Tune in to hear Sara Watkins on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor ... Bombino tours Benelux ... Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter head East ... Dr. John is in the South ... Iron and Wine plays upstate NY ... Kronos Quartet performs Philip Glass in Vancouver ... Audra McDonald tours Texas ... Brad Mehldau's Mehliana is at Largo in LA ... Natalie Merchant joins the Alabama Symphony Orchestra ... Randy Newman goes to Galveston ... Joshua Redman is in Rome ... Chris Thile brings Bach to Boston ... and more ...
Sara Watkins joins Garrison Keillor and the cast of A Prairie Home Companion for a live broadcast performance of the show from the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Saturday, starting at 6 PM EDT. The show is broadcast on public radio stations across the US and streams live online at prairiehome.org. You can also hear a rebroadcast of the live stream on Sunday afternoon.
In addition to Watkins, a frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion (and its first-ever guest host), the show includes regular favorites the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.
Watkins, who released her latest album, Sun Midnight Sun, last year on Nonesuch Records, also guest starred on the season opener of Minnesota Public Radio’s variety show Wits, broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Thursday night. You can download the podcast of the show on iTunes.
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Bombino continues the European leg of his tour with a performance at Trix Club in Antwerp, Belgium, tonight, followed by two shows in the Netherlands: at Patronaat in Haarlem on Saturday afternoon, and Tivoli De Helling in Utrecht on Sunday. His tour features music from his Dan Auerbach-produced Nonesuch debut album, Nomad, released earlier this year.
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Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter continue their US duo tour with a performance at the Riviera Theatre and Performing Arts Center in North Tonawanda, New York, tonight, and Penn State University’s Eisenhower Auditorium in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Colvin heads to Chicago for two nights of solo shows at City Winery next week before resuming her duo tour with Carpenter in November.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Chuck Yarborough, reviewing their recent show in the city, says: “The acoustic setting actually was the perfect way to experience the singer-songwriter gifts of both women. It was just the two of them on acoustic guitars, with no trick pedals, no wah-wahs, nothing to clutter the message or the mirth.”
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Dr. John plays a sold-out set at the Jefferson Center’s Shaftman Performance Hall in Roanoke, Virginia, tonight, followed by a headline set at the LEAF Festival at Black Mountain, North Carolina, on Sunday. His performances feature selections from his Grammy-winning Dan Auerbach-produced Nonesuch debut album, Locked Down, and songs from throughout his career.
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Iron and Wine performs an acoustic set at the University of Rochester’s Strong Auditorium in Rochester, New York tonight, before kicking off the West Coast leg of a US fall tour in Los Angeles on Halloween.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Iron and Wine would headline the ninth annual Holiday Cheer for FUV concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on December 10, with Calexico as house band and Nick Lowe performing as well. Tickets are on sale today at noon via Ticketmaster.
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Kronos Quartet, as part of its 40th anniversary season, gives the world premiere of Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 6 at the University of British Columbia’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver on Saturday. Also 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 a traditional Iranian lullaby—along with works written for Kronos by John Oswald and Nicole Lizée, and works by Geeshie Wiley, Alter Yechiel Karnoil, and Tanburi Cemil Bey. Directly preceding the concert is a conversation with Philip Glass, hosted by broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reviewing the Kronos show in Wisconsin last weekend, describes the “absolute precision with which its members delivered piece after piece of music of the 20th and 21st centuries.”
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Audra McDonald reaches the halfway mark in her 22-city North American concert tour with two concerts in Texas this weekend: at the Wortham Center’s Brown Theater in Houston on Saturday, joined by musical director Andy Einhorn, and an all-ages performance at the Long Center in Austin on Sunday. She performs songs from her new album, Go Back Home, as well as other songs from the American songbook.
Billboard spoke with Audra McDonald about taking time between tour stops to rehearse for for a live staged version of The Sound of Music, which will be broadcast on NBC on December 5. Read the article at billboard.com.
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Brad Mehldau, as one half of Mehliana, his electric duo with drummer Mark Guiliana, has a two-day residency at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, with two sets tonight and two sets on Saturday. The duo, which kicked off a ten-day US tour earlier this week, heads next to Illinois, Ohio, and Massachusetts, before Mehldau heads to Europe for a week of solo shows. He and Guiliana reunite for a two-week Mehliana tour of Europe and the UK starting November 14.
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Natalie Merchant joins the Alabama Symphony Orchestra for a performance at the University of Alabama’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center’s Jemison Concert Hall in Birmingham tonight. Along with new works, the show features favorites from throughout Merchant’s storied career, including selections from her Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep.
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Randy Newman, recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, may hear the sea winds blowin' as he performs at The Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston, Texas, on Saturday.
Newman is set to speak at the keynote Q&A at the 2013 Billboard & The Hollywood Reporter Film and Music Conference in Hollywood later this month, where he will be interviewed by his son, Amos Newman, the head of Music for Visual Media at William Morris Endeavor. Together they will discuss music, film, family, and what is next in store. Click here for more info.
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Joshua Redman and his quartet—featuring pianist Aaron Goldberg, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, and bassist Reuben Rogers—perform at Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on Sunday following two performances in France this weekend: at Théâtre Municipal Raymond Devos in Tourcoing tonight, as part of the Tourcoing Jazz Festival; and Grange au Lac in Thonon on Saturday.
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Steve Reich’s Different Trains is on the program as French chamber orchestra Ensemble Intercontemporaine performs at Cité de la Musique’s Salle des Concerts in Paris on Saturday, nearly 25 years after it was recorded for Nonesuch. The piece features Hideki Nagano and Dimitri Vassilakis on piano, Diego Tosi and Jeanne-Marie Conquer on violin, Gregory Simon on viola, and Eric-Maria Couturier on cello. On the three-act program are also works by Pierre Boulez, Berio, and Pascal Dusapin, among others.
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Chris Thile brings the music of his Nonesuch solo album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1, and more to three different states this weekend: the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, tonight; the Bomhard Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday; and the Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday. He continues the northeastern leg of his tour with a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in New York City on Tuesday.
A new video released earlier this week finds Thile performing Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001 in its entirety. You can watch it here:
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