Brad Mehldau concludes his four-night residency at Smoke Jazz Club in NYC, where Punch Brothers continue their acoustic variety show at Minetta Lane Theater with guests James Taylor and Gaby Moreno, and Makaya McCraven plays Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. In Florida, The Black Keys headline Riptide Music Festival in Fort Lauderdale and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway are at Orange Blossom Revue in Lake Wales. Shara Nova performs The Blue Hour in Ann Arbor. In California, Yussef Dayes is at The UC Theatre in Berkeley and Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, where Alarm Will Sound is joined by Nathalie Joachim and Alyssa Pyper at The Nimoy.
Brad Mehldau concludes his four-night, sold-out residency at Smoke Jazz Club in New York City tonight and Saturday, with three solo sets each night. Mehldau's new solo album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, has landed on Top 10 Albums of the Year lists from Jazzwise and DownBeat, which describes it as "the music of The Beatles channeled through the mind of one of our greatest living pianists." “A great improvising pianist takes on The Beatles,” says Mojo. “An inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics.” Mehldau’s acclaimed 2002 album Largo was released on vinyl for the first time last spring.
Across the East River, there’s more jazz being made as Makaya McCraven plays Pioneer Works in Brooklyn tonight. McCraven, who recently won the Deutscher Jazzpreis for International Drums/Percussion, released his latest album, In These Times, last year, making 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”).
Back in Manhattan, Chris Thile and his fellow Punch Brothers continue The Energy Curfew Music Hour, their new, fully acoustic musical variety show with special guests, at Minetta Lane Theatre on Saturday. This week's guests: James Taylor and Gaby Moreno! The five-concert series runs through December 10, with each night being recorded for future release as an Audible Original. The show imagines a near future where electricity is rationed worldwide with 24 hours of the energy grid down to promote the unplugged lifestyle. In this future, The Energy Curfew Music Hour broadcasts across the country the hour before the lights go out.
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The Black Keys bring music from their latest album, Dropout Boogie, and more to Fort Lauderdale Beach in Florida on Saturday for the headlining set at Riptide Music Festival.
About three hours north, in Lake Wales, Florida, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway bring music from their critically acclaimed and Grammy-nominated new album, City of Gold, to the Orange Blossom Revue tonight. Tuttle and the band earned their second consecutive Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album, for City of Gold, following last year's win for their debut album, Crooked Tree. Rolling Stone recently named Tuttle one of “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” saying: “Even before they started sweeping awards ceremonies, California-raised, Nashville-based bluegrass innovator Molly Tuttle and her crack band Golden Highway were writing their name into the history of roots music.” Earlier this week, they shared an animated music video for their track “Down Home Dispensary,” which may be seen here.
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Heading to the Midwest, composer and vocalist Shara Nova joins the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, conducted by Jayce Ogren, for a free performance of The Blue Hour—a song cycle composed by Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, set to excerpts from Carolyn Forché’s epic poem On Earth—at the University of Michigan’s Hankinson Rehearsal Hall in Ann Arbor tonight. Nova performs on the premiere recording of the piece with the chamber orchestra A Far Cry, which was released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records last year, and was just nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical. “Unforgettable,” writes NPR Classical’s Tom Huizenga, naming the album to his list of the ten best of 2022. “Nova has rarely sounded so all-encompassing—from intimate communications to full-throated operatic splendor, backed by the agile string orchestra A Far Cry.”
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Out in California, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes takes his US tour of music from his critically acclaimed new album, Black Classical Music, across the state this weekend, with shows at The UC Theatre in Berkeley on Saturday and the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday. NPR Music declares Black Classical Music “an absolute feast,” while Paste says “Dayes’ debut is an enormous statement of his talent.” AllMusic considers it “easily a top pick for best albums of 2023.” The album has landed at No. 6 on Rough Trade's list of the Best Albums of the Year.
Also in Los Angeles, Alarm Will Sound is joined by vocalist, flutist, and composer Nathalie Joachim and violinist Alyssa Pyper at The Nimoy on Saturday, for a program that includes Eartheater’s When Fire is Allowed to Finish, as well as works by Joachim and Pyper. Alarm Will Sound can be heard on several Nonesuch albums, including the premiere recordings of Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger (2019) and Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite (2014), and its own 2009 collection, a/rhythmia.
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