Molly Tuttle and Emmylou Harris join the Grand Ole Opry's O Brother, Where Art Thou? 25th anniversary celebration in Nashville. Opéra National de Paris performs John Adams's Nixon in China. Sérgio and Odair Assad, Chris Thile, and Tortoise all tour California. Julia Bullock is in Australia for the Adelaide Festival. Mary Halvorson is at Dartmouth. Makaya McCraven tours Florida. Mandy Patinkin is in Denver.
Molly Tuttle and Emmylou Harris take part in the Grand Ole Opry's 25th anniversary celebration of the Coen brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and its famed T Bone Burnett–produced soundtrack, on which Harris is featured, at the Opry House in Nashville on Saturday. Their fellow performers for the evening include Alison Krauss, Billy Strings, Old Crow Medicine Show, Del McCoury Band, and many others. Tuttle was on American Songwriter’s Off the Record to discuss her latest album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, on which, says host Lisa Konickito, Tuttle "explores country, rock, and pop; all the while, she's still the amazing guitar player that we know and love." Harris was on the cover of the Independent’s Culture section on Saturday to discuss the European farewell tour she’s undertaken this year; you can read the article here.
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Composer John Adams's Nixon in China is performed by the Opéra National de Paris at Opéra Bastille tonight. The production, which opened earlier this week, directed by Valentina Carrasco and conducted by Kent Nagano, stars Thomas Hampson, Renée Flemming, John Matthew Meyers, and Caroline Wettergreen and continues through March. Nixon in China can be heard on John Adams Collected Works, a forty-disc box set released in 2022 with recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with Nonesuch.
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Sérgio and Odair Assad continue their 60th Anniversary Farewell Tour in California at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on Saturday and Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo on Sunday. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of their Nonesuch debut album, Latin American Music for Two Guitars. On the album, the brothers—"the best two-guitar team in existence, maybe even in history" (Washington Post)—perform music by Astor Piazzolla, Leo Brouwer, Hermeto Pascoal, Radamés Gnattali, Alberto Ginastera, and Sérgio himself.
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Classical singer Julia Bullock performs in the Australian premiere of Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide on Sunday, as part of the Adelaide Festival. Directed by Peter Sellars, the work shines a light on artist and activist Joséphine Baker. Julia Bullock’s solo debut album, Walking in the Dark, was released on Nonesuch in 2022 and won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.
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Guitarist Mary Halvorson and Illegal Crowns, her trio with drummer Tomas Fujiwara and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, are joined by special guest trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts' Spaulding Auditorium in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Saturday. The program includes works by Halvorson, Fujiwara, Smith, a reimagining of Charles Mingus's Another Prayer for Passive Resistance, and more.
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Drummer, producer, and sonic collagist Makaya McCraven, whose new two-disc, four-EP compilation, Off the Record, was released last year, continues his US tour in Florida with early and late sets at Judson’s Live in Orlando tonight and Saturday, and a performance at Heartwood Soundstage in Gainesville on Sunday.
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Mandy Patinkin continues his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more—with pianist Adam-Ben David, at University of Denver’s sold-out Newman Center for the Performing Arts tonight.
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Chris Thile brings music from his new album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 2, and more to California this weekend, performing at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall tonight and Cal Poly’s Performing Arts Center San Luis Obispo on Saturday. Gramophone names the album an Editor's Choice, calling it "an album of real beauty, emerging as if through the mist—the mandolin proceeds to bring to this familiar music a vivid and highly personal sense of both mystery and joy."
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Also in California, Tortoise, whose first new album since 2016, Touch, was released last fall, kicks off its series of special Northwest winter performances with two sold-out sets at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco tonight and Saturday. Band member Dan Bitney recently stopped by the Nonesuch offices to share some favorite records for the Nonesuch Selects video series; you can watch it and see his picks, here.
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