Kronos Quartet bids farewell to longtime members John Sherba and Hank Dutt at Kronos Festival in San Francisco. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Chris Thile, and Punch Brothers return to Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado, where Emmylou Harris is in Steamboat Springs. Illinoise cast members sign CDs at Barnes & Noble in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Frisell, and Herlin Riley, perform Owl Song in California. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society performs Dynamic Maximum Tension at Ottawa Jazz Fest. Yussef Dayes plays SummerStage in NYC. Jeremy Denk gives a masterclass in Santa Barbara. Brad Mehldau goes solo in France and Belgium. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Cleveland.
Kronos Quartet’s ninth-annual hometown Kronos Festival began at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco last night and continues through Sunday, marking the ensemble’s milestone 50th Anniversary season and featuring the farewell performances of violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt, members of Kronos for more than 45 years, as well as their longtime manager, Janet Cowperthwaite.
The quartet is joined by Nathalie Khankan and Tanya Tagaq at Miner Auditorium tonight for a program of works by Tagaq, Nicole Lizée, and others, as well as the world premiere of Active Radio, which combines live music from Kronos and a conversation between civil rights lawyer and activist Dale Minami and journalist Brooke Gladstone.
There are two daytime conversations at the Joe Henderson Lab on Saturday: one with Sherba and Dutt, moderated by Gladstone, and one with composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, founders of the Luna Composition Lab, which provides mentorship and resources for teenage female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers. Kronos returns to Miner Auditorium that night, joined by Mahsa Vahdat and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, to perform works by Vahdat, Terry Riley, Vladimir Martynov, Yoko Ono, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, Pete Seeger, and others.
The festival culminates with the quartet live-scoring filmmaker Sam Green’s A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary at Miner Auditorium on Sunday, the final performance of a multimedia experience that blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with some of the many artists with whom Kronos has collaborated.
---
The 51st annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival—a summer solstice tradition—began yesterday in Colorado and continues through Sunday, with return appearances by Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Chris Thile, and Punch Brothers. Following Thile’s duo performance with Billy Strings yesterday, Punch Brothers take the main stage on Saturday afternoon. Tuttle and her band bring music from their critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, to the festival’s main stage on Sunday evening, following a performance with Old Crow Medicine Show at Dillon Amphitheater in Dillon, Colorado, tonight, and a NightGrass set at Sheridan Opera House on Saturday. Per tradition, Punch Brothers close things out with a NightGrass performance at Sheridan Opera House on Sunday night.
City of Gold won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and the International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year. Thile’s latest solo release is 2021’s Laysongs, and Punch Brothers released Hell on Church Street, a reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album Church Street Blues, in 2022.
Emmylou Harris is also in Colorado this weekend, performing at the Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs tonight. Harris’s second Nonesuch album, Stumble Into Grace, was released on vinyl for the first time, in a limited cream-colored edition, last year, for its twentieth anniversary. Newsweek declared: “Her stellar voice takes on new depth when tied to songs this personal.”
---
Members of Broadway’s Illinoise: A New Musical company and creators are at the Atlantic Avenue Barnes & Noble in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, this afternoon for a conversation and signing of the original cast recording CD, out today on Nonesuch Records. The cast performed at The Tony Awards last weekend—you can watch it here—and the show's director, choreographer, and co-author Justin Peck won the Tony for Outstanding Choreography. The show, which features music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens based on his album Illinois, with new arrangements by Timo Andres, and is now playing at Broadway's St. James Theatre.
---
Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is joined by guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley, as he was on his 2023 Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, to perform music from it in Northern California: at Bing Concert Hall in Stanford tonight and Bacchus Landing in Healdsburg on Saturday, with a set from the Brandee Younger Trio, as part of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. "This is subtly profound music, full of meditative, focused beauty,” Uncut exclaims of Owl Song. DownBeat says: "A quiet rush of gorgeous sound where space, tone and beauty come together in one of the most impactful albums of 2023 … This is one of the most interesting recordings to come along in a very long time by one of the most interesting artists of our time."
---
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society takes music from its 2023 album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, to Argue’s home country of Canada, performing at National Arts Centre’s Azrieli Studio in Ottawa tonight, as part of Ottawa Jazz Festival. He spoke with Marc Chénard, longtime editor of Canada’s La Scena Musicale, for a feature in Chénard’s final issue as editor; you can read what he had to say here. Last month, Argue won the Jazz Journalists Association's 2024 JJA Jazz Award for Arranger of the Year.
---
Multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes brings music from his 2023 album, Black Classical Music, to New York City for a free set at Central Park’s SummerStage on Saturday, before heading down to Virginia for a show at The National in Richmond on Sunday. Black Classical Music recently won the UK's Ivor Novello Award for Best Album and was named one of the Albums of the Year by Rough Trade, BBC 6 Music, PopMatters, Boston Globe, AllMusic, and NPR Music, which declares it “an absolute feast.”
---
Jeremy Denk gives his second successive weekend solo piano masterclass, The Roots of Mastery, at Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall in Santa Barbara, California, this afternoon.
---
Brad Mehldau is solo in Europe this weekend, beginning with a set at Fort Kleber in Wolfisheim, France, tonight, for Wolfi Jazz Festival, followed by a performance of selections from his new album Après Fauré at Palais des Beaux in Charleroi, Belgium, on Saturday. He returns to France for a program of music by The Beatles and more at Théâtres Romains de Fourvière in Lyon on Sunday, as part of Les Nuits de Fourvière.
Mehldau’s new solo albums, After Bach II and Après Fauré, were released last month on Nonesuch. 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.” Last year, he released the solo album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, landing on year’s best 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.”
---
Cécile McLorin Salvant and her band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Aaron Kimmel—perform at Playhouse Square’s Mimi Ohio Theatre in Cleveland tonight, as part of Tri-C JazzFest. Last month, Salvant won the Jazz Journalists Association's 2024 JJA Jazz Award for Female Vocalist of the Year. She was a recent guest on The New Yorker Radio Hour, speaking with host David Remnick and performing three songs with Sullivan Fortner; you can hear it here.
- Log in to post comments
