Brad Mehldau plays three nights at the Blue Note in NYC with Christian McBride ... John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls is performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ... Louis Andriessen turns 75 ... Bombino is in Italy ... Shawn Colvin, Steve Earle close out duo tour in Chicago ... Richard Goode joins Deutsche Symphonie Orchester in Berlin ... Emmylou Harris plays pet rescue benefit in Nashville ... Kronos Quartet plays Philip Glass with Nederlands Dans Theater ... Pat Metheny Unity Group tours Europe ... Conor Oberst plays the Ryman ... Robert Plant is in the Netherlands ... Joshua Redman Quartet tours Australia ... Allen Toussaint is in Chicago ... and more ...
Pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Christian McBride kick off a three-night run at the Blue Note in New York City, with two consecutive sets each night, tonight, Saturday, and Sunday. Part of the month-long Blue Note Jazz Festival 2014, this marks the duo premiere from these longtime friends and collaborators. The program pulls pieces from their extensive shared history, which dates back to their work together as part of Joshua Redman’s quartet in the 1990s; both performed on MoodSwing, Redman’s first album with his own band, which Nonesuch reissued in 2009.
Mehldau, who had a six-night run a few New York City blocks away at the Village Vanguard with his Trio last month, heads to Canada at the end of this month for the Toronto and Montreal jazz festivals, including sets with Mehliana, his electric duo with drummer Mark Guiliana; they launch a tour of Europe on July 5. “This is a modern jazz piano giant’s full-on and plugged-in engagement with hard-hitting grooves and electronic vibe,” writes the Ottawa Citizen about Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, the duo’s debut album, released on Nonesuch earlier this year. “Between them, it’s a musical conversation of the highest order. Indeed, given the range of what Mehldau and Guiliana do, it’s also a full-fledged orchestrated event, scarily blending compositional rigour and jam-band looseness.”
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John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy Award–winning piece On the Transmigration of Souls is performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore tonight and on Sunday, and the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda on Saturday. Adams wrote the piece (released on Nonesuch in 2002) to commemorate the one-year anniversary of September 11. The program, conducted by Marin Alsop, also includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Nonesuch Records recently released John Adams’s City Noir, which comprises "two stellar pieces" (New York Times): the title piece and the debut recording of Adams’s new Saxophone Concerto featuring saxophonist Timothy McAllister, who "sizzles."
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Louis Andriessen, who celebrates his 75th birthday today, has his 1975 piece Workers Union performed by the London Sinfonietta at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London Saturday evening. The program, titled Assemble, which also includes Frederic Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge and the world premiere of a new piece by Emily Hall, is a collaboration between the London Sinfonietta and the public, featuring 50 amateur, student, and professional musicians in the performance.
Andriessen's Grawemeyer Award–winning film opera La Commedia, a collaboration with director Hal Hartley, is due out on Nonesuch Records next week in a two-CD-plus-DVD set of the Dutch National Opera production. It is available to pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store.
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Bombino rounds out the Italian leg of his European tour at the Auditorium Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre tonight and the Bari in Jazz festival in Bari on Saturday, for which Roy Paci joins Bombino and his band on trumpet. The Tuareg guitarist, who released his Nonesuch debut album, Nomad, last year, heads next to Germany to perform a headline set at the Afrika Tage München festival in Munich’s Theresien meadow on Sunday. The tour rounds out in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Croatia, and Slovenia though the end of the month, after which Bombino and the band tour North America.
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Shawn Colvin and fellow singer-songwriter Steve Earle close out their “Songs and Stories: Together Onstage” duo tour with a sold-out show at Thalia Hall in Chicago tonight. These two longtime friends and mutual admirers share music from their extensive catalogues as well as some of their favorite songs by other classic songwriters, sharing the stage for a night of song swapping, duets, and storytelling. “There also was an obvious mutual admiration for each other’s talents, making for a rich, remarkably relaxed 110-minute performance,” writes the Orange County Register about their recent show in California. “The blending of these two voices often heightened the strength of their songs.”
Colvin joins another famed singer-songwriter, Richard Thompson, as a “counselor” at Frets and Refrains, Thompson's acoustic guitar and songwriting camp in Big Indian, New York, later this month.
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Richard Goode joins the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester (DSO) Berlin and conductor Herbert Blomstedt at the Konzerthaus Berlin tonight and Saturday. The program opens with Goode performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, which he recorded for Nonesuch as part of a series of albums with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Also on the program is Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6.
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Emmylou Harris, who’s groundbreaking album, Wrecking Ball, was recently reissued on Nonesuch Records, performs at the Fontanel Mansion in Nashville for the third-annual Woofstock at Fontanel benefit on Saturday afternoon. The event helps to support Harris’s animal rescue, Bonaparte’s Retreat, and Crossroads Campus, which gives disadvantaged youth and adults the opportunity to care for homeless cats and dogs.
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Kronos Quartet joins the contemporary dance company Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) for three consecutive nights at the Food Center’s Market Hall in Amsterdam Saturday through Monday, as part of the month-long Holland Festival. Kronos performs new and existing works by Philip Glass as dancers of NDT 1 perform the site-specific piece Spiritwalking, choreographed by Sol León and Paul Lightfoot. Nonesuch Records recently celebrated Kronos’s 40th anniversary year with two releases: the album A Thousand Thoughts and the five-CD box set Kronos Explorer Series, comprising five classic albums from five different parts of the world.
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Pat Metheny Unity Group—woodwind player Chris Potter, drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist Ben Williams, and multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi—rounds out the French leg of its European tour at the Arcadium in Annecy tonight and the Salle Poirel in Nancy on Saturday, followed by a performance at Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht on Sunday. The tour, in support of its debut album Kin (←→), continues in the UK and Italy in the days ahead.
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Conor Oberst, who recently released his Nonesuch debut album, Upside Down Mountain, rounds out the first leg of his tour with special guests Dawes in two performances down South this weekend: at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville tonight and Buster’s in Lexington, Kentucky, on Saturday.
Reviewing one of two recent shows at First Avenue in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune notes Oberst’s “needle-point intensity and a go-all-out-or-go-home kind of passion.”
Oberst and Dawes kick off a tour of Europe next month.
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Robert Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters band kicked off their summer tour in full force at the Mawazine Festival in Rabat, Morocco, last night. Up next is a set at the Pinkpop Festival in Landgraaf’s Megaland in the Netherlands on Saturday. Nonesuch Records will release the legendary British singer/songwriter’s label debut later this year. The tour continues in Scandinavia in the week ahead.
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Joshua Redman Quartet—with Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums—concludes its tour Down Under in three different Australian cities: at the Melbourne Recital Centre tonight, as part of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival; the Queensland Multicultural Centre in Brisbane for the Brisbane International Jazz Festival on Saturday; and a sold-out show at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney on Sunday. The ensemble heads next to Europe, with dates in France, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands in the weeks ahead.
Nonesuch Records is set to release Redman’s forthcoming album, Trios Live, on June 17.
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Allen Toussaint performs an all-ages show at SPACE in Evanston, Illinois, tonight, featuring songs from throughout his storied career.
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