Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail is due out on Nonesuch next Tuesday, September 14, but Chicago audiences can celebrate a few days early: the Rhys Chatham Trio, featuring Chatham on amplified and processed trumpet with guitarist David Daniell (the concertmaster at the Lincoln Center performance of A Crimson Grail captured on the album) and drummer Tim Barnes, headline a triple-bill concert at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, with John Wiese and Bill Orcutt, tonight. Tonight marks the first time Chatham has performed in Chicago since the 2007 performance of his Guitar Trio, as well as Tuesday's release of the new album, which Record Collector magazine describes as iImaginative, bold and successful."

Time Out Chicago names tonight's concert a Top Live Show and suggests that the release of A Crimson Grail should help in "cementing Chatham’s long-overdue ascent."

The concert is also a critics' choice of the Chicago Reader, which calls A Crimson Grail "an epic piece," one that "shapes the swarming, richly layered tones produced by multiple guitarists strumming simple, sustained patterns into a gorgeous symphonic arc—though of course with 50 or 60 times as many guitarists, the result is both more monumental and more ethereal." Read more at chicagoreader.com.

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A Crimson Grail was recently featured on WNYC's New Sounds program. Introducing an excerpt from the new recording, host John Schaeffer says that the piece "is built up almost like a Sufi ritual, where it starts softly and slowly, gradually accelerates, rhythm enters, until it finally builds into an ecstatic, massive climax." To hear the segment, visit wnyc.org.

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For information on additional live performances from Chatham, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To reserve a copy of A Crimson Grail, with the complete album included as audiophile-quality, 320 kbps MP3s available on release day, head to the Nonesuch Store.