The Merkin Concert Hall in New York is one of the city’s great musical performance venues and features a dynamic schedule of various concerts and program events. Most recently the hall featured the Lark Quartet performing a new works by two Pulitzer Prize winning composers. The works were performed during the first half of the concert on the Thursday evening, April 22 and included pianist Jeremy Denk who joined the quartet. They performed the new piano quintet by Paul Moravec’s as well as Jennifer Higdon’s new work. There are so many diverse selections of musical performances and concerts that occur on a nightly basis in this city that it can frequently be difficult for residents to choose which event they want to go to. This dilemma is magnified for the tourist who will only stay in New York for a week or so. However, the upside is that the city, including the Merkin Concert Hall, is never short on performances or entertainment options.

The month of May will also be busy at the Merkin and the hall will feature performances from the New York Festival of Song. This year’s festival will feature some all new works that highlight the diversity and beauty of the human voice. Some of the featured works will include Beautiful Ohio, which is a new song cycle written by Harold Meltzer. Gabriel Kahane’s work Craigslistlieder is an original eight song cycle work that is based on anonymous Craigslist ads. The singers for the festival will include Paul Appleby, Anne Carolyn-Bird and Andrew Garland. Pianists for the songs will be Steven Blier and Michael Barrett. The Merkin Concert Hall is known for its outstanding concerts and for promoting new and original pieces. Some of the most honored musicians, singers and composers are featured at the hall every year. This is just one of the great performance venues in New York.

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Merkin Concert Hall in New York Premieres New Works

Barcelona is a global city and Yo Yo Ma is a global musician. Ma has performed in cities across the world and Barcelona received tourists from across the world. It is only appropriate that the two worlds meet. Yo Yo Ma has played in Barcelona to a captivated and appreciative audience. This is due in part to Ma’s status as one of the world’s virtuoso cellists and also in part to the tremendously arts oriented population in Barcelona. Undoubtedly, many of the tourists staying in a Barcelona Spain hotel would be interested in seeing and hearing Ma play as well.

For a city that is so rich in cultural and the arts it is only fitting that a major world talent be received with such enthusiasm and support. Of course Ma receives this almost everywhere he goes. Ma was born in Paris though his parents were Chinese. His parents moved the family to New York City when Ma was only four years old, which was the same year that he first began playing the cello. He took up the cello after first studying both the violin and the viola, so by the time he had reached the ripe old age of four he was ready to begin playing the cello and by the time he was five he was already performing in front of audiences.

Ma studied at both Juilliard School where his teacher was legendary cellist Leonard Rose and he also studied at Columbia University before transferring to Harvard. One of his most famous recordings is of the Six Suites for Solo Cello composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. These suites are considered to be one of the most essential collection of works in any cellist’s repertory and very few have actually made critically acclaimed recordings of them. Ma to the music a step further and made an artistic journey on film with them. He treated each of the suites separately and created a concept and short film inspired by their music.

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Yo Yo Ma in Barcelona Spain

There is no doubting that the top New York City hotels are the best of the best.  Given the location, in the greatest city in the world, how could it be any different?  Here, the world’s best designers, chefs, architects, and artists gather, or have gathered at time or another, to soak up the energy and to contribute their share of talent.  It’s a buzzing place, and the hotels are a reflection of this, except with a large dose of relaxation and rejuvenation.  With a combination of world-class amenities, mixed with a studied practice of hospitality learned from all the cultures in the melting pot, there is a sense here of being close to the heartbeat of the world.

New York could be the pulse of the world, for all we know, and with bands like the Talking Heads, the pulse is exciting.  And an experiment in rhythms, too.  The Talking Heads performed as a group for the first time on June 8, 1975, at NYC’s famous CBGB, and they opened for the Ramones, no less.  An auspicious beginning, but not quite the beginning.  The band members started hooking up a few years before that, as art school students in Rhode Island, and they started to play together using some of David Byrne’s early songs, like Psycho Killer, as beginning tracks, to learn each other’s musical directions.  From the beginning, the rhythms were a combination of infectious punk beats and rock and roll rhythms that had their roots in African rhythm.  David Byrne, whose life-long interest would become apparent in subsequent years, often mentions the African influence in his music from the beginning.

The other members of the Talking Heads were Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison.  Their run as a band together was a little over a decade, enough to record some of the most influential albums in punk, post-punk, art-punk, new-wave, alternative music history.  Whatever they were playing, it was definitely abstract.  They certainly had artistic allies in New York, with groups like  Blondie and Television, and visionary artists like Twyla Tharpe, Laurie Anderson, and Robert Wilson working as contemporaries.  The experiment that was the Talking Heads, then, was a rather successful one, and one that David Byrne could later draw on as his music has taken on a more consciously African sensibility and approach.  True New Yorkers, and true world artists.

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The Name of This Blog is Talking Heads in NYC