Davóne Tines and his band THE TRUTH perform ROBESOИ on Little Island in NYC; he can be heard on the Met Opera's NYC Pride March float. Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara play at the Met Museum and MASS MoCA. Ambrose Akinmusire is at Montreal Jazz Fest. Yussef Dayes is in Saratoga Springs and at Ottawa Jazz Fest. Jeremy Denk joins Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Vail. Brad Mehldau goes solo in Kraków. Natalie Merchant is in Boone, NC. Cécile McLorin Salvant sings French songs at UK's Grange Festival. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is performed in Singapore and Oregon. Chris Thile goes solo in Big Sky, MT. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway play from Kentucky to Wisconsin.
Davóne Tines and his band THE TRUTH—pianist John Bitoy and sound artist Khari Lucas—conclude their four-night residency at Little Island in New York City with the premiere performances of their new work, ROBESOИ, tonight and tomorrow, following shows last night and Wednesday. Tines and THE TRUTH released “LET IT SHINE,” the first song from ROBESOИ, on Nonesuch last month. “As this ‘Let It Shine' progresses,” says WNYC's Soundcheck, “Tines begins to show off his remarkable ability to soar into heights that a so-called ‘bass-baritone’ simply has no business being in.” Details of the forthcoming ROBESOИ album, Tines’ solo recording debut, will be announced soon.
Tines can also be heard in the New York City Pride March in Manhattan on Sunday as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s float. He made his Met debut earlier this year in performances of John Adams' El Niño.
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Further uptown, guitarist Mary Halvorson joins drummer Tomas Fujiwara for Short Films for Short Nights, Program Two: Objects—a selection of experimental short films made between 1909 and 1969 scored to live music—at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Saturday. The duo then heads north to Massachusetts for a set at MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center in North Adams on Sunday afternoon, as part of Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival. Halvorson’s new album, Cloudward, released earlier this year on Nonesuch Records, features eight new compositions she performs with her Amaryllis sextet (including Fujiwara) and “reveals a newfound sense of beauty and clarity,” per the Guardian. “[Halvorson] outdoes herself again,” says All About Jazz. “Cloudward is just too good.”
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Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is at the Montreal Jazz Festival this weekend, giving a solo performance at Le Gesù tonight, before joining bassist Dave Holland for a duo set at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe on Saturday. Akinmusire’s Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, released last December and featuring Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley, is “subtly profound music, full of meditative, focused beauty,” exclaims Uncut. 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.”
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Multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes brings music from his 2023 album, Black Classical Music—winner of the Ivor Novello Award for Best Album—to the SPAC Amphitheater in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Saturday, for Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival. He and his band then head up to Canada for a set on the OLG Stage at Marion Dewar Plaza in Ottawa on Sunday, as part of Ottawa Jazz Festival. Dayes stopped by KEXP in Seattle in November to perform three songs from the album and discuss what host Larry Mizell, Jr. calls “some of the most exciting music I've heard in years.” You can watch the session here.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fabio Luisi, for a performance of Anna Clyne’s piano concerto ATLAS at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado, on Saturday, as part of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The program also includes Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and is followed by a Q&A with Denk and the festival’s artistic director, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott.
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Pianist Brad Mehldau gives a solo performance at Filharmonia im. K Szymanowskiego in Kraków, Poland, on Saturday, for Summer Jazz Festival Kraków. His 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.”
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Natalie Merchant is joined by the Western Piedmont Symphony in bringing music from her 2023 album, Keep Your Courage, to the Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts in Boone, North Carolina, on Saturday, as part of An Appalachian Summer Festival. Keep Your Courage “has some of Merchant’s best songwriting,” says the AP. Mojo calls it “her most beautiful in decades.”
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and pianist Dan Tepfer celebrate their French heritage with A French Salon at The Grange in Alresford, United Kingdom, tonight and tomorrow, as part of The Grange Festival. They are joined by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conductor Gavin Sutherland, and special guest pianist Thomas Enhco, for the program, which includes the world premiere of a song cycle Tepfer wrote for Salvant based on Virginie Sampeur's three last poems; songs made famous by Édith Piaf and Josephine Baker; and works by Ravel and Jacques Brel. Salvant won the Jazz Journalists Association's 2024 JJA Jazz Award for Female Vocalist of the Year last month.
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Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is given its Asian premiere by the Chorallective, conducted by Choy Siew Woon, at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore on Saturday. Across the Pacific, the piece is performed by the OBF Chorus and OBF Modern Orchestra, led by Craig Hella Johnson, at Beall Concert Hall in Eugene on Sunday, for Oregon Bach Festival. Mass for the Endangered is a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world—animals, plants, insects, the planet itself—an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. The first recording, released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records in 2020, features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch.
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Chris Thile performs solo at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana, on Saturday. His latest solo Nonesuch release is 2021’s Laysongs; Thile and his fellow 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.
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway bring music from their critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, to Yellow Creek Park in Owensboro, Kentucky, tonight, for ROMP Festival. They then head to Wisconsin for a set on the Main Stage at Pines Music Park in Eau Claire on Saturday, as part of Blue Ox Music Festival, and a headlining show at Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield on Sunday. City of Gold won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and the International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year.
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