Jeremy Denk, Timo Andres perform at 68th Ojai Music Festival, of which Denk is Music Director ... David Byrne gives TimesTalk at Luminato Festival in Toronto ... Carolina Chocolate Drops play Chicago Blues Festival (as does Dr. John) and Bonnaroo ... Richard Goode is in UK ... Jonny Greenwood, LCO play music from his film scores in UK ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica play Bach in France ... Pat Metheny Unity Group tours Italy ... Robert Plant is in Sweden ... Rokia Traoré is at Fès Festival ... and more ...
Jeremy Denk is the Music Director for the 68th Ojai Music Festival, which got underway in Ojai, California, last night and continues through Sunday. (The program heads to Berkeley for Ojai North next weekend.) Most of the Ojai Music Festival’s talks and concerts are streaming live via ojaifestival.com, including the world premiere of The Classical Style: An Opera (of Sorts), with libretto by Denk and music by Steven Stucky, at Ojai’s hub, Libbey Bowl, tonight. The comedic opera is based on pianist and scholar Charles Rosen's 1971 book The Classical Style; Denk describes it as “a love letter to Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and a satire of classical pomp.” The Knights orchestra and Brooklyn Rider string quartet perform the piece, led by Robert Spano. Before the concert are several Ojai Talks in memory of Rosen at the Ojai Valley Community Church this afternoon, including conversations with Denk and his Nonesuch label mate pianist/composer Timo Andres.
Denk, whom the Los Angeles Times calls "a man who enjoys interpreting and intertwining musical pieces in novel ways," offers his own set of performances at Libbey Bowl this weekend: he joins violinist Jennifer Frautschi to perform Ives’s complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano in a duo concert Saturday morning. That night, he gives the world premiere of a new piano piece by Andrew Norman, and Timo Andres joins The Knights to perform his re-composition of Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto, heard on his 2013 Nonesuch album, Home Stretch. On Sunday, Denk and The Knights perform a morning concert of Mozart's “Jupiter” Symphony and what’s being described as “a mélange of musical canons and canon-esque miscellany” devised by Denk, followed by an evening concert of the Ligeti études (featured on his Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven) and works by Ives and Beethoven.
Andres, who tells the Santa Barbara Independent, “I like the idea of being in dialogue with the classical canon rather than putting it in a glass case in a museum,” also gives a solo piano concert at the Ojai Art Center on Sunday afternoon, performing Schumann’s Kreisleriana and his own companion piece, It takes a long time to become a good composer.
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David Byrne sits down with New York Times writer Ben Sisario for a TimesTalks conversation at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Ontario, on Sunday, as part of the Luminato Festival. For this interview series, Byrne discusses the evolution of music and the nature of listening in the digital age.
The new cast recording of Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Here Lies Love, released last month on Nonesuch Records, has been called "exceedingly seductive" by PopMatters. It “takes one to a wondrous world,” says the site, “to create something deeply suggestive and revealing. Imelda comes alive through Ruthie Ann Miles's sumptuous singing ... and the rest of the company all offer extraordinary vocal accompaniment.”
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Carolina Chocolate Drops, who kicked off their summer tour last night, perform the first main stage set of the Chicago Blues Festival at the Petrillo Music Shell in Chicago’s Grant Park tonight before heading down to Manchester, Tennessee, for two sets at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday afternoon. The group returns to Chicago and rounds out the Midwestern leg of the tour in Ann Arbor in the days ahead.
Dr. John, whose 1974 Allen Toussaint–produced album, Desitively Bonnaroo, inspired the name of the Tennessee festival, closes out the Chicago Blues Festival with a set at the Petrillo Music Shell on Sunday, directly following his fellow New Orleans native son Aaron Neville. The Chicago Sun-Times calls it the event’s “strongest closing bill in years.”
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Richard Goode performs at the Snape Maltings Concert Hall in Snape, England, on Saturday, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival. On the program are selections from Janáček’s An Overgrown Path, Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, and the first dozen of Debussy's Préludes (Book 1).
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Jonny Greenwood and soloists from the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO) join forces to perform at The Wind Tunnel Project in Farnborough, England, on Saturday. The program includes music from three film soundtracks by the Radiohead guitarist and composer, all of which were released on Nonesuch Records: writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s films The Master (2012) and There Will Be Blood (2007), and director Tran Anh Hung’s 2011 film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood. (The LCO performs on the most recent of these recordings, The Master.) In addition, this performance includes the premiere of new material by Greenwood, as well as works by Bach, Xenakis, Purcell, and LCO Composer-in-Association Edmund Finnis.
In August, Greenwood rejoins the LCO at the Roundhouse in London for a world premiere screening of There Will Be Blood with Greenwood’s score performed live by the orchestra, led by conductor Hugh Brunt.
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Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra perform two nights at La Grange de Meslay in Parçay-Meslay outside of Tours, France, on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s program comprises Philip Glass’s The American Four Seasons and excerpts from The Art of Instrumentation: Homage to Glenn Gould, the group’s latest Nonesuch album, and Sunday’s performance, with pianist Yulianna Avdeeva, features works by Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, and Piazzolla.
Kremer and his orchestra give one more performance in France before returning home to Latvia to kick off the XI Kremerata Baltica festival, titled “Riga’s Stars,” on July 2.
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Pat Metheny Unity Group—featuring Chris Potter, Antonio Sanchez, Ben Williams, and Giulio Carmassi—continues the Italian leg of its European tour in two cities this weekend: at Villa Manin Passariano del Friuli in Udine on Saturday and Arena Derthona in Tortona on Sunday. The band, performing selections from its recent Nonesuch debut album, Kin (←→), rounds out its tour of Italy in Roma, Florence, Avellino, and Bari in the week ahead.
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Robert Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters band round out the Scandinavian leg of their European tour at Dalhalla in Rattvik, Sweden, on Saturday. They head next to Estonia, Germany, Denmark, France, and Ireland, and close out the month with a set at the famed Glastonbury Festival in the UK. Nonesuch Records will release the legendary British singer/songwriter’s label debut later this year.
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Rokia Traoré performs songs from her latest Nonesuch release, Beautiful Africa, and more at Batha Museum in Fès, Morocco, on Saturday afternoon, as part of the Festival International des Musiques Sacrées de Fès.
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