David Byrne brings American Utopia to Austin City Limits Fest … Rhiannon Giddens joins Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra … Tigran Hamasyan plays Seattle, LA … Emmylou Harris tours Midwest … James Farm tours France … Kronos Quartet concludes ballet residency in San Francisco … Mandy Patinkin performs Diaries 2018 in NYC … Chris Thile hosts Live From Here from St. Paul … and more ...
David Byrne concludes the US leg of his 2018 American Utopia world tour this afternoon, returning to Zilker Park for a set at the second weekend of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The Los Angeles Times exclaims that the “American Utopia show is, quite simply, a wonder of imagination, ambition and execution, a frequently breathtaking celebration of the miracle of life.”
Byrne and his twelve-piece band return to the UK, Ireland, and Europe later this month for a two-week run of dates, followed by shows in China, New Zealand, and Australia through the end of November. “If you only go to one gig this autumn,” asserts the Independent’s i, “make it this: David Byrne’s imaginative, breathtaking show is a work of art.”
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Composer John Adams’s City Noir is performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday. Herbie Hancock also joins the orchestra for a selection of his own works.
Nonesuch released the Grammy Award–winning recording of City Noir in 2014, featuring the St. Louis Symphony, conductor David Robertson, and saxophonist Timothy McAllister. The New York Times calls it “dense, brash and exuberant,” writing that Adams “has become a master at piling up materials in thick yet lucid layers. Moment to moment the music is riveting.”
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Louis Andriessen is the subject of a series of performances by the New York Philharmonic titled The Art of Andriessen, including concerts at David Geffen Hall this morning and Saturday, pairing Andiressen’s TAO with works by Rachmaninoff and Sibelius, and a late-night Nightcap event curated by the composer in the Kaplan Penthouse on Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, Juilliard’s AXIOM ensemble gives a free concert that includes Andriessen’s De Staat in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
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Rhiannon Giddens joins the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Eric Jacobsen, for matinee and evening performances at the Bob Carr Theatre on Saturday, as part of the Pops: American Blues series. The program includes Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and selections from Giddens’s Nonesuch solo albums Freedom Highway and Tomorrow Is My Turn.
“A lot of the history is tough to get through but the stories are what people grab on to and these stories kind of make themselves known, if they want to be a song,” Giddens tells Ireland’s Independent in a recent interview. You can read what else she had to say here.
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Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan launched an eight-city tour of the United States in Portland, Oregon, earlier this week, continuing with concerts at Seattle Art Museum tonight, as part of Earshot Jazz Festival, and UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Hamasyan plays selections from his 2018 EP, For Gyumri, and 2017 album, An Ancient Observer, which DownBeat called “simply breathtaking” in a four-star review.
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Emmylou Harris is in Kansas, playing Kansas State University’s McCain Auditorium in Manhattan tonight and Johnson County Community College’s Carlsen Center in Overland Park on Saturday. She heads up to Iowa for a performance at University of Northern Iowa’s Gallagher Bluedorn in Cedar Falls on Sunday.
Harris “seems almost a genre unto herself,” writes the Los Angeles Times, in reviewing her concert at Royce Hall last week. “An artist to whom listeners can turn without knowing how to classify her music, but secure in knowing their time won’t be wasted on frivolity … she plumbs the deepest reaches of human experience.”
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James Farm—saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland—brings its three week tour of Europe to France, playing La Cartonnerie in Reims tonight and Centre Culturel Le Moustier in Thorigny-Sur-Marne on Saturday, for Festival Automne Jazz.
Nonesuch released James Farm’s self-titled debut in 2011 and its sophomore album, City Folk, in 2014. The Evening Standard praises the band as “four crack musicians and improvisers whose fierce grooves and synergy make for spine-tingling listening.”
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Kronos Quartet concludes an eight-show residency with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet at YCBA Theater in San Francisco this weekend, with performances tonight, Saturday afternoon and evening, and Sunday. The program includes a new collaboration between Kronos and the company, selections from the quartet’s Fifty for the Future commissioning project, and more.
The San Francisco Chronicle writes: “It’s pure pleasure to watch these dancers move and hear these musicians play; both at once approaches an embarrassment of riches.”
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The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt's musical adaptation of Yuan Dynasty playwright Ji Juanxiang's The Orphan of Zhao (orig. 1330; adapt. 2003) receives its Asian premiere with a performance at the Beijing Music Festival in China this Sunday. This production, featuring Merritt's wrote music and lyrics and a book by David Greenspan, premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in July 2003, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. The cast recording released on Nonesuch in 2006 is available to download on iTunes and in the Nonesuch Store and streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.
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Mandy Patinkin began his Diaries 2018 tour with the first in a ten-performance residency presented by New York Theatre Workshop at The Connelly Theater in New York City earlier this week, continuing with concerts tonight and Sunday and through the month. Joined 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.
A limited number of tickets are available here via a daily TodayTix lottery.
“I’m not the gifted genius who writes the songs,” Patinkin recently told the New York Times, “I’m the mailman, delivering the letters.” You can read what else he had to say at nytimes.com.
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Chris Thile hosts his public radio show Live From Here at Palace Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday, with special guests Dirty Projectors, Anna & Elizabeth, and comedic duo The Sklar Brothers. Madison Cunningham joins Thile as his duet partner. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch live online at livefromhere.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.
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