Louis Andriessen's six decades of music-making are being celebrated at the Barbican in London, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 … Timo Andres premieres new piece in NY … Jeremy Denk plays the Goldberg Variations in London … Kronos Quartet plays Riley and more in Montana … Brad Mehldau goes solo in Europe … Joshua Redman is in Budapest … Rokia Traoré celebrates release of her new album with in-store showcase in Paris … and more ...
This long weekend marking Presidents' Day in the US (not to mention Valentine's Day and Grammy Monday!), composer Louis Andriessen's six decades of music-making are being celebrated at the Barbican Centre in London all week. The special series of concerts, titled Andriessen: M is for Man, Music & Mystery, held in Barbican Hall and at Milton Court Concert Hall, began on Tuesday and continues through Saturday.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Martyn Brabbins performs the UK premiere of La Commedia, Andriessen's Grawemeyer Award–winning film opera, of which Nonesuch released a two-CD-and-DVD recording in 2014, tonight. The orchestra returns on Saturday for a BBC SO Total Immersion Day featuring a conversation with Louis Andriessen about his life and music as well as a range of concerts including: a performance of "De Stijl" from his opera De Materie; Britten Sinfonia performing the UK premiere of an arrangement for string orchestra of Andriessen's …miserere… and his Dances for soprano; plus UK premiere performances of Andriessen’s "Mysterien" and Rosa's "Horses" with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Listeners around the world can hear highlights from the Total Immersion on Hear and Now on BBC Radio 3 Saturday night at 8 PM; listen online at bbc.co.uk.
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Timo Andres and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn give the New York premiere of Andres’s Running Theme, at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn on Saturday night. Also on the program are Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.
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Jeremy Denk concludes his tour of Europe and the UK with two performances of Bach’s complete Goldberg Variations in England: at St. John’s College in Oxford tonight and Wigmore Hall in London on Sunday morning. Denk recorded the Goldberg Variations for his latest Nonesuch album, in 2013.
The Irish Times spoke to Denk ahead of his show in Dublin last week, positing that “Denk’s deep understanding of maths allows him to see the beauty of the musical patterns in Bach’s Goldberg Variations.”
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Kronos Quartet is in Montana this weekend, giving concerts at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky tonight and Hamilton Performing Arts Center in Hamilton on Sunday. The program includes Terry Riley’s "One Earth, One People, One Love," which lent its name to the five-disc Kronos box set of works by Riley released last year on Nonesuch.
Kronos presented its second-annual hometown festival at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco last weekend, to which the Financial Times gave four stars.
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Brad Mehldau gives three solo piano recitals this weekend, including a performance at the Flame Jazz Festival at Sigyn-Sali in Turku, Finland, tonight, a sold-out show at Sellosali in Espoo, Finland, on Saturday, and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Munster, Germany, on Sunday.
Glide magazine recently reviewed Mehldau’s critically-acclaimed 10 Years Solo Live, calling it a “multi-faceted listening experience, in sequence or as separate and unique sessions, an unusually enlightening encounter with one of the most brilliant musicians of our time.”
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Joshua Redman lends his saxophone to Müpa Budapest’s Composer’s Evening with composer and pianist Kálmán Oláh at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest tonight. Redman was recently included in a New York Times article about this year’s Grammy Awards improvised jazz solo field, which you can read at nytimes.com.
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Rokia Traoré celebrates the release of her new album, Né So, with a free in-store showcase at FNAC Saint-Lazare in Paris tonight.
The Daily Telegraph, in its four-star review of Traoré’s tour-opening concert at the Roundhouse in London last week, called the performance “irresistible.” “From the ethereal guitar and vocal lines with which she set down the bones of her songs,” writes reviewer Neil McCormick, “she and her five-piece band constructed an involving weave of sound and rhythm, each new layer adding elements of movement and harmonic depth until the whole became almost overwhelming.”
Né So, Traoré’s sixth album, features 10 original songs and a cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." NPR calls it a "gorgeous new album" from a "fantastically gifted" artist. The Times says: "Traoré has made the album of her career."
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