These days, our favorite West Village dwelling (Le) Poisson Rouge is serving a lot more than classic rock and opera singers.
Case in point: Ensemble (L)PR, the venue's top-flight resident new music ensemble, takes on quite the program for Friday, March 7.
Alongside Béla Bartók's now classic Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and selections from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood's first score for Paul Thomas Anderson, the concert features the U.S. premiere of another Classicalite favorite--National bro/Brooklyn composer Bryce Dessner's Lachrimae.
And it all fits together.
"There's a lot of the same vocabulary, a lot of the same harmonic and melodic devices are used," says Ensemble (L)PR co-founder, violinist and violist David Handler about the Dessner.
"And sort of the same scales are used as building blocks for Greenwood's suite from There Will Be Blood. So, in a way, you can consider Bartók a predecessor to those pieces."
Of course, Greenwood and Dessner are label mates now, their split disc via Deutsche Grammophon hosting Lachrimae, itself.
Conductor André de Ridder led the orchestra on the recording, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, and he'll take to (L)PR's red stage for the March 7 performance, too.
You can bank on a younger crowd for the gig as well, but as Handler notes, that may be for the best.
"We welcome everyone to expand their musical territory," he says. "Because two of the composers have one foot in, shall I say, popular music of some kind and another foot in the classical music tradition, to whatever extent either of those distinctions have any meaning anymore."
"I think for that reason," Handler continues, "we'll get a lot of people listening because they know The National or Radiohead, or even [There Will Be Blood]."
"But I think that--certainly from reading Bryce and what he's had to say about what kind of musician he is--he says anyone of our generation, anyone born in the last 30 or 40 years, popular music is an undeniable influence on one's ears. And he very much considers himself a composer who plays in a band, or even the inverse of that."
Ultimately, as David Handler duly notes: "With Ensemble (L)PR, we're really looking to be able to introduce classical music to a new listenership and even challenge what that word means, because we don't necessarily know what that word means."
Ensemble (L)PR's performance will be livestreamed, both audio and video, thanks to the good people at Q2 Music.
And yes, last-minute tickets are still available.
