Deep inside the bowels of our great nation, I am revising my yMusic piece. There is a Steinway in front of me and beside me a machine that spits out passable coffee.

A couple of rather exciting premières coming up this week—unfortunately, on the same day—Wednesday, the 22^nd. If you are in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., you may want to attend this concert by the Attacca Quartet at Library of Congress. They will be playing a little quartet I wrote them called Early to Rise.

On the other hand, if you’re in New York, you’ll want to find yourself at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2, where yMusic will be playing new pieces by Mark Dancigers, Marcos Balter, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Norman, and Nico Muhly (quite a list!) along­side my new piece for them, Safe Travels.

I want to issue my highest recom­men­da­tion for the Living Earth Show’s May 12^th concert at the Cell Theater. Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson (electric guitarist and percus­sion­ist, respec­tively) have commis­sioned a remark­able body of work for them­selves over the past few years, and they throw them­selves into playing it with a gusto that is inspir­ing to behold.

And you needn’t take my word for it; their YouTube page features many compellingly-performed/pro­duced music videos of their commis­sions. In this video, the duo performs Sam Adams’s Tension Study no. 2, with the fetching trapeze artist Deanna Hammond swinging overhead.

I recently had the good fortune of my name appear­ing on a poster in the NYC subway for the first time. More people in my own age bracket responded to this adver­tise­ment than to any other listing I’ve ever gotten—comprising the coveted “young people who don’t neces­sar­ily rush to buy every new David Lang album, and in fact may not have even heard of David Lang” demo­graphic. And the audience ended up packed with those very people.

I’ve made fun of BAM’s subway posters in this space before (that’s because they were terrible), but I think they’re a great music-PR strategy, espe­cially when deployed on the G line, where one is bound to spend dozens of minutes on the plat­forms staring at the adver­tise­ments. I remember seeing a Chamber Music Society subway poster a few years ago featur­ing the excel­lent cellist Nick Canel­lakis, and maybe one with Wu Han in a red drapery? Clas­si­cal presen­ters should clearly be doing more of this!