William Brittelle's Spiritual America is performed by Metropolis Ensemble, Sam Amidon in Ireland … Jeremy Denk performs Schumman with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra … Kronos Quartet is in Georgia … Pat Metheny concludes NYC run … Robert Plant brings Carry Fire to Harvest Jazz & Blues Fest in Canada … Chris Thile hosts Live From Here from NYC … Yola makes Grand Ole Opry debut … and more …
Metropolis Ensemble, Sam Amidon, Wye Oak’s Andy Stack, and Arone Dyer of Buke and Gase perform composer William Brittelle's Spiritual America, Brittelle’s genre-defying electro-acoustic song cycle, at CIT Cork School of Music in Ireland on Sunday, as part of Sounds From a Safe Harbour festival.
"It literally stopped me in my tracks, I have never heard anything like it," says festival director Mary Hickson of hearing Spiritual America for the first time. "It made me feel an energy I haven't had with music in a while, it felt strangely familiar in so many ways but was drawn in and swallowed up by its completely new sound."
New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records released the premiere recording of Spiritual America, performed by Wye Oak, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and the Metropolis Ensemble, earlier this year. PopMatters says this “excellent” album “defies traditional genre conventions through fusing elements of traditional classical, electronic music, and shredding rock guitar through a narrative of crisis and faith.”
Sam Amidon has another festival set later that night, playing re-imagined versions of songs from Harry Smith’s The Anthology of American Folk Music at St. Luke’s in Cork. Amidon’s latest album, The Following Mountain, released in 2017 on Nonesuch, was called “breathtaking” by the Irish Times, “a fascinating signpost to the future.”
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Pianist Jeremy Denk leads the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in performing Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor at Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota, this weekend, with concerts tonight, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. The program also includes Rossini’s Overture to La scala di seta and Schubert’s Symphony No. 2.
Denk’s new album, c. 1300–c. 2000, is “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital,” raves BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. The Sunday Times calls it “thrilling and deft.”
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Rhiannon Giddens and Emmylou Harris can be seen in Ken Burns’s eight-part, 16-hour documentary series, Country Music, which premieres on PBS this Sunday at 8:00 PM CT. Giddens performed along with Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Vince Gill, Kathy Mattea, Marty Stuart, Dwight Yoakam, and others for the Country Music: Live at the Ryman concert special, which you can watch in its entirety here.
Giddens’s new album, there is no Other, named one of The 50 Best Albums of 2019 So Far by Rolling Stone, is now available as a double-vinyl edition, with four additional tracks, expanded liner notes, and photos from the recording session.
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Guitarist/composer Jonny Greenwood made his BBC Proms debut with a late-night concert at Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday. He curated a program of pieces by Biber and Krzysztof Penderecki, Steve Reich's Pulse, and his own works, including the world premiere of his new piece, Horror vacui. Greenwood joined the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble and BBC National Orchestra of Wales in performing. You can hear the concert again via BBC Radio 3 now and watch it on BBC Four tonight.
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Kronos Quartet and Iranian vocalist Mahsa Vahdat perform Music for Change: The Banned Countries in Georgia this weekend, with concerts at Emory University’s Concert Hall in Atlanta on Saturday and UGA’s Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall in Athens on Sunday. The programs also include works by John Coltrane and Omar Souleyman, as well as pieces written and composed for the quartet’s Fifty for the Future commissioning project.
The first complete recording of Sun Rings, the quartet’s groundbreaking collaboration with composer Terry Riley, was released last month on Nonesuch Records.
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Pat Metheny and his Side Eye trio—pianist James Francies and drummer Marcus Gilmore—conclude a three-night residency at Sony Hall in New York City tonight.
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Robert Plant and his band the Sensational Space Shifters bring music from his latest album, Carry Fire, and more to the Moose Light Blues tent in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in Canada, tonight, as part of the sold-out Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival.
“Carry Fire further extends Plant’s voyage and reaffirms his mastery,” said New York magazine's Vulture. “There’s always been something deeply enviable about Plant’s voice, which summons, more or less without effort, a sense of sustained astonishment ... Plant has come into his own.”
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Chris Thile hosts his public radio show, Live From Here, from its new home, The Town Hall in New York City, on Saturday, with special guests The Lumineers, Raphael Saadiq, actor Jeff Daniels, writer Maria Popova, and comedian Aparna Nancherla. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend and around the world via livefromhere.org, starting at 5:45 PM ET.
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Yola makes her debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville tonight, followed by a set at the Great Southeast Music Hall Stage at Piedmont Park in Atlanta on Saturday, for Music Midtown.
Yola’s Dan Auerbach–produced debut album, Walk Through Fire, has been named one of The Best Albums of 2019 (So Far) by NPR Music, which says it’s an “exhilarating” album that “encapsulates country-soul lustiness, plushly orchestrated pop transcendence and a range of expression both subtle and striking.”
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