Punch Brothers take All Ashore tour to London, Paris, Hamburg … Laurie Anderson is in Madrid ... David Byrne brings American Utopia to New Zealand … Olivia Chaney performs in London … Jeremy Denk joins Phoenix Symphony … Rhiannon Giddens leads NYC artist residency … Tigran Hamasyan tours Benelux … Gabriel Kahane brings Book of Travelers to Midwest … Lake Street Dive is back in Boston … Mountain Man takes Magic Ship home to North Carolina … Conor Oberst joins John Prine in Midwest … Mandy Patinkin takes Diaries tour to Australia … Rokia Traoré is in Switzerland, France …
Punch Brothers conclude their two-week tour of Europe, featuring music from the new album, All Ashore, with three performances this weekend—at Barbican Hall in London tonight, Le Trianon in Paris on Saturday, and Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, on Sunday—and a final show of the year at National Concert Hall in Dublin on Monday. The Independent gives All Ashore four stars, calling it “an album of rich instrumentation and understated beauty that reveals deeper nuances on each and every listen …”
Punch Brothers were on BBC Radio 3's In Tune, performing songs from All Ashore, yesterday. You can hear them at six minutes into the program and again at thirty-nine minutes here.
Tickets for Punch Brothers’ just-announced US tour in March with special guest Gabriel Kahane go on sale to the general public today.
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Laurie Anderson has been in Madrid this week for the Rizoma Festival, giving a performance of All the Things I Lost in the Flood and leading a discussion on virtual reality and art. The events continue with a conversation about creative processes at Espacio Fundación Telefónica and a screening of her 1986 film Home of the Brave followed by a Q&A at Cine Doré, all today. On Saturday, an installation of her virtual reality project Chalkroom opens at Espacio Fundación Telefónica, where it will be till January 13. All this month, Cine Doré hosts a retrospective of films she has directed or participated in, including her 2015 film Heart of a Dog, for which Nonesuch released the complete soundtrack, Wim Wenders' Sky Over Berlin, and even The Rugrats Movie.
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David Byrne brings his American Utopia world tour to Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday. He and his band take the show to Australia next week, and conclude nine months of touring with concerts in Melbourne and Adelaide next weekend.
“With an intensity and sheer belief in the material Byrne and his grey-clad and barefoot army of support artists—singers, dancers, percussionists—absolutely nail all aspects of the performance,” exclaimed Stuff’s review of this week’s Wellington show. “It's world-class performers doing what they do best … There is no other performer quite like him … He's fresh, inspirational and straight-up entertaining.”
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Olivia Chaney performs songs from her new album, Shelter, as special guest of Vessel at Somerset House in London on Sunday. She made her debut on Later... with Jools Holland last month, performing “Roman Holiday” from the new album. You can watch it again here.
Shelter has just been nominated as Album of the Year in the 2018 fRoots Critics Poll.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk joins the Phoenix Symphony, conducted by Tito Muñoz, to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 at Symphony Hall in Phoenix tonight, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. The program also includes Timo Andres’s Everything Happens So Much and Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony.
Jeremy Denk's new album, c.1300–c.2000, due in February, is available to pre-order now with an instant download of Binchois's Triste Plaisir.
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Rhiannon Giddens closes out her weeklong artist residency at Symphony Space in New York City with a program titled Sisters Present, in which she welcomes fellow performers Toshi Reagon, Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah, and her sister Lalenja Harrington to the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on Saturday.
The program features contemporary music from a diverse group of women of color, and follows Sisters Past, which featured music from Nina Simone, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Fitzgerald, Ethel Waters, and more, at Symphony Space earlier this week. The performers are accompanied by pianist Francesco Turrisi, trumpeter Alphonso Horne, bassist Jason Sypher, and drummer Attis Clopton.
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Tigran Hamasyan plays selections from his 2018 EP, For Gyumri, and 2017 album, An Ancient Observer, at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the Netherlands, tonight, and Concertgebouw in Bruges, Belgium, on Saturday, as part of Jazz Brugge.
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Gabriel Kahane brings music from his Nonesuch debut album, Book of Travelers, to the Midwest this weekend, in concert at Constellation in Chicago tonight, The Back Room at Colectivo in Milwaukee on Saturday, and The Ark in Ann Arbor on Sunday.
Kahane was on PBS NewsHour last week to discuss the new album, a musical travelogue about the looping railway journey across the US he embarked upon the day after the 2016 US election and the people he met along the way. You can watch it again here.
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Lake Street Dive concludes the current leg of its Free Yourself Up tour with sold-out shows at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock tonight and Wang Theatre in Boston on Saturday. The band will close out 2018 with two nights at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, in late December and a New Year's Eve show back at the Wang Theatre.
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Mountain Man returns home to North Carolina to close out its fall Magic Ship tour with shows at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw on Saturday and Sunday. Indy Week calls Magic Ship “a marvel of intimacy,” and NPR praises the trio’s “rare, innate gift of almost supernatural harmonizing … hauntingly beautiful.”
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Conor Oberst performs as special guest of John Prine this weekend at Arvest Bank Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, tonight, and Orpheum Theater in Oberst’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, on Saturday. The Kansas City Pitch, previewing tonight’s show, calls Oberst “an heir to Prine’s sound and spirit if ever there was one.”
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Mandy Patinkin concludes his Diaries 2018 tour with a concert at Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane, Australia, on Saturday. Accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David, he performs music from Diary: January 27, 2018 and Diary: April/May 2018, the first two in a series of musical installments with pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett released on Nonesuch earlier this year.
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Rokia Traoré brings her Dream Mandé project to Théâtre de Vevey in Vevey, Switzerland, tonight, and MC93 in Bobigny, France, on Sunday.
On tonight’s program, Dream Mandé – Bamanan Djourou, Traoré leads a group of musicians and singers in a performance based on classical Mandinka music, featuring covers of traditional Bambara songs and adaptations of French songs.
Sunday’s program is Dream Mandé – Djata, a narrative in the form of a Mandinka epic, performed against a backdrop of Mandinka classics, with Mamah Diabaté on n’goni and Mamadyba Camara on kora.
“The Dream Mandé project concerns traditional Malian music,” says Traoré, “but it is also proof that modernity is bringing us to inevitable changes, sometimes giving the possibility to offer a vigor and a sense to the past through contemporary concepts that go against established customs.”
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