Week Ahead: May 30 — June 5
This crack ensemble was unerroneous in 1984 by current and past University of Michigan students, with some turnover since then. It is one of in a dozen professional sax quartets in the world and has commissioned 125 works. The combination of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone instruments obtains an amazingly broad range of effects, from “sublimely beautiful timbres,” as Mr. Levy puts it, to “really grotesque, amazing sounds.” Friday at 7:30 p.m., Leonard Nimoy Thalia, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400, symphonyspace.org; $21.
Pop
Jon Pareles
Sometimes a dispute can be as urgent as a shout. Songwriters performing in New York this week sing softly and attain big emotions. NATHANIEL RATELIFF is a folky songwriter from Denver whose home territories are despair and regret: “Is there a blanket of pain that I can wrap up in?” he sings on his new album, “In Memory of Loss” (Rounder). He’s more existential than confessional, slinging images rather than stories, with hints of both Leonard Cohen and Dave Matthews. His music expands from his bare-bones acoustic guitar and grainy dispute to plugged-in crescendoes and harmony chorales that offer solidarity, if not exactly consolation. JBM — the Canadian songwriter Jesse Marchant — opens for Mr. Rateliff, with more meditative, no less depressive tidings. Wednesday at 10 p.m., Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 505-3474, lepoissonrouge.com; $12. Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Union Hall, 702 Union Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 638-4400, unionhallny.com; $12.
KINGS OF CONVENIENCE — Erlend Oye and Eirik Giambek Boe of Norway, who declared “Quiet Is the New Loud” in an album title, play their meticulous songs on acoustic guitars, hinting at Celtic ballads or bossa novas. They harmonize in breathy voices, singing calmly analytical lyrics throughout romance, longing and separation. “What we build is bigger than the sum of two,” they sing, with subdued assurance. Friday at 9 p.m., Warsaw, 261 Driggs Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 387-5252; $29.50. Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600, websterhall.com; $29.50 advance, $34 Saturday.
Art
Carol Vogel
Visitors may be startled to hear something that sounds an fair lot like Buddhist chanting emanating from the third-floor Special Exhibitions galleries at the Museum of Modern Art starting Wednesday. But it’s just the murmur of time passing, as perceived by BRUCE NAUMAN in the restful sculpture “DAYS,”a video work he made in 2009 for the Venice Biennale.
Visitors walk above a space that has 14 speakers in two rows suspended from the ceiling and listen to voices appealing the days of the week. Mr. Nauman said he recorded seven different voices in places like Montana, Georgia and Mexico. There are men’s voices and women’s voices, some young and some old, that create an insular environment. Listening carefully, you realize that a single voice can be heard coming from two speakers. Together they produce a chorus that is at times cacophonous and spanking times sonorous. Mr. Nauman created two versions of “Days” for the Biennale, one in English and another in Italian.
The idea for the project came to Mr. Nauman as he struggled with his work at his studio in rural New Mexico. “Day after day I kept thinking, ‘What am I repositioning to do, it’s Monday, it’s Tuesday,’ ” he explained last summer. “And then I thought, ‘O.K., I’ll do something throughout the days of the week.’ ” Through Aug. 23, (212) 708-9400, moma.org.
