. In addition to...

On March 9 at 7:30 p.m. in New York City's Merkin Hall, Ecstatic Music Festival all-star Nadia Sirota joins two indie songwriters -- pianist Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and violinist Owen Pallett -- in an evening of new music by the aforementioned composers, as well as Nico Muhly and Missy...

The Ecstatic Music Festival is now entering the home stretch. And while the festival hinges on the creation and performance of new works conceived with collaboration in mind, the impact of composers past is inescapable. Composer/multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Kahane recently took time out while on tour to talk with me about...

One of my favorite arts-related quotes comes from Matt Berninger -- lyricist and frontman for indie rock band The National -- who had this to say about his song lyrics: "Without the music they don't work. They'd be like a dress without the girl."

The quote itself demonstrates Berninger's...