This Labor Day Weekend, Brad Mehldau gives the world premiere performance of his Piano Concerto at Philharmonie de Paris … Fleet Foxes conclude tour with hometown set at Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle … Tigran Hamasyan Trio starts Japan tour in Tokyo … Gabriel Kahane joins Oregon Symphony for his new oratorio ... Kronos Quartet performs in Poland … Lake Street Dive takes Free Yourself Up tour to Midwest …
This long, Labor Day Weekend in the United States, Brad Mehldau is in Paris for the world premiere performance of his new Piano Concerto at the Philharmonie on Saturday. After beginning the evening with a solo set, Mehldau is joined by l'Orchestre national d'Ile-de-France, led by Clark Rundell, to perform the new piece. The concert is part of the two-week Jazz à la Villette festival.
Mehldau was at Philharmonie de Paris earlier this year, performing his Three Pieces After Bach program. As with his album After Bach, released on Nonesuch in March, that solo program pairs selections from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier with Mehldau's own works inspired by the piece. You can watch that concert in its entirety here.
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Fleet Foxes headline the final day of the Bumbershoot Festival in their hometown of Seattle on Sunday. The band’s homecoming performance marks the conclusion of fifteen months of touring since the release of their critically acclaimed Nonesuch debut, Crack-Up. “Likely to be the most remarkable album you will hear this year,” the Times of London exclaimed. “The return of one of the most original bands of this century.” Uncut calls the album “astonishing … a recipe for total entertainment forever.”
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Pianist Tigran Hamasyan begins a four-city run of Japan with a trio performance at Jazz Odyssey in Tokyo on Saturday, as part of Tokyo Jazz Festival. Hamasyan makes stops in Nishinomiya, Nagoya, and Saga over the next week, before heading back to the States for an October tour. “As a pianist and composer,” says NPR, “he draws inspiration from jazz, folkloric and classical sources, in ways that feel both hypermodern and practically ageless.”
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Gabriel Kahane joins the Oregon Symphony and conductor Carlos Kalmar for an encore performance of his new oratorio, emergency shelter intake form, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall this evening. The piece, which looks at deep poverty in America, received its world premiere with the orchestra in May. Kahane sings as part of the "chorus of inconvenient statistics"; also performing ar mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran and the Maybelle Community Singers, many of whose members are currently facing extreme poverty. Tonight's concert is presented free-of-charge, with a pay-what-you-will suggested contribution and all proceeds going to a consortium of social service agencies.
Kahane discussed his just-released Nonesuch debut album, Book of Travelers, with NPR's All Things Considered, and performed songs from it on New Sounds' Soundcheck earlier this week. Rolling Stone calls the album a "stunning portrait of a singular moment in America."
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Kronos Quartet is at Kościół Świętego Krzyża in Zakopane, Poland, on Saturday, performing Steve Reich’s Different Trains, which the quartet recorded for Nonesuch in 1989 (and which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition). The program also includes a work by Philip Glass, as well as several works written and composed for the quartet’s Fifty for the Future commissioning project, including the world premiere of a new piece.
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Lake Street Dive resumed its North American Free Yourself Up tour in Michigan last night, and continues this long weekend with concerts at Manchester Music Hall in Lexington, Kentucky, tonight, and Monarch Music Hall in Peoria, Illinois, on Saturday, followed by a sold-out show at Englert Theatre in Iowa City on Monday.
The band stopped by Songkick Live earlier this year to perform several songs from the new album and earlier fan favorites, and to answer fans' questions. You can watch the complete session here.
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