Carter and Dargel make a virtue of musical disruption, showing that the most interesting narratives don’t necessarily project well onto music of smoothness and ease. The characters might vary—Carter’s voluble and acerbic, Dargel’s defiantly damaged—but both dramas spring from the same conviction: that the get-together only starts to be really interesting once things get broken.

September was chock-a-block with musical activity in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For more than a decade, Houston’s Musiqa has presented a sort of artistic cornucopia for its audience. Music, dance, and the spoken word come together with other art forms in dynamic multifaceted presentations that keep the audience engaged and on its toes.

Mandolinist and composer Chris Thile, arts entrepreneur Claire Chase, and bow maker Benoît Rolland are among the 23 recipients of 2012 MacArthur Fellowships.

Martin Pearlman’s Finnegans Wake: An Operoar did right by James Joyce’s garrulous tumble of language. What success the work produced could be traced to two fundamental decisions: not cutting the text (the piece sets the novel’s first seven pages in whole), and opting for a reciting actor (Adam Harvey) rather than singers.

The sound of trains runs through Harry Partch’s music, the wheeze and whine of whistles drifting over and beyond the settled grid of equal temperament, the percussive cycles phasing in and out like the rods and wheels of a locomotive.

The ubiquitous John Cage centenary tributes continued in the Bay Area this month with a performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations, 49 years after the first performance famously organized by Cage.

Bill Duckworth had a broad knowledge of musical style, a patient understanding of the human condition, and a clutter-free apartment. (I had none of those things.) In fact, I don’t exactly know how to describe my friendship with Bill, other than much of our time together was spent in dining rooms and automobiles.

Inaugurated in 2000, Michelle Schumann’s annual “Happy Birthday Mr. Cage!” event has become a “Rite of Fall” of sorts for Austinites in and around the new music scene.

Mason Bates is among the winners of the 18th annual Heinz Awards, an honor which includes an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000. At 35, Bates—a composer noted for his integration of classical music with DJ culture and the use of electronics in his symphonic work—is one of the youngest-ever recipients of the award.