Kronos Quartet celebrates Terry Riley's 80th birthday with three-night Terry Riley Festival at SFJAZZ ... Sam Amidon is at Wilco's Solid Sound Fest ... The Bad Plus Joshua Redman plays Montreal Jazz Fest ... David Byrne's Contemporary Color comes to Brooklyn ... Olivia Chaney plays Glastonbury ... Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell's White House performance on The Gospel Tradition airs on PBS ... Harris, Crowell are in Sydney ... Brad Mehldau plays in Amsterdam ... Randy Newman tours Northern California ... Punch Brothers tour the Midwest ... and more ...
Groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley turned 80 this past Wednesday, and Kronos Quartet marks the occasion with Kronos Presents: Terry Riley Festival, a three-night celebration of its longtime friend and collaborator at SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium in San Francisco this weekend. The quartet joins pipa virtuoso Wu Man and tabla master Zakir Hussain for the opening concert tonight, followed by a celebratory after-party. Kronos then joins Riley and his son, guitarist Gyan Riley, as well as new music ensemble The Living Earth Show and more, for Kronos, Terry & Friends, an evening of new works, birthday tributes, and Riley classics, Saturday night. The weekend closes out with a rare performance of Riley’s 1986 string quartet Salome Dances for Peace, performed in its entirely by Kronos for the first time in 20 years on Sunday.
Salome Dances for Peace is included in One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley, the five-disc box set released by Nonesuch Records earlier this week. Also in this set of work composed for and performed by Kronos are Requiem for Adam, The Cusp of Magic, and Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, which was also released as an individual record.
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Sam Amidon continues his US tour with two performances in the Northeast: with Bill Frisell at Solid Sound Festival, Wilco’s music and art festival, in North Adams, Massachusetts, Saturday, and at Caffe Lena in Saratoga, New York, Sunday.
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The Bad Plus Joshua Redman closes out its four-city tour of Canada and the current leg of its North American tour with a performance at Montreal’s Théâtre Maisonneuve for Montreal International Jazz Festival Sunday. In preview of Wednesday’s show, the Vancouver Sun called the trio’s debut eponymous album “some of the best music that either the trio or Redman has ever done, tuneful, lively and thoughtful at turns, but ready for wherever the journey takes them.” The quartet heads to the United Kingdom next week to start a summer tour of Europe.
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Devendra Banhart celebrates the release of his newly published collection of drawings, painting and media pieces, I Left My Noodle on Ramen Street, with a free book signing, performance, and reception at LACMA in Los Angeles on Sunday. He talks with 5 Every Day head writer Zach Pennington about his book and music and performs a few songs with his band; his friend Niki Haas plays DJ for the reception..
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David Byrne is joined by Nico Muhly, Nelly Furtado, Ira Glass, Devonté Hynes, St. Vincent, tUnE-yArDs, and more, for two performances of the new collaborative performance piece Contemporary Color at Barclays Center in Brooklyn Saturday and Sunday. The piece, which features ten of North America’s most elite color guard teams, was co-commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music and Toronto’s Luminato Festival.
“[T]he 100-minute Contemporary Color flowed with the easy fluidity of a compact 10-song album,” wrote Rolling Stone of Wednesday’s performance in Toronto. “[Each piece] yielded a wonderfully WTF, once-in-a-lifetime moment.” Time Out New York predicts that it “might be the coolest event of the season.”
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Olivia Chaney returns home to England following a month-long North American tour for a performance at the Glastonbury Festival on Sunday. While touring the US, Chaney stopped by The Current’s Radio Heartland to perform songs from her debut album, The Longest River. You can hear that session here.
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Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell 's very special performance in The Gospel Tradition: In Performance at the White House, from April, receives its TV broadcast premiere on PBS stations across the US tonight at 9 PM ET. They join President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and an esteemed group of performers, including Aretha Franklin, Darlene Love, and Lyle Lovett, to pay tribute to the fundamental role gospel music has played in the American musical tradition. Watch Giddens's concert performance of "Up Above My Head" here.
Harris and Crowell continue their tour of Australia with performances at the Star Event Centre in Sydney on Saturday and WIN Entertainment Center in Wollongong on Sunday. Reviewing last weekend’s show in Perth, the West Australian wrote, “It was a night that lovers of authentic country Americana music won’t forget in a long while.”
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Brad Mehldau performs with his wife, singer Fleurine, at Bimhuis in Amsterdam on Sunday. He kicks off a European tour with his trio at the beginning of July.
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Randy Newman gives two performances in Northern California this weekend: at the Nevada County Fairgrounds for the Music in the Mountains series in Grass Valley tonight, and a free set at Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco, with an opening set from Hot Club of San Francisco, on Sunday.
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Punch Brothers continue their summer tour in the Midwest with a set at Summerfest in Milwaukee tonight, then head to Cincinnati for a double bill with Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn at the Taft Theatre on Saturday.
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