Chris Thile and Punch Brothers launch five-concert variety series at Minetta Lane Theatre in NYC. Hurray for the Riff Raff is across the East River in Brooklyn, as are Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, who also have shows in Connecticut and Albany. Sam Gendel plays a set at Rockit Festival in the Netherlands, as does Cécile McLorin Salvant, who is also in Austria. Rhiannon Giddens and Silkroad Ensemble tour California; Omar, her Pulitzer Prize–winning opera with Michael Abels, is at SF Opera. Richard Goode gives a solo recital in St. Paul. Mary Halvorson goes to Guimarães, Portugal. Tigran Hamasyan performs in Riga. Kronos Quartet is in DC. The Magnetic Fields is in Rouen and Paris. Brad Mehldau is in Beaverton, Berkeley, and Boise. Natalie Merchant is in Bath. Mandy Patinkin leads a London residency. Vagabon is in Glasgow and Leeds with Weyes Blood. Yasmin Williams is in Chicago and Grand Rapids.
Chris Thile and his fellow Punch Brothers premiere The Energy Curfew Music Hour, their new, fully acoustic musical variety show with special guests, at Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City on Saturday. This weekend's special guests: Louis Cato and Madison Cunningham. The five-concert series runs through December 10, with each night being recorded for future release as an Audible Original. The show imagines a near future where electricity is rationed worldwide with 24 hours of the energy grid down to promote the unplugged lifestyle. In this future, The Energy Curfew Music Hour broadcasts across the country the hour before the lights go out.
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Across the East River, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway bring music from their critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, to Brooklyn Made tonight, followed by shows at the Jorgenson Center for the Performing Arts in Mansfield, Connecticut, tomorrow, and The Egg Performing Arts Center in Albany on Sunday. Rolling Stone recently named Tuttle one of "The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," saying: "Even before they started sweeping awards ceremonies, California-raised, Nashville-based bluegrass innovator Molly Tuttle and her crack band Golden Highway were writing their name into the history of roots music.”
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Also in Brooklyn this weekend, Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, who just announced a new album, The Past Is Still Alive, to be released February 23 on Nonesuch, performs at St Ann’s Church on Sunday as part of the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Hurray for the Riff Raff's acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut, LIFE ON EARTH, made year's best lists from NPR, Mojo, Rolling Stone, Uncut, Brooklyn Vegan, and others. You can hear “Alibi,” a newly released track from the upcoming album, here.
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Saxophonist and composer Sam Gendel performs at the Atlantis stage at De Oosterpoort in Groningen, Netherlands, tomorrow for part of the Rockit Festival. His latest album, COOKUP—interpretations of R&B and soul hits originally released between 1992 and 2004—was released earlier this year on Nonesuch.
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Rhiannon Giddens joins the Silkroad Ensemble, of which she is Artistic Director, for American Railroad, which maps the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through stories and sounds of African American, Chinese, Irish, Japanese, and Native American communities, in California this weekend, performing at Balboa Theatre in San Diego tonight, Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo, tomorrow, and California State University Northwood’s The Soraya on Sunday. Omar, the opera for which Giddens and co-writer Michael Abels earned the Pulitzer Prize in Music this year, began its run at San Francisco Opera earlier this week, with performances continuing through November 21. Folks around the world can get tickets to watch the livestream of this Saturday’s performance here.
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Pianist Richard Goode gives a sold-out solo recital at Macalester College’s Mairs Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, Sunday afternoon, performing works by Mozart and Beethoven. The New York Times says: “It is virtually impossible to walk away from one of Mr. Goode’s recitals without the sense of having gained some new insight, subtle or otherwise, into the works he played or about pianism itself.”
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Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson joins bass player Michael Formaneck’s “New Digs” septet at the Centro Cultural Vila Flor in Guimarães, Portugal, tonight as part of the Guimarães Jazz Festival. Halvorson’s new album, Cloudward, featuring eight new compositions she performs with her sextet Amaryllis—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—will be released in January. You can hear the opening track, “The Gate,” here.
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Pianist/composer Tigran Hamasyan and his Trio—bassist Marc Karapetian, and drummer Arthur Hnatek—play at Hanza Perons in Riga, Latvia, tonight. The Trio performs music from Hamasyan’s 2020 album, The Call Within, which Jazzwise calls “an exceptional recording for exceptional times” and Hamasyan’s “strongest artistic statement yet.” Hamasyan followed that album with last year’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.”
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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC, on Saturday to perform music from George Crumb’s Black Angels and works by Nicole Lizee, Bob Dylan, and more. As part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch will release 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 in February. The Evening Standard included it among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Last week, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass last week. The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.”
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The Magnetic Fields continue their European tour, featuring songs from throughout their career, in France this weekend, playing at Le 106 in Rouen tonight and Le Petit Bain in Paris on Saturday. The band’s 2004 Nonesuch debut album, i, is now available on vinyl for the first time, on limited-edition 140-gram, gold-colored vinyl, here. “Stephin Merritt is an incomparable lyricist capable of balancing arch wit with painfully acute observation,” the Guardian said upon the album's release. “The most exciting dissector of modern love around.”
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Pianist and composer Brad Mehldau and his Trio—bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard—perform out West this weekend: at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, tonight, Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, tomorrow, and The Sapphire Room in Boise, Idaho, on Sunday. Mehldau released a live solo album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, earlier this year. "A great improvising pianist takes on The Beatles," says Mojo. "An inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics." His acclaimed 2002 album Largo was released on vinyl for the first time last spring.
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Natalie Merchant continues her European headlining tour, with music from her new album, Keep Your Courage, performing a sold out show at The Forum in Bath, England, on Saturday. She was on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week last week to talk with presenter Kirsty Wark and fellow guests Jeffrey Boakye and Michel Faber about Keep Your Courage and more; you can hear their conversation here. You can watch the recently published video for the album track “Sister Tilly,” which is dedicated to Joan Didion and pays homage to the generation of women who influenced Merchant in the 1960s and ’70s when she was growing up, here.
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Mandy Patinkin began a Live In Concert residency at the Lyric Theatre in London earlier this week, with concerts tomorrow and Sunday and continuing to November 19. The program includes music by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Harry Chapin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and more. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her quintet—pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, drummer Savannah Harris, and percussionist Weedie Braimah—are at Festspielhaus St. Pölten in Ausrtia tonight and on the Rockit Festival’s Challenger Stage at De Oosterpoort in Groningen, Netherlands, on Saturday, performing music from her new album Melusine, and more. Salvant released the second of three videos of songs from the album filmed in the Unicorn Tapestries Room at The Met Cloisters this week. You can watch “D’un feu secret” here and the title track here.
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Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko), touring Europe with Weyes Blood, heads to the United Kingdom to play The Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow Saturday and O2 Arena Leeds on Sunday. Vagabon’s new album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, is one “that chases joy at every turn,” says Dork in its four-star review, and “cycles through urgent dance, fiery indie, and feel good pop with a resilient sense of euphoria underpinning every joyous moment.” “To unspool Tamko’s music is a bountiful reward,” says Paste. “Especially on Sorry I Haven’t Called, the work is dazzling and stirring.”
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Composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams continues her tour with Valerie June, Rachael Davis, and Thao at Old Town School in Chicago tonight and the Chapel at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday. Earlier this year, Williams released her first song on Nonesuch, “Dawning.” The track—featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing—provides an early peek at her Nonesuch debut album, due early 2024 (details to come). You can hear the song and watch the video for it here. “Williams … is one of the country’s most imaginative young solo guitarists,” says the New York Times. “[Her] radiant sound and adventitious origins have made her a key figure in a diverse dawn for the solo guitar.”
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