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Journal Friday, November 21, 2008

  • John Adams: Hallelujah Junction [book]
    Wednesday, October 8, 2008
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    NY Times: John Adams's "Absorbing" Memoir Examines His "Lush and Austere, Grand and Precise" Music

    John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.

  • Glenn Kotche
    Thursday, November 20, 2008
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    Chicago Sun-Times: Glenn Kotche, eighth blackbird Concert Offers "Fierce" Performance from "Kindred Musical Souls"

    "Glenn Kotche is not your average rock-and-roll percussionist," says the Chicago Sun-Times in its review of Glenn's joint concert on Tuesday with new-music ensemble eighth blackbird at Chicago's Harris Theater. The paper calls the performers "kindred musical souls," mild in temperament, perhaps, but "as fierce as any garage band or chamber players hurtling through a late Beethoven string quartet." Chicagoist's editors faced a conundrum in deciding how to spend their Tuesday night but "realized just how foolish we would be to pass up" what was "a stellar performance" with "a jaw dropping solo rendition of 'Monkey Chant' by Kotche" and, ultimately, "a truly remarkable evening."

  • Bill Frisell
    Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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    Financial Times: Five Stars for Bill Frisell and His "Spot-On Scores" to Films at Barbican Show

    Fresh off yesterday's five-star review in The Guardian, Bill Frisell's tour-closing concert at the Barbican earns another five stars, from the Financial Times. For the show, the Frisell Trio performed Bill's "spot-on score" that gave "a zesty sheen" to the films of Buster Keaton, Jim Woodring, and Bill Morrison, with the Trio's musical efforts "equal partner in the audiovisual experience." The paper sums up Bill's works as "a soundscape pregnant with humour, menace and the struggle to survive."

  • Bill Frisell "Buster Keaton: High Sign" [cover]
    Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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    Guardian: Five Stars for Bill Frisell Trio's Film Music at the Barbican

    Bill Frisell concluded his Trio tour—playing music to the films of Buster Keaton, Bill Morrison, and Jim Woodring—at the Barbican in London on Saturday as part of the London Jazz Festival. The Guardian gives a perfect five stars to the performance, in which the Trio gave "all the light and shade needed to underpin three very different film-makers' visions ... Best of all were the Buster Keaton movies The High Sign and One Week, integrating music and vision so brilliantly it was impossible to think of the event as pure film or just jazz."

  • Brad Mehldau color horizontal
    Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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    LA Times: Brad Mehldau Offers a "Standout" Performance in "An Evening of Seriously Dynamic Piano Jazz"

    Brad Mehldau shared the bill with jazz greats Ellis Marsalis with his Quintet and McCoy Tyner with his Trio for the final performance of the season at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles Sunday night. The Los Angeles Times describes it as "an evening of seriously dynamic piano jazz, each artist taking a different path to a similar destination" and credits Brad with setting "the evening's tone with a delicately filigreed solo set ..." The review cites as "one of the evening's standouts" Brad's "haunting, occasionally dissonant cover of Nick Drake's 'River Man.'"

  • Punch Brothers 2009 bw
    Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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    Buffalo News: Punch Brothers Give "Revelatory," "High-Flying," "Masterful" Performances

    Punch Brothers are on the road again, touring the States, following Chris Thile's duo tour with bassist Edgar Meyer. Last night, the quintet performed at the University of Buffalo Center for the Arts. The Buffalo News says that as "Bach eventually begat Beethoven," so too has Punch Brothers taken "Bill Monroe’s speeded-up version of old-time country music and accelerating it into another century." The review calls Chris "ferociously gifted," Noam Pikelny's banjo playing "revelatory and a perfect counter for Thile’s high flying skills," and their bandmates' playing "masterful."

  • John Adams profile
    Monday, November 17, 2008
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    Boston Globe: John Adams "Hallelujah Junction" Offers Guide to Artistic Success with Integrity

    The Met premiere production of John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic concluded last Thursday; this weekend, the Atlanta Symphony will give a staged production of the piece. Tonight, the composer is at Harvard to lead a performance of The Wound-Dresser, followed by a discussion. The Boston Globe talks with the composer about this "particularly rich time" in his life, as "one of America's busiest and most original composers" and features a review of Adams's memoir, Hallelujah Junction, that concludes: "[T]his is a book that any aspiring artist, in any medium, should read as a kind of how-to guide to achieving artistic success without losing integrity, something that seems to many young artists today nearly impossible. In fact, it is a book for anyone who wants to create something—including a self."

  • Dan Auerbach by James Quine
    Monday, November 17, 2008
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    Nonesuch to Release Dan Auerbach's Solo Debut, "Keep It Hid"

    Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce that singer/songwriter/guitarist Dan Auerbach, best known as half of The Black Keys, will release his solo debut, Keep It Hid, on February 10, 2009. Dan will begin a national tour with performances in New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC, with opening acts Those Darlins and Hacienda, the latter also lending support as Auerbach’s backing band.

  • Rokia Traoré "Tchamantché" [cover]
    Monday, November 17, 2008
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    Guardian: Five Stars for Rokia Traoré's "Intriguing, Sophisticated and Often Intimate" New Album

    Rokia Traoré's latest Nonesuch album, Tchamantché is due to hit stores in the US come January. It was released earlier this year in the UK to rave reviews. The Independent calls it her best yet and recommends her set this Wednesday at London's Jazz Café as a "show you shouldn't miss." The album earned a perfect five stars from The Guardian, which called it "an intriguing, sophisticated and often intimate set that is quite unlike any of the other great music Mali has produced." The Times gives the album four stars, exclaiming that with it, "the breadth of her artistic vision has emerged fully formed in her music." The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, and The Evening Standard all give Tchamantché four stars as well, and The Daily Telegraph named it Pop CD of the week upon its release.

  • Don Byron "Bug Music" [cover]
    Friday, November 14, 2008
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    Nonesuch Events for the Weekend of November 14–16

    Don Byron celebrates his 50th at New York's Jazz Standard with music from his Nonesuch catalog ... Kronos plays Adams's Fellow Traveler ... The Black Keys tour the UK with Liam Finn ... Shawn Colvin plays NY state ... Toumani Diabaté concludes his US fall tour ... Bill Frisell rounds out his European Trio tour of film music at the Barbican ... Emmylou Harris joins Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion ... k.d. lang closes out the latest leg of her Watershed tour ... Brad plays the Greek Theatre's final concert of the season ... the Nicholas Payton Quintet plays the high seas ... Joshua Redman plays Portugal ... Allen Toussaint does two dates in Virginia ... Dawn Upshaw brings Kurtág's Kafka Fragments to Lincoln Center ... and more ...

  • Explorer Series: East Asia: Japan: Geza Music [cover]
    Friday, November 14, 2008
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    Scotsman: Return of Explorer Series "Simply Wonderful"

    "Never again will a record company essay what the producers of the Nonesuch Explorers did in 1967, bringing out a series of superb field recordings to make, eventually, a 92-record set," says The Scotsman in its five-star review of the two titles that marked the reissue of a number of Japanese Explorer Series albums on CD this fall: Koto Classics and Geza Music from the Kabuki. "The vinyl LPs ... brought to light a wealth of hitherto hidden traditions," says the review, and their return as remastered CDs "is simply wonderful, because much of this music—four decades on—is now either extinct or grievously debased."

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