Rhiannon Giddens plays a sold-out show at the Beacon Theatre in NYC, where Nathalie Joachim has sold out Carnegie Hall’s Resnick Education Wing. The Black Keys play a set at Stubb's in Austin for SXSW. Tigran Hamasyan and his trio are in Boston and Chicago. Hurray for the Riff Raff has a sold-out show in St. Paul. Brad Mehldau plays solo in Europe—in Geneva, Rome, and Verona. Mandy Patinkin is in San Antonio. Cécile McLorin Salvant performs Ogresse conducted by Darcy James Argue in Luxembourg and Brussels.
Rhiannon Giddens, who kicked off a US tour featuring music from her new album, You’re the One, in Massachusetts earlier this week, plays a sold-out show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on Saturday. The tour continues in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio before heading to Tennessee for the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, where Giddens leads multiple sets. "Rhiannon Giddens is one of those people where I feel like they have to start inventing new awards, because she's already won all of them," Song Exploder host Hrishikesh Hirway says of his guest. Giddens talks about “You Louisiana Man,” breaking down the song from the new album on the episode, which you can listen to here.
In another sold-out New York City show, singer and composer Nathalie Joachim performs in Carnegie Hall’s Resnick Education Wing tonight, as part of the venue’s Well-Being Concerts series. Her new album, Ki moun ou ye, released last month on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records, “startles the senses,” says The Quietus; Bandcamp Daily calls it “dazzling.” Joachim stopped by WNYC Studios to talk with New Sounds’ Soundcheck host John Schaefer and perform three songs from the album; you can hear the conversation and live set and watch the performances here.
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The Black Keys play a set at Stubb's in Austin, Texas, just past midnight tonight, for an Easy Eye Sound showcase at SXSW. The band’s set follows yesterday’s special keynote with Rolling Stone’s Angie Martoccio, and Monday’s premiere of their new documentary, This is a Film About The Black Keys, directed by Jeff Dupre. The band’s twelfth studio album, Ohio Players, is due April 5 on Nonesuch Records; the latest single, “This Is Nowhere,” was released last week and can be heard here.
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Pianist Tigran Hamasyan and his trio—bassist Evan Marian and drummer Nate Wood—kicked off a two-week North American tour, featuring music from his 2020 album The Call Within, and more, in Washington, DC, last night, continuing with concerts at Berklee Performance Center in Boston tonight and Lincoln Hall in Chicago on Sunday, St. Patrick’s Day. Hamasyan followed The Call Within, which Jazzwise calls “an exceptional recording for exceptional times” and Hamasyan’s “strongest artistic statement yet,” with 2022’s StandArt, his first album of American standards which led Jazziz to call him “one of today’s most revered and distinctive voices in jazz and creative music.”
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Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, continues their North American tour, featuring music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, with a sold-out show at Amsterdam Bar & Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, tonight. The Past Is Still Alive, was released last month 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 calls it an “astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record ... the best batch of songs Segarra's ever written.”
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Pianist Brad Mehldau is in Europe this weekend, performing solo at Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland, tonight, before heading south to Italy for concerts at Auditorium Parco della Musica’s Sala Sinopoli in Rome on Saturday and Teatro Ristori in Verona on Sunday. “Brad Mehldau stands as a beacon of innovation in the jazz world, intertwining the richness of classical music with the spontaneity of jazz to create a sound uniquely his own," says Rick Beato, who spoke with Mehldau last month about for the Everything Music series; you can watch it here. Last year’s Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles landed 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.”
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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 Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio, Texas, on Saturday, 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 concludes a five-city European tour of her multimedia theatrical piece Ogresse—featuring her own original libretto, costume design, and visual projections, and an ensemble led by Darcy James Argue—at Philharmonie in Luxembourg tonight and Bozar in Brussels on Sunday. Described as “staggeringly original” by the Wall Street Journal, Ogresse blends jazz, chamber music, opera, art song, and many generations of storytelling traditions. 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 Outstanding Jazz Album at tomorrow’s NAACP Image Awards, broadcast live on BET and CBS.
Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble's 2023 album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Slate, PopMatters, and Stereogum, which calls it “simply some of the most exciting music being made right now … Argue’s music shifts and whirls like an entire galaxy in orbit around itself, and it’s breathtaking to listen to.”
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