Timo Andres joins Alarm Will Sound in Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians in College Park and Philadelphia. Cécile McLorin Salvant premieres new piece at 92NY in NYC, where The Magnetic Fields play 69 Love Songs at The Town Hall. Sam Amidon plays with Laura Veirs in Portland and Shahzad Ismaily in Seattle. Hurray for the Riff Raff is in Texas for shows in Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston, where Kronos Quartet live-scores Sam Green's documentary about them. Nathalie Joachim is in Columbus. Mandy Patinkin performs in Peekskill and joins his family in conversation in New London. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is performed outside Pittsburgh. Chris Thile plays solo in Beaverton and Seattle. Yasmin Williams is in Tysons, VA.
Composer and pianist Timo Andres joins Alarm Will Sound to perform Steve Reich's landmark piece Music for 18 Musicians at The Clarice at University of Maryland in College Park on Saturday and Zellerbach Theatre in Philadelphia on Sunday. The all-Reich program also features Vermont Counterpoint, Clapping Music, and Radio Rewrite, the premiere recording of which Alarm Will Sound released on Nonesuch in 2014. Nonesuch Records’ recording of Music for 18 Musicians, performed by Steve Reich and Musicians, won a Grammy Award in 1998 and is now available on vinyl. The New York Times says: “It would be hard to think of any American music more important than this.”
Timo Andres’ new album, The Blind Banister, was released last month on Nonesuch. The album comprises three works by the composer/pianist: the titular piano concerto (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016), with Andres as soloist, and Upstate Obscura for chamber orchestra and cello, with soloist Inbal Segev—both of which feature Metropolis Ensemble and conductor Andrew Cyr—and the solo piano piece Colorful History, also performed by Andres. “Original and arresting,” says the Guardian’s four-star album review. “It’s a highly accomplished disc all round.” Alarm Will Sound released a/rhythmia on Nonesuch in 2009 and Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger in 2019.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, flutist Emi Ferguson, theorbo player/lutist Dušan Balarin, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and percussionist Keita Ogawa—give the world premiere performance of her new piece, Book of Ayres, at 92NY’s Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York City on Saturday. The piece was commissioned by 92Y for the venue’s 150th anniversary. To celebrate the recent one-year anniversary of her critically acclaimed album Mélusine, which DownBeat included among the year’s best and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” Salvant shared live performances of four songs from the album made at Oberlin College and Conservatory; you can watch those here.
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The Magnetic Fields are also in New York City, continuing their back-to-back, two-week residency at The Town Hall as part of their tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of their album 69 Love Songs. Performances continue tonight and tomorrow, following shows there last night and Wednesday, and four sold-out shows last week. These concerts feature the full album, all 69 songs, over two nights at each tour stop. The band brings the tour to Chicago next week.
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Sam Amidon joins Laura Veirs and her band—bassist and vocalist Karl Blau, saxophonist, synth player, and vocalist Charlotte Greve, and drummer, pianist, and vocalist (and frequent Amidon collaborator) Shahzad Ismaily—at Polaris Hall in Portland tonight. Amidon and Ismaily then head north to Seattle to conclude Amidon’s US tour with a duo performance at Ballard Homestead on Sunday.
Amidon’s Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices, was released this week. He chose music by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express; Astor Piazzolla; Kronos Quartet featuring Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, Natalie Merchant; Sam Gendel; Word of Mouth Chorus; and Bill Frisell. You can watch it here.
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Chris Thile is in the Pacific Northwest as well, performing solo at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, tonight, and the Meany Center for the Performing Arts in Seattle on Saturday. Thile’s latest solo Nonesuch release is 2021’s Laysongs; he and his fellow Punch Brothers released Hell on Church Street, a reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album Church Street Blues, in 2022.
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Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, concludes the West Coast leg of their North American tour, featuring music from their critically acclaimed new album, The Past Is Still Alive, in Texas this weekend, with shows at Tulips in Fort Worth tonight, 3TEN in Austin on Saturday, and White Oak Music Hall in Houston on Sunday. Segarra returns to their hometown of New Orleans for a set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and a headlining concert at Chickie Wah Wah later this month. They can be seen performing a Saturday Sessions set of songs from the new album on CBS News Saturday tomorrow morning.
“I'm such a big fan,” Elton John says of Hurray for the Riff Raff, his recent guest on his Apple Music show Rocket Hour. “This is an artist who loves what they do, and so do I.” You can hear their conversation here. “The Troubadour: How Alynda Segarra, a former train-hopping punk from the Bronx, became one of America’s best songwriters,” titles an extensive profile in New York magazine's Vulture on Segarra and their new album, written by Jenn Pelly. You can read the article here.
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Also in Houston, Kronos Quartet live-scores filmmaker Sam Green’s A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary at Jones Hall on Saturday. The multimedia experience—called “mind-blowing” by Newsweek and “magical" by the Los Angeles Times—blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with some of the many artists with whom Kronos has collaborated, like Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man, and Terry Riley. As Green tells the multi-decade and continent-spanning story of the quartet, Kronos revisits its extensive body of work, performing music by George Crumb, Laurie Anderson, John Adams, Clint Mansell, John Zorn, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and many others.
Earlier this year, as part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch released the group’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels on vinyl; the Evening Standard included it among the “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Late last year, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass, which the Washington Post called “an ideal combination of composer and performers.” Throughout the concert season, Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington has shared anniversary playlists spanning each of the group’s decades; you can hear the fifth and final one in the series here.
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Singer and composer Nathalie Joachim gives a solo performance of her new album, Ki moun ou ye, at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday. Ki moun ou ye, released earlier this year on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records, is “vividly sculpted,” says SPIN, and “dazzling,” per Bandcamp Daily. Joachim stopped by WNYC Studios last month to talk with New Sounds’ Soundcheck host John Schaefer and perform three songs from the album; you can hear the conversation and live set and watch the performances here.
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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 the Paramount Hudson Valley Theater in Peekskill, New York, tonight, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. Patinkin and his wife, actress Kathryn Grody, then meet up for a public conversation at the Garde Arts Center in New London, Connecticut, on Sunday. The program, moderated by their son Gideon Grody-Patinkin, offers a live in-person visit of family stories, professional anecdotes, and glimpses into the couple’s 40-plus years together. The three of them were on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday around Valentine’s Day 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. Patinkin’s latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.
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Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is performed by chamber choir Voces Solis in collaboration with Kassia Ensemble at Christ United Methodist Church in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. Mass for the Endangered is a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world—animals, plants, insects, the planet itself—an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. The first recording, released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records in 2020, features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch. CandyStations created the music videos for all of the tracks on the album, which you can watch here.
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Guitarist Yasmin Williams plays at Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia, on Saturday, as part of Vienna Jammers: The Big Jam 2024. The Vienna Jammers is a percussion ensemble of more than 135 children ages 8 to 18 years old from Northern Virginia that perform with both traditional and non-traditional instruments. Last fall, Williams released her first song on Nonesuch, “Dawning.” The track—featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing—provides an early peek at her Nonesuch debut album, due later this year. You can hear the song and watch the video for it here.
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