Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and choreographer Aszure Barton present A a | a B : B E N D—an intimate yet provocative world where dancers and musician coexist on stage to embrace human friction, tension, and explosive beauty—at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts’ Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto tonight and on Saturday. Akinmusire’s latest album, honey from a winter stone, has made several year-end lists, including DownBeat, Jazzwise, and Mojo, and has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album. “It’s every bit the stunner," Nate Chinen writes in his Substack The Gig, including the album among the year's best in jazz: "intensely personal, dauntlessly political, a feat of formal cohesion.”

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Classical singer Julia Bullock continues her four-performance run with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Petr Popelka, at the Chicago Symphony Center tonight, Saturday, and Sunday. The program includes the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s Song of the Reappeared which was written for Bullock, as well as Brahms' Symphony No. 3 and Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. Song of the Reappeared, a setting of the poetry of Chilean writer Raúl Zurita, explores themes of memory, language, and spirituality.

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Guitarist Mary Halvorson joins pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith at Roulette in Brooklyn on Sunday. “Thrilling; no matter how many times I return, this album feels like a fresh expedition," Nate Chinen writes of her latest album with her sextet Amaryllis, About Ghosts, naming it the No. 1 Jazz Album of the Year in his Substack, The Gig. She recently spoke with Chinen’s co-host on WRTI’s The Late Set, which you can hear here. About Ghosts has been recognized on many year-end lists including The Quietus, Jazzwise, and Mojo.

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Singer/composer Gabriel Kahane and his father, pianist Jeffrey Kahane, perform at Healing Force of the Universe in Pasadena, California, on Sunday. The program includes the LA premiere of Kahane’s Final Privacy Song—a setting of a long poem by the poet Matthew Zapruder—along with other works by Gabriel Kahane, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, Samuel Barber, and Aaron Copland. The composer’s new album, Heirloom, featuring a concerto of the same name he wrote for his father, was released this fall. "A musical roller coaster of a journey bursting with drama, detail and invention," says Gramophone. "With pianist Jeffrey Kahane in top form, and conductor Eric Jacobsen and The Knights' orchestral collective alive to the concerto's every twist and turn, here is a dazzling concerto du jour that glows with an exhilarating sense of its own clear purpose and inevitability."

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Rob Mazurek and Exploding Star Orchestra perform at the Walker Art Center’s McGuire Theater in Minneapolis tonight. His 2020 album with Exploding Star Orchestra, Dimensional Stardust, was released on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records.

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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Kyle Poole—bring music from her album Oh Snap and more to Cornell University's Bailey Hall in Ithaca, New York, tonight. Salvant was on the New York Times’ Cannonball with Wesley Morris to discuss the art of the cover song—a phrase Salvant doesn't use—and opens with a list of Morris's all-time favorites, on which he places Salvant's interpretation of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights," the opening track to her 2022 Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song, at No. 7. You can hear their conversation here. Salvant’s new album, Oh Snap, is among the year’s best, per Jazzwise.

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Molly Tuttle continues her The Highway Knows tour in support of her new album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, in her home state, California, with shows at House of Blues in San Diego on Saturday and Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara on Sunday. Tuttle has been nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Americana Album for So Long Little Miss Sunshine and Best Americana Performance for the album track "That's Gonna Leave a Mark." Listen to her new holiday track with Golden Highway, joined by Ketch Secor, their take of The Pogues' 1987 holiday classic with Kirsty MacColl, "Fairytale of New York," here.

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Guitarist/composer Yasmin Williams is also on the West Coast, bringing music from her latest album, Acadia, and more to The Freight in Berkeley tonight, The Get Down in Portland on Saturday, and Triple Door in Seattle on Sunday. The Washington Post calls Acadia “sumptuous” and describes her music style as “highly inventive, largely unorthodox, and totally alive.” Williams just won the International Folk Music Awards' Rising Tide Award, which "celebrates emerging artists who inspire others by embodying the values and ideals of the folk community through their work."