Hurray for the Riff Raff is in Philadelphia and Woodstsock. John Adams’ Frenzy gets world premiere at the Barbican in London. Sam Amidon tours New England with This Is The Kit. Jeremy Denk joins Danish String Quartet in Denmark. Kronos Quartet is in Berkeley. Mandy Patinkin is in California and Colorado. Cécile McLorin Salvant joins Jon Batiste at Montreux Jazz Festival Miami. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway play WinterWonderGrass Steamboat in Colorado.
Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, continues their North American tour, featuring music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, at The Foundry in Philadelphia tonight, before a sold-out show at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, New York, on Sunday. They come down to the city next week to perform at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Tuesday. The Past Is Still Alive, was released last week to widespread critical acclaim, including a Best New Music review from Pitchfork, which calls the album “fantastic.” NPR exclaims: “Segarra has created an epic tale of life on the road, a nearly mythic version of their own life story that stands alongside other great American musical travelogues … career-defining.” Rolling Stone says: “Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record ... the best batch of songs Segarra's ever written.” Paste calls it “a celebratory measure of love, sanctuary, and defiance ... In their hands, the trauma of the present day is a prelude to the possibilities of a better tomorrow.”
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Composer John Adams’ new orchestral piece, Frenzy, is given its world premiere performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Simon Rattle at Barbican Hall in London on Sunday. The premiere performances continue in Bristol, Dortmund, Luxembourg, and Paris in the coming days.
It was announced just yesterday that the first recording of John Adams’ 2017 opera, Girls of the Golden West, will be released April 26 on Nonesuch. The album features a live LA Phil performance at Disney Hall conducted by the composer and directed by longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars, who created the opera’s libretto, drawing from original sources. The opera, which brings true stories of the California Gold Rush to life, also features the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon, and a cast led by Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, and Ryan McKinny.
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Sam Amidon concludes his North American tour with This Is The Kit in New England this weekend, performing at the Portland House of Music in Maine tonight and Arts at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Saturday. Amidon leads his own US headline tour following his set at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville this month.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk joins the Danish String Quartet at Konservatoriets Koncertsal in Frederiksberg, Denmark, tonight. The program includes Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E flat major, excerpts from Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2, and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor. On his 2021 Nonesuch album, Mozart Piano Concertos, recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Denk “approaches everything with questing intelligence and energy” says the Observer. “His ornaments and cadenzas are full of wit and imagination, his ear for detail incisive and bracing.” You can also hear him perform Mozart and many other composers on his 2019 album, c. 1300–c. 2000, which the Telegraph called “quite exhilarating” and BBC Radio 3 called “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital.” Denk was on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters last Saturday; you can hear that here.
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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on Saturday. The program includes Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet, the world premiere of Peni Candra Rini’s Segara Gunung, and works by Sam Green, Severiano Briseño, Sofia Gubaidulina, Michael Gordon, and Nicole Lizée. Nonesuch released the world premiere recording of Reich’s Triple Quartet performed by Kronos Quartet, for whom he wrote the piece, in 2001.
As part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch released the group’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels, the title piece of which inspired David Harrington to found the group in 1973, on vinyl last month. The Evening Standard included it among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Late last year, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass. The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.” Kronos published the fifth and final playlist in its 50th anniversary playlist series earlier this week; you can hear 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 La Mirada Theater in La Mirada, California, tonight, and Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, on Sunday, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant joins Jon Batiste for his sold-out Jon Batiste & Friends concert at The Hangar in Coconut Grove in Miami tonight, as part of Montreux Jazz Festival Miami. Salvant’s 2023 album, Mélusine, which DownBeat includes in its year’s best list and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” is up for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album.
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway bring music from their Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, to the main stage at Upper Knoll Lot in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, on Sunday, for WinterWonderGrass Steamboat. City of Gold, which won Album of the Year at the International Folk Music Awards as well as the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, made last year’s best lists from PopMatters, Folk Alley, No Depression, AllMusic, WFUV, and Holler, which calls it Tuttle’s “most captivating record yet … A heady 48 minutes of joy, Tuttle is single handedly making bluegrass her own.”
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