Jeff Parker's new album, Suite for Max Brown, is "a demonstration of how jazz mixes it up with other musics these days," says NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross music critic Kevin Whitehead. "Parker invokes his days as a crate-diving club DJ, a job where you can juxtapose beats from all over as long as they serve or creatively stem the flow." You can hear the review here.
 

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were on RTÉ One’s Tommy Tiernan Show in Ireland on Saturday to perform "Wayfaring Stranger." You can watch it here. The song is on their album there is no Other, which they recorded in Dublin. They return to Dublin to give a concert at Vicar Street in July, after a residency at SFJAZZ; touring Australia, New Zealand, and Japan; Giddens' receiving an honorary degree from UNC Greensboro; and performances of her opera Omar at Spoleto Festival.

Rhiannon Giddens begins a week of Bay Area performances … Sam Amidon concludes Netherlands run … Devendra Banhart, Gabriel Kahane tour Europe … Daughter of Swords kicks off tour in Virginia … Jeremy Denk performs Bach in upstate New York … Richard Goode gives solo recital in London … Randy Newman performs on Academy Awards … Mandy Patinkin plays Ohio … Chris Thile hosts Live From Here from NYC; plays solo in Wyoming … Yola tours Texas …

Gabriel Kahane begins an eleven-city tour of Europe at the Philharmonie Luxembourg on Saturday. The tour, featuring songs from his album Book of Travelers, continues with stops throughout France, Germany, Netherlands, and Finland, culminating at Konservatoriets Koncertsal in Copenhagen on February 25.

David Byrne will be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on February 29, with host John Mulaney. Byrne will perform songs from his American Utopia on Broadway, making for a very Happy Leap Day indeed. This is his first Saturday Night Live appearance since 1989, after a ten-year gap since his 1979 appearance on the show with Talking Heads.

Caroline Shaw’s album Orange, for which Attacca Quartet earned a Grammy Award, is due on vinyl for the first time on July 24, 2020, via New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records. The two-LP set is pressed on double 180-gram orange vinyl and includes a printed excerpt from the score and is available to pre-order now. "Completely gorgeous in so many ways," exclaims BBC Radio 3. "It hits you everywhere, all at once." "A love letter to the string quartet," says NPR. "[W]hen you hear all the imaginative sounds on Orange, you know you're listening to the voice of a strong composer."

David Byrne was on the CNN / PBS program Amanpour & Co. to talk with host Christiane Amanpour about his show American Utopia on Broadway. "As fate would have it, I was unable to watch the State of the Union address live," says Amanpour, "but for a very good reason as I was preparing for my next interview at a Broadway show which, as it happens, is a wonderful antidote to toxic and partisan politics. It is American Utopia by the legendary David Byrne. It's all about hope and connection between people, and it rocks." You can watch their conversation here.

Daughter of Swords (aka Mountain Man's Alexandra Sauser-Monnig) follows up her 2019 debut album, Dawnbreaker, with a new digital single, “Prairie Winter Wasteland,” out now. The Jeff Tweedy–produced track, recorded at his Chicago studio The Loft, “is a reflection on the way our emotional experiences of place are shaped in powerful and mystical ways by the people we’ve know there,” she says. Tweedy, who invited Daughter of Swords on tour with Wilco last year, joins her on a variety of instruments, with his son Spencer on drums and Nick Macri on bass. Daughter of Swords begins a full-band US tour this weekend.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced its 2020–21 season, and among the artists performing at Walt Disney Concert Hall are John Adams, Joshua Redman, and Brad Mehldau. The season also brings performances of several works by Adams, including his operas Nixon in China and Girls of the Golden West, and by Louis Andriessen (De Staat), Steve Reich, Timo Andres, and Nico Muhly.

Congratulations to Jeff Parker, whose new album, Suite for Max Brown, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Current Contemporary Jazz Chart and at No. 2 on the Contemporary Jazz Chart in the US. The album was released on January 24 via a newly formed partnership between International Anthem and Nonesuch Records. "It lives at the vanguard of new jazz music," says Pitchfork. The Los Angeles Times calls it "a transcendent set of pieces that occupy a vague terrain lit by jazz, experimental electronic music, instrumental hip-hop and genre-jumping avant-rock." Jeff Parker will tour the US in March, with shows in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, Philadelphia, NYC, Miami, and Knoxville's Big Ears Festival.

Mandy Patinkin was on CBS Sunday Morning to talk with correspondent Holly Williams about portraying Saul Berenson on Homeland, entering its eighth and final season on Showtime next Sunday, and his role as an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee. You can watch the piece here, as well as a web-exclusive segment on singing, his "first love." Patinkin is on the final leg of his tour of songs from Children and Art, his first new album since 2002.

Academy Award–winning director Spike Lee will direct a filmed version of the acclaimed Broadway show David Byrne’s American Utopia, due later this year. Participant will be the lead financier and executive producer for the project, which River Road Entertainment and Warner Music Group will also co-finance. “Pinch me. This couldn't have worked out better for this project,” Byrne said. “Spike Lee directing and Participant producing—two socially engaged teams, well, three if you count us in the band, coming together in what I feel will be something moving, important, and unlike anything anyone has seen before.”