Brad Mehldau leads residency at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in NYC. Sam Amidon performs at UK's End of the Road. Ambrose Akinmusire tours France and Germany. Tyondai Braxton is in Woodstock. Jeremy Denk performs in the Republic of Georgia. Emmylou Harris is at Rhode Island's Rhythm & Roots Fest. Hurray for the Riff Raff is at Bumbershoot in Seattle. The Magnetic Fields perform 69 Love Songs at the Barbican in London, where Steve Reich's Jacob’s Ladder gets UK premiere at Royal Albert Hall for BBC Proms. Jeff Parker is in LA. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway are in Virginia, Georgia, and Illinois.
This Labor Day long weekend in the United States, Brad Mehldau continues a four-night residency at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in New York City, joined by bassist Felix Moseholm, through the weekend, with early and late sets tonight, Saturday, and Sunday. Mehldau released two new solo albums, After Bach II and Après Fauré, on Nonesuch earlier this year. The Associated Press says: “Mehldau’s variations are bracing and daring, breathtaking and beautiful, spiritual and psychedelic. Blue notes emerge from the contrapuntal complexity as he tests the limits of Bach’s music, showing there are none.”
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Sam Amidon performs on the Talking Heads Stage at Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset, United Kingdom, tomorrow, for the End of the Road Festival. Amidon’s latest release, his 2020 self-titled album, is “a fine showcase for [his] studio experimentation,” says Rolling Stone, adding that the album “incorporates elements of spacious, echoing ambient electronic music to complement Amidon’s warm vocals, reminiscent of Nick Drake and Arthur Russell.” No Depression, describing it as “full of delicate noise and artful sophistication,” says it “deserves a pause in a harried time.”
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Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his quartet—Sam Harris on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass, and Justin Brown on drums—are on tour in Europe, performing at Scène Sully in Nantes, France, tonight as part of the Rendez-vous de l'Erdre Festival, and Konzertsaal der Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, Germany, on Saturday for Cologne JazzWeek. Akinmusire stays on at Cologne JazzWeek for a solo set for at St. Agnes Church on Sunday. He was named Trumpeter of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, and his Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, featuring Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley, made the Jazz Albums of the Year list. "A quiet rush of gorgeous sound where space, tone and beauty come together in one of the most impactful albums of 2023," says DownBeat. "This is one of the most interesting recordings to come along in a very long time by one of the most interesting artists of our time."
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Tyondai Braxton performs at Maverick Concert Hall—where John Cage's 4'33" premiered in 1952—in Woodstock, New York, on Monday as part of the Unexpected Music experimental music mini-festival. Throughout the daylong event, the artists will engage with the avant-garde history of this century old venue and explore it within a contemporary context.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk is in the Republic of Georgia, performing with violinists Joshua Bell and Irène Duval, violist Blythe Teh Engstroem, and cellist Steven Isserlis at the Tsinandali Estate’s Chamber Music Hall in Tsinandali, as part of the Tsinandali Festival. The all-Fauré program features the composer’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 45, and Piano Quintet No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 89.
Denk’s new album Ives Denk is due October 18 on Nonesuch Records. It is a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ives’ birth and features the composer’s four violin sonatas, performed with violinist Stefan Jackiw, as well as remastered versions of his Sonatas No. 1 and 2 for piano, from Denk’s 2010 debut recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives. “In the Barn,” the second movement of Sonata No. 2 for violin, can be heard here.
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Emmylou Harris performs at the Rhythm Stage at Ninigret Park in Charlestown, Rhode Island, on Saturday for the Rhythm & Roots Festival. Harris’s second Nonesuch album, Stumble Into Grace, was released on vinyl for the first time, in a limited cream-colored edition, last year, for its twentieth anniversary. Newsweek declared: “Her stellar voice takes on new depth when tied to songs this personal.”
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Hurray for the Riff Raff brings music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, to the Bumbershoot Arts + Music Festival in Seattle on Saturday. Segarra is up for the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards for Album of the Year for The Past Is Still Alive, which Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly include in their lists of The Best Music of 2024 So Far, while the album track “Ogallala” is included in New York magazine’s Vulture’s list of The Best Songs of 2024 (So Far).
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The Magnetic Fields continue the European leg of their 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary tour performing sold-out shows at the Barbican in London on Saturday and Sunday. The concerts, which continue in Europe through September before picking back up in the US in October, feature the full album, all 69 songs, over two nights at each tour stop. The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt curated an hour-long playlist for BBC Radio 6 Music's Freak Zone, fittingly featuring nothing but love songs.
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Guitarist/composer Jeff Parker and his Trio—Jeremiah Chiu on modular synth and Ben Lumsdaine on drums—explore some sonic terrain at The High Low (formerly The Griffin) in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, on Monday.
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Composer Steve Reich’s new work Jacob’s Ladder receives its UK premiere in a performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Synergy Vocals, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, at Royal Albert Hall in London tonight for the BBC Proms. Also on tonight’s program are works by Stravinsky, Tippett, and Elgar. Jacob’s Ladder, a BBC co-commission, premiered at David Geffen Hall in New York City last fall, performed by Synergy Vocals and the New York Philharmonic, conducted Jaap van Zweden. “The 20-minute new piece burbles with a steady, propulsive rush … brightly etched … lilting vividness,” says the New York Times. “Energetic while meditative … light, graceful, refreshing. Twenty minutes passed like a song.” The New York Classical Review adds: “Lovely and refreshing, and the performance struck the first-time hearer as superb.”
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway—who have been nominated for eight IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards, including Album of the Year for their latest, City of Gold—perform at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center in Vienna, Virginia, tonight as special guests of Old Crow Medicine Show, then lead sets at the Blue Ridge Music Center in Galax, Georgia, on Saturday, and Shoe Fest’s Bent River Stage at Camp Shaw-Waw-Nas-See in Manteno, Illinois, on Sunday. The band’s new six-song EP, Into the Wild, is due September 20 on Nonesuch; you can hear the title track here.
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