American Contemporary Music Ensemble: A Night of New Classical at Joe's Pub
ACME in Concert, Joe's Pub, NYC, October 25, 2011 Other than my highly-expensive coke and chocolate brownie (Thanks, Joe's Pub food policy), the evening for the chamber group American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) left me feeling much more assured and happy I was there to capture it. It was quite a crisp, vital program in the intimate setting of Joe's Pub, a place that one associates more with indie rock, but these days there's hardly a chasm between the two anyway. The ensemble, featuring the compelling violist Nadia Sirota and, on a few works pianist Timo Andres (Christian Carey's work and a great solo-piano piece by David Smooke called Requests ), blazed through 11 relatively short pieces for varied instruments by 11 composers--9 of which that were chosen from over 200 that applied for the event--Carey and Hayes Biggs were judges and also had pieces on the program. The highlights of this program for me were: a) The world premiere of Christian Carey...