Big Ears Festival takes place in Knoxville with Kronos Quartet, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, Laurie Anderson, Tyondai Braxton ... NY Phil performs new John Adams ... Jeremy Denk tours Northeast ... Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell perform at Tennessee benefit ... James Farm tours Brazil ... Audra McDonald sings outside DC ... Natalie Merchant performs in Connecticut ... Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters finish Latin American tour at Lollapalooza Brazil ... Punch Brothers perform in Portland ... and more ...
As noted earlier this week in the Nonesuch Journal, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival makes its return for what Vice has called “one of the country’s most audacious musical experiments,” and Kronos Quartet, this year’s Artists-in-Residence, are joined on the line-up by their fellow Nonesuch artists Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, Laurie Anderson, and Tyondai Braxton. In several cases, and in the festival’s spirit of collaboration and innovation, several of these artists also join each other on stage.
Among those Kronos collaborative performances are a concert of reimagined folk songs with Rhiannon Giddens, and Sam Amidon, and a performance with Laurie Anderson of her piece Landfall, which was inspired by her experience of Hurricane Sandy. Both events take place at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday.
Prior to those shows, Kronos helps open the festival with a performance of Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic with pipa virtuoso Wu Man at the Tennessee Theatre tonight, in celebration of the composer’s 80th birthday year. On Sunday, Kronos helps close out the festival in performances with Tanya Tagaq, Bryce Dessner, and Nels Cline.
Sam Amidon and Rhiannon Giddens also perform their own Big Ears sets: Amidon featuring music from his latest Nonesuch release, Lily-O, Saturday night, and Giddens kicking off her tour with music from her solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, Sunday afternoon, both at the Bijou Theatre.
Finally, Tyondai Braxton performs his piece HIVE at The Standard each day this weekend. HIVE features five musicians atop oval pods designed by Danish architect Uffe Surland Van Tams. The live music combines synths, samples, and acoustic percussion with lighting and visual effects. Premiered in 2013 at the Guggenheim Museum, tonight’s performance is only the second occasion that HIVE has been presented in North America. Additionally, Braxton hosts a DJ set in the early hours of Sunday morning and takes part in a panel on technology’s place in creativity at the Knoxville Museum of Art that afternoon. Braxton makes his Nonesuch debut with the release of HIVE1, which evolved from the piece he performs at Big Ears, on May 12.
---
John Adams’s new piece Scheherazade.2 received its world premiere with the New York Philharmonic, led by Alan Gilbert, at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall last night. Performances continue tonight and Saturday, both preceded by talks with the composer. Violinist Leila Josefowicz, who has been playing Adams’ music for over a decade and for whom the piece was written, describes the piece as “theatre with sound, unlike any other piece written for the violin,” in a New Yorker preview of the premiere. Also on the program are Lyodov’s The Enchanted Lake and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.
---
Jeremy Denk’s tour with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields comes to a close with three performances this weekend: at Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey, tonight, UMass’s Fine Arts Center Concert Hall in Amherst on Saturday, and Mechanics Hall in Worcester on Sunday.
---
Following last night's Richard Goode and Friends performance in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in New York City, the pianist returns to the Hall, in the new Resnick Education Wing, this evening to lead a public master class on Debussy’s Preludes with young pianists. Goode gives two performances in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium next month, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 15 and in a solo recital on April 24.
---
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell—capping off a week that saw the announcement of their forthcoming second duets album, The Traveling Kind—join Vince Gill and Cory Chisel for the Celebrity Barn Dance at the Jaeckle Centre in Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, Saturday night. Proceeds from the benefit event support the Jaeckle Centre, which provides rehabilitation and other veterinary care for horses.
Harris and Crowell will play a series of intimate shows in support of the new album starting May 7, just days before its May 12 release. Rolling Stone, which premiered the album’s title track (co-written by Chisel), says: “The Traveling Kind is probably about as deserving of the term ‘Americana’ as it comes, weaving in elements of our entire historical landscape, mixing notes from the mountains with notes of both the cities and plains.”
---
James Farm—the collaborative band of Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland—plays two shows at the Nublu Jazz Festival: at SESC Pompeia in São Paulo tonight and at SESC São José dos Campos tomorrow evening.
---
Audra McDonald continues her extensive US tour at the Music Center at Strathmore in Rockville, Maryland, tonight.
---
Natalie Merchant performs at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts in Storrs, Connecticut, Saturday night. She plays two shows in Colorado and a sold-out show in Virginia next month, followed by two nights in Toronto at the beginning of May.
---
Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters finish out their tour of Latin America with a performance at Lollapalooza Brazil in São Paulo on Saturday.
As announced last week, Plant and the band will tour North America this spring, starting May 24; each ticket to the non-festival shows includes a CD of their latest album, lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar.
---
Punch Brothers continue the second leg of their North American tour out west this weekend, with performances at Roseland Theater in Portland, with support from Gabriel Kahane, tonight and at Harrah’s Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada, on Saturday. The band, whose performance was recently described as “staggeringly tight and clean” by the Boston Globe, is touring in support of their recent record, The Phosphorescent Blues. Tickets to the shows include a download of the album.
Before tonight's Portland concert, the band gives a Kink.fm performance in the Skype Live Studio at 1 PM PT. Tune in to watch it live at skypelivestudio.com.
The San Diego Union-Tribune's George Varga, previewing the band's forthcoming concert in Chris Thile's hometown, describes The Phosphorescent Blues as "likely the finest album he’s made to date with his virtuoso band." Varga goes on to say of the band: "Bluegrass, contemporary classical, alt-rock, folk, pop, Celtic—few bands have such a dazzling command of so many styles, or the ability to fuse elements of each so seamlessly and with such consistent verve and imagination ... The result is an exhilarating aural synthesis that can be buoyant and inviting one moment, dense and challenging the next, but always richly rewarding." Read more at utsandeigo.com.
- Log in to post comments
