Allen Toussaint headlines the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, plays SFJAZZ ... David Byrne is out West, at Red Rocks and Red Butte ... Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe bring tour to Belgium ... Toumani Diabaté, Béla Fleck tune in to Telluride Bluegrass Fest ... Bill Frisell performs a solo set in Washington state ... Emmylou Harris goes solo at Telluride ... Pat Metheny revisits Gary Burton Quartet on the road ... Punch Brothers play bluegrass and Radiohead at Telluride ... Sara Watkins does Prairie Home Companion at Ravinia, joins WPA at Telluride ... Wilco does Vegas and Hard Rock Hotel ... and more ...
Allen Toussaint takes his show to St. Paul, Minnesota's Mears Park for a free outdoor set as the headline performer at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival tonight. The Minneapolis City Pages previews the show in an extensive interview with the famed pianist, the extended version of which can be found at blogs.citypages.com. On Saturday, he and his quartet, featuring Renard Poche on guitar, Roland Guerin on bass, Herman LeBeaux on drums, and Clarence Toussaint on percussion, head to San Francisco to perform at the Herbst Theatre as part of the 10th anniversary of the SFJAZZ spring season.
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David Byrne is out West, having helped open the Telluride Bluegrass Festival with the final set of the festival's opening night proceedings last night. He and his Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno tour remain in Colorado through Saturday's show at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison before heading to Salt Lake City, Utah, for Sunday's set at, coincidentally, the similarly named Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre. After last Sunday's stop at the Majestic Theater in Dallas, the Dallas Observer wrote: "Dressed in all white, like some kind of angelic delivery boy, legendary indie rock icon David Byrne thrilled a packed house at the Majestic Theatre with two hours of angular pop/funk that was downright inflammable."
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Ry Cooder's European tour with Nick Lowe and Joaquin Cooder winds its way through the Benelux counties, having stopped at the Carré Theatre in Amsterdam last night and heading to Belgium this weekend. On Sunday night, the group performs its first of two consecutive night shows in the country, playing Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp before a Brussels show on Monday. After the tour opener at the Olympia in Dublin, the Irish Independent, said that "Cooder’s guitar qualities—especially his slide guitar virtuosity—are frequently breathtaking." An additional date at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre has now been added at the tour's end, July 10.
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Toumani Diabaté joins touring partner Béla Fleck for an evening set at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival tonight. On Sunday, Diabaté will perform a special solo set at the Cincinnati Zoo Amphitheater for the MusicNOW festival.
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Bill Frisell performs a one-night-only solo set at the San Juan Community Theatre's Whittier Theatre in Friday Harbor, Washington. "Guitarist Bill Frisell has mined areas of Americana, pop and vintage jazz so often that their inspirations have become like welcome spirits in his music," wrote the Lexington Herald-Leader after a Frisell Trio performance in Louisville earlier this week. "They state their presence briefly, celebrate within whatever emotional context that best fits the tune at hand, then evaporate into the ether."
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Emmylou Harris helped start off the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in an opening-night performance with Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and Buddy Miller for a Three Girls & Their Buddy set. She returns solo on Sunday night as the festival's final headlining artist.
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Pat Metheny hits the road this weekend for a 10-day tour with what's being billed as the Gary Burton Quartet Revisited, reuniting Metheny with vibraphonist Gary Burton and his original Quartet bassist Steve Swallow, along with frequent Metheny collaborator Antonio Sanchez. First up is a performance at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton, Massachusetts, tonight, followed by a Saturday night gig at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, and a Sunday night show at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey.
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Punch Brothers return to their old stomping grounds of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where Chris Thile and Noam Pikelny first became friends, to perform two distinctly different sets. On Saturday, the group plays a program with the festival-appropriate title Punch Brothers Play & Sing Bluegrass. On Sunday night, it's a different set of songs altogether when the guys take the NightGrass stage for Punch Brothers Play & Sing Radiohead.
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Sara Watkins is a special guest on this week's episode of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, airing a live national broadcast performance from the Ravinia Festival Pavillion in Ravinia, Illinois, on hundreds of public radio stations across the US Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, Sara joins her brother and fellow Nickel Creek member Sean Watkins at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival to perform with their other band, Works Progress Administration, featuring Glenn Phillips, Benmont Tench, Greg Leisz, and a number of other stellar musicians.
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Wilco, following a sold-out show with Grizzly Bear at Tucson's Centennial Hall last night, sets out for a string of dates with opener Jonathan Wilson. They're in Vegas tonight to perform at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel and in Pomona, California, on Saturday to perform at the Fox Theatre there. Up next week are three sold-out shows at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, the last with Okkervil River.
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