David Byrne brings "breahtlessly brilliant" concert (Evening Standard) to the Continent ... Leila Josefowicz play's Adams Violin Concerto with Houston ... Laurie Anderson puts life in focus at Rubin Museum talk ... New World Symphony premieres Andriessen's Vermeer Pictures ... Assads, Salerno-Sonnenberg revisit Gypsy music ... Black Keys play Coachella's main stage ... Carolina Chocolate Drops do Southern festivals, Record Store Day in-store ... Toumani Diabaté does two nights at NYC's Poisson Rouge ... Philip Glass plays northern New England ... Emmylou Harris visits DogTown ... Fred Hersch sets the Jazz Standard ... k.d. lang plays the Canadian Maritimes ... Mandy Patinkin & Patti LuPone do Detroit ... Keersmaker troupe dances to Reich in Dresden ... Sara Watkins plays Vanderbilt ... Wilco releases DVD, signs copies at Knoxville shop for Record Store Day ... and more ...
After a successful run in the UK and Ireland, David Byrne has taken the Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno to the Continent. Tonight, they're at the Volkshaus in Zürich, Switzerland, and on Sunday, it's Le Fenice in Senigallia, Italy. After last week's show in Oxford, England, Oxford Times's Tim Metcalfe says, "David Byrne’s gig at the New Theatre was always going to be a special occasion. And it was ... If you get a chance to see him on this tour grab it with both hands."
The Independent gives a perfect five stars to this past Sunday's show at London's Royal Festival Hall, one of two shows there for the Southbank's Ether festival, as does the Evening Standard's John Aizlewood, who says, at 56, "Byrne is bursting through boundaries once again." Aizlewood exclaims: "From the moment the Scottish-born New Yorker emerged with his four-man band and three backing singers, there was magic afoot ... Live music really doesn’t get any better than this. Breathlessly brilliant." The Daily Telegraph gives this "musical feast" four stars, decribing it as "a night of delirious, intoxicating, weird fun reflected back in the enigmatic smile of the king of the silver foxes ..."
There's even an editorial "In praise of ... David Byrne" in the Guardian, which asserts that "of all the art students that drifted into pop in the 70s, Byrne remains one of the most interesting ... Often affectionately described as a 'nerd who made good,' Byrne is much more interesting and warm-blooded than that."
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John Adams's Violin Concerto (1993) will be performed in each of three concerts by the Houston Symphony and violinist Leila Josefowicz tonight and tomorrow night and in a matinee performance Sunday afternoon. Also on the program is Brahms's First Symphony.
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Laurie Anderson participates in a sold-out event titled Rapt: The Focused Life as part of the Brainwaves series at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, Sunday afternoon. The event's title is based on a book by Winifred Gallagher, who discusses the subject of creativity and focus with Anderson and neurophysiologist André Fenton, exploring in particular the link between quality of life and the things one chooses to pay attention to.
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Louis Andriessen's Vermeer Pictures, a 2005 concert suite for orchestra from his opera Writing to Vermeer, receives its US premiere Saturday night by the New World Symphony, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, in a program titled Dutch Masters and Spiritual Journeys, at the Lincoln Theater in Miami Beach, Florida.
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Sérgio and Odair Assad join Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg at the University of Georgia's Performing Arts Center in Athens for a program that includes works from their acclaimed self-titled Nonesuch release from 2000, about which the Wall Street Journal wrote: "The mood throughout is contemporary—Gypsy tradition is approached without sentimental nostalgia."
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The Black Keys lay the tracks for a killer night on the main stage at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California. The Keys' set on the Coachella Stage leads right into sets by Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, and, closing out the festival's opening night, Sir Paul McCartney. Pat and Dan won't have a chance to catch the rest of the weekend's acts, as they're headed up to Oakland next for a show at the Fox Theatre Saturday night. The Black Keys also joined The Flaming Lips on a limited-edition 7" of "Borderline / Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles," available at independent record outlets on national Record Store Day, Saturday.
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The Carolina Chocolate Drops, the most recent addition to the Nonesuch roster, plays the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, tonight as part of the Southern Soul and Song concert series. On Saturday, as part of Record Store Day, which supports local music shops across the country, the group plays an afternoon set at Criminal Records in Atlanta. They'll head west to perform at the Alabama Chicken and Egg Festival in Moulton, Alabama, on Sunday.
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Toumani Diabaté and his Symmetric Orchestra are at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, tonight, then head into New York City to perform two nights at Le Poisson Rouge. They'll be joined by pianist Jenny Lin on Saturday night and the quartet Burkina Electric on Sunday. The New York Times's Amanda Petrusich, in recommending the shows, describes Toumani as a "self-taught child prodigy ... renowned for his mastery of the kora." Time Out New York says, "Ancestral lineage being what it is in West Africa, the name Diabaté says 'master musician' in Mali the way Kennedy connotes 'politics' stateside."
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Philip Glass continues his tour of performances based at educational institutions, after an event last night at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a concert of his chamber music with cellist Wendy Sutter and percussionist Mick Rossi, Saturday night, at Dartmouth College's Spaulding Auditorium. The concert will be followed by a post-performance discussion with the composer in the Auditorium. The trio performs again, at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Sunday night.
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Tune in to the National Geographic channel tonight at 10 PM ET to catch Emmylou Harris on an all-new DogTown, in which she seeks out help in handling Gunnar, a shepherd mix with a violent streak she's rescued in her shelter, Bonaparte's Retreat. You can watch a video preview of the episode at channel.nationalgeographic.com.
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Fred Hersch and his Pocket Orchestra, featuring Avishai Cohen on trumpet, Richie Barshay on percussion, and Jo Lawry on vocals, began their residency at New York's Jazz Standard last night and will play an additional eight sets through the weekend. The New York Times's Nate Chinen, in recommending the show, says "Hersch brings a sharp compositional acumen to this ensemble."
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k.d. lang continues her Canadian tour in the Maritimes and Atlantic provinces with stops at the Moncton Coliseum in Moncton, New Brunswick, tonight, and the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Saturday night. She'll play one more show in the region at the Mile One Center in St. John's, Newfoundland, on Monday before heading south of the 49th parallel and a stops along the US East Coast next week. k.d. spoke with Eric Lewis of the Times & Transcript, covering Moncton, about her career, her latest album, 2008's Watershed, and the comfort she feels performing for a live audience; read the interview at timestranscript.canadaeast.com.
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Mandy Patinkin and fellow Broadway icon Patti LuPone brought their extensive US tour to Detroit's Fisher Theater earlier this week and continue performances of their show there through the weekend, one tonight, two on Saturday, and two on Sunday.
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Belgian choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaker's dance ensemble, Rosas, brings her famed 1982 piece Fase, set to four works by Steve Reich—Piano Phase, Come Out, Violin Phase, and Clapping Music—to the European Center for the Arts Hellerau in Dresden, Germany, for two performances, tonight and Saturday night.
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Sara Watkins kicked her tour into full gear at the start of the week with a stop at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, performing with John Paul Jones, the producer of her new album, on bass; her brother and Nickel Creek band mate Sean on guitar; and The Roots' ?uestlove sitting in on drums. You can watch the performance at nonesuch.com/media.
She followed that appearance with two nights at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, where City Pages writer Rick Mason called the new album "a gorgeous collection of originals and covers (ranging from Jimmie Rodgers to Tom Waits) that, like latter-day Creek, carries bluegrass and country tradition into a genre-defying realm transcending the sum of its parts."
Sara plays The Union at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, tonight, and, tomorrow evening, plays the Vanderbilt University Rites of Spring Festival, a weekend-long event featuring a broad range of artists, from Amadou & Mariam collaborator K'Naan to festival closer The Flaming Lips. She'll next play New York City's Mercury Lounge, on Wednesday.
Sara spoke with Paste magazine about the album and the tour; you can read the interview at pastemagazine.com.
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After a week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that saw Wilco participate in a Brewers game, wrangle a camel at a photo shoot for their forthcoming Nonesuch release, and perform two nights of sold-out shows at the city's Pabst Theater, the band headed next to Indiana University in Bloomington last night and is at Ohio University's Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium in Athens, Ohio, for another sold-out set tonight.
Following the second night at the Pabst, the Milwaukee Decider's Steven Hyden offers up this "brilliant idea: Let’s make Wilco concerts at The Pabst Theater an annual tradition." He insists "a legend was indeed born" Wednesday night, and "people who either weren’t lucky or quick enough to get tickets will soon grow tired of hearing about how great these shows were from their over-excited friends. And they’re only going to get more annoyed—Wilco’s two-night stand at the Pabst is going to be talked about for a long time." Read more at milwaukee.decider.com.
Tomorrow, in recognition of national Record Store Day, Wilco releases its first concert DVD, Ashes of American Flags, in independent retailers across the country and in the Nonesuch Store, tomorrow. The band will also sign copies of the DVD at Disc Exchange in Knoxville, Tennessee, where, later that day, they play their next sold-out show, at the Tennessee Theatre.
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