Rhiannon Giddens and Silkroad Ensemble are in Berkeley and Fairfax, VA. Mary Halvorson tours Europe with Ches Smith. Emmylou Harris is in Georgia and Florida. Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride are in France and Luxembourg. Shara Nova performs The Blue Hour with Wheeling Symphony Orchestra. Robert Plant and Saving Grace are in Austin and New Orleans. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Indianapolis. Davóne Tines joins NY Phil. Molly Tuttle ends European tour with Tyler Childers in Amsterdam.
Rhiannon Giddens and Silkroad Ensemble, of which she is artistic director, perform at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, on Friday and at the George Mason University Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, on Sunday for their tour Sanctuary: Power, Resonance, and Ritual. The program explores music’s capacity to process loss and environmental change while rebuilding community through shared humanity. Giddens and Silkroad released the album American Railroad on Nonesuch in 2024. It is the culmination of four years of research, collaboration, and music-making, having brought Silkroad artists all across the US to uncover and uplift stories of those who built the transcontinental railroad and connecting railways across North America. You can get it and hear it here.
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Guitarist Mary Halvorson joins Ches Smith in Europe, performing from his Clone Row at Bimhuis in Amsterdam tonight, Werkplaats Walter in Anderlecht, Belgium, on Saturday, and Stadtgarten Köln in Cologne on Sunday. Halvorson’s latest album, About Ghosts, was recognized on many year-end-best lists, including The Quietus, Jazzwise, Mojo, PopMatters, Slate, and more, and topped the Francis Davis Jazz Poll.
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Emmylou Harris performs at The Piedmont Grand Opera House in Macon, Georgia, on Saturday, and Glazer Hall in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. Harris was on the cover of the Independent’s Culture section last month to discuss the European farewell tour she’s undertaken this year; you can read the article here.
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Pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Christian McBride are in Europe, performing at La Maison de la Culture in Amiens, France, tonight, and the sold-out Philharmonie Luxembourg on Saturday. Mehldau and McBride can heard together with saxophonist Joshua Redman and drummer Brian Blade on three albums: LongGone (2022), RoundAgain (2020), and MoodSwing.
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Composer and vocalist Shara Nova joins Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Devlin, for a performance of The Blue Hour—a song cycle composed by Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider—at Capitol Theatre in Wheeling, West Virginia, tonight. Set to excerpts from Carolyn Forché’s epic poem On Earth, the music follows one woman’s journey through the liminal space between life and death via thousands of hallucinatory and non-linear images. You can get the album and hear it here.
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Robert Plant and Saving Grace continue their US spring tour in support of their album Saving Grace at Austin City Limits at the Moody Theater in Austin on Saturday and Saenger Theatre in New Orleans on Sunday. They take their tour across the US with stops in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Louisville, Raleigh, Asheville, Newport News, Philadelphia, and Red Bank, culminating at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, then head to South America in May and back to Europe this summer. Plant and Saving Grace will release a vinyl EP, Saving Grace: All That Glitters…, at independent record stores on Record Store Day, April 18.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and pianist Sullivan Fortner perform a sold-out show at The Cabaret in Indianapolis on Saturday. Salvant was recently nominated for the Jazz FM Award for Album of the Year for her album Oh Snap.
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Bass-baritone Davóne Tines joins the New York Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel for the world premiere of composer David Lang's the wealth of nations at David Geffen Hall's Wu Tsai Theater tonight through Sunday, following last night's first performance. The piece features text from Adam Smith's titular work as well as Franklin Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Wharton, Eugene Debs, and Maria W. Stewart. Tines's debut solo album, ROBESON, released on Nonesuch in 2024, grapples with the legacy of a hero through the musical repertoire of Paul Robeson. “Like his predecessor [Robeson], Mr. Tines has always been more than just a performer," says the Wall Street Journal, "using his richly expressive, wide-ranging instrument and theatrical skill to excavate his own stories, dark side and all.”
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Molly Tuttle’s European tour with Tyler Childers comes to a close at AFAS Live in Amsterdam on Saturday. Before the tour, she joined Emmylou Harris and Alison Krauss to perform "Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby" at 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; you can watch it here.
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