(Photo: Michael Yu)

Sometimes, when I look through all of the new music listings in NYC, it's honestly hard to tell one group from the next. And, with most of the music on the program being, well, new, it's hard to know what to expect, unless they're playing something by Reich, Glass, Wolfe, or some other well-known composer of an older generation. 

But, Hypercube, who performed last Tuesday night at the DiMenna Center, piqued my interest. And, telling from the packed house, that of many others as well (including familiar faces like Elliott Sharp and Tristan Perich.) Part of what interested me was the NYC-based quartet's unusual lineup of saxophone (Erin Rogers), electric guitar (Jay Sorce), accordion/piano/synth (Andrea Lodge) and percussion (Chris Graham). 

Hypercube (named after a geometric shape) performed in the round, switching sides every so often to give everyone a good view. They started with Rogers' own composition, Casino (Remix), which sounded like some sort of Hunter S. Thompson nightmare, with Rogers' tenor sax mimicking the intoxicating chorus of slot machines while Sorce's guitar screeched like someone had set off the fire alarm. 

Nicholas Deyoe's they solidify then tilt veered between atmospheric and anxious, inspired by Alison Carter's poem in which she tries to make out the contents of her bedroom in the dark. Sorce played his guitar with partially open strings, creating a tense, glissandi-filled sound.

After Tuesday's NY Phil concert with Semyon Bychkov leading the U.S. Premiere of Thomas Larcher's colorful, surprisingly tonal Symphony No. 2 "Kenotaph", I took a chance and walked across Lincoln Center Plaza to the Met, just as Die Walküre, the second installment of Richard Wagner's monumental opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen - was letting out for its second intermission.

Sure enough, a patron who had had enough for one night - Die Walküre runs five hours, not including curtain calls - offered me her ticket in the Grand Tier, which is how I got to see all of Act 3: the Ride of the Valkyries, the long duet between Wotan and Brünnhilde, the Magic Fire music. As I said when the Met last staged the Ring in 2012, this Robert Lepage production - and it's 40 ton machine - is a bit hit-and-miss, but the music, as performed by the mighty Met Orchestra under the brilliant conductor Philippe Jordan, is breathtaking. (Jordan is currently Music Director of two of the biggest opera houses in the world: the Paris Opera and the Vienna State Opera.) As for the singers, home grown soprano Christine Goerke is a force of nature as Brünnhilde, her voice easily carrying over the orchestra. Bass Michael Volle is a menacing, almost terrifying Wotan, while soprano Eva Maria Westrbroek fortified her position as the world's leading Sieglinde. 

Tickets for the remainder of this cycle, as well as cycle 3 next week, are all gone, but you can take your chances at the box office on returns. Or, maybe just show up a few hours late and hold up a finger. You'll be glad you did. 

Video preview here. More pics below and on the photo page.

"The string quartet repertoire was probably changed more by (Kronos Quartet) than by any other group." - Philip Glass

What is a string quartet? That seems to have been the essential question on Sam Green and Joe Bini's mind when they set out to make the documentary film A Thousand Thoughts, about the pioneering, peerless Kronos Quartet. The film, which received its New York premiere last night at The Town Hall, reminds us how Kronos has spent the past half-century upending just about every convention associated with the string quartet. Instead of tuxedos or concert black, they've typically worn the colorful, trendy outfits of a rock band (though they've toned it down considerably in recent years.) Instead of being marooned to classical radio or stuffy recital halls, they appeared on Sesame Street and at experimental music festivals. And, instead of playing the core repertoire by Haydn, Beethoven or Schubert, Kronos almost exclusively plays music by living composers, with more than 1,000 commissions to date, including their ongoing Fifty for the Future project with Carnegie Hall. 

When Green pitched the project to Kronos founder and Artistic Director David Harrington (whom I met at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville four years ago) he called it a "live documentary", in which Kronos would perform live and Green would provide running commentary to the film. (Green's other projects include The Love Song of R Buckminster Fuller, featuring live accompaniment by Yo La Tengo.) Harrington signed on immediately; Thursday's performance was the 18th since the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018. 

Green was given full access to Kronos' extensive archives, housed in their San Francisco rehearsal studio, and the film is largely a pastiche of his never-before-seen findings: video and audio recordings, photographs, old clippings of reviews (yikes!). It also includes interviews with composers, managers, musicians - and, of course, the four members of Kronos: Harrington, John Sherba (violin), Hank Dutt (viola), and Sunny Yang (cello).