In Tuesday’s (4/19) Washington Post, Anne Midgette writes that the National Symphony Orchestra’s Monday night “New Voices, Old Muses” program at the Kennedy Center Atrium demonstrated “a calculated balance between edginess and familiarity. Here is the appeal, or hope, of Mason Bates’s KC Jukebox series.… Broadening the number of ways that art music can reach audiences is a worthwhile goal, and contemporary concerts are the favored laboratory for experiments—like KC Jukebox—in varying the format.” With Donato Cabrera conducting, the program of works by contemporary composers included Edmund Finnis’s In Situ, Anna Clyne’s As Sudden Shut, Molly Joyce’s Sit and Dance, for Baroque Cello and Electronics, and Donnacha Dennehy’s That the Night Come. “From a technical standpoint, this was the smoothest and tightest of the three KC Jukebox concerts…. The hall was not as full as it was for the first two KC Jukebox concerts. Still, the experiment is worthwhile; I wouldn’t claim Bates has found a silver bullet for successful new-music presentations, but I’ve enjoyed the series so far, bumps and all, and look forward to seeing what it will offer next year—over five concerts.”
Posted April 21, 2016
