Julia Bullock joins Boston Symphony Orchestra, Hilary Hahn, and conductor Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood. The Black Keys are in Spain and Greece. Sam Gendel tours Japan with Festival Fruezinho. Emmylou Harris headlines Winnipeg Folk Festival. Brad Mehldau Trio plays Kongsberg and North Sea Jazz fests. Natalie Merchant joins Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra upstate. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in the Catskills. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway are at Blissfest in Harbor Springs, MI.
Classical singer Julia Bullock joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra and violinist Hilary Hahn, conducted by Andris Nelsons, at Tanglewood’s Koussevitsky Music Shed in Lenox, Massachusetts, on Sunday. The program features two BSO-commissioned pieces—Iman Habibi’s Zhiân, receiving its world premiere, and Jessie Montgomery’s Freedom Songs—as well as Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Bullock won the Opus Klassik award in Germany last week as the Breakout Artist of the Year for her debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, released late last year on Nonesuch, and an Edison Classical Award nomination in the Netherlands for the same in the Solo Vocalist category just yesterday.
---
The Black Keys, currently touring Europe for the first time in eight years, continue to hit the summer festivals this weekend, performing music from their latest album, Dropout Boogie, and more at Espacio Mad Cool in Madrid, Spain, tonight, for Mad Cool Festival, and Terra Vibe in Malakasa, Greece, on Saturday, as part of Rockwave Festival. "The Black Keys have always been a visceral live experience," says Clash in a recap of the band's recent Manchester AO Arena show. "At heart, it's about two musicians—Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney—tearing it up, letting the sweat, blood, and booze ease out into their riffs."
---
Sam Gendel and his new trio—keyboardist, composer, and producer Benny Bock and fiddler, composer, and keyboard player Hans Kjorstad—are in Japan for Festival Fruezinho, with two shows this weekend: at Tachikawa Stage Garden in Tokyo on Saturday and Fukuoka Civic Hall on Sunday. Gendel’s latest album, COOKUP, on which he interprets R&B and soul hits originally released between 1992 and 2004, was released on Nonesuch earlier this year. The album, per Mojo’s four-star review, “highlights Gendel’s daring interpretative strengths.”
---
Emmylou Harris headlines the main stage at Birds Bill Provincial Park in Winnipeg, Canada, tonight, as part of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Harris's album Stumble Into Grace, which turns 20 this year, was released on vinyl for the first time earlier this spring in a limited cream-colored vinyl edition. On this, her second album of original material, following her Nonesuch debut album, Red Dirt Girl, Harris is joined by guests like Linda Ronstadt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Gillian Welch, Jane Siberry, Buddy Miller, Daniel Lanois, and Malcolm Burn, who produced the record. Newsweek declared: "Her stellar voice takes on new depth when tied to songs this personal."
---
Brad Mehldau Trio—Mehldau, drummer Jeff Ballard, and bassist Larry Grenadier—continue their European tour with two festival sets: at Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway on Saturday and North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands on Sunday.
---
Natalie Merchant is joined by the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to perform music from her new album, Keep Your Courage, and more at the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater in upstate New York on Saturday. Merchant was on the Song Exploder podcast last week to talk with host Hrishikesh Hirway about the album track "Sister Tilly.” You can hear what she had to say here.
---
Cécile McLorin Salvant and her quintet—pianist Elio Villafranca, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, djembe and conga player Weedie Braimah, and percussionist Keita Ogawa—bring music from her new album, Mélusine, and more to the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, New York, on Saturday. "Salvant has already far transcended her early status as her generation's most imaginative and thrilling jazz interpreter," says SPIN, naming Mélusine one of The Best Albums of 2023 (So Far).
---
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway play the Blissfest Music Festival in Harbor Springs, Michigan, tonight. Their new album, City of Gold, due July 21 on Nonesuch, follows their acclaimed 2022 label debut, Crooked Tree, which won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. You can watch two videos for the newly released album track “San Joaquin” here. You can watch their Holler session of songs from the new album and more, filmed live at the Railbird Festival in Lexington, Kentucky, last month, here.
- Log in to post comments
