Emmylou Harris kicks off the 2011 Sydney Festival ... John Adams Slonimsky's Earbox featured in LA Phil live cinematic broadcast across the US ... Timothy Andres performs with his brother in Connecticut ... The Black Keys are musical guests on Saturday Night Live ... Björk hosts karaoke marathon in Iceland to fight energy company sale ... David Byrne talks Here Lies Love on MPR's The Current ... Randy Newman joins Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in New Orleans ... The Low Anthem plays close to home ... Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music closes on Broadway ... Allen Toussaint plays Tokyo ... and more ...
Emmylou Harris is in Sydney, Australia, this weekend for the launch of the 2011 Sydney Festival. The three-week festival kicks off on Saturday with Festival First Night, a free extravaganza in the heart of the city, in which Harris and her Red Dirt Boys headline an evening concert at The Domain. On Sunday, Harris and the four-piece band perform the first of two consecutive nights of shows at the State Theatre.
The Sydney Festival performances are Harris's only Australian performances this trip and mark the first time she's performed in the country in a decade. The Australian, in a preview of Harris's concerts, calls her "the reigning Queen of Americana." The Sydney Morning Herald calls her "the byword for quality music."
Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass will perform at the Sydney Festival next week: Kronos in the Australian premiere of A Chinese Home, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and a performance of Glass's score for Dracula with the composer. Glass also offers an evening of etudes and other work for solo piano. For more information, visit sydneyfestival.org.au.
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John Adams's 1996 piece Slonimsky's Earbox will open the first live-broadcast concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic showing in movie theaters across the United States at 2 PM PST on Sunday, kicking off the LA Phil LIVE series of concerts. Also on the program are Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 ("Jeremiah") and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Music Director Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the orchestra from the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Sunday, following performances of the program there tonight and Saturday. For more information and to find out where the concert is playing in a theater near you, visit laphil.com.
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Timothy Andres and his brother Wells are performing a violin-piano concert at The Taft School's Walker Hall in Watertown, Connecticut, tonight. (The school is Wells's alma mater.) Included on the program are Ravel’s Violin Sonata and Pärt’s Fratres.
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The Black Keys kick off the new year of Saturday Night Live as musical guests this Saturday night, with host Jim Carrey. Tune in to NBC Saturday at 11:30 PM EST to catch the show. Check out the promo for the show featuring bandmates Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach along with Carrey and cast member Kristen Wiig:
The Black Keys head to the Southern Hemisphere later this month for the Big Day Out tour of New Zealand and Australia.
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Björk launched a three-day karaoke marathon yesterday at the Nordic House in Reykjavík, Iceland, to raise awareness of and gain support for her campaign against the impending sale of her country's energy company HS Orka to Canada's Magma Energy. The karaoke-fest continues in venues throughout Iceland today and tomorrow, also marking Threttándinn, the end of Christmas, and will feature performances from many of Iceland's best-known musicians, including Björk herself. For more information, visit bjork.com.
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David Byrne is the subject of the latest episode of The Current Presents, an hour-long program from Minnesota Public Radio's The Current, airing Sunday night Sunday night at 9 PM CST. The show, titled How Did I Get Here? An Intimate One-Hour Conversation with David Byrne, will focus on Byrne's 2010 Nonesuch release, Here Lies Love, a collaboration with Fatboy Slim exploring the life of Imelda Marcos. The program includes several tracks from the album, featuring vocals by Florence Welch (of Florench and the Machine), Santigold, Sharon Jones, and others. Tune in at 89.3 FM in Minneapolis or online at minnesota.publicradio.org.
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Randy Newman kicks off his 2011 performance schedule with a return to his childhood hometown of New Orleans to perform with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra at the Mahalia Jackson Theater tonight.
"Playing with an orchestra in New Orleans feels like the most natural thing in the world for me," Newman told the Times-Picayune. Find out why in the paper's feature article on Newman at nola.com.
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The Low Anthem begin their tour season with a sold-out home-state performance at Lily Pads in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, with Joe Fletcher & The Wrong Reasons on Saturday.
In the coming weeks, the band will perform at the Allen Room in New York City as part of Lincoln Center's American Songbook series and at the Wiltern in Los Angeles opening for Iron & Wine. In February, the band will hit the road in support of its forthcoming Nonesuch album, Smart Flesh, due out February 22 and available for preorder now in the Nonesuch Store.
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The first-ever Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical A Little Night Music will end its run at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York this Sunday. The production opened in December 2009 and will have logged in more than 420 performances by Sunday's close. The revival's initial cast, led by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, is featured on the Nonesuch/PS Classics recording currently up for a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. Zeta-Jones won a Tony Award for her performance. She and Lansbury were later replaced by Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch, who will close the show on this weekend.
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Allen Toussaint begins a three-show tour of Japan on Sunday with the first of two consecutive nights at Billboard Live in Tokyo. After Monday's set in Tokyo, Toussaint will head to Osaka to perform at the Billboard Live there.
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