Jeremy Denk performs Bach’s Goldberg Variations at The Kennedy Center and Chicago Symphony Center ... Alarm Will Sound kicks off Metropolitan Museum of Art residency ... Sam Amidon rounds out US tour in LA ... Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter tour the US ... Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell take tour to Texas ... Gidon Kremer is in Germany ... Kronos Quartet is in Wisconsin ... Audra McDonald sings a Chicago Symphony Center ... Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club closes out US tour in NYC ... Joshua Redman tours Netherlands ... Chris Thile is in the South ... Rokia Traoré plays Paris ... and more ...
Pianist Jeremy Denk performs J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations in full at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater in Washington, DC, on Saturday afternoon and at Chicago’s Symphony Center the following afternoon. The Chicago Reader, in recommending the latter, describes Denk’s recently released recording of the piece for Nonesuch as a “magnificent performance.” Directly following Sunday’s concert, Denk signs copies of the album in Symphony Center’s first floor Rotunda. In November, Denk will tour with the San Francisco Symphony, performing Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 25 in four shows at Davies Symphony Hall and concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Krannert Center.
Denk discusses his recording of the Goldberg Variations in the latest edition of The New Yorker’s Out Loud podcast, available at newyorker.com. He has also penned a brief personal history for this week's issue of the magazine, in which he shares stories from his early career. The article, his third contribution to the magazine, is available online for subscribers at newyorker.com.
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Alarm Will Sound kicks off its season-long residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with a performance in the Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium tonight. The concert, including works by Ligeti, Wagner, and Schoenberg, is the first of four events in the residency. Next up is an all-Reich program featuring the New York premiere of his Radio Rewrite, on November 16. Both concerts will stream live from the Met via metmuseum.org.
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Sam Amidon concludes a five-week North American tour in support of his recently released Nonesuch debut album, Bright Sunny South, at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California, tonight. The London-based Amidon returns to the UK to tour there and Europe later this month.
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Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter, who resumed their US duo tour last weekend, perform three shows in three different states this weekend: at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, Illinois, tonight; the Center for the Performing Arts’ Brown Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday; and the Palace Theatre in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
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Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, currently on tour in support of their recent collaborative album, Old Yellow Moon, perform a sold-out set at Gruene Hall in Gruene, Texas, for the town’s Music & Wine Festival tonight.
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Gidon Kremer joins the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra for a performance at Vilnius Congress Hall tonight. On the program is Sibelius’ Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, Op. 47, and Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. The violinist then heads to Neuhardenberg, Germany, to join up with his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to perform a program titled Alles über Gidon at Neuhardenberg Schloß on Saturday.
Kremer organized a concert held at Berlin's Philharmonic Hall this past Monday, titled To Russia with Love, in support of human rights in Russia. Performers included Kremer and his orchestra, as well as Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Emanuel Pahud, on a program featuring classic works by Russian composers, contemporary pieces, and the premiere of a composition by Giya Kancheli. You can watch the concert here.
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Kronos Quartet, as part of its 40th anniversary season, performs at the Wilson Center for the Arts’ Harris Theater in Brookfield, Wisconsin, tonight. On the eclectic program are two pieces featured on Kronos’s 2009 Nonesuch album, Floodplain—Aleksandra Vrebalov’s …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… and the traditional Lebanese song “Wa Habibi (Beloved)”—along with works written for Kronos by Bryce Dessner, Nicole Lizée, and Pamela Z, and works by Sigur Rós, Alter Yechiel Karnoil, and R.D. Burman. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls it “a happy homecoming” for Kronos violinist John Sherba, who hails from the region and whose father will be in attendance. Read more at jsonline.com.
Earlier this week, Kronos founder David Harrington spoke with Oregon Music News in advance of a concert in Portland. “We’ve had access to musicians from so many different cultures and backgrounds that it’s just fabulous,” says Harrington. The group aims “to find ways for it to relate in unusual and perhaps even new ways that haven’t been thought of before. Basically, I think of our work as this vast set of variations.” Read the full interview at oregonmusicnews.com.
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Audra McDonald continues her North American tour with a performance at Chicago’s Symphony Center on Saturday, missing label mate Jeremy Denk by a day. Backed by a trio, she performs songs from her new album, Go Back Home, as well as other songs from the American songbook.
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Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club rounds out its US tour with two sold-out performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater tonight and Saturday. The all-Cuban Orquesta features a 15-member lineup of Cuban musicians, including lead vocalists Omara Portuondo and Eliades Ochoa, trumpeter Manuel “Guajiro” Mirabal, trombonist Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos, and laúd player Barbarito Torres, all of whom count themselves among the original Buena Vista ensemble. The group is set to launch its first national tour of Cuba in January.
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Joshua Redman and his quartet—featuring pianist Aaron Goldberg, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, and bassist Reuben Rogers—continue playing in the Netherlands this weekend with the second of two shows at Bimhuis in Amsterdam tonight, and Muziekgebouw Frits Philips in Eindhoven on Saturday, as part of the So What’s Next Festival.
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Chris Thile rounds out the Southern US leg of his tour with two performances this weekend: a solo set at Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg, West Virginia, tonight, and a day of duets with Michael Daves at The Festy Experience in Nelson, Virginia, on Saturday, held at the Devils Backbone Brewing Company concert grounds. Thile and Daves released a duo album of bluegrass tunes, Sleep with One Eye Open, on Nonesuch in 2011. This is the only time Thile performs with Daves on his otherwise solo tour in support of his new album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1.
Reviewing his “absolutely dazzling” show in Denver last week, Reverb writes, “the audience was enthralled by Thile’s performance from the first note.”
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Rokia Traoré continues the French leg of her tour at Le Trianon in Paris tonight and Le Moulin de Roc in Niort on Saturday. She performs songs from her recently released Nonesuch album, Beautiful Africa.
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