MUSIC
THURSDAY - SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 - 22 (also SEPTEMBER 25)
7:00 PM THURSDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY

New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$59-$275

Trifonov, Beethoven, and The Rite of Spring:

Opening Gala Concert: New York, Meet Jaap:

New Music Director Jaap van Zweden and the Philharmonic management team seem intent on proving that this appointment isn't the reactionary throw-back that many fear (and, to be fair, many welcome), by peppering Jaap's opening concerts with significant new pieces.  These, Jaap's very first shows, open with a new commission by someone who must be the most talked-about young composer in New York right now, sonic explorer Ashley Fure.  What's more, the Fure will involve the participation of such stalwarts of the local alternative music scene as Rebekah Heller of ICE, Nate Wooley of avant-garde jazz, and Brandon Lopez of the lunatic improvisational fringe.  All that and a choreographed moving choir!  Also on the program is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which should at least play to van Zweden's rather brash style.  (If only they'd let Becky Heller play the bassoon solo!)  Oh, yeah, and some piano player named Daniil Trifonov, who through a vagary of programming will play the invigoratingly jazzy Ravel Piano Concerto on opening night and Beethoven's mighty Emperor Concerto on the rest.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Tom Valenti's Oxbow Tavern strikes the perfect note:  it's the kind of basic-but-interesting-enough-but-not-scary restaurant that the Upper West Side will accept and the rest of New York can still appreciate.