This President's Day weekend in the United States, Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Georgia and Florida. Jeremy Denk performs Bach in Burlington. Rhiannon Giddens tours Germany, with shows in Hamburg, Berlin, and Cologne. Richard Goode performs Beethoven in Fresno. Mary Halvorson is at Roulette in Brooklyn. Makaya McCraven is in Saratoga Springs and Brattleboro. Mandy Patinkin is in Arizona, performing in Mesa and Tucson. The Staves join Nickel Creek in Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
This President's Day weekend in the United States, Cécile McLorin Salvant, accompanied by pianist Sullivan Fortner, brings music from her critically acclaimed new album, Mélusine, and more to the US Southeast. They perform at Clayton State University’s Spivey Hall in Morrow, Georgia, on Saturday, before heading to Florida for the start of a three-night, six-set run at Judson's Live at Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando on Monday. Mélusine, which DownBeat includes in its year’s best list and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” is up for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album; public voting is open now at naacpimageawards.net.
Salvant, who has just been nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis for International Live Act of the Year, has been named a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist for the historic New York City venue’s 2024–25 concert season. She will lead four performances throughout the season, including a small-group show, a duo set, a full-orchestra concert, and her multimedia theatrical piece Ogresse. More information is available here.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk performs a selection of Bach’s Partitas at the University of Vermont’s Recital Hall in Burlington tonight. You can hear him perform Bach and many other composers on his album c. 1300–c. 2000—released five years ago last week—which the Telegraph called “quite exhilarating” and BBC Radio 3 called “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital.”
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Rhiannon Giddens continues her two-week European tour, featuring music from her new album, You’re the One, in Germany this weekend, performing at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on Saturday, Lido in Berlin on Sunday, and Kulturkirche Ost in Cologne on Monday. On You’re the One, “Giddens melds the past and present, writing a bold new future for herself in the process,” says Rolling Stone. “One of Americana music's most vital voices expands her sound without abandoning her roots.” “It’s easy to hear the joyous spirit in which she’s singing these songs,” says Folk Alley, “and Giddens delivers a little masterpiece of an album that showcases her commanding presence as a singer and songwriter.” Uncut calls the album an “accomplished tour d’horizon by [a] prolific polymath.”
Giddens can be heard playing banjo and cello on the just-released Beyoncé song “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
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Pianist Richard Goode performs an all-Beethoven program at California State University’s Concert Hall in Fresno tonight. On the program are Six Bagatelles from Op. 119, nos. 6–11; Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109; and 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120. Gramophone calls Goode's Grammy-nominated, ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas, released on Nonesuch in 1993, “one of the finest interpretations ever put on record.” Timo Andres, in his recent Nonesuch Selects video, says: “Here’s a box you can’t live without.”
Goode's first recording of Bach partitas—numbers 2, 4, and 5—was released on Nonesuch twenty-five years ago today. His performance, says the San Francisco Chronicle, "is that rare blend in which a probing analytical intelligence is joined to a profound mastery of tone, color and phrasing."
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Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson joins cellist Rubin Kodheli and his trio—bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Brian Chase—for a set of improved music at Roulette in Brooklyn on Sunday. The concert will be livestreamed and archived for future viewing here. Halvorson’s new album, Cloudward, released last month on Nonesuch Records, features eight new compositions Halvorson performs with the sextet—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—and “reveals a newfound sense of beauty and clarity,” per the Guardian. “[Halvorson] outdoes herself again,” says All About Jazz. “Cloudward is just too good.”
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Makaya McCraven and his band—trumpeter Marquis Hill, bassist Junius Paul, and harpist Brandee Younger—bring music from his latest album, In These Times, and more to Arthur Zankel Music Center in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Saturday, before heading up to Vermont for a Sunday afternoon performance at Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro. In These Times was released in 2022 via International Anthem / Nonesuch / XL Recordings and made several year's best album lists, including those of Pitchfork (“a high-water mark”), NPR Music's Nate Chinen (“the culmination of a years-long experiment in groove ... just might be Makaya McCraven's manifesto”), and Treble (“McCraven's masterwork”).
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Mandy Patinkin brings his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more—to Arizona for performances at Ikeda Theater in Mesa tonight and Fox Theatre in Tucson on Sunday, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.
Mandy Patinkin and his wife Kathryn Grody were on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday with their son Gideon Grody-Patinkin to talk with host Scott Simon about what Simon calls the "sweet little interrogations of his parents" Gideon first posted to social media during the pandemic and which have offered their expansive audience a glimpse into their lives together. You can hear their conversation here.
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The Staves continue their tour of the US Midwest and South, as special guests of Nickel Creek—Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins—with a show at Clyde Theatre in Fort Wayne, Indiana, tonight. They head south from there, playing The Louisville Palace in Kentucky on Saturday and Durham Performing Arts Center in North Carolina on Monday. The tour ends next week with shows in Georgia and Florida. The Staves begin a headline tour in April in support of their new album, All Now, due March 22 on Nonesuch Records. The band released their latest single from the album, “I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It,” last month; you can hear it and watch a lyric video for it here. Nickel Creek’s album A Dotted Line was released on Nonesuch in 2014.
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