Rokia Traoré performs in Paris, begins North American tour in NYC … John Adams’s Nixon in China is performed by Royal Swedish Opera … Tyondai Braxton tours Europe … Michael Daves plays Brooklyn Bluegrass Bash … Jeremy Denk performs with St. Louis Symphony … Rhiannon Giddens plays for Bill Murray's Mark Twain Prize ceremony on PBS … Richard Goode gives solo recital in Colorado … Mariza is at SFJAZZ … Chris Thile hosts A Prairie Home Companion in Saint Paul … and more …
Rokia Traoré performs at Le Trianon in Paris tonight, before launching a brief North American run at Symphony Space in New York City on Sunday. The tour then heads to the West Coast for concerts in San Francisco, Calgary, Vancouver, and Seattle.
Earlier this week, Traoré released a new song and video, "Be Aware Brother, Be Aware Sister," in support of the Aware Migrants campaign, which aims to inform migrants about the risks of travel. You can watch the video, download the song, and learn more about the project at awaremigrants.com.
Traoré released her sixth album, Né So, on Nonesuch earlier this year. "Traoré has made the album of her career,” exclaimed the Times. “This accessible yet sophisticated album offers its own defiance against hard times." Uncut says: "Brave, challenging and arrestingly original, Traoré may just have gone and made the finest indie-rock album to emerge from arguably the world's most musical continent."
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John Adams’s groundbreaking opera Nixon in China is performed by the Royal Swedish Opera, led by director Michael Cavanaugh and conductor Lawrence Renes, in Stockholm on Saturday. The Boston Globe called the 1987 work “a milestone in American operatic history.” The Grammy Award–winning original cast recording, first released on Nonesuch in 1988, "has an eloquence not since matched," says Los Angeles Times.
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Tyondai Braxton launches a brief solo tour of Europe and the UK, with sets at the Semibreve Festival in Braga, Portugal, on Saturday, and the Soy Festival in Nantes, France, on Sunday. Praised by the Washington Post as “one of the most acclaimed experimental musicians of the last decade,” Braxton made his Nonesuch debut last year with the release of HIVE1, which Q calls "a sonically absorbing experience.”
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Michael Daves joins banjoist Tony Trischka at the fifth annual Brooklyn Bluegrass Bash at the Bell House on Sunday. Before their set, the venue gives the premiere screening of a mini-documentary about the making of Daves’s 2016 double album, Orchids and Violence, released last year on Nonesuch, and on which Trischka lends a hand. The album is "a roots-music master class, a brilliant example of old modes reinhabited with flair," says the New York Times.
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Jeremy Denk joins the St. Louis Symphony, conducted by Jun Märkl, at Powell Hall this morning, and again on Saturday evening. The program includes Brahm’s Piano Quartet in G minor, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, and Liszt’s Prometheus. Denk spoke with the St. Louis Post Dispatch ahead of the performances; you can read what he had to say at stltoday.com.
Denk “dazzles,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in a review of his performance with the Florida Orchestra last weekend, showing the audience “what a world-class pianist sounds like.”
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Rhiannon Giddens performed alongside Aziz Ansari, Bill Hader, David Letterman, Emma Stone, Sigourney Weaver, and more, at the ceremony awarding Bill Murray the 19th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, last weekend. The ceremony airs on PBS stations across the country tonight at 9/8c.
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Richard Goode gives a solo recital in Macky Auditorium at University of Colorado at Boulder tonight, performing works by Mozart, Janáček, Brahms, Debussy, and Beethoven. The New York Times has praised Goode for his “fastidious musicianship, infallible fingers, warming spirit and vital connection to the living traditions set down by his predecessors.”
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Portuguese singer Mariza continues her North American tour in support of her newest album, Mundo, at SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium in San Francisco tonight, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. The Mercury News, in previewing the shows, writes that “no singer combines a command of the fado tradition with an international sensibility like Mariza.”
Earlier this week, BBC Radio 3 named Mariza (and Youssou N’Dour and Buena Vista Social Club) one of “Seven Pioneering Players in World Music.”
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Steve Reich’s 80th birthday celebration continues as AXIOM, the Julliard student ensemble, led by music director Jeffrey Milarsky, performs the composer’s Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ; Double Sextet; Mallet Quartet; and City Life at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City on Saturday. The show is free of charge.
Carnegie Hall begins its celebration of the composer at 80, which includes events all season long, with its own all-Reich program featuring Three Tales, a collaboration with video artist Beryl Korot, and the world premiere of Reich’s new piece, Pulse. ICE, So Percussion, and Synergy Vocals perform, led by conductor David Robertson.
The Guardian US examines the composer’s work in a new feature out this week titled “Steve Reich: The Composer with His Finger on the Pulse.” You can read the article at theguardian.com.
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Chris Thile continues his inaugural season as host of A Prairie Home Companion with a show at the program’s home base at Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday. Joining Thile as special guests for the episode are Esperanza Spalding, Dawes, and comedian Aparna Nancherla. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.
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