Make Music 2013

A voyage westward will prevent me from seeing the 2013 edition of Make Music NY. After last year's epic broiler, the weather gods seem inclined to smile on tomorrow's affair: the forecast calls for bright sun but a high of merely eighty-six degrees. Steve Smith has a handy preview of several of the potential highlights: three R. Murray Schafer events on Central Park Lake, including a performance of his Credo, with 144 singers; a 175-keyboard rendition of Jed Distler's Broken Record on Cornelia Street (Steve promises, or threatens, that Mayor Bloomberg will be involved); So Percussion and Eli Keszler's Archway, with piano wires suspended from the Manhattan Bridge; and an ambitious mounting of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning, unfolding over ten hours. Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim looks ahead to the Cardew in a New York Times piece, while Lev Bratishenko has a preview of the Schafer. The Canadian master, codifier of the concept of "soundscape," has long been a pioneer in site-specific composition, notably in his Patria series. Patria 7: Asteríon will have a performance in August, as part of Schafer's eightieth-birthday celebrations.