Conor Oberst, Emmylou Harris play free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco … John Adams conducts LA Phil New Music Group, Timo Andres … Sam Amidon, The Staves play Berlin festival … David Byrne headlines Roots Picnic in NYC … Kronos Quartet performs in Oregon … Lianne La Havas hits Midwest with Leon Bridges … Lake Street Dive takes US tour east … Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau are in NYC, LA … and more …
Conor Oberst and Emmylou Harris return to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the free, annual outdoor music festival, now in its 16th year.
Oberst, who started a tour of intimate solo shows this week, hosts the Rooster Stage all day today, for the third-annual Conor Oberst Brings Friends for Friday, with performances from artists including MiWi La Lupa, Hop Along, Jim James, and Oberst himself, in a headlining set. Oberst remains in California for the weekend, playing two sold-out shows featuring music from his forthcoming album, Ruminations: at The Fillmore in San Francisco with Jim James on Saturday and The Glass House in Ponoma on Sunday. The album is now streaming in full as an NPR Music First Listen.
Emmylou Harris, who has played Hardly Strictly every year of the festival’s existence, returns with a headlining set on the Banjo Stage on Sunday, following a show at the Parson Theater in Santa Rosa on Saturday. Harris's 2000 Grammy Award–winning album Red Dirt Girl received its first-ever vinyl release last week. It was announced earlier this week that Robert Plant will join her for select dates on the Lampedusa: Concerts for Refugees tour, which begins next week and will support Jesuit Refugee Service’s educational programs for refugees around the world.
---
Composer John Adams conducts the LA Phil New Music Group and pianist and label mate Timo Andres in four world premieres, including a new work by Ingram Marshall, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday. The program is part of the LA Phil’s Green Umbrellas series.
Adams's Scheherazade.2 is out on Nonesuch Records today. Adams wrote this dramatic symphony for the violinist Leila Josefowicz, who performs it on the recording with the St. Louis Symphony led by Music Director David Robertson.
Josefowicz, Roberston, and the St. Louis Symphony mark Adams’s forthcoming 70th birthday, with a performance of his Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony at Powell Hall in St. Louis tonight and Saturday. Adams spoke with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about his longstanding relationship with the orchestra for an article you can read at stltoday.com.
---
Label mates Sam Amidon and the Staves both perform at a collaborative festival curated by Justin Vernon and The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner at Funkhaus in Berlin on Saturday and Sunday.
The Staves worked with Vernon on both their new EP, Sleeping In A Car, and 2015 Nonesuch Records debut album, If I Was, of which the New York Times says, "the songs are illuminated from within." The Times calls Amidon’s Lily-O “hauntingly beautiful.”
---
David Byrne plays the second and final day of the Roots Picnic, co-headlining with Wu-Tang Clan and, Nile Rodgers, and backed by The Roots, at Bryant Park in New York City on Sunday.
---
Kronos Quartet performs at the Austin Auditorium in Oregon State University’s LaSells Stewart Center in Corvallis on Sunday. The program includes works written or arranged for the Quartet, including pieces by Terry Riley, Pete Townsend, and Sigur Rós, as well as works commissioned as part of Kronos’s Fifty for the Future project.
Kronos Quartet's acclaimed 1992 album Pieces of Africa, which Time called a "potent new brew of folk influences, Minimalism, and European forms by eight black, brown, and white African composers," is now available on vinyl for the first time.
---
Lianne La Havas’s tour as special guest of R&B artist and singer, songwriter Leon Bridges draws to an end with shows at The Fillmore in Detroit tonight and Masonic Temple in Cleveland on Saturday, followed by a sold-out show at The National in Richmond on Sunday. They play one final show together in Birmingham on Wednesday, before La Havas closes out her US tour with a headlining show in Atlanta on Thursday. The Kansas City Star, in review of a show at the Uptown Theater earlier this week, praises her “stunning voice and ebullient stage presence.”
NPR recently reported that La Havas's 2015 Tiny Desk Concert, featuring songs from her album Blood, is the most popular Tiny Desk of 2016 so far. You can watch it again here.
---
Lake Street Dive brings its North American Side Pony tour east with shows at the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York, tonight, Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on Saturday, and Camden Opera House in Camden, Maine, on Sunday.
---
Saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau continue a two-month world tour in support of their just-released duo album, Nearness, with a show at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in New York City tonight. Mehldau stays on at the theater for a solo recital on Saturday, before heading across country to join back up with Redman at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California, on Sunday.
"Magic always seems to happen when saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau play together," exclaims Mojo magazine in a review of Nearness. "They create a special telepathic musical synergy in each other’s company." The Wall Street Journal says: "Few records released this year better define what jazz sounds like today."
- Log in to post comments
