Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman give final live performance of complete Highway Rider at Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA ... Timothy Andres plays in NYC's Ecstatic Music Festival ... The Black Keys' Austin City Limits set airs on PBS ... Shawn Colvin plays Washington state ... Ben Folds kicks off tour in Minneapolis ... Philip Glass pays tribute to Allen Ginsberg with Patti Smith in Paris ... Wanda Jackson, Jack White play sold-out shows in NYC, LA ... Audra McDonald sings at Utah State ... Randy Newman has solo shows in Arkansas, Texas ... Punch Brothers play three shows in the Midwest ... Allen Toussaint launches weekly series in NYC ... Dawn Upshaw sings Bartók, Berio with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra ... and more ...
Brad Mehldau brings together the musicians featured on his 2010 Nonesuch release, Highway Rider, for one final live performance of the album, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight. Those featured musicians—Mehldau's Trio, with Larry Grenadier on bass, Jeff Ballard on drums; label mate Joshua Redman on saxophone; and Matt Chamberlain on drums—will be joined by a chamber orchestra led by conductor Scott Yoo for the event. LAist selects the concert as a Classical Pick of the Week.
Mehldau, his Trio, Redman, Chamberlain, and Yoo gave the world premiere live performance of Highway Rider in November at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, followed by the New York premiere in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall and performances throughout Europe. New York Times music critic Nate Chinen called the Highway Rider album the "year’s most luxurious jazz release, a double album with Romantic underpinnings and a stealth foothold in classic rock." His Times colleague, Allan Kozinn, called the piece Mehldau's "grandest effort yet" joining classical music and jazz.
The Brad Mehldau Trio will next perform at the Virginia G. Piper Theater in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Saturday. Mehldau returns to Carnegie Hall, where he is the holder of the Debs Composer's Chair this season, for a solo set in Zankel Hall on Tuesday. The New York Times recommends the concert, with Nate Chinen explaining: "In his solo piano recitals Mr. Mehldau blends judicious pop offerings, archaic songbook standards and intricate originals, employing a touch that runs from sprightly to somber."
Redman follows Friday's performance with a solo performance of his Quartet, featuring Aaron Goldberg, Reginald Veal, and Gregory Hutchinson, at Zellerbach Hall in his hometown of Berkeley, California, Saturday night. Redman and his Trio, featuring Hutchinson and Matt Penman perform at the University of Colorado's Macky Auditorium in Boulder on Sunday.
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Timothy Andres continues his participation in the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York City—which he helped kick off in last Monday's Marathon session—when he joins ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) for a performance of Craig Wedren and Jefferson Friedman's song cycle On in Love at Merkin Concert Hall Saturday night. Andres spoke with new-music blog Sequenza21 about his participation in the festival and much more; you can read the article at sequenza21.com.
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The Black Keys' set for the long-running PBS performance show Austin City Limits, recorded late last year, airs on PBS stations across the US Saturday night at 9 PM ET/PT. Also on the show are Sonic Youth. Austin City Limits describes the episode as a look at "the evolution of electric guitar music." You can watch the band's performance of "Tighten Up" in the video below. Find out where and when the show is airing on a PBS station near you at austincitylimits.org.
As noted in the Nonesuch Journal last week, The Black Keys regrettably have had to cancel their shows in Australia and New Zealand, including the shows set to take place in Auckland today and on the Gold Coast on Sunday as part of the Big Day Out touring festival.
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Shawn Colvin shares a double bill with Loudon Wainwright III at the Washington Center for the Arts in Olympia, Washington, tonight.
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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Ben Folds kicks off his 2011 tour schedule with a concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this Sunday. He'll be joined by Street Corner Symphony, finalists of The Sing-Off, the NBC singing competition of which he was a judge.
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Philip Glass joins award-winning author and rock legend Patti Smith for a tribute concert to poet Allen Ginsberg at Salle Pleyel in Paris tonight. They will be performing reinterpretations of tracks from Smith’s seminal album Horses. Glass then gives a solo performance at the Auditorio de la Diputación de Málaga in Málaga, Spain, on Saturday.
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Wanda Jackson, whose Third Man / Nonesuch Records debut, The Party Ain't Over, is due out on Tuesday, performs three sold-out record-release shows with The Third Man House Band featuring Jack White on guitar in the coming days: at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, tonight, followed by sets at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday and Monday. The Los Angeles Times says the show is sure to be "a can't miss scorcher of an evening." Nonesuch Records gave three lucky winners tickets to the sold-out shows earlier today. Congratulations to Mark Piro, Ghazal Hashemi, and William Kyle Wilkerson, and thanks to all who entered!
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Strange Powers, the film documenting ten years of music-making by Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, opens at the Melwood Theater in Pittsburgh this weekend. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives the film three stars.
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Audra McDonald joins in the Celebration of the Arts Week at Utah State University's Caine College of the Arts in Logan, Utah, tonight for the event's Grand Gala in the Kent Concert Hall.
“She is a stunning artist with one of the most beautiful voices ever heard,” said Craig Jessop, dean of the Caine College of the Arts. “Her unbelievable talent is something I’m so excited to share with this community, and she is, without a doubt, one of the best professionals I have ever worked with. She is a true friend to this college.”
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Randy Newman has two shows in store this weekend: first at the Walton Arts Center's Baum Walker Hall in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Saturday, and then at Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth, Texas, on Sunday.
"In the ongoing American musical history, he sits in the highest echelon, an ambitious, daring artist as essential as Cole Porter or Bob Dylan," writes the Arkansas Times's John Tarpley in a preview of this weekend's show, "if only because he had the imagination to split the difference between the two. He's our country's Jonathan Swift, a big-hearted, blunt-mouthed satirist with a keen ear for ragtime melodies and a sharp, often misunderstood pen turned towards rednecks, politicians and, of course, short people."
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Punch Brothers have a full weekend of performances starting at the Rose Hulman Institute's Hatfield Hall in Terre Haute, Indiana, tonight, followed by Saturday’s show at the Bomhard Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, and closing out the weekend at Miami University of Ohio in Middletown on Sunday.
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Allen Toussaint launches a series of noontime Sunday performances at Joe's Pub in New York City this weekend. It is the first of five successive Sunday shows at the venue.
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Dawn Upshaw joins the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for three performances in and around the ensemble's home base of St. Paul, Minnesota. Upshaw performs folk songs by Bartók as well as Berio’s Folk Songs; the orchestra also performs Astor Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. They gave the premiere of the program last night at Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater and follow with encore performances at the Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie tonight and at the United Church of Christ in Saint Paul on Saturday.
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