MUSIC
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
7:30 PM

Alarm Will Sound
Ecstatic Music
Merkin Hall
129 West 67th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$35; $20 each for two or more festival performances; $162 10-concert pass
https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/ecstatic-music-alarm-wil-sound-eartheater-the-hunger/

Ecstatic Music presents collaborations between alt-classical and alt-pop musicians. From this List's admittedly haughty standpoint, success or failure usually stands or falls on the quality of the pop musicians, the general quality of alt-classical being pretty consistently high. So we can have optimistic expectations for the ace contemporary classical ensemble Alarm Will Sound's performance of a piece written for them by Queens future-popster Eartheater (a/k/a Alexandra Drewchin), another artist this List thinks does the sort-of-Björk thing better than Björk does. Also on the bill is Donnacha Dennehy's cantata about the Great Irish Famine, The Hunger. Your Compiler usually enjoys Dennehy's work tremendously, but couldn't help but wonder, when first hearing this piece a few years ago, whether musical dramaticization is perhaps not Dennehy's métier.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Classic UWS bistro La Boite en Bois, for old times' sake.