Youssou N'Dour performances, film at BAM ... Amadou & Mariam make music in Montreal, Boston ... Laurie Anderson comes to Colorado Imagination Fair ... The Black Keys play Pittsburgh, Philly, San Diego festivals ... David Byrne's in Philly too and Vienna, VA ... Bill Frisell is guest of honor at Telluride Festival ... Richard Goode performs Chopin, Bach in Bristol ... Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin open Luminato Festival ... k.d. lang joins Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion ... Low Anthem plays two states in one day ... Kronos gives Australian premieres of Floodplain pieces ... Sara Watkins takes the Mountain Stage with Steve Earle ... and more ...
Youssou N'Dour kicks off the Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas festival in a sold-out concert with his Super Étoile band at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) tonight. Youssou and the band return to BAM tomorrow night for the NY premiere of the documentary Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, about the making of his 2004 Grammy-winning album, Egypt, and a post-screening performance. The Village Voice describes Youssou's band as "astonishing" and Egypt as "a masterful expression of personal faith embellished with Cairean strings and, of course, the slippery Wolof beats that underlie N'Dour's complexly ecstatic mbalax sound." Watch the film's trailer at nonesuch.com/media.
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Amadou & Mariam play the second of two dates in Canada tonight at Montreal's Metropolis, with opener Melissa Laveaux, after last night's set in Toronto. From there, the duo return to the States for the remainder of their North American headlining tour. On Saturday, they'll play the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, with support from Club d'Elf and Anjulie.
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Laurie Anderson plays the first of a string of dates with her performance piece Burning Leaves tonight at Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. The concert is being held in conjunction with Imagination Fair, an exploration of the application of science and technology to art and music in downtown Fort Collins.
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The Black Keys play three shows in a row this weekend, starting with a festival-opening slot at the free Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh's Point State Park tonight. Tomorrow, they head east to Philadelphia's Festival Pier for the Roots Picnic, organized around the band now seen nightly as the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon; and on Sunday, they play the sold-out KBZT Independence Jam festival in San Diego. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a feature profile of the band that includes Patrick Carney's thoughts on his brief foray at the city's Art Institute. Read the article at post-gazette.com.
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David Byrne's summer tour of the States with Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno began this past Monday, with stops in Shelburne, Vermont; Montclair, New Jersery; and upstate New York's CMAC Performing Arts Center, leading the Rochester City Newspaper to describe Byrne an "'artiste' in the most expansive definition of the word. His life is a work of art, his art is a work of life, and his work is a life of art." The tour continues this weekend with stops at the Mann Center in Philadelphia tonight and the Filene Center in Vienna, Virginia, on Saturday, both with Devotchka supporting. On Monday, Byrne and company will open the new season of Celebrate Brooklyn!, the series of free, outdoor concerts in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.
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Bill Frisell is the guest of honor at this weekend's Telluride Jazz Festival in Telluride, Colorado. He and his Trio, featuring Eyvind Kang and Rudy Royston, will take the aptly titled Bill Frisell Town Park Stage Saturday evening in the capstone event of the festival.
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Richard Goode, whom The Observer has called "a poet of the piano," performs works by Bach and Chopin at St. George's in Bristol, England, tonight. Featured on the program are two of Bach’s Prelude & Fugues and selected mazurkas, nocturnes, and waltzes by Chopin, culminating in the epic Polonaise-Fantaisie.
The Guardian recently gave four stars to Goode's recent recordings of the complete Beethoven concertos with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic, has named it the CD of the Week on his blog, The Rest Is Noise.
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Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin continue their Three Girls and Their Buddy tour with Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller in three stops this weekend. Tonight's performance at Massey Hall in Toronto marks the Opening Night of the third annual Luminato Festival, a ten-day celebration of collaboration in the arts. On Saturday, the quartet plays the PNC Pavillion at Riverbend in Cincinnati, and on Sunday, they're at the renowned Ravinia Festival Pavillion outside Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times previews Sunday's show with a look at Miller's career and his ties to each of the three "girls" on the tour at suntimes.com.
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As reporter earlier today, k.d. lang will be among the special guests on this week's episode of A Prairie Home Companion, taping tonight from a live performance at LA's Greek Theatre. Joining k.d. and the show's host, Garrison Keillor, as special guests are Sheryl Crow and Martin Sheen.
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The Low Anthem is in for a busy Saturday. The Rhode Island–based trio will begin the day in its home state, playing an afternoon set at the Rhode Island Sustainable Living Fest at the Apeiron Institute for Sustainable Living in Coventry. Just hours later, the band plays the well-titled Thing in Spring Festival a couple states north in Peterborough, New Hampshire's Union Congregational Church. Seems Magnet magazine was right when it called the band "a possible contender for official summer band ‘09."
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Kronos Quartet is in Australia for two dates this weekend. Tonight, the group performs at the Sydney Opera House, with a program featuring the Australian premieres of a number of works off their most recent Nonesuch release, Floodplain, as well as the world premiere of Jon Rose's Music from 4 Fences. On Saturday, Kronos brings the program down to Melbourne for a performance at the Melbourne Recital Centre.
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Sara Watkins plays each night this weekend, from tonight's set at The Arts Center in Carrboro, North Carolina, to The Handlebar in Greenville, South Carolina, Saturday, and finally to the Chuck Mathena Center in Princetown, West Virginia. At that last stop, Sara will join the likes of the legendary Steve Earle and bluegrass masters Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver for a live performance event for public radio's Mountain Stage. (It also happens to be the night before Sara's 28th birthday.)
Leading to tonight's show in Carrboro, the Raleigh News & Observer has a feature profile of the singer-songwriter and her recent self-titled solo debut on Nonesuch, seen as "a mature and fully realized collection that shows the 27-year-old Watkins coming into her own as a virtuoso singer, fiddle player and record-maker."
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