Emmylou Harris joins Rufus & Martha Wainwright in presenting Nashville Noel Nights at the Ryman … John Adams’s El Niño is performed by LA Philharmonic … Devendra Banhart plays Standing Rock benefit in LA … Shye Ben Tzur, Rajasthan Express perform Junun in Thailand ...
Emmylou Harris joins Rufus and Martha Wainwright in presenting Nashville Noel Nights, this year's edition of the Wainwrights’ mostly annual Christmas benefit show, with special guests Alison Krauss, Karen Elson, and several members of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clans, including Loudon Wainwright III. The special event will be held this year at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Sunday and Monday, with proceeds going to the Kate McGarrigle Foundation for sarcoma research and the Epilepsy Foundation of Tennessee.
In 2005, Nonesuch released The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, an album in which sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle, their family—including Kate's children, Rufus and Martha—and honorary family members, like Harris, celebrated the holidays in song. That same year saw the start of a holiday tradition of live McGarrigle/Wainwright Christmas shows full of eclectic carols in French and English, traditional and not so traditional, starring McGarrigles, Wainwrights, and many friends.
Kate McGarrigle passed away in January 2010 after a battle with sarcoma. In 2013, Nonesuch released Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle, featuring highlights from three concerts held in her honor. Proceeds from the set, which includes performances by Harris, Anna McGarrigle, the Wainwrights, Antony, Norah Jones, Teddy Thompson, and others, go to the Kate McGarrigle Foundation as well. Antony's performance of "Go Leave" from the album was The Atlantic's Track of the Day earlier this week.
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Composer John Adams’s 2000 Nativity Oratorio, El Niño, is performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Children's Chorus, conducted by Grant Gershon, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight and Sunday, as part of the LA Phil’s John Adams @ 70 season-long series. In the next and final performances in the series, Adams conducts the LA Phil in his first opera, Nixon in China, in March.
Adams recently conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in El Niño at the Barbican and Philharmonie de Paris. The Evening Standard gives the Barbican performance five stars, praising the work’s “numinous aura, enhanced by a score of stunning inventiveness” and its “hypnotic, shimmering textures.”
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Devendra Banhart performs at the sold-out We Rock with Standing Rock benefit concert at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday. Other performers include TV on the Radio, Fiona Apple, Native Rock recording artist Robby Romero, Sky Ferreira, Benjamin Booker, and Valerie June. Proceeds from the event go to The Official Oceti Sakowin Camp (Seven Council Fires) Fund, Native Children’s Survival, The Seeding Sovereignty Project, and GiveLove.
Banhart embarks on a world tour, featuring songs from his latest release, Ape in Pink Marble, early next year. Q magazine and the Times of London give the album four stars; Uncut calls it "excellent."
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Shye Ben Tzur and the Rajasthan Express perform Junun at the Wonderfruit Festival in Pattaya, Thailand, on Saturday. Composer/musician Ben Tzur and the group, joined by guitarist Jonny Greenwood, first reunited to play Junun, the album they recorded in India in 2015, at Barbican Hall in London earlier this year. The Financial Times gave the show four stars, praising the music’s “uncomplicated exuberance … this was music that transported the listener, not just to the state of Rajasthan but to a state of mesmeric bliss.”
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