Wilco plays Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit Concert ... Kronos Quartet gives John Adams piece its Swedish premiere ... Laurie Anderson speaks at UC Berkeley colloquium ... Sérgio and Odair Assad continue college tour with the Turtle Island Quartet ... David Byrne brings his "mind-blowing, booty-shaking music" to the Midwest ... Shawn Colvin performs there as well ... Bill Frisell's Trio is in Brazil ... k.d. lang plays the Ryman ... The Magnetic Fields close out their fall tour of "dizzyingly catchy songs" ... Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman play Europe together and with their trios ... Randy Newman finishes his North American tour ... Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Steve Reich Evening comes to Brooklyn ... Dawn Upshaw repeats "transfixing" performance in St. Paul ... and more ...
Wilco will be in Northern California this weekend, performing both days of the Bridge School Benefit Concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. The special event, now in its 22nd year, is organized by Neil Young and his wife, Pegi, in support of the school, a non-profit organization working to ensure that individuals with severe speech and physical impairments achieve full participation in their communities.
In addition to Wilco and Young's performances—good preparation for their tour together this winter—this year's line-up also includes Jack Johnson, Death Cab for Cutie, Norah Jones, Cat Power, Sarah McLachlan, Band of Horses, Josh Groban, and Smashing Pumpkins.
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Tonight marks the Swedish premiere of John Adams's Fellow Traveler in a performance at Konsert & Kongress in Uppsala by Kronos Quartet, for whom Adams wrote the piece in celebration of director Peter Sellars's 50th birthday. Kronos goes on to Florence, Italy, for a complete performance of Terry Riley's Sun Rings at the Festival de la Creativitia.
And speaking of Sellars, the Metropolitan Opera production of Adams's Doctor Atomic, for which Sellars assembled the libretto and directed its original production in San Francisco, continues with an 8:30 PM performance on Saturday. The opera's run continues through November 13.
Another European Adams premiere takes place tomorrow evening when his 1997 piece Century Rolls gets its first Lithuanian performance by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, with Petras Geniusas at the piano, at the Nacionaliné Filharmonija in Vilnius.
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Laurie Anderson is in Berkeley, California, this weekend with two performances of her latest work, Homeland, at Zellerbach Hall on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, tonight and Saturday. She'll also participate in an open discussion and Q&A as part of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the university's Center for New Media Saturday afternoon.
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Sérgio and Odair Assad join the Turle Island Quartet for another weekend of shows in the groups' fall college tour titled String Theory. Tonight's performance is at the Miller Auditorium at Grantham, Pennsylvania's Messiah College; tomorrow night at the Weis Center on Bucknell University's campus in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania; and Sunday at the Howard Performing Arts Center at Andrews University in Michigan. The tour concludes on Wednesday with a performance at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium in Palo Alto, California.
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David Byrne continues the North American leg of his tour Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno with three more stops in the Midwest after last night's show in Cleveland that led the Cleveland Plain Dealer to assert that even with the choreographed extravaganza that is this show, "Byrne's mind-blowing, booty-shaking music itself was a portal to a higher plane." Tonight, the tour hits the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor; tomorrow, it's on to Clowes Memorial Hall in Indianapolis; and Sunday the Chicago Opera House.
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Shawn Colvin performs Saturday and Sunday night this weekend in the Midwest as well: Saturday at the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the next night at Park West in Chicago.
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Bill Frisell has made his way to Brazil for two shows this weekend with his Trio, featuring Tony Scherr on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. They play the Auditorio Ibirapuera in São Paulo tonight and the Marina de Gloria in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. They'll head to another Lusophone country, Portugal, next weekend for two shows there.
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k.d. lang's fall tour hits Nashville, Tennessee, tonight for a show at the city's storied Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry. Tomorrow night, she'll be in Birmingham, Alabama, to perform at the Alys Stephen Center's Jemison Concert Hall. Prior to last night's show at Atlanta Symphony Hall, k.d. spoke with the Southern Voice about her career and her latest Nonesuch release, Watershed.
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The Magnetic Fields play all three nights this weekend, starting at The Southern Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, tonight; The Merriam Theater in Philadelphia on Saturday; and the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on Sunday. The Washington Post previews the Lisner show, the last on the band's fall tour, with a feature article about Stephin Merritt, the man behind the "dizzyingly catchy songs." You can catch inside scoop from the past month on the road at the tour blog of the set openers, Mike Fusco and Emma Straub, at airplanesdonutsdistortion.tumblr.com.
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Brad Mehldau continues to tour through Europe with his Trio, Larry Grenadier and Jeff Bllard, performing tonight at the Roma Cultural Center in Antwerp, Belgium, and Sunday night at the Kulturzentrum Alte Feuerwache in Mannheim, Germany.
In between, Mehldau joins label mate Joshua Redman for a special duo concert at Mannheim's Christuskirche Saturday night. Redman is in Europe on tour with his own Trio of Reuben Rogers and Brian Blade; they perform tonight at the Umeå Jazz Festival in Sweden.
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Randy Newman brings the North American leg of his Harps & Angels tour to a close Saturday night with a performance at the Shedd Institute for the Arts' Jaqua Concert Hall in Eugene, Oregon. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the "piece de resistance" of his concert in that city earlier this week, the song "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" off "his excellent new album ... The song ended like the show itself, suddenly and eloquently, with a plain 'Goodbye.'" Up next: an extensive tour of Europe that runs to the end of November.
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Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Steve Reich Evening arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this week for the venue's acclaimed Next Wave Festival. The piece features a collection of pieces by the choreographer has set to Steve Reich's music, including two new works set to Four Organs and Eight Lines. Performances, by the Rosas dance company with music performed by Ictus, continue at BAM through Saturday night.
Also this weekend, Reich's New York Counterpoint is part of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra program tonight at its hometown Knitting Factory Concert House, and his Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings will be performed by the Milton Street Chamber Music Society under Brady Harrison Saturday at the Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Dawn Upshaw gives two encore performances tonight and Saturday of Maria Schneider's Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories, with the composer conducting the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. Also on the program are works by Ravel, Hindemith, and Bach. After its premiere on Thursday night, the St. Louis Pioneer Press exclaimed of Dawn: "Her voice resounded around the Ordway as it never has before, transfixing the audience." For tickets, visit thespco.org.
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