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Articles by Ben Gambuzza
Infinite Wagner
Skip to content Photo: Jonathan McIntosh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Here is a battered sneaker box, tennis-court green. Inside of it are cassette tapes, their cases smudged and cloudy. Outside of it is a room in a second-floor apartment in Somerville, near Boston. Enter the code sent to your email Email address Enter your password Sign in by entering the code we sent to , or clicking the magic link in the email. We'll send a verification code to .
Evenings with the Orchestra
Me and Data (Photo courtesy Grcote, via Wikimedia Commons) Last week, five Italian data scientists published a paper in Scientific Reports (a journal under the umbrella of Nature) concluding that Western music has gotten simpler over the last four hundred years. Their narrow method and dubious sources—not to mention their research question, conclusion, and credentials—led me down a rabbit hole that had me feeling like the Norman Finkelstein of musicology. They started with a question.
Parlando confronts darkness and history in Haas’s unsettling ‘in vain’ | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Parlando February 22, 2026 Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center New York City, New York – USA Parlando, Ian Niederhoffer, conductor. Georg Friedrich HAAS: in vain Ben Gambuzza | 25 FEB 2026 The hall was dark. I heard the clacking of train tracks. I remembered the old bike path, the one that traced the railroad along the river. And the place I used to stop off at when I biked there, a rock. I sat on it and stared at the waterfall, and beyond it, the old paper mill.
Ian Hobson concludes five-year Schumann project in New York recital | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Ian Hobson November 6, 2025 Tenri Cultural Institute, Manhattan New York, New York – USA Ian Hobson, piano. Robert SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 11 Robert SCHUMANN: Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6 Ben Gambuzza | 12 NOV 2025 It’s finally over.
Alexander Kobrin opens Key Pianists season with poetic Haydn, Schubert, and Schumann | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Alexander Kobrin November 6, 2025 Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall New York, New York – USA Alexander Kobrin, piano. Joseph HAYDN: Andante and Variations in F minor Franz SCHUBERT: Four Impromptus (D. 899) Robert SCHUMANN: Arabeske, Op. 18 Robert SCHUMANN: Kreisleriana, Op. 16 Ben Gambuzza | 10 NOV 2025 There are virtuosic pianists and there are poetic pianists.
Brick Presbyterian Church wraps an expressive Mozart “Requiem” around service
The Brick Presbyterian Church’s Chancel Choir and Orchestra performed Mozart’s Requiem as part of the regular church service in their Park Avenue parish on a rainy Sunday evening.
JACK Quartet celebrates Lachenmann’s 90th birthday with otherworldly delicacy | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Jack Quartet October 9, 2025 Miller Theatre, Columbia University School of the Arts New York, New York – USA JACK Quartet Quartet (Christopher Otto & Austin Wulliman, violins; John Pickford Richards, viola; Jay Campbell, cello).
Wu Man and The Knights pluck musical magic from Lou Harrison’s “Pipa Concerto” | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Wu Man & The Knights September 9, 2025 The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metroplitan Museum of Art New York City, New York – USA The Knights, Colin Jacobsen, artistic director; Wu Man, pipa.
POTUS’s Military Parade/Birthday Bash Was No World-Beater
The military parade in D.C. on Saturday was not fun, for anyone. You could see it on their faces: mugs instead of smiles. You could hear it in their talk. One little girl said, “I want to see him!,” to which her mother replied, “You’ve seen him. He looks the same.” You could hear it in their cheers, which were infrequent and weak.
Sighs and swoons: Yekwon Sunwoo brings Romantic depth and clarity to a sold-out Zankel Hall | EarRelevant
CONCERT REVIEW: Yekwon Sunwoo May 2, 2025 Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall New York City, New York – USA Yekwon Sunwoo, piano. R. SCHUMANN: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 CHOPIN: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60 C. SCHUMANN: Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann RACHMANINOFF: Moments musicaux Ben Gambuzza | 5 MAY 2025 I was in a horrible mood. Then, I heard Yekwon Sunwoo. I awoke Friday morning with my brows already furrowed in frustration because I dreamt I had to take, then retake, the SAT.
UnBinged: Something Wicked This Way Comes – Reviews of ‘The Penguin,’ ‘Agatha All Along,’ and ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ - The Village Voice
Gotham City is not for the weak of heart. It is the type of metropolis that can easily destroy anyone not willing to fight for what they have, or not fight back against those who wish to take it from them. And within that hellscape, an occasional hero might arise. But this isn’t a story about heroes. Welcome to the underworld of HBO’s The Penguin.
Having a Real Good Time Together: LCD Soundsystem Does Europe
Brooklyn-born LCD Soundsystem, fronted by the redoubtable James Murphy, recently headlined All Points East, an urban music festival in the multi-ethnic district of London’s Bethnal Green, part of a 14-date European tour. At Victoria Park, the Pixies opened for LCD; the bill also included younger acts, including another Brooklyn band, Nation of Language.
The Way We Live Now: New York Artists at the Edge of Survival
It’s hard to hurl criticism at Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York, Marin Kosut’s new book, that the author hasn’t already anticipated, levied at herself, and responded to in the text. What do her editors at Columbia University Press think of the book? Oh, probably something about how Art Monster “isn’t the book I proposed to write,” as she admits in the acknowledgments. So what? “If my perspective seems shifty, it’s because I’ve changed.” What do her academic peers think?
Caroline Shaw remains refeshing but Ringdown is a letdown
Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, is astounding. It’s a compendium of vocal techniques – huffs, puffs, hums, moans – built around baroque dance forms like the sarabande and the courante. I hear something new every time I listen. It’s what made me a fan. Her 2019 album with the Attaca Quartet, Orange, is also fantastic. Patient, thoughtful, human, and organic, her string writing is beautiful.
Hobson’s Schumann series turns to chamber works with mixed results
Friday evening’s concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute by pianist Ian Hobson and friends was spirited and passionate. But there was a volume problem. Winces abounded, the man next to me covered his ears toward the end, and several people walked out onto West 13th St. saying as much. Hobson, who is in his fourth year of performing all of Schumann’s works for piano, has two years left.
‘Composing While Black’ Rethinks Music in Time and Space
The last thing you could hear was his breathing, and the squeaking of his stool, as drummer Jessie Cox ended the set. He had just played an hour-long improvisation with bassoonists Rebekah Heller and Joy Guidry last month at the Stone, an experimental music venue on West 13th Street. Guidry supplemented bassoon with synth, dueting and diverging with Heller, who scampered through spontaneous, anxious, spoken monologues and crafted beautiful melodies with her bassoon.
The Secret of Striped Light
Music Last October, Knitting Factory alumnus and bagpiper David Watson hosted the first concert of his inaugural Striped Light series in Long Island City. As with the two concerts since, anyone who wanted to attend had to direct message Striped Light (@striped_light) through Instagram to learn the address of the show’s location, which is kept secret. Striped Light’s stealth is due to landlord issues, according to Watson.
The Top 9 Places to Hear (and See) Experimental Music in Brooklyn, According to Musicians
The Brooklyn avant-garde music scene is no longer burgeoning; it is flourishing. Guitarist and New England Conservatory student Gabe Boyarin, who is sure to make waves in the scene when he graduates and moves to NYC next year, says it best: “Brooklyn’s really popping right now… Some say it’s the new Manhattan.” Boyarin first learned about this world by listening to music from the Tzadik label, created by downtown musician and bandleader John Zorn.
Gerry Eastman – Not Just His Brother’s Keeper - The Village Voice
Jazzman Gerry Eastman, 78, cooks harder than ever. Every Friday he gigs fast and mean, nimble and soulful, experimental and tender at the Williamsburg Music Center, which he has owned and operated (and lived in) since he bought the building for $50,000, in 1981. Back then the neighborhood was Black and Puerto Rican, and Eastman, composer and virtuoso electric guitarist, was just one of many musicians who owned their own clubs.
Ben Manley: Digital Thoreau
The first time I met Ben Manley, he told me he would sleep in his car for his next musical project. This was in September at a Blank Forms concert in Clinton Hill. We were both there to hear Swedish musician Marcus Pal experiment with just intonation on a prepared, open-faced, upright piano.
‘The City Without Jews’ – a 1924 Silent Film With a Loud Warning - The Village Voice
“He was a son of a bitch,” Casablanca composer Max Steiner said of Richard Wagner (1813–1883).
An 'Infinite Staircase' of World Premieres in Williamsburg
It's rare enough to catch a world premiere. It's unheard of to catch 18 in one night. But that's what you can do on September 24 at Williamsburg's National Sawdust, where pianist Han Chen will celebrate what would have been György Ligeti's 100 th birthday by playing 18 new works by 18 different composers, each paired with one of the Austro-Hungarian composer's 18 piano as a starting point for their original compositions.
Preview: Death of Classical to Bury Beethoven
Audiences at the big concert venues of Manhattan — Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Met Opera — are often unenthusiastic or even sleepy, what my Sicilian family would call mezza morta: half-dead. But from September 20 to 22, a portion of one particular audience will be simply morta.
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