Devendra Banhart plays OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland … Jeremy Denk joins Britt Orchestra for Brahms in Oregon … Emmylou Harris is in Idaho, Montana … Lake Street Dive conquers Kansas City … Punch Brothers conclude Blue Note Tokyo residency … Steve Reich’s The Desert Music is performed at Sydney Opera House … The Staves play Edmonton Folk Music Festival … Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil perform at the Opening Ceremony of Rio Olympic Games … and more …
Devendra Banhart headlines the City of Music Stage at the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland, tonight. The singer/songwriter/guitarist's new album, Ape in Pink Marble, will be released by Nonesuch on September 23. Banhart wrote, produced, arranged, and recorded the album in Los Angeles with his longtime collaborators Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick, both of whom also worked on his 2013 album, Mala. Ape in Pink Marble, which Uncut has already described as “excellent,” is available to pre-order now with an instant download of the album's opening track, "Middle Names."
---
Jeremy Denk joins the Britt Orchestra for a program including Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Mozart’s Symphony No. 25, and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber at the Britt Festival in Jacksonville, Oregon, on Saturday. The New York Times has called Denk’s performances “rhapsodic … wildly imaginative … compelling … [and] elegant.”
---
Emmylou Harris takes a short break from her co-headlining tour with Lyle Lovett & His Large Band to play two solo shows: a set at The Festival at Sandpoint at War Memorial Field in Sandpoint, Idaho, on Saturday, and a sold-out show at the Wilma in Missoula, Montana, on Sunday. Harris concludes her tour with Lovett with two shows in Virginia next week.
---
Lake Street Dive, having launched the next leg of its North American tour earlier this week, plays the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Missouri, tonight and the Hinterland Music Festival at Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater in St. Charles, Iowa, on Saturday. "The band sounds like little else in 2016, with bits of jazz and Motown mixed into its yet up-to-date sound,” writes World Cafe host David Dye. “As great a powerhouse lead singer as Rachael Price is, it's the cohesion of all four band members that makes Lake Street Dive's newest album, Side Pony, unique."
---
Punch Brothers conclude their three-night, multi-set residency at Blue Note Tokyo with two performances tonight. The band continues on to a five-city run in Australia next week with stops in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne.
As reported last week, Punch Brothers have been nominated for a 2016 International Bluegrass Music Award for Instrumental Group of the Year. The nominees also include individual nods to band members Noam Pikelny ("Pickles"), up for Banjo Player of the Year (he won the award in 2014), and Chris Eldridge ("Critter"), up for Guitar Player of the Year.
---
Preceding Punch Brothers in Australia is a performance of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music in its entirety by Synergy Vocals and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson, at the Sydney Opera House tonight and tomorrow afternoon. The program also includes Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
Reich made his Nonesuch debut in 1985 with a recording of The Desert Music, his first work for large orchestra and chorus, performed by Steve Reich and Musicians and members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, led by Michael Tilson Thomas. The New York Times praised its “ingenious craft, transfixing rhythmic energy, and gorgeous sound.”
Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will be putting on a week of concerts to celebrate Reich’s upcoming 80th birthday, highlighting the composer's works at Davies Symphony Hall, September 7–11, culminating with a performance including Kronos Quartet.
---
The Staves play the Main Stage at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, with music from their new EP, Sleeping In A Car, and 2015 Nonesuch debut album, If I Was, at Gallagher Park on Saturday. Glide Magazine recently praised the trio’s set at Newport Folk Festival, writing that they “brought angelic vocals and ethereal keys to the Fort Stage, drawing eager listeners who likely weren’t expecting to find a new favorite band … they were enchanting.”
---
As noted in the Nonesuch Journal, the legendary Brazilian singers, songwriters, and guitarists Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil perform at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro at the Maracanã Stadium tonight. The ceremony will be broadcast around the world and can be seen in the US on NBC starting at 8 PM ET. Nonesuch released a live two-disc recording from Veloso and Gil—Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música: Multishow Live—earlier this year, celebrating a lifelong friendship over the half-century careers of two artists who hold key roles in developing and keeping Brazilian popular music vibrant and alive around the world.
- Log in to post comments
