Kronos Quartet’s annual Kronos Festival is at SFJAZZ Center, celebrating its Fifty for the Future–commissioned works, with Attacca Quartet and others. Laurie Anderson celebrates Mikhail Baryshnikov's 75th in upstate NY. The Black Keys are in Glasgow and London. Richard Goode performs Beethoven in Portland, ME. Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza is at NY City Center starring Ruthie Ann Miles; Miles starred in the original 2014 off-Broadway production of David Byrne & Fatboy Slim's Here Lies Love, which is in previews on Broadway. Makaya McCraven is at the Getty Center in LA. Natalie Merchant is joined by Orchestra of St. Luke’s at NJPAC in Newark. Mandy Patinkin performs on Long Island. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Hong Kong. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway tour Wisconsin and Missouri with Outlaw Music Festival.
Kronos Quartet’s eighth-annual hometown festival, Kronos Festival 2023, began at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco last night and continues through Saturday, celebrating the diverse array of works created for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future, a commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project.
The quartet is joined by guitarist/composer Rafiq Bhatia, sound artist / instrument-maker Victoria Shen, and the Friction Quartet at Miner Auditorium tonight for a program of works by Bhatia, Nicole Lizée, Tanya Tagaq, Terry Riley, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and others. Kronos joins Shen for Quartets for the Edge of Time: Traces of a Needle.
The quartet hosts Around the World with Kronos, a family concert at Miner Auditorium on Saturday morning, sampling short works from the globe-spanning Fifty for the Future repertoire—including music from Terry Riley, Garth Knox, Aftab Darvishi, Tanya Tagaq, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, and Wu Man—with “tour stops” in the composers’ home nations.
Later that afternoon, Kronos Festival Lab spotlights student ensembles from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in a free concert of Fifty for the Future compositions at Joe Henderson Lab. Following that, Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington joins Executive Director of the Kronos Performing Arts Association Janet Cowperthwaite and musicians/composers Rafiq Bhatia, Soo Yeon Lyuh, and Kronos cellist Paul Wiancko for a conversation moderated by Valérie Sainte-Agathe.
The festival culminates with a Kronos concert at Miner Auditorium on Saturday night, featuring special guests Attacca Quartet and Friction Quartet for a program of works by Philip Glass, Angélica Negrón, Zakir Hussain, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, and others.
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Laurie Anderson performs at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, New York, on Sunday, as part of Baryshnikov Arts Center’s celebration of the 75th birthday of its Founder & Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov. The event also includes music from Regina Spektor, Dianna Krall, and Kaoru Watanabe, as well as performances by Boris Grebenshikov and choreographer Mark Morris, a work-in-progress performance by Pam Tanowitz Dance, and remarks by actress Anna Baryshnikov.
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The Black Keys, currently touring Europe and the UK for the first time in eight years with music from their latest album, Dropout Boogie, and more, play OVO Hydro in Glasgow on Saturday with special guest Spoon, followed by a headlining show at Islington Academy in London on Sunday.
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Pianist Richard Goode performs an all-Beethoven program at St. Luke’s Cathedral in Portland, Maine, on Friday, as part of the Bach Virtuoso Festival. On the program are Six Bagatelles from Op. 119, nos. 6–11; Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109; and 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120. Gramophone calls Goode’s Grammy-nominated, ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas, released on Nonesuch in 1993, “one of the finest interpretations ever put on record.”
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New York City Center performances of the 2005 Tony Award–winning musical The Light in the Piazza, written by composer/lyricist Adam Guettel with a book by Craig Lucas, began on Wednesday and continue through Sunday for the venue's beloved Encores! series. The City Center production stars Ruthie Ann Miles, who can be heard on the 2014 original cast recording of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's musical Here Lies Love, which itself is currently in previews at the Broadway Theatre. Guettel and actress Victoria Clark, who originated the role of Margaret Johnson that Miles is playing this weekend, both won Tony Awards for The Light in the Piazza's original Broadway run, which also starred Kelli O’Hara and Matthew Morrison. The New York Times called the original cast album "sublime ... the most intensely romantic score of any Broadway musical since West Side Story." You can hear it here.
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Makaya McCraven plays a free show at the Getty Center in Los Angeles on Saturday, preceded by a DJ set from International Anthem founder Scottie McNiece. McCraven released his latest album, In These Times, on Nonesuch/International Anthem/XL last fall, 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").
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Natalie Merchant is joined by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s to perform music from her new album, Keep Your Courage, and more at NJPAC in Newark on Sunday. Merchant was on Good Morning America this week to perform the album track “Come On, Aphrodite,” joined by Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, who sings on the album as well; you can watch it here.
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Mandy Patinkin brings his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more—to the Suffolk in Riverhead, New York, on Sunday. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant, currently touring Asia with music from her new album, Mélusine, and more, is in Hong Kong this weekend, performing at Carlyle & Co. tonight and Saturday, and Tsuen Wan Town Hall on Sunday. She continues her tour with shows at Tokyo’s Cotton Club next week. “Salvant has already far transcended her early status as her generation’s most imaginative and thrilling jazz interpreter,” says SPIN, naming Mélusine one of The Best Albums of 2023 (So Far).
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway tour with the Outlaw Music Festival this weekend: they begin in Wisconsin at Somerset Amphitheater tonight and Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy on Saturday, before heading to Missouri to play Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights on Sunday. Their new album, City of Gold, due July 21 on Nonesuch, follows their acclaimed 2022 label debut, Crooked Tree, which won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. You can watch the newly released video for the album track “Next Rodeo” here.
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