Kronos Quartet is joined by Laurie Anderson, Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and others to celebrate its 50th anniversary at Carnegie Hall, then heads to Halifax. Sam Amidon is in Clonakilty, Ireland. Timo Andres performs Philip Glass in Chicago. Jeremy Denk is in DC. Rhiannon Giddens joins Silkroad Ensemble in Fairfax, VA. Tigran Hamasyan is in Italy and Spain, where The Magnetic Fields launch a European tour. Natalie Merchant is in London and Glasgow. Vagabon is in Milan and Lausanne with Weyes Blood. Yasmin Williams begins her tour with Valerie June, Rachael Davis, and Thao in Saxapahaw, NC.
Kronos Quartet is joined by Laurie Anderson, Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and many others in celebrating its 50th anniversary in concert at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in New York City tonight. The program—part of the season-long Kronos: Five Decades tour—includes a screening of a short film by Sam Green, the director of the live Kronos documentary A Thousand Thoughts; the New York premieres of works by Michael Gordon and Gabriella Smith; and a new “Sunrise Jam” version of Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector for 50 musicians! Kronos then takes the tour to the Dalhousie Arts Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sunday, performing works by Riley, Penderecki, Piazzolla, and more.
As part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch releases the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass today. The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.” Kronos Quartet’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels, the title piece of which inspired David Harrington to found the group in 1973, will be released on vinyl on February 16 and may be pre-ordered here. The Evening Standard included it among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.”
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Sam Amidon performs at De Barra’s Folk Club in Clonakilty, Ireland, on Saturday, as part of Samhain Festival. He performed live from West Kerry, Ireland, for Other Voices’ Anam: Songs for Hearts and Minds earlier this year; you can watch that performance of “Spanish Merchant’s Daughter,” a song from his 2020 self-titled album, here.
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Timo Andres performs a selection of Philip Glass’s Piano Etudes at the Reva and Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago on Sunday, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Following the performance, Andres joins WNYC’s John Schaefer in conversation about the work. You can hear Andres perform Glass’s “Evening Song No. 2” on the 2020 Nonesuch album I Still Play—an album of original solo piano compositions written by artists who have recorded for Nonesuch performed by Andres and others.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk gives a solo recital of music by female composers from the 19th century to the present at Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, on Saturday, featuring works Clara Schumann, Tania Leon, Cecile Chaminade, Meredith Monk, and more. Denk also performs Robert Schumann’s Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations) and Fantasie in C, Op. 17. You can hear him perform the latter Schumann 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.”
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Rhiannon Giddens joins the Silkroad Ensemble, of which she is Artistic Director, for the world premiere performance of American Railroad—which maps the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad through stories and sounds of African American, Chinese, Irish, Japanese, and Native American communities—at the George Mason University Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, on Sunday. You can watch Giddens and her band perform three songs from her new album, You're the One—which Uncut calls "an accomplished tour d’horizon by [a] prolific polymath"—from a recent episode of WFUV's FUV Live here.
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Tigran Hamasyan and his trio—bassist Marc Karapetian and drummer Arthur Hnatek—bring music from his 2020 album, The Call Within, to Paral·lel 62 in Barcelona tonight, for Barcelona Jazz Festival, and Cinema Teatro Ariston in Mantova, Italy, on Saturday, for Mantova Jazz. Hamasyan followed The Call Within, which Jazzwise calls “an exceptional recording for exceptional times” and Hamasyan’s “strongest artistic statement yet,” 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 music.”
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The Magnetic Fields begin a fifteen-concert European tour, featuring songs from throughout their career, in Spain this weekend, with shows at Sala Apolo in Barcelona on Saturday and Sala Oasis in Zaragoza on Sunday. 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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Natalie Merchant kicked off a European headlining tour, featuring music from her new album, Keep Your Courage, earlier this week in Berlin, and performs the second of two nights at the London Palladium tonight, followed by the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Sunday. She was on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week on Monday 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. Merchant released the 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, last week; you can watch it here.
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Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko), touring Europe with Weyes Blood, plays Alcatraz in Milan, Italy, tonight and Les Docks in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday. 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 begins her tour with Valerie June, Rachael Davis, and Thao at Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, on Sunday. 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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