The stage production of John Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary, directed by Peter Sellars, premieres with LA Philharmonic; new Adams documentary premieres on BBC4 TV ... Laurie Anderson Domain privé concludes in Paris ... Timothy Andres plays Crumb and Reich in Chicago ... Björk concludes her Parisian Biophilia residency ... Jeremy Denk performs in Santa Barbara ... Lianne La Havas tours the UK ... Kronos Quartet, Wu Man perform at the Auckland Arts Festival ... Brad Mehldau tours Europe with Mehliana ... Audra McDonald performs in the Midwest, guests on CBS's The Good Wife ... Joshua Redman helps inaugurate the SFJAZZ Center ... Steve Reich is in residence at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ... Sara Watkins tours the South ... and more ...
The stage production of John Adams's new oratorio, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, directed by his frequent collaborator Peter Sellars, was given its world premiere by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles last night. Performances continue tonight and Sunday afternoon. While Adams's 2000 piece El Niño was his take on a Nativity oratorio with a libretto by Peter Sellars, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, an LA Phil commission, is their vision of a Passion, juxtaposing Biblical narratives with contemporary meditations, images, and challenging experiences. Sellars’ new libretto includes words of five extraordinary women—Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Day, Rosario Castellanos, June Jordan, and Hildegard—which are set by Adams. Following its concert premiere last spring, The New Yorker's Alex Ross wrote that the piece "contains some of the strongest, most impassioned music of Adams’s career," calling it "an immensely potent work, one that may prove pivotal in the composer's output."
The new documentary American Master: A Portrait of John Adams, by filmmaker Mark Kidel, will broadcast for the first time on BBC4 TV tonight at 8 PM. The film will also be screened at the Barbican in London on March 16 as a prelude to the European premiere of The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the LA Philharmonic. You can watch an excerpt from the film here.
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Laurie Anderson's five-day Domain privé at the Cité de la musique in Paris comes to a close this weekend with a performance of her piece Transitory Life in the Salle des concerts on Saturday and a conversation with writer Bernard Comment in the Amphitheatre Sunday afternoon.
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Timothy Andres joins fellow pianist David Kaplan, who is featured on Andres's 2010 Nonesuch debut album Shy and Mighty, for Makro-American: Crumb/Reich, a program with Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion at Merit School of Music's Gottlieb Hall in Chicago tonight. The performance includes master works by two American composers: George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) and Steve Reich’s Sextet.
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Björk concludes her Parisian Biophilia residency with a final performance in the round at the club Le Zenith tonight.
All this month, Björk's "Mutual Core" music video from Biophilia is being shown on over 15 of the largest digital screens in Times Square in New York City at three minutes before midnight as a Midnight Moment, presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts.
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Jeremy Denk performs at University of California–Santa Barbara's Campbell Hall on Saturday. On the program is Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, which he performs on his 2012 Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven, as well as works by Bartók, Liszt, and Bach. Preceding the performance, Denk will hold a free morning master class with UCSB students at Geiringer Hall.
Denk performed the program at Boston's Jordan Hall last week, giving what the Boston Globe's David Weininger described as a "revelatory performance" of the Beethoven. Says Weininger: " It would be foolish to understate how remarkably talented he is." Read the review at bostonglobe.com.
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Lianne La Havas continues the UK leg of her tour this weekend with a show at the HMV Institute in Birmingham tonight and at the HMV Ritz in Manchester on Sunday. Her UK tour culminates in two sold-out shows at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London next week. La Havas then makes her way across the Atlantic for the SXSW music conference in Austin next week and the launch of her US tour in Dallas the following Sunday.
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Kronos Quartet is joined on their tour of New Zealand by pipa virtuoso Wu Man for a special performance at the Civic Theatre in Auckland Saturday as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. On the program are A Chinese Home, a multimedia piece conceived by Wu Man, Kronos Quartet's David Harrington, and Chen Shi-Zheng, and Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, which the artists recorded for a 1997 Nonesuch album. There will be a free Q&A immediately following the performance.
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Brad Mehldau continues his month-long European tour with Mehliana, his duo project with drummer Mark Guiliana, which began earlier this week. Mehliana, which finds Mehldau on Fender Rhodes and a battery of synths, performs this weekend at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest on Saturday and the Lucerna Music Bar in Prague on Sunday.
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Audra McDonald performs at two universities in the Midwest: for Dominican University’s 33rd Annual Trustee Benefit Concert in River Forest, Illinois, on Saturday, and Lawrence University’s Artist and Jazz Series in Appleton, Wisconsin, on Sunday. Fans across the country can catch her as a guest star on the CBS series The Good Wife Sunday night.
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Joshua Redman helps inaugurate the new SFJAZZ Center's Miner Auditorium in San Francisco, now in its opening season, in a sold-out performance with table virtuoso Zakir Hussain on Sunday. Redman’s forthcoming album Walking Shadows, the first to feature an orchestral ensemble, will be released in May and is currently available for pre-order with an instant download of the Redman-penned tune "Final Hour," in the Nonesuch Store.
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Steve Reich is the focus of a number of events this weekend at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, where he will perform, discuss his work, and be the subject of a number of performances. The residency begins with a concert on Saturday featuring his new piece, Radio Rewrite, performed by London Sinfonietta in the culmination of a UK tour premiering the work, which draws inspiration from songs by Radiohead. The all-Reich program opens with the composer in Clapping Music, and also includes Electric Counterpoint, 2x5, and Double Sextet.
Tuesday's premiere of the program at London's Royal Festival Hall, which received four stars from the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, and Independent, was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3's Live in Concert and is streaming online on bbc.co.uk in part one and part two.
Sunday afternoon begins in a conversation and Q&A with the composer led by Svend Brown, immediately after which London Sinfonietta in collaboration with NYOS Futures, the contemporary music group of the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland, perform Reich’s Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings. And following that concert, The Colin Currie Group performs his famed early '70s piece Drumming.
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Sara Watkins kicked off her three-week headlining tour last night in Duluth, Georgia, and continues across the South this weekend: tonight at the Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain, North Carolina (where a VIP tickets include a brewery tour and tasting); The Franklin Theatre in Franklin, Tennessee, on Saturday; and the Headliners Music Hall in Louisville on Sunday.
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