Here’s how we celebrated the longest day of the year: with the NY première of Mauricio Kagel’s Eine Brise, for 111 cyclists.

OK, there aren’t exactly 111 of us, but I think the piece sounds pretty great anyway. The above video (courtesy of master videographer Adrian Knight) actually shows two performances: one going each way up and down Cornelia St., which was closed off for the occasion.

I got to be the leader. One of the proudest performances of my life.

And on a related note, here’s a nice little article on NYC cyclists from the Wall Street Journal, of all places.

Yesterday was the Bang on a Can marathon, which is a type of marathon for non-athletic people. I got to play At the River, at a river, for the second time this month. The marathon is the kind of thing that feels, to me, as though it had always existed, and will always continue to exist—I am happy to have been a small part of this continuum.

But that’s not the only marathon happening around now—there’s one in Atlanta, Georgia called SonicPalooza on June 25th, with 10 hours of your favorite (mostly minimally-inclined) music, including my own Crashing Through Fences. 2 PM until midnight at the Woodruff Arts Center. All my Georgian cohort, be there.

I’ve been making siphon coffee for about a year (I use a stovetop pot) but I’ve never been as clinical about it as the guy in this video. I am so excited to now have a morning-time use for my meat thermometer.

Here’s an idea I had while I was learning some new pieces for my Bargemusic show last week. Perhaps performers, not composers, were at the root of all the complexity in new music, especially 20th-century music. A kind of “performance anxiety”, but not in the usual sense of the term.

When a performer learns a newly-composed piece of music, he asks himself at a certain point: is this piece any good? Is it worth the time and effort I’m putting into it? If the question persists, it makes it pretty tough to do your job.

But if the music is so dense and complex that even the performer can’t understand it, that pretty much solves the problem. Is the piece good or bad? Who cares, because it’s completely unassailable! The performer’s job is reduced from cultural gatekeeper to manual laborer. Investing so much in learning a piece of complex music is kind of like buying an expensive, unreliable European sports car: you have to justify it to yourself somehow, or you’ll go crazy.

The end result is decreased risk for the performer of contemporary music. That impenetrable wall of perceived quality is transferred to them. Maybe performers actually put themselves at greater risk by choosing to play music that’s more outwardly grasp-able or emotionally accessible. And what good are you if you don’t take risks?

Here is a lovely video that shows why biking in midtown Manhattan is so much fun:

The reason I like this video so much is that it shows that no one group of people is at fault for traffic problems. Very often you’ll read coverage from, say, the perspective of cyclists laying all blame on cars; the car people decry lawless cyclists. No one ever seems to blame pedestrians. Just watch this video, though, and you’ll see terrible behavior from all involved parties.

(Also, just FYI, none of the idiot bikers in the video is me.)

This, and other questions, answered Monday, June 6, at 4 PM EST. My friend Gabriel Kahane and I will be chatting (virtually) with Olivia Giovetti of Q2 about all manner of topics. Mostly food. And obsolete social media.

You should also come hear Gabe play at Rockwood Music Hall any one of various days this month. Boy’s got an album coming out this fall, and his new tunes are just beautiful.