Yasmin Williams takes US tour to Alexandria and NYC. Mary Halvorson tours Germany and Spain with Tomeka Reid. David Longstreth and Jeff Parker perform at "I Love LA" Eaton Fire Relief benefit in Glendale. Brad Mehldau brings Après Fauré to Barcelona and London. Ringdown plays in Portland. Cécile McLorin Salvant and Metropole Orkest, led by Darcy James Argue, end their tour in Eindhoven. Davóne Tines and THE TRUTH bring ROBESOИ to Brussels.
Guitarist Yasmin Williams continues her US tour in support of her new album, Acadia, at the Birchmere in her hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, tonight and at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on Saturday. "As metaphors go, the mountaintop feels fitting for this moment in Yasmin Williams' career," writes Washington Post's Chris Richards. "Back in October ... she released her sumptuous third album, 'Acadia,' attracting a widening listenership to her highly inventive, largely unorthodox, totally alive style of music making." You can read the feature here and find it on the cover of the paper's Weekend section today. You can watch her performance of “Nectar” from the album for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Me Music series here, and watch her perform an acoustic set for Acoustic Guitar here.
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Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson continues her European tour with the Tomeka Reid Quartet, performing two shows in Germany—at Jazzclub Singen in Singen tonight and Gemeindehalle Gschwend in Gschwend on Saturday—and one at El Molino in Barcelona on Sunday. Halvorson, whose latest album, Cloudward, won the 2024 JJA Jazz Award, the DownBeat Critics Poll for Guitarist of the Year, and was recognized on many year-end lists including those of Slate, Jazzwise, The Quietus, Treble Music, The Guardian, All About Jazz, PopMatters, and more.
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David Longstreth and Jeff Parker both perform at the Glendale Presbyterian Church in Glendale, California, on Saturday, as part of the sold-out "I Love LA" Eaton Fire Relief benefit. They join Andrew Bird, Bright Eyes, Jim James, Anna Butterss, Kevin Morby, Lucius, Madison Cunningham, The Milk Carton Kids, Watkins Family Hour, and others to those affected by the Eaton Fire; proceeds go to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, performed by the composer with his band Dirty Projectors and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, is due April 4. The Way Out of Easy, Parker’s new album with his ETA IVtet—saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, drummer Jay Bellerose—was released to critical acclaim in November.
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Pianist Brad Mehldau brings music from his new album Après Fauré to Europe performing at L’Auditori in Barcelona tonight and at Wigmore Hall in London, on Sunday. On the album, Mehldau performs four nocturnes, from a thirty-seven-year span of Fauré’s career, as well as a reduction of an excerpt from the Adagio movement of his Piano Quartet in G Minor, along with four of Mehldau’s compositions that Fauré inspired presented in a group, bookended by two sections featuring the French composer’s works. Alongside Après Fauré, Mehldau released another new solo album, After Bach II, on Nonesuch last year. The Associated Press says: “Mehldau’s variations are bracing and daring, breathtaking and beautiful, spiritual and psychedelic. Blue notes emerge from the contrapuntal complexity as he tests the limits of Bach’s music, showing there are none.”
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Ringdown, the duo of Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan, performs at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday. Ringdown released two singles on Nonesuch last year—“Ghost” and “Two-Step”—and can be heard on “Slow Motion,” a track from Shaw and Sō Percussion’s new album, Rectangles and Circumstance, which just won the GRAMMY Award for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. You can read more here.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant concludes her week of performing with the Metropole Orkest, conducted by Darcy James Argue, at the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven, Netherlands, tonight. Last year, Salvant was named Female Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, and her latest album, Mélusine, made the Jazz Albums of the Year list. She can be heard on Argue’s Nonesuch debut album, Dynamic Maximum Tension. "Salvant is a fearless singer, composer, and visual artist who is one of the most highly regarded jazz vocalists of her generation," David Krauss, MET Opera Principal Trumpet and host of the Speaking Soundly podcast, says of this week's guest; you can hear their conversation here.
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Davóne Tines and his band THE TRUTH—sound artist Khari Lucas and pianist John Bitoy—perform music from their new album ROBESOИ at Bozar’s Terarken in Brussels on Saturday. The album grapples with a hero's legacy, exploding the musical repertoire of Paul Robeson. "Tines proves a masterful storyteller whose work is compellingly provocative,” Mojo says in its four-star review of ROBESOИ. You can hear the album here.
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