MUSIC
TUESDAY - THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 - 5, 2019
7:30 PM

Resonant Bodies Festival
Roulette
509 Atlantic Avenue, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

$20 per night; Festival Pass $50-$75
https://roulette.org/genre/resonant-bodies-festival/
https://roulette.secure.force.com/ticket/#sections_a0F1R00000RlyqCUAR

The Resonant Bodies Festival is it: the best way I know to catch up on the (no longer quite) new genre-defying audience-friendly kind of New Music afoot in the world (and most particularly the world's epicenter, Brooklyn). Music that can surprise, even startle, you with its formal and tonal adventurousness — but that will almost always draw you right in. Music that is accessible to anyone who enjoys any of the more advanced forms of current pop — and whose creators and performers listen to that kind of music as well. It probably helps that the Festival focuses on vocal music, since the human voice seems to make even abstruse music relatable (although little of this music really isabstruse). As always, each night of the Festival gives three different vocal performers their heads for a 45-minute set each (hmmmm, looks like this year it's down to 30 minutes each). This year's edition edges closer than before to the Classical Music Mainstream, including two Certified Opera Stars — which would be a cause for concern, if not for the nearly flawless taste of the Festival's organizers. So Mainstream Opera fans can see two particularly adventurous denizens of the Met roster: the questing counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo on Tuesday and — skip this at your own risk — star mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe doing a tenorino drag show on Thursday. Wednesday, meanwhile, gives you a chance to hear two of the very best proponents of the kind of New Music I've been talking about: Kate Soper andTed Hearne. And the other equally exploratory performers filling out each night's bill are all quite compelling in their own rights (I mean: the shimmeringArooj Aftab backed by Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily????!!!!!!!). To tell the truth, my strong advice is: go all three nights. You will NOT be sorry.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: To be completely candid, I don't much like eating and drinking before a show: you lose concentration, you can get sleepy. I prefer to drink and dine afterwards. Multitudes disagree with me, though (they're wrong, of course). Before these shows, the Festival has arranged a $50 prix-fixe at one of the very best nearby places, the Grand Army Bar (many may find the chosen menu a bit on the light side, though — which could solve the concentration/staying awake problem, but not the "I want dinner" problem). After the shows, the Resonant Bodies crew decamps to local bar the Hollow Nickel, which will feature a couple of dedicated cocktails created for the Festival (one of them concocted by notional tenorino Blythely Oratonio!). The company, if not the food and drink, will be great.