MUSIC
THURSDAY, MAY 24
8:30 PM

Thomas Bartlett & Nico Muhly:  Peter Pears:  Balinese Ceremonial Music
(Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan

$25 advance; $35 door
http://lpr.com/lpr_events/lpr-x-bartlett-muhly-peter-pears-may-24th-2018/

OK, just stay with me for a few minutes.  Colin McPhee was a Canadian-American composer who moved to Bali and, as one would, became fascinated with the local gamelan music played by orchestras of gongs.  Returning to North America, he moved into the famous February House in Brooklyn Heights, where -- along with W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, and Gypsy Rose Lee -- lived the great (although then at the start of his career) English composer Benjamin Britten.  McPhee made gamelan transcriptions for two pianos and played them with Britten (who himself became fascinated with gamelan) (as one would).  Which brings us to another February House resident:  Peter Pears, Britten's partner and one of the most distinctive tenors of the 20th Century.  Now we come to this show, where the not-really-Freak-Folk/pop singer-songwriter Thomas Bartlett (a/k/a Doveman) and the not-really-Minimalist composer Nico Muhly will play some of McPhee's two-piano gamelan transcriptions, as well as a new song cycle they wrote together inspired by McPhee's pieces.  Why it's all named after Peter Pears, we'll have to go to the show to find out.  But otherwise, this could hardly be more enticing.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  I'm still pushing the homey and adorable Bessou, for delicious Northern Japanese cuisine.