There's no shortage of unforgettable musical memories for Valentine's: Brad Mehldau, Anne Sofie von Otter bring his Love Songs to Cambridge ... Adams works feature in dances by the Pennsylvania Ballet and by Savion Glover with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ... Dan Auerbach plays Conan ... David Byrne ends his Southern Hemisphere tour ... Gipsy Kings play three nights ... Philip Glass, Patti Smith honor Allen Ginsberg; Glass plays marathon Music in 12 Parts ... Richard Goode performs Bach, Chopin in Budapest ... Punch Brothers play convivial California ... Alvin Ailey dances Reich ... Allen Toussaint continues Joe's Pub residency ... Rokia Traoré concludes US tour ... Dawn Upshaw's Australian tour closes ... and more ...
This weekend's list of events featuring Nonesuch artists brings no shortage of opportunities to offer your Valentine unforgettable musical memories, not to mention the added celebrations to coincide with Presidents' Day in the US on Monday.
Brad Mehldau, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, and her longtime collaborator, pianist Bengt Forsberg, bring the program they debuted this week at Carnegie Hall to the Sander Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
On the program are songs by Sibelius, Hahn, and Schumann, as well as Brad's new piece, Love Songs, written for von Otter, commissioned by Carnegie Hall, and premiered there on Wednesday. "Though infused with jazzy rhythmic and harmonic elements," wrote the New York Times's Anthony Tommasini of the piece, "Mr. Mehldau’s work honors the heritage of contemporary classical song."
New York Daily News reviewer Howard Kissel writes, "It is a mark of Mehldau's maturity that he chose some intimate poems by Sara Teasdale ... He gave them settings sometimes rhapsodic, sometimes intensely simple, always allowing the text to dominate." Kissel concludes that "the combination of Mehldau and von Otter seemed genuinely inspired."
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The Pennsylvania Ballet continues its timely program, Love & Longing, featuring choreography Peter Martins's Fearful Symmetries, set to the John Adams 1988 orchestral piece of the same name. The program began at the Merriam Theater in Philadelphia on Wednesday and continues there through the weekend, with a performance tonight, two on Valentine's Day, and one Sunday afternoon.
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Merilyn Jackson says "you'll find dozens of long-stemmed beauties" in the Valentine's program, including "the fiery energy" of the Martins/Adams piece. "The mercurial movement of Fearful Symmetries is risky, but the piece's 23 dancers attacked with a ferocity that matched the music's velocity and demonic sense of danger, changing partners with the speed of light."
Adams's Lollapalooza will be featured in a very different sort of dance program by tap dancer Savion Glover, who teams up with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop joint performances Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the orchestra's home venue, Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, in Baltimore.
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Sérgio & Odair Assad bring their duo guitars to the Midwest to perform at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minnesota, tonight, as part of the church's St. Croix Concert Series, a non-profit, volunteer organization dedicated to bringing first-rate classical music and musicians to the St. Croix Valley.
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Dan Auerbach will be the musical guest on tonight's Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Tune in to catch Dan perform a song off his solo debut album, Keep It Hid. The show airs on NBC starting at 12:35 AM ET. Also scheduled to appear are actress Isla Fisher and the Jonas Brothers.
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David Byrne plays the last of his shows in the Southern Hemispheric leg of his Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno tour, tonight in Wellington, New Zealand, at the Michael Fowler Center, and tomorrow at the ASB Theatre in Auckland. He returns to the States for two shows in the Pacific Northwest next week.
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The Gipsy Kings play each of the three weekend nights, beginning at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center tonight, then heading north for two nights at the Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City Saturday and Sunday. The group comes to New York City next week to play Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday.
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Philip Glass joins his recent Tibet House benefit concert guest artist, Patti Smith, for a tribute to poet Allen Ginsberg at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Campbell Hall, on Valentine's night. The two will also be joined by Smith's son, guitarist Jackson Smith, for the US premiere of Footnote to Howl: The Poet Speaks, an homage to Ginsberg.
On Monday, the composer and his ensemble, led by music director Michael Riesman, present a marathon concert of Music in 12 Parts, his monumental work from 1971–74, at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall. The program begins at 5 PM and will be spread over three parts, with two intermissions and a dinner break. Never before performed live in its entirety on the West Coast, the work receives its regional premiere 35 years after its creation.
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Richard Goode is in Europe this weekend, performing works by Bach and Chopin at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary. Goode will be in the UK later in the month for performances at Barbican Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, as well as additional appearances around England.
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Punch Brothers play three nights straight in California this long weekend, strategically placing themselves conveniently close to good cheer for Valentine's. Tonight, they'll perform at Laxon Auditorium in Chico, which, Chris Thile reminds readers in an interview with the Chico News & Review, is home to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. "I love to go to the Sierra Nevada Brewery," he tells the News & Review. "I’m a fan of good beer, and I feel Sierra Nevada has done America a service."
On Saturday, Chris and his bandmates will celebrate Valentine's together at the University of California, Davis, performing arts center named after famed vintner Robert Mondavi. The quintet rounds out the weekend at the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center, where they'll play the venue's Bankhead Theater.
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Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians provides the setting for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's performances of choreographer Elisa Monte's 1981 piece Treading, featured in the company's current US tour celebrating its 50th anniversary season. The piece is on Sunday afternoon's program, along with Mauro Bigonzetti's Festa Barocca and Ailey's famed 1960 piece Revelations, at the Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit. The tour continues through May.
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Allen Toussaint continues his bi-weekly residency at Joe's Pub in New York City this Sunday at noon. He stopped by the WNYC studios yesterday for a chat and performance on Soundcheck, which you can hear archived online at wnyc.org.
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Rokia Traoré's two-week tour of the US comes to a close this weekend with a performance at the Somerville Theatre outside Boston tonight and a return to New York Saturday for show at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts.
After her performance last night at the Barns of Wolf Trap outside Washington, DC, the Washington Post exclaims that "the pacing and feel of her explosive performance had much in common with a no-holds barred rock concert." The music "surged and roiled over a wicked tangle of electric guitar and n'goni," says the review, with songs that "recalled the propulsive style of recent Amadou and Mariam performances, built to furious climaxes, concluding with Traoré dancing in joyous release."
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Dawn Upshaw concludes her two-week tour of Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra at Sydney's City Recital Hall Angel on Saturday night. On the program are works by Mozart, Strauss, Bartók, and Upshaw's frequent collaborator, Osvaldo Golijov: his Night of the Flying Horses, Lúa Descolorida, and How Slow the Wind.
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