Yasmin Williams performs at the Kennedy Center and Evanston Folk Fest. LA Phil & Gustavo Dudamel perform John Adams at Hollywood Bowl. Jeremy Denk marks Ives's 150th at the Lammermuir Fest in Scotland. The Magnetic Fields perform 69 Love Songs in Vienna. Brad Mehldau is at Jazz à La Villette in Paris. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Buenos Aires. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway tour the Carolinas.
Guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams brings music from her forthcoming Nonesuch debut album, Acadia, to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, DC, tonight, as part of DECLASSIFIED: Ben Folds Presents, which also features performances by Rob Thomas, Madison Cunningham, and the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Steven Reineke. Williams then heads to Illinois for a set at Dawes Park in Evanston on Sunday, as part of the Evanston Folk Festival.
Just yesterday, Williams released the Acadia album track “Hummingbird,” featuring Allison de Groot on banjo and Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle, along with a video for it which you can watch here. Acadia, due October 4, is “beautiful—a showcase for a one-of-a-kind artist,” says Aquarium Drunkard’s Jason P. Woodbury, who recently spoke with Williams for the site’s Transmissions podcast; you can hear their conversation here.
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Composer John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine is performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles tonight and Saturday. The program, which also features Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade and YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), also includes Arturo Márquez’s LA Phil-commissioned Danzón No. 9 and Gabriela Ortiz’s Antrópolis.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk throws a 150th birthday party for composer Charles Ives at the Lammermuir Festival in Dunbar, Scotland. He is joined by violinist Maria Wloszczowska for a performance of Ives’ four violin sonatas at Dunbar Parish Church this afternoon. Also joining the celebration are Garleton Singers, led by music director Stephen Doughty, and the East Lothian Council Instrumental Service Wind Band and Friends. Denk returns to the Dunbar Parish Church for a solo recital on Saturday, featuring works by Brahms, Robert and Clara Schumann, Missy Mazzoli, Meredith Monk, and more. He continues at the festival for performances with Valo String Quartet on Monday and Wednesday.
Denk’s new album Ives Denk is due October 18 on Nonesuch Records. It features the composer’s four violin sonatas, performed with violinist Stefan Jackiw, as well as remastered versions of his Sonatas No. 1 and 2 for piano, from Denk’s 2010 debut recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives. “In the Barn,” the second movement of Sonata No. 2 for violin, can be heard here.
Jeremy Denk was on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row to talk with presenter Kirsty Wark about today’s concert and the new album; you can hear their conversation here.
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The Magnetic Fields continue the European leg of their 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary tour with shows at Volkstheater in Vienna, Austria, on Sunday and Monday. The concerts, which continue in Europe through September before picking back up in the US in October, feature the full album, all 69 songs, over two nights at each tour stop. “A 172-minute indie rock spectacular,” says the London Times in its review of the band’s shows at Edinburgh last week. “As the crowd erupted into applause and even a few cautious whoops, there was a shared feeling of having witnessed a spectacular of the first order.”
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Brad Mehldau is at the sold-out Jazz à La Villette festival in Paris this weekend. He performs with his trio—bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer Jorge Rossy—at the City of Music concert hall on Saturday, before returning for a solo set on Sunday afternoon. Mehldau released two new solo albums, After Bach II and Après Fauré, on Nonesuch earlier this year. The Associated Press says: “Mehldau’s variations are bracing and daring, breathtaking and beautiful, spiritual and psychedelic. Blue notes emerge from the contrapuntal complexity as he tests the limits of Bach’s music, showing there are none.”
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Savannah Harris—perform early and late sets at Bebop Club in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Saturday and Sunday. Salvant was named Female Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, and her latest album, Mélusine, made the Jazz Albums of the Year list. “The massively creative vocalist delivers a tour de force in several languages recounting the legend of Mélusine,” the magazine says.
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway—who have been nominated for eight IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards, including Album of the Year for their latest, City of Gold—are in the Carolinas this weekend, playing Brevard Music Center in Brevard, North Carolina, tonight, for Mountain Song Festival. From there, they play The Refinery in Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday, before heading back up north for a show at Greenfield Lake Amphitheater in Wilmington on Sunday. The band’s new six-song EP, Into the Wild, is due September 20 on Nonesuch; you can hear the title track here.
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