James Farm plays the Newport Jazz Fest, webcast live on NPR Music ... Laurie Anderson celebrates Shel Silverstein in NYC's Central Park ... The Black Keys inaugurate the Kanrocksas Music Fest ... Carolina Chocolate Drops open for Dylan, celebrate the Carter Family ... Wanda Jackson, k.d. lang play Edmonton Folk Fest ... Randy Newman concludes Australia tour in Sydney ... Punch Brothers play outdoors in MA ... Allen Toussaint joins Rita Coolidge at Telluride Jazz Celebration ... Sara Watkins joins the Decemberists at the Ryman ... and more ...
Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island, welcomes more festival sounds and Nonesuch artists this weekend, having hosted last weekend's Newport Folk Festival, which included performances from several Nonesuch artists, all of which can be heard at npr.org. This weekend, the 2011 Newport Jazz Festival takes place on the park's grounds and features a set by James Farm, which released its debut album on Nonesuch earlier this year. The collaborative band, featuring saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland will take the festival's main stage on Sunday at 1 PM ET.
"Typical of the festival's—and jazz's—rich crosscurrents these days is the collective quartet James Farm," writes Boston Phoenix's Jon Garelick in a feature on the group. "This is a band with unassailable jazz bona fides." Read the article at thephoenix.com.
For those unable to catch their set in person, NPR Music will again be webcasting live from Newport. For more information, and to tune in live on Sunday, head to npr.org.
Newport is not the group's only festival of the weekend, however, as they have a set the previous night at the Caramoor Music Festival's Venetian Theatre in Katonah, New York.
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As a part of New York City's Central Park SummerStage season, Laurie Anderson participates in Shelebration!, a tribute to the works of beloved author Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends). This free Saturday evening show is produced by Hal Willner and features Anderson and her husband Lou Reed along with a wealth of additional performers, including Melvin Van Peebles, Martha Wainwright, Dan Zanes, and others.
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The Black Keys take part in the inaugural Kanrocksas Music Festival with a performance at Kansas City's Kansas Speedway on Saturday.
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Carolina Chocolate Drops perform at Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, Ohio, tonight, opening for the legendary Bob Dylan. The band heads to Hiltons, Virginia, tomorrow to take part in the Carter Family Memorial Music Festival at the Carter Family Fold, which in turn is part of the Carter Family Memorial Music Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of old-time, traditional country and mountain music.
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Wanda Jackson is in Canada tonight for a show at the Edmonton Folk Festival before heading back to the States on Saturday to performs at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minnesota, for a double bill with Justin Townes Earle.
"The Edmonton Folk Music Festival has a knack for bridging generations of music fans with its mix of veteran and emerging acts," says the Edmonton Sun in a preview of tonight's show. "It’s a perfect storm for country and rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson, who broke out in the 1950s and is enjoying a resurgence in popularity at age 73."
The Edmonton Journal, choosing Wanda's set as a festival highlight, says: "Kind of a no-brainer, but seeing Wanda Jackson on a small platform where you can actually get up close and twist your hips is not to be missed."
American Songwriter's Evan Schlansky includes Jackson's performance of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good," off the Queen of Rockabilly's album The Party Ain't Over, among the highlights of last weekend's Newport Festival.
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Also performing at the Edmonton Folk Festival this weekend is k.d. lang, who returns to her homeland with her band the Siss Boom Bang for two festival sets: at the Regina Folk Festival on Saturday and the Edmonton Folk Festival on Sunday. As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, lang is today's guest on NPR's World Cafe.
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Randy Newman closes out his Australian tour tonight when he joins the Sydney Symphony for their second consecutive night at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.
Earlier this week, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald lauded Newman as "one of the greatest songwriters of the past 50 years," whose "work proves yet again that on the big questions, all too often the artists can illuminate the truth better than the essayists, the journalists and, perhaps less surprisingly, the politicians."
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Punch Brothers perform in Boarding House Park in Lowell, Massachusetts, as part of the Lowell Summer Music Series.
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Allen Toussaint performs on Sunday with Rita Coolidge at the Telluride Jazz Celebration in Telluride, Colorado's Town Park. The Denver Post's Reverb recently described Toussaint as "arguably the single most important musician of the New Orleans soul scene of the '60s and '70s, and one of the most influential soul producers of all time."
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Sara Watkins continues her tour with The Decemberists with two shows this weekend: at The Lawn at River State Park in Indianapolis tonight and at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Saturday.
Of her recent performance with the band at Mountain Park in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Chris Dondoros of the Republican praised her diverse set of talents: "Sara Watkins spent much of the night switching between a seemingly endless number of instruments, making the quintet sound like a band much larger in size."
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