You can check out my review at Classical Source. [Continued below the break.]

The ACO performs a few concerts a year at Carnegie Hall’s lower-level venue, Zankel Hall (hence the series name “Orchestra Underground), and the seats are consistently packed with new music fans, including a sizable contingent of local composers and artists, which can make the intermissions and post-concert amble to the exit as interesting as the concert itself. Inevitably, I’ll run into a number of friends, including at least one I haven’t seen in some years.

This year, the ACO has again stepped up its publicity and PR activities, and other venues around town would be well-advised to take a peek at the excellent press kit put together by Christina Jensen PR with its thorough background material. There’s rarely a boring moment in the ACO’s concerts, and this is reflected in the ensemble’s superb press backgrounders.

The orchestra is launching a retooled “R&D Lab” for new works in the form of “Playing It UNsafe,” which will include five workshops open to the public at no charge between this coming Monday, October 18 and March 3 of next year at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan (West 76th St. @ Amsterdam Ave.) leading to the concert of March 4 at Zankel Hall. If you’re interested in seeing what it takes to create a new work with orchestra, you can watch the process unfold as five terrific composers — Henry Threadgill, Joan La Barbara, Sean Friar, Laura Schwendinger, and David Heuser — get in “under the hood” and refine new works for performance.