Chris Thile kicks off his European tour in France and Italy, where John Adams conducts. Laurie Anderson and Sexmob play Pitchfork Music Festival London. Jeremy Denk is at Northwestern. Mary Halvorson concludes About Ghosts tour in the Netherlands. Emmylou Harris is in Louisiana. Natalie Merchant takes her tour to Connecticut. Mandy Patinkin is in New Jersey. Jeff Parker plays in Brooklyn. Robert Plant and Saving Grace perform in Port Chester, NY. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Paris and Spain, where Gustavo Santaolalla performs Ronroco. Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion are in Prague. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera premieres in LA.
Chris Thile kicks off his European tour, featuring music from his new album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 2, out today, at Le Brassin in Schiltigheim, France, tonight, followed by two shows in Italy, at Casa del Jazz in Rome on Saturday and Teatro dell'Arte in Milan on Sunday. You can watch a new video of the Largo, from Sonata No. 3 in C major, directed by Matthew Edginton, here. Ahead of the tour, Thile shared some cultural picks with RTE, by Miyazaki, Rothko, Stravinsky, Bolaño, Jennifer Egan, Elena Ferrante, George Saunders, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, and more; you can find that here. He also spoke with Songlines magazine about some albums that shaped him, by Miles Davis, Radiohead, Gillian Welch, Benjamin Britten, Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck, and Mike Marshall; you can read that here. He stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects series to share some favorite Nonesuch albums; you can find that here.
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Also in Italy is composer John Adams, who conducts Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia at Saint Cecilia Hall in Rome tonight and Saturday. The mostly Adams program includes his Short Ride in a Fast Machine and music from Nixon in China, as well as Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite. San Francisco Symphony’s 1986 recording of Short Ride in a Fast Machine, from the album The Chairman Dances, and 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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Laurie Anderson and the band Sexmob perform music both new and old at Roundhouse in London on Saturday for the Pitchfork Music Festival. Anderson’s latest album, Amelia, about renowned female aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic last flight, was released to great acclaim last year.
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Pianist Jeremy Denk performs a sold-out recital at Northwestern School of Music’s Galvin Recital Hall in Evanston, Illinois, tonight. The program features music by women composers from Clara Schumann to Meredith Monk, alongside pieces by Brahms and Robert Schumann, whose work he performs on his 2019 album, c. 1300–c. 2000.
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Guitarist Mary Halvorson and her improvisatory sextet Amaryllis—Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet)—conclude their About Ghosts European tour this weekend with two concerts in the Netherlands: at Bimhuis in Amsterdam tonight and De Oosterpoort in Groningen on Saturday. About Ghosts, released earlier this year, "conjures such vibrant, picturesque riffs, capricious melodic excursions, and suspenseful rhythmic undertows," DownBeat says in its four-star review, "a marvelous document for Halvorson’s compositional acumen and conceptual ingenuity.” The magazine's Critics Poll named Halvorson Guitarist of the Year and Amaryllis Group of the Year.
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Emmylou Harris performs at Riverdome at Horseshoe Casino & Hotel in Bossier City, Louisiana, tonight, for the James Burton International Guitar Festival. Last month, she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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Natalie Merchant continues her three-week acoustic tour, joined by her guitarist of twenty-five years, Erik Della Penna, with a sold-out show at Edmond Town Hall in Newtown, Connecticut, on Saturday. Her latest record, Keep Your Courage, released on Nonesuch Records in 2023, dives into love and human connection in its many forms, with Mojo calling it “her most beautiful [material] in decades.” Merchant’s album Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings was released ten years ago yesterday.
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Mandy Patinkin continues his JukeBox tour with pianist Adam-Ben David at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick tonight.
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Guitarist Jeff Parker joins Patrick Shiroishi and Fergus Jones in the Atrium at Public Records in Brooklyn on Sunday for Durations. Parker and his Tortoise band mate John McEntire were on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday to discuss the band's new album, Touch, and their upcoming concert with Chicago Philharmonic at The Auditorium. You can hear their conversation here.
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Robert Plant and Saving Grace—vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown—continue their first ever North American tour in support of their new album, Saving Grace, performing at the sold-out Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, on Saturday. Plant was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week to discuss the album; you can watch their conversation here.
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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her band—pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Kyle Poole—perform at Teatro Cervantes de Málaga in Spain tonight for Málaga Jazz Festival, and at Philharmonie de Paris on Saturday. Her new album, Oh Snap, was released earlier this year. Salvant sat down for a Nonesuch Q&A about the new album, covering a wide range of topics, including her songwriting process, working on the project in secret, AutoTune, bodily fluids, frogs, and embracing weirdness. You can see what she had to say in the six-part series here.
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Composer/producer/musician Gustavo Santaolalla continues to tour Europe with his acclaimed 1998 album Ronroco at Auditorio El Batel in Cartagena, Spain, on Saturday for Cartagena Jazz Festival. A remastered edition of the Grammy and Academy Award winner’s critically acclaimed album was released on vinyl for the first time in a newly remastered edition on Nonesuch Records last year.
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Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion are at La Fabrika in Prague tonight for Prague Sounds. The program includes music from their GRAMMY-winning new album together, Rectangles and Circumstance, and their previous collaboration, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part.
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Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera, Hildegard, received its world premiere on Wednesday, with two additional sold-out performances at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on Saturday and Sunday. The opera explores the life of the 12th-century German Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen and fellow nun Richardis von Stade. After Hildegard begins seeing visions of God, the two women quickly develop a transformative partnership that awakens them creatively, spiritually, and romantically. Snider’s Mass for the Endangered, featuring the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch, was released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records in 2020.
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