Emmylou Harris and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco. Sam Amidon joins Teaċ Daṁsa dancers in Dublin. Tyondai Braxton is in Oakland. Hurray for the Riff Raff tours Australia. Gabriel Kahane’s Book of Travelers and Magnificent Bird continue in NYC. Natalie Merchant, Mandy Patinkin are at Hudson Valley Votes in Kingston, NY. Steve Reich is performed in Amsterdam. Gustavo Santaolalla performs Ronroco in Dubai. Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet perform in Oslo. Vagabon tours California with Crumb. Yasmin Williams joins Michael Kiwanuka and Brittany Howard in Chicago and St. Paul.
The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival begins today at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, and continues through Sunday with three days of free performances including appearances from Emmylou Harris and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. Tuttle and the band—whose latest album, City of Gold, won the IBMA Bluegrass Music Award for Album of the Year, and whose new six-song EP, Into the Wild, was released last month—hit the festival’s Banjo Stage this afternoon at 4:05pm and return to the stage tomorrow night to play with Steve Earle on the Banjo Stage at 5:45pm. Harris, as she has each of the festival’s 24 years, helps close things out with a set on the Banjo Stage on Sunday at 5:45pm.
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Sam Amidon continues his sold-out performances in Nobodaddy, a new work by choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan, with Teaċ Daṁsa dance company, at the O'Reilly Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, tonight and tomorrow, as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Nobodaddy, a large-scale dance and theatre piece for nine dancers and six musicians including Amidon, heads to London next week.
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Tyondai Braxton performs a free solo electronic set at Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall in Oakland, California, on Saturday. The event is Presented by the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, where Braxton is the 2024 David Tudor Composer in Residence.
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Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, is touring Australia this weekend, bringing music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, to the Dashville Skyline festival in Wonnarua Country, today; the Factory Theatre in Sydney, on Saturday; and The Eltham Hotel in Eltham, on Sunday. Segarra was recently on NPR’s World Cafe, whose host Raina Douris says: "On Hurray for the Riff Raff's latest album, The Past Is Still Alive, songwriter Alynda Segarra acts as a reanimator, casting the old American cowboy myth in a new light, crafting heroic legends for long-lost friends of theirs, and finding ways to commune with their father, who they lost right before recording the album … I love this record." You can hear their conversation here.
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The staged production of Gabriel Kahane’s Nonesuch albums Book of Travelers and Magnificent Bird at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater in New York City, which opened last weekend, continues tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. Performances run through October 13, with shows alternating between the two albums. Nonesuch has released two new recordings, “Give Us the Ballot” and “Red Letter Days,” in celebration of the production; you can hear them here. Kahane wrote both songs in October 2020, during the final month of a year spent off the internet, at the height of the pandemic, and will perform the previously unreleased songs as part of the production.
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Natalie Merchant and Mandy Patinkin take part in Hudson Valley Votes Rally & Concert, which will include performances as well as guest political speakers from the New York State Senate and New York State Assembly, at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston, New York, today. All of the proceeds from the event will go to Planned Parenthood of Greater New York.
Mandy Patinkin and his son, Gideon Grody-Patinkin, are also hosting a screening of The Princess Bride followed by a moderated Q&A, in the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts in Greenvale, New York, on Saturday. Patinkin will be continuing his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more–later this year.
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, performs Steve Reich’s Music for Ensemble and Orchestra at Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam tonight and tomorrow. The premiere recording of the piece, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, was released on Nonesuch in 2022. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it “a beautiful and dramatically charged masterpiece, but its impact goes even further than that.”
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Singer/composer/producer Gustavo Santaolalla continues the 25th anniversary tour of his beloved album Ronroco with a performance at the Dubai Opera House on Saturday. A remastered edition of the Grammy and Academy Award winner’s critically acclaimed album—which the New York Times described as “unworldly”— was released on vinyl for the first time from Nonesuch Records earlier this year.
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Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet perform on the Main Stage of the Oslo Opera House in Norway on Sunday. The program includes works from their Grammy-winning album Evergreen and more. The New York Times calls the collaboration “exuberant, funky and... more exactingly nuanced”. Attacca performs Shaw's original score to Ken Burns's upcoming documentary LEONARDO da VINCI, along with Sō Percussion, Roomful of Teeth, and John Patitucci, on the soundtrack, due October 25. A new track from the score, "The Last Supper," was released last week; you can hear it here.
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Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko) performs music from her latest album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, at Fox Theater in Oakland, California, tonight, and Ace of Spades in Sacramento, tomorrow, supporting Crumb on their North American tour through October. Released last year on Nonesuch, Sorry I Haven’t Called is an album “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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Guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams performs music from her new album, Acadia, out today, at the Chicago Theatre on Saturday and the Palace Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday, supporting Michael Kiwanuka and Brittany Howard on their North American tour through mid-October. “Nobody plays the guitar like Yasmin Williams,” The Fader says. “[Acadia] takes her sound into new territory … Worth every minute of an almost four-year wait.” Williams “looks out on the world with unbound curiosity and zeal, every coruscant melody and glowing harmony another discovery,” Mojo adds. You can listen to Acadia here.
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