Pitchfork

The Wordless Music Series is back and more ambitious than ever this spring and summer, and the whole of the music-loving world is better off for it.

Not only will the high-minded, NYC-based concert series welcome even more acts known to use actual words this season, it will also expand its reach to two additional cities and quite a few new venues as well.

First up, the "regular" Wordless programming, which includes a trio of gigs on that current Stars of the Lid/Christopher Willits tour and an additional Portland show featuring Eluvium. The SOTL and Eluvium PDX shows mark the beginning of a partnership between Wordless, the Holocene venue, and a certain Spectre Entertainment Group that can only yield even more wondrous happenings down the road.

Then come June, we can look forward to four consecutive Fridays at New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art featuring performances by Times New Viking, Prefuse 73, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, and the Berg Sans Nipple. Free admission, too!

Finally, Wordless promises a pair of "unusually over-the-top summer events", the first of which you may have read about in these pages: Deerhoof in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. As for the second, well, that remains under wraps for the moment. Please, let it be My Bloody Valentine and the New York Philharmonic doing Loveless in the Holland Tunnel, or something.

The pairing of adventurous indie fare and contemporary compositional offerings has been a lynchpin of the Wordless Music Series, and this year is no different. The aforementioned Wordless events will also feature performances of works by Dimitri Shostakovich, Arvo Pärt, John Adams, and Zoltán Kodály, among others, as well as that previously mentioned "remix" of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring that will precede the Deerhoof gig.

Find out who's performing where and when below, and for more detailed info on Wordless Music Series events, seize upon this link here.

Wordless Music Series:

04-17 Portland, OR - Holocene (Stars of the Lid, Christopher Willits, Classical Revolution PDX)
04-18 Portland, OR - The Old Church (Eluvium, Third Angle New Music Ensemble)
04-21 Minneapolis, MN - Southern Theater (Stars of the Lid, Christopher Willits)
05-02 New York, NY - Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church (Stars of the Lid, itsnotyouitsme, Face the Music)
06-06 New York, NY - Whitney Museum (The Berg Sans Nipple, ACME)
06-13 New York, NY - Whitney Museum (A Sunny Day in Glasgow, ACME)
06-20 New York, NY - Whitney Museum (Prefuse 73, ACME)
06-27 New York, NY - Whitney Museum (Times New Viking, ACME)
07-18 Brooklyn, NY - Prospect Park Bandshell (Deerhoof, Metropolis Ensemble)