Lianne La Havas, Makaya McCraven, and Jeff Parker perform at Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, while Richard Goode, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jeremy Denk perform at Caramoor outside NYC. Giddens is also in upstate NY and PA. Hurray for the Riff Raff's tour with Norah Jones concludes in San Francisco, while Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway's tour with The Infamous Stringdusters begins in Seattle and Montana.
The Newport Jazz Festival is under way at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island, with three sold-out days of performances today through Sunday, including appearances from Lianne La Havas, Makaya McCraven, and Jeff Parker. La Havas performs on the Quad Stage Saturday afternoon, while McCraven and Parker team up for a duo set at the Harbor Stage on Sunday evening.
Lianne La Havas' 2020 self-titled album, which was named Best Album at the Ivor Novello Awards, “demands, and rewards, all the attention you can give it,” says Rolling Stone. “The songs on this album, La Havas's third and perhaps best, reveal how her sophisticated artistry is made of not just brilliantly crafted lyrics,” says NPR Music, “but a rich musicality, full with gorgeous harmonic voicings, catchy rhythms and soulful melodies.”
Percussionist, producer, and composer Makaya McCraven’s latest album, In These Times, released in 2022, 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”).
Guitarist/composer Jeff Parker’s 2021 album, Forfolks, was declared “a beautifully freewheeling, guitar-driven expression of joy and musical exploration,” by Guitar World, “a masterpiece of improvisation.” Pitchfork, including the album in its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2022, says, “like the best of his work, it is quiet yet commanding, an invitation to drift as well as dream.”
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Meanwhile, just outside New York City, it’s a very Nonesuch weekend at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, which hosts Richard Goode, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jeremy Denk.
Pianist Richard Goode brings an all-Beethoven program to Caramoor’s Venetian Theater tonight, performing Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109; Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110; and Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111. Gramophone calls Goode's famed 1993 set of the complete Beethoven sonatas “one of the finest interpretations ever put on record.”
Rhiannon Giddens—who won in the DownBeat Critics Poll for Beyond Artist and Beyond Album of the Year for her latest, You're the One—brings music from that album and more to the Venetian Theater on Saturday, following a concert at the Robinson Pavilion at Anyela’s Vineyards in Skaneateles, New York, tonight, as part of Skaneateles Festival. She performs at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Pianist Jeremy Denk joins the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by Thomas Wilkins, for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 at Caramoor’s Venetian Theater on Sunday afternoon. You can hear Denk perform Beethoven and many other composers on his 2019 album, c. 1300–c. 2000, which the Telegraph called “quite exhilarating” and BBC Radio 3 called “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital.”
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Hurray for the Riff Raff concludes their nine-city run with Norah Jones, bringing music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, to The Masonic in San Francisco 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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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—begin a five-city run with The Infamous Stringdusters with shows at the Moore Theatre in Seattle tonight and Abayance Bay Marina in Rexford, Montana, on Saturday. The band has just announced a new six-song EP, Into the Wild, due September 20 on Nonesuch. You can hear the title track here.
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