The Black Keys play two shows in Tennessee before helping to close out New Orleans Jazz Fest ... Kronos Quartet premieres new works at Carnegie Hall ... Jeremy Denk joins Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall ... Devendra Banhart kicks off tour in Colorado ... Bombino plays Belgium and Germany ... Lianne La Havas is at Cheltenham Jazz Festival ... Gidon Kremer joins Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich ... Brad Mehldau Trio and The Bad Plus with Joshua Redman perform in LA ... Sara Watkins kicks off tour of US West ... and more ...
The Black Keys close out their four-city tour with special guests The Flaming Lips at the Bridgestone Arena in their hometown of Nashville tonight. They stay on in Tennessee to play a Saturday night set in Tom Lee Park in Memphis as headliners at the Beale Street Music Festival.
The festivities continue through the weekend when The Black Keys head down to New Orleans to help close out the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest) with a Sunday afternoon set on the Acura Stage.
There are still more spring festivals ahead this month as the band hits two California events in the weeks to come: Bottle Rock Napa Valley next Friday and the recently announced KROQ Weenie Roast on May 18.
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Kronos Quartet performs at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall tonight, joined by special guest David Krakauer on clarinet. On the program are the world premiere of a Missy Mazzoli’s You Know Me From Here; the New York premieres of the Silvestrov String Quartet No. 3 and Aleksandra Vrebalov's Babylon, Our Own; and Laurie Anderson's Flow, from her latest Nonesuch album, Homeland. (Kronos and Anderson perform her latest piece, Landfall, at nearby Montclair State University in New Jersey next weekend.). In a pre-concert talk this evening, Kronos Artistic Director and violinist David Harrington joins composers Mazzoli and Vrebalov in a conversation with Carnegie Hall's Director of Artistic Planning Jeremy Geffen.
Kronos Quartet heads next to Kenne, New Hampshire, for a performance at the Colonial Theatre on Sunday, featuring Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11, Anderson’s Flow, the new Mizzoli piece, and more.
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Also performing at Carnegie Hall this weekend is pianist Jeremy Denk, who joins soprano Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet in Stern Auditorium Saturday night for a program titled Vienna: Window to Modernity, featuring works by R. Strauss, Brahms, Schoenberg, Wagner, and more.
The New York Times, reviewing Denk's solo recital at Carnegie Hall last month, says his “colossal interpretations conveyed the sense of composers grappling with the ineffable, inventing new vocabulary to express the inexpressible."
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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Devendra Banhart kicks off his six-week tour of the United States and Canada with two concerts in Colorado this weekend featuring music from his Nonesuch debut album, Mala: at Belly Up in Aspen on Saturday and Gothic Theatre in Denver on Sunday. The tour heads next to Arizona and to the West Coast for a run up California, Oregon, and Washington; then to the Midwest, Canada, and the East Coast, culminating in a concert at The Town Hall in New York City on June 12. Banhart begins a five-week tour of Europe on June 26.
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Bombino continues his European tour at Muziekcentrum Cactus in Bruges, Belgium, tonight, and at Ringlokschuppen in Mülheim An Der Ruhr, Germany, on Saturday. He rounds out this leg of the tour with two dates in Portugal later this month before making his way to the US, continuing the celebration of his Nonesuch debut album, Nomad, released in April.
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Gidon Kremer performs with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, concluding a two-night run at Gasteig München in Munich tonight. On the program is Haydn's Symphony in D minor, Schnittke's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 4, and Sibelius' Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39. You can watch a live broadcast of the performance on BR-Klassik.
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Lianne La Havas offers a set at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in Gloucestershire, England, on Sunday, one of a number of spring and summer festivals in Europe and the US at which she will perform, including Central Park SummerStage in New York City, XPoNential Music Festival in Philadelphia, and Lollapalooza in Chicago.
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The songs of k.d. lang's provides the inspiration and the musical setting for the Alberta Ballet's new piece, Balletlujah!, which receives its world premiere at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton tonight and Saturday. The piece was choreographed by the company's artistic director, Jean Grand-Maître, who collaborated with lang to create what the Alberta Ballet describes as "a heartfelt portrayal of the voice and the personality that has captivated audiences around the world for almost 30 years."
lang was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame late last month.
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Brad Mehldau Trio, featuring Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums, has two shows in Southern California with The Bad Plus this weekend: at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara tonight and UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday, where The Bad Plus is joined by special guest Joshua Redman. Time Out Los Angeles calls Royce Hall "an ideal venue for [Mehldau's] cool, reflective originals and interpretations." The show is a Los Angeles Times Critic's Pick, with writer Chris Barton concluding that "a knockout is certainly expected."
Redman's latest Nonesuch album, Walking Shadows, is due out this Tuesday, May 7. It was produced by Mehldau—the first time he has assumed that role for a project other than one of his own—and features a core ensemble comprising Mehldau, Grenadier, and Brian Blade.
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Allen Toussaint offers a sold-out solo piano performance at Snug Harbor in his hometown of New Orleans on Saturday, following his performance at Jazz Fest last weekend. The Wall Street Journal, reviewing that concert, describes Toussaint's work as "immense, impeccably crafted and indelibly tied to its home." Read the full review at wsj.com.
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Sara Watkins kicks off the western leg of her US tour at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday. She goes on to perform in five different Californian cities in the coming week before heading to the Pacific Northwest.
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