Chelsea Redux, Sort Of

I went for a gallery trawl in Chelsea last week, my first visit since the area was flooded during Hurricane Sandy.  While most galleries are back in business, there are still a number closed for restoration, those that were on the ground floor.  The others show signs of restoration, with new dry wall, etc.   They must be happy that concrete floors are trendy...
I saw a very exciting exhibit of paintings by Mark Bradford, an American working out of L.A.  These are large scale abstract works, painted but also with layers of different types of material peeking out underneath the painting.  Some of the paintings resemble large scale maps that might have been painted over.  Some illustrations give a general idea, but don't convey the three dimensional quality of the collaged material.

Adès in Your Neighborhood

We went to a concert in our neighborhood tonight, a performance by the Calder String Quartet.  It was a free concert, in a church a few blocks away.  The chief attraction was Thomas Adès's string quartet, "The Four Quarters", written last year.  It was absolutely engaging;  Adès has genuine musical ideas that build on tradition and yet sound new and fresh.  The music strikes me as more succinct and clear than his earlier works.  I can't think of any other contemporary composer whose work I look more forward to hearing.  The quartet performance was excellent, (they have worked closely with Adès)   The Adès was preceded by Stravinky's "Three Pieces for String Quartet", which sounded Webernian in their brevity, and followed by a sensuous performance of Ravel's String Quartet.   A beautifully balanced program.   (The Calder Quartet played in last September in Vancouver.)