Rhiannon Giddens is at Cucalorus Festival in North Carolina … Devendra Banhart curates, performs at Le Guess Who? in Netherlands … Tyondai Braxton plays in Ithaca … David Byrne brings American Utopia to Hong Kong … Gabriel Kahane curates Lincoln Center concert with Timo Andres … Kronos Quartet live-scores documentary in Houston … Lake Street Dive tours US East Coast … Brad Mehldau is in Barcelona … Natalie Merchant gives benefit concert in upstate NY ... Mountain Man plays Los Angeles … Mandy Patinkin performs in Australia … Punch Brothers tour Europe … Joshua Redman launches Still Dreaming tour …
Rhiannon Giddens is at the Cucalorus Festival in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, on Sunday. The day begins with a screening of Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind, John Whitehead’s documentary about Carolina Chocolate Drops, followed by a Q&A with Giddens.
That afternoon, Giddens and writer/musician John Jeremiah Sullivan mark the 120th anniversary of the 1898 Wilmington massacre—in which a democratically elected, biracial government was overthrown by a mob of white citizens—by previewing songs from their work-in-progress musical based on the event. After the performance, at Thalian Main, there will be a march to the 1898 memorial on North 3rd Street for a sunset vigil.
As reported last week in the Nonesuch Journal, NPR has named Giddens one of the 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century. The honor, part of its ongoing Turning the Tables project, was announced in a new essay, titled “Rhiannon Giddens Is the 21st Century's Revelator,” which you can read at npr.org/music.
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Devendra Banhart is in Utrecht, the Netherlands, this weekend as a co-curator of and performer at Le Guess Who? festival. He performs at Grote Zaal on Saturday night and welcomes several artists throughout the weekend, including Vashti Bunyan, Ghanaian Highlife musician Ebo Taylor, Japanese singer-songwriter Shintaro Sakamoto, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and more.
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Tyondai Braxton plays a solo set at the Community School of Music & Arts in Ithaca, New York, on Saturday. Q magazine called Braxton’s 2015 Nonesuch debut album, HIVE1, “a sonically absorbing experience.”
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David Byrne brings his American Utopia world tour to Central Harbourfront Event Space in Hong Kong on Saturday, as part of Clockenflap Festival. He begins the antipodean portion of the tour in New Zealand next week and heads to Australia the following week.
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Gabriel Kahane curates a New York Philharmonic Nightcap event at Lincoln Center’s Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse on Saturday night. The concert, which complements the NY Phil’s program of Beethoven and Schubert earlier that evening, features performances by pianist Timo Andres, vocalist Caroline Shaw, and the Miró Quartet.
Kahane released his Nonesuch debut album, Book of Travelers, earlier this year. Rolling Stone calls it “a stunning portrait of a singular moment in America.” “Extraordinary,” exclaims the San Francisco Chronicle, “vivid and wholly original.”
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Kronos Quartet live-scores two screenings of filmmaker Sam Green’s A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary at Asia Society Texas Theatre in Houston on Sunday. The multimedia experience blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with some of the artists with whom Kronos has collaborated, like Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man, and Terry Riley.
The quartet has “attempted to rise above time and place as much as possible,” writes the Houston Chronicle in an interview with Sam Green and Kronos’s David Harrington. You can read what they both had to say here.
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Lake Street Dive continues its Free Yourself Up tour on the US East Coast this weekend, following two sold-out nights at the Beacon Theater in New York City, with shows at The Anthem in Washington, DC, tonight, Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, and Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence, Rhode Island, on Sunday.
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Brad Mehldau performs his new Piano Concerto with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, led by Clark Rundell, at L'Auditori in Barcelona tonight. Also on the program are solo performances by Mehldau and the opening suite of Jonny Greenwood’s score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood.
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Natalie Merchant joins Yungchen Lhamo for a benefit concert at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York, on Saturday. Proceeds from the event, titled "One Drop of Kindness," go to support the Yungchen Lhamo Charitable Foundation and its efforts to help those in need in Tibet, Nepal, and the United States.
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Mountain Man plays music from its recently released Nonesuch debut album, Magic Ship, at Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles tonight and Saturday. Indy Week calls Magic Ship “a marvel of intimacy,” while NPR praises the trio’s “rare, innate gift of almost supernatural harmonizing … hauntingly beautiful.”
The band recently stopped by Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current to perform from and discuss the new album; you can listen to the complete session and interview here.
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Mandy Patinkin brings his Diaries 2018 tour to a close with a three-city run of shows in Australia, starting at Hamer Hall at Arts Centre Melbourne on Sunday. 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. The tour continues with concerts at Sydney Opera House and Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane next week.
“I was very excited to launch the project and I have never been quite as excited to show people something,” Mandy Patinkin tells the Sydney Morning Herald in a feature article previewing the tour. You can read what else he has to say at smh.com.au.
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Punch Brothers, currently touring Europe in support of their new album, All Ashore, perform at Neumünster Kirche in Zürich, Switzerland, tonight, and play a sold-out show at Dashaus in Ludwigshafen, Germany, on Sunday.
The Independent, in a four-star review, calls All Ashore “an album of rich instrumentation and understated beauty that reveals deeper nuances on each and every listen. Both forward-thinking and imbued with an appreciation of the traditional sounds of America ...”
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Saxophonist Joshua Redman, following a free jazz clinic for students at Whitworth University yesterday, performs at the 30th annual Whitworth Guest Artist Jazz Concert at Martin Woldson Theater in Spokane, Washington, tonight.
From there, Redman and his Still Dreaming quartet— drummer Brian Blade, bassist Scott Colley, and cornetist Ron Miles—begin a North American tour with shows at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Saturday and Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday. The group, which the Washington Post calls “consistently riveting,” released the album Still Dreaming on Nonesuch in May.
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