John Zorn News

On August 14, composer, vocalist, and producer Lisa Bielawa releases Blueprints I, a digital-only album featuring ten world premiere recordings of Bielawa's compositions. Her five-concert residency at The Stone (a performance initiative founded by John Zorn) in NYC was to take place the very week in March 2020 that the city went into lockdown.

For Week 12 of National Sawdust's Digital Discovery Festival focused on Virtuosity, we present short concerts with genuine virtuosi, including an exceptional percussionist early in her career and a guitarist in the prime of his creative years.

National Sawdust's physical doors are still closed but, thanks to a generous grant from the Alphadyne Foundation, the mission of providing artists the resources and support they need to create and present new work continues with the Digital Discovery Festival, featuring over 100 artists from May through August. All past and present Digital Discovery Festival events are accessible on the newly-constructed Live@NationalSawdust website, as well as on Facebook Live, entirely free of charge.

On Friday, July 3, Hot Clube de Portugal will present groundbreaking vocalist and composer Sara Serpa  in a live-streamed concert. Serpa is celebrating her multimedia masterpiece Recognition.  She will be accompanied by guitarist André Matos and drummer João Pereira. For information visit https://www.crowdcast.io/e/sara-serpa--andr-matos/register.

With over sixty total events featuring more than 100 artists over a four month span, National Sawdust's ongoing Digital Discovery Festival is the rarest sort of story in NYC's post-COVID live music world: an unalloyed success.

On Sunday, June 28: Art Is Live will present groundbreaking vocalist and composer Sara Serpa in a live-streamed concert at 5 p.m. EDT to celebrate her multimedia masterpiece Recognition. She will be accompanied by guitarist André Matos. For information visit https://www.artislive.net/.

Tzadik Records presents the debut recording of THE WAKE WORLD, a hallucinatory choral fantasy by Los Angeles-based composer David Hertzberg.

The Broad Stage announces The Broad Stage Classical Hour, a new, recurring program featuring live classical performances from intimate rooms. The Broad Stage Classical Hour is part of The Broad Stage at Home, a destination offering new, livestreamed content from artistic partners and archival concert footage.

Due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the 2020 spring season of Tom Gold Dance, Wednesday, April 1 and Thursday, April 2, at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, has been canceled. The April 2 Tom Gold Dance benefit has also been canceled.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts today announced its 2020 Mostly Mozart Festival, running from July 14 through August 8. Maintaining Mozart's innovative spirit as its inspiration, the festival magnifies its impact through groundbreaking immersive works, commissions, premieres, international multidisciplinary productions, and more.

DELANILA's forthcoming debut album, Overloaded, is set for release on April 3; preorder/pre-save the album HERE. DELANILA is the self-described cinematic experimental alternative project of multiple award-winning “notable cross-genre composer” (The New Yorker), performer and multimedia artist Danielle Eva Schwob, who has garnered international acclaim for her concert music, alt-rock songs and film scores.

American singer-songwriter, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jonny Polonsky presents his new 'Kingdom of Sleep' LP and the new video for his latest single 'Ghost Like Soul' featuring Cedric Bixler-Zavala (The Mars Volta/ At The Drive-In), directed by Paul Elledge, a legend in the world of professional photography with work featured in publications as diverse as Rolling Stone and Forbes.

Last year, Lisel - a.k.a. avant-pop singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and artist Eliza Bagg - released her remarkable self-produced solo debut, Angels on the Slope, via Luminelle. Drawing on her vast areas of expertise to create an other-wordly landscape where one wanders between the gauzy and ethereal and distorted, beat-driven pop, Lisel crafted a singular debut that earned praise from the likes of NPR Music, Pitchfork, Billboard, The Fader, and more. Now, prior to her SXSW debut and following a recent performance as a soloist in the iconic New York Philharmonic, Lisel announces a new double-single. 

The music video for “The Philospher,” the new single by self-described cinematic experimental alternative project DELANILA, is out today and may be streamed and shared. The video premiered at Clash, who called it a “crisp, seismic slice of pop-edged songwriting, but one that comes complete with a black, black heart.”“The Philosopher” comes from DELANILA's upcoming debut album Overloaded, set for release on April 3 on her own label, ZYG ZYG Records.

Composer, vocalist, and producer Lisa Bielawa will curate a residency at The Stone at The New School (a performance initiative founded by John Zorn) from Tuesday, March 10, 2020 through Saturday, March 14, 2020, with performances each night at 8:30pm.

The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, the arts center of the Archdiocese of New York, has announced highlights of its 2020 Spring season, a rich mix of theater, film, music, author's nights, gallery exhibitions, and talk events featuring artists and thought leaders including Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist and author Peggy Noonan; New York Times columnist and bestselling author David Brooks, and Director of The Philanthropy Roundtable's Character Initiative and author Anne Snyder; Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ; a rousing evening of gospel music from Vy Higginsen's Sing Harlem choir; celebrated composer and big bandleader Darcy James Argue plus the New England Conservatory Alumni Big Band; Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico and multi-award winning New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik; singer, songwriter, and acclaimed clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn and genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso and vocalist from Beijing Wu Fei; and events tackling thought-provoking topical themes including justice in underserved communities, the protection of immigrants to America, and the inspiration of Sr. Thea Bowman and other Servants of God.

The New York Youth Symphony (NYYS) continues its 2019-2020 season with a performance by the 17-member NYYS Jazz ensemble on Monday, March 9, 2020 in two sets at 7:30pm and 9:30pm, at Dizzy's Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, led by Director Andy Clausen. Titled Celebrating Charlie Parker @ 100, and featuring saxophonist Steve Wilson, the performances pay homage to Charlie Parker's centennial, musical legacy, and bebop innovations with selections by Parker, Wilson, Bennie Moten, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and more. NYYS Jazz will also give the world premiere of the NYYS First Music commission In the Shadow of Tall Giants by Devin Reilly.

See what's on the schedule at National Sawdust in March! Kimbra, Little Kruta, JACK Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble and more...

On Friday, February 7, Guitar Mash and the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment will bring an audience as diverse as Queens itself to 'mash' with some of the music industry's most acclaimed guitarists and singer/songwriters when Flushing Town Hall hosts the first-ever NYC Urban Campfire: QUEENS.