Laurie Anderson and Björk's Biophilia app developer Scott Snibbe participate in all-day NYC event Survival of the Beautiful: Scientists and Artists Ponder the Aesthetics of Evolution ... Björk continues her NYC residency at Roseland ... ENO gives John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer its London premiere ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour the Midwest ... Philip Glass celebrates his 75th all weekend at NYC's Park Avenue Armory ... Emmylou Harris plays the HRC Equality Dinner in Nashville ... Kronos Quartet performs in New Jersey ... The Low Anthem headlines in New Hampshire ... Randy Newman tours Belgium ... Punch Brothers play the Northeast ... and more ...
Laurie Anderson will take part in an all-day Wonder Cabinet event at New York University's Cantor Film Center in New York City on Saturday titled Survival of the Beautiful: Scientists and Artists Ponder the Aesthetics of Evolution. The event, guest-curated by author David Rothenberg, includes presentations from 18 artists, academics, writers, musicians, and more examining the role of beauty in Darwin's theory of natural selection. Anderson will be joined by Elisabeth Weiss, owner and founder of DogRelationsNYC, in a discussion of how animals can learn music and art. Weiss taught Anderson's late dog Lolabelle to play the piano as part of the rat terrier's cancer treatment.
Other speakers at Saturday's event, which is free and open to the public, include virtual reality pioneer and bestselling author Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget), science writer Philip Ball, and digital artist Scott Snibbe, who collaborated with Björk to create the apps for her latest album, Biophilia. Snibbe will discuss how the project unfolded and how he helped transform the singer/songwriter's love of science into the app. Snibbe told the Guardian last year that the Biophilia app is “an expression of the music, the story, and the idea.” In addition to producing the app, he was commissioned by Björk last summer to create the images for the live shows.
Speaking of the Biophilia live shows, Björk plays her second night at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan tonight as part of the second leg of her month-long New York residency.
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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer receives its London premiere in seven performances by the English National Opera, led by conductor Baldur Brönniman, starting Saturday and running through March 9. The production follows ENO's highly successful productions of Adams' operas Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic. The award-winning director Tom Morris (War Horse) makes his opera directing debut.
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Carolina Chocolate Drops continue their US tour with two shows in Indiana, playing at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington tonight and at Earlham College in Richmond tomorrow. On Sunday, the group heads to Nelsonville, Ohio, to play a sold-out show at Stuart’s Opera House. David Wax Museum opens the latter two shows. Carolina Chocolate Drops new album, Leaving Eden, is due out next week on Nonesuch.
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The Tune-In Music Festival’s Celebrating the American Icon: Philip Glass at 75 continues at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City all weekend long following last night's opening performance featuring Bill Frisell and Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish. Tonight, Patti Smith and her band join Philip Glass for a sold-out performance that pays homage to Ginsberg. On Saturday, Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble perform his monumental work Music in 12 Parts in a sold-out concert. Sunday brings two performances: an afternoon concert showcasing a number of next-generation new-music pioneers assembled by Glass and a culminating concert featuring Glass’s Another Look at Harmony, a choral work he started in 1975 for organ and 100 voices.
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Emmylou Harris performs for the 17th Annual Human Rights Campaign Equality Dinner fundraiser at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, tomorrow. The HRC is the nation’s largest organization working to end discrimination against LGBT citizens.
Harris performed the closing set at the tribute concert honoring Warren Hellman, the late founder and sponsor of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, last weekend on the Great Highway by Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Among the day's other performers were John Doe, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, The Wronglers with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Gillian Welch, Boz Scaggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Robert Earl Keen. You can watch the entire event online at warrenhellman.org.
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Wanda Jackson performs at Track 29 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tomorrow night, and at Buster’s in Lexington, Kentucky, on Sunday with special guests Greg Garing and Fifth On the Floor.
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Kronos Quartet performs Saturday at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. The program will feature a Philip Glass arrangement of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and the Requiem for a Dream Suite by Clint Mansell, arranged by David Lang.
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The Low Anthem plays at The South Church on Saturday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, marking their first show following their North American tour with City and Colour, which came to a close last night. Redwing Blackbird opens the show.
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Randy Newman takes the stage at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall tonight as part of his recently launched European tour. Newman spends the next two days in Belgium, performing first at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels on Saturday and at Cultureel Centrum in Hasselt on Sunday.
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Punch Brothers launched their month-long North American tour with special guest Aoife O'Donovan last night at the Somerville Theatre outside of Boston. They give an encore performance in Somerville tonight and a show at the Higher Ground Ballroom in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday.
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