Miscellany: Ives vs. McCartney, etc.

The SONiC Festival ends on Saturday night with a free concert by the American Composers Orchestra at the World Financial Center. Yes, a guy from a famous rock band is involved, but there are other reasons to go — Andrew Norman's brilliant piece Unstuck, for example. You can listen to music from the opening-night program at Performance Today; Alex Temple's Liebeslied, with delirious vocals by Mellissa Hughes, is something quite amazing.... The Great Flood, a new collaboration between guitarist/composer Bill Frisell and the filmmaker Bill Morrison (he of Decasia and The Miners' Hymns), memorializes the 1927 Mississippi River flood. The premiere is at Zankel Hall on Nov. 4.... Jeremy Schlosberg muses on the need for good music curators.... The hits keep coming at Medici TV: up now is a gorgeous performance of Cavalli's Didone, with William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants at the Théâtre de Caen. At least the first half is gorgeous; I can't get Part 2 to work.... Opera Vista, in Houston, is presenting Thomas Adès's pitch-black operatic comedy Powder Her Face on Nov. 10 and 11.... New World Records has digitized the entire old CRI LP catalogue. Dog of Stravinsky!.... Congratulations to the culture-criticism site ArtsATL for receiving a $20,000 challenge grant from the Possible Futures foundation.... Sources close to the Internet are telling me that the new Ives CD by violinist and video ironist Hilary Hahn came within a hundred copies of unseating Paul McCartney from his ill-earned position on top of the Billboard classical chart. Can crusty old Ives defeat winner-takes-all celebrity culture? Next week will tell.