journal.nonesuch.com

Jazz.com Names New Nicholas Payton, Brad Mehldau Tracks as Songs of the Day

On his Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, Nicholas Payton and his quintet offer a unique rendition of "Chinatown," from Jerry Goldsmith's score of the 1974 Roman Polanski film of the same name. Jazz.com reviewer Ralph A. Miriello singles out the tune as Song of the Day.

"Nicholas Payton unabashedly takes on this challenge and confidently navigates the song's bittersweet sensibilities," writes Miriello, "creating a sensuously delicious mood of sultry, slow-steamed blues blended with the mystery of a Raymond Chandler novel. Conjuring up a shadowy back alley, Payton luxuriates in the mood with a deeply evocative tonal range that remains sparse yet elicits great feeling."

The reviewer cites "Payton's sensitivity" as "a quality too rarely displayed by today's trumpeters" and finds the track to be "a wonderful vehicle for his artistry."

To read the complete Song of the Day review, visit jazz.com.

---

The site recently named the Brad Mehldau Trio's version of Ray Noble's "The Very Thought of You," from the new Live CD, a Song of the Day as well, rating it 96/100. Reviewer Ted Gioia notes the pianist's deconstruction of the original, from "introspective trio ballad" through impressive, "fresh improvised lines" to "one of those surprising shifts that have become a specialty of this artist," all of which make the track "not just a novel approach to improvisation but a challenge to our very sense of jazz structure. You can't really compare this to jazz precedents. It sets its own."

That complete Song of the Day entry can also be found at jazz.com.

---

Click here to add Nicholas Payton's Into the Blue CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Click here to add the Brad Mehldau Trio's two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Pop Matters: Mehldau Trio "Live" an "Impressive Showcase"

The Brad Mehldau Trio's new two-disc set, Live, was recorded during a weeklong residency the group played at New York's famed Village Vanguard in 2006. Reviewer Ron Hart, giving the album an 8 of 10 in Pop Matters, writes that "there's something about the sound of piano trio in that room that inspires monumental performance," and there may be no one who "understands that concept quite like Brad Mehldau."

Hart calls the latest offering from the Mehldau Trio, Brad's third live disc from the venue, an "impressive showcase" and "classic Mehldau through and through ... a well-hued balance between original and cover material." Where Live differs from Brad's previous outings recorded at the Vanguard, says Hart, can be seen in the "bolder choices in the tunes he tackled" this time around. While he still pays tribute "to the jazz gods," like Ray Noble, Jimmy Heath, and John Coltrane, 

it's when Mehldau does what's earned him a loyal following amongst the new generation of jazz aficionados, rearranging nuggets from our alt-rock youth in a post-bop motif, does Live earn its bragging rights as the piano man's strongest Village Vanguard album to date ... And it's in those moments where Mehldau earns his most rightful place on the stage of the last great American jazz club.

To read the full review, visit popmatters.com.

An additional three hours of music is available now as an album of MP3s exclusively in the Nonesuch Store. It contains the complete music from all three Friday night sets during the Trio's Vanguard residency. Friday's versions of just "Fit Cat" and "Secret Beach" appear on Live, so The Complete Friday Night Sets offers 13 additional tracks.

---

Click here to add the two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Laurie Anderson Begin Barbican Residency, Appears on BBC Radio

Laurie Anderson kicks off her four-night residency at the Barbican Theatre in London tonight. The shows are part of the Barbican's bite08 festival of music, dance, and visual art taking place over the next month, as well as the Spring 08 Contemporary Events series, which also includes a sold-out performance by Toumani Diabate at the LSO St. Luke's this Friday and the UK premiere of Philip Glass's Waiting for the Barbarians in June.

Before tonight's show at the Barbican, Laurie will stop by the BBC studios for an appearance on the Nemone radio show, which begins 1 PM GMT on BBC Radio 6 Music. To listen live online, visit bbc.co.uk. You can also listen again to the show online for the following week.

Laurie made an earlier appearance on BBC radio yesterday on the Radio 4 program Woman's Hour. You can listen to that now at bbc.co.uk/radio4.

Listen to Steve Reich Discuss "Daniel Variations," from WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show"

Steve Reich stopped by the WNYC studios yesterday to discuss his new album, Daniel Variations, and the creation of its title piece, on The Leonard Lopate Show. You can download an MP3 of the segment at wnyc.org or listen to it in its entirety here:

---

Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Youssou N'Dour Marks Malaria Awareness Day with White House Meeting, NYC Benefit Concert

Youssou N'Dour was in Washington, DC, last Friday for a meeting at the White House with President Bush in honor of Malaria Awareness Day. Reuters reports that the two discussed the recent rise in the cost of food around the world and the resulting political instability, both of which have made the world's poorest all the more susceptible to malaria-causing conditions. Youssou is working to raise both awareness and the funds to eradicate the disease in part through such simple, cheap, and highly effective means as mosquito netting. Following his meetings in Washington during the day, Youssou made his way to New York City for an intimate benefit concert at Joe's Pub Friday night. For coverage of Youssou's Malaria Awareness Day activities in Washington, visit reuters.com.

Brisbane Courier Mail: k.d. lang "In Sensational Form" on Australian Tour

"You can quickly run out of adjectives to describe k.d. lang," writes the Adelaide Advertiser's Lesley High, "powerful, soulful, sensual, lush, velvet, joyous---and that's just her voice." In a four-star review of k.d.'s show at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre last Saturday, High says, "Quite frankly, Ms. lang could sing the classifieds section and it would sound beautiful." To read the review, visit news.com.au/adelaidenow.

All the better, on her worldwide tour in support of her new album, Watershed, k.d.'s singing a good deal beyond the classifieds. The Courier Mail's Noel Mengel, in his review of the first of k.d.'s two shows last night at the Brisbane QPAC Concert Hall, calls Watershed "her best album of original material in years." He says k.d. "was in sensational form" and that her "command of songs about love's joys and bruises remains as convincing as ever." You'll find that review at news.com.au/couriermail.

Reviewing the show in the Sunshine Coast Daily, also out of Brisbane, Lisa Kither, reports that "the woman whose voice often brings goosebumps" didn't disappoint this time around. "Backed by an incredible five-piece band," Kither writes, "k.d. lang knows how to deliver a brilliant concert." The full review is at thedaily.com.au.

k.d. and her band continue their Australian tour tonight with a second show at the QPAC Concert Hall in Brisbane before returning to Sydney to play the State Theatre on Friday and a just-added second show on Saturday.

---

Click here to add the Watershed limited-edition, deluxe CD plus free album MP3s directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $20.

Emmylou Harris to Receive WFUV's Sound & Vision Award Tonight at Gala Event

Emmylou Harris will take part in WFUV public radio's first-ever Gala event tonight at Sotheby's in New York City tonight. As part of the celebration, Emmylou will receive the station's Sound & Vision Award and a give a special intimate performance, along with special guests, for Gala attendees.

Also being honored at the event are journalist Charles Osgood, host of CBS Sunday Morning, and Vin Scully, the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers for nearly 60 years. The Gala will raise funds for WFUV, a non-commercial, listener-supported public radio station in New York.

For more information, visit wfuv.org/gala.

If you can't make it to the Gala, WFUV is running an encore presentation of Emmylou's 2003 visit to their studios for Words & Music from Studio A, for a conversation with the station's music director, Rita Houston. Tune in at 9 PM ET tonight at 90.7 FM in New York or online at wfuv.org.

Check back in with the Journal over the coming weeks for more information on Emmylou's forthcoming Nonesuch release, All I Intended to Be, due out June 10.

Wilco and The Black Keys Set to Perform at 3rd Virgin Mobile Festival This Summer

Wilco and The Black Keys will join Bob Dylan, Kanye West, Iggy Pop, Cat Power, Andrew Bird, and dozens of other artists performing at the third running of the Virgin Mobile Festival, August 9-10, at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Wilco will take the main stage on Saturday, August 9, while The Black Keys will play the main stage the next day.

Tickets go on sale this Saturday at 10 AM ET. For more information and a complete line-up, visit virginmobilefestival.com.

NY Times: Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" a Folk Song for Many Artists, an Anthem for New Orleans

Randy Newman will have a considerable presence at this year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest). Not only will he perform there this Thursday at 4 PM, on the Gentilly Stage, but his song "Louisiana 1927" will also find its way through a number of different interpretations by other Jazz Fest performers, reports the New York Times, not least the Neville Brothers, who will close the festival with their set on Sunday. The song, which Randy wrote in 1974 about an early 20th-century flood in the region and its political ramifications, has taken on new meaning since the floods following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and their aftermath.

In the Times article, writer Geoffrey Himes examines the song's rich history, and how, over the years, particularly after 2005, it has become both an anthem (because, as blues singer Marcia Ball, a Louisiana native, tells Himes, it has "'one of those simple, irresistible Randy Newman melodies and lyrics that were so real'") and "also a modern-day folk song that gains new lyrics as singers adapt it to new circumstances."

Randy has performed the song on two Nonesuch albums: his Songbook Vol. 1, in a solo piano version released two years before Katrina, and Our New Orleans, featuring the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra with members of the New York Philharmonic, recorded shortly after the floods, with album proceeds going to benefit Habitat for Humanity's relief efforts in the city.

To read the article, visit nytimes.com. For more on Jazz Fest 2008, visit nojazzfest.com.

Frederic Rzewski's 70th Birthday Celebrated with Concerts at Gilmore Festival and Carnegie Hall

April 13 marked the 70th birthday of composer Frederic Rzewski, who, in 2002, performed his own works for piano on a seven-disc collection, Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works, 1975-1999, released by Nonesuch. This week, the composer will celebrate with three special concert events: tonight and tomorrow as part of the renowned Gilmore Keyboard Festival and this Thursday in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in New York.

Included on the program tonight at the Dalton Center Recital Hall in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in Zankel Hall on Thursday, is a two-piano version, which Rzewski will perform with Stephen Drury, of "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues," part of the North American Ballads the composer plays on the Nonesuch collection, as well as the premiere of Natural Things, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Gilmore Festival, for which the pianists will be joined by Opus 21.

The Zankel Hall performance is part of Carnegie's Making Music series and will be moderated by Ara Guzelimian, the Provost and Dean of the Juilliard School. For the Gilmore, the composer will play an additional solo recital of his work tomorrow afternoon at the Wellspring Theater at Kalamazoo's Epic Center. Included on that program are Mayn Yingele and De Profundis, both of which are part of the Nonesuch boxed set, as well as the newer piece War Songs.

In the New York Times, Matthew Gurewitsch writes of the 2002 collection that, for all of Rzewski's "anarchic streak," both humorous and political, "what emerges above all is a picture of a pianist enamored of his instrument as handed down by the master builders of the 19th century."

As Daniel R. Gustin, the Gilmore Festival's director, tells Gurewitsch:

Rzewski is in the line of the great pianist-composers like Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn ... He's a bit of a maverick, which is fun, and it's hard to pin him down as to style and approach. But his piano works connect to the great pianistic tradition.

To read the New York Times article, visit nytimes.com.

For information on the Gilmore Festival programs, visit thegilmoreiscoming.com; for the Zankel Hall program, visit carnegiehall.org.

---

Click here to add the seven-disc Rzewski Plays Rzewski boxed set to your Shopping Cart for $44. (MP3 downloads for this set are not currently available from the Nonesuch Store.)

Times (UK): Laurie Anderson Fascinates with "Homeland" at the Baribcan This Week

"If Laurie Anderson didn't already exist," writes Dominic Maxwell in The Times (UK), "some New York novelist would have to invent her. Artist, musician, singer, storyteller, intellectual, inventor and one-time pop star ... She's four decades of downtown art scene in a lullaby voice."

Laurie spoke with Maxwell leading up to the four-night residency of her Homeland tour at the Barbican in London, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday of this week. In the article, Maxwell examines Laurie's long and varied career and finds that her greatest appeal unifying all that she does may derive from the fact that "she remains the eternal student." He writes:

Steady in tone, wide of eye, she is fascinating because she is fascinated ... [A]s she speaks and sings and speak-sings about the images that burrow their way into our brain, from Aristophanes to underwear models, from presidents to terrorists, there's no denying she's an American determined to look beyond her own backyard.

To read the profile, visit entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

For ticket information on this week's performances, visit baribican.org.uk.

Steve Reich to Discuss "Daniel Variations" on WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show"

Steve Reich will be the featured guest today on The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, 93.9 FM. The composer will discuss his new album, Daniel Variations, and its title piece, written in memory of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

To listen live, New York audiences can tune in to 93.9 FM; the show is also streaming live at wnyc.org. The show starts at 12 PM ET, including an interview with filmmaker Errol Morris about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal; the Reich segment begins at 1:30 PM.

---

Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

The Herald (UK): Steve Reich's "Drumming" Creates "Staggering Musical Experience" in Performance by Colin Currie

On Saturday night, a performance of Steve Reich's Drumming marked the culmination of percussionist Colin Currie's residency at the Horsecross Concert Hall in Perth, Scotland, and rated five stars in The Herald (Scotland). The paper's music critic Michael Tumelty says that the "mind-bogglingly virtuosic" musicians Currie gathered to perform the 1970-71 piece with him offered a "staggering musical experience" and "a stunning, dramatic version of Drumming." The event, concludes Tumelty, "was a tour de force for Currie, as organiser and player."

To read the complete review, visit theherald.co.uk.

---

Click here to add the 1987 release of Drumming, by Steve Reich and Musicians, on CD plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14 .

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below is information on just some of the many events going on this weekend across the globe featuring Nonesuch artists. Enjoy!

---

Violinist Leila Josefowicz will join the Saint Louis Symphony, led by conductor Marin Alsop, for three performances of John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur this weekend at Powell Hall in St. Louis. Also tonight, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra led by Raymond Leppard will perform Adams's Violin Concerto at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, Spain, featuring violinist Chlöe Hanslip, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI led by Trevor Pinnock will perform the composer's 1990 orchestration of Liszt's The Black Gondola, in Turin, Italy.

Saturday night, the San Francisco Ballet presents the Mark Morris Dance Group's Joyride, featuring Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, as part of the continuing New Works Festival.

Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine gets three playings this weekend: Saturday night at the Saenger Theater in Mobile, Alabama, by Scott Speck and the Mobile Symphony, and Bloomington High School in Bloomington, Indiana, by Jose Valencia and the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra; and Sunday night at Royal Albert Hall, London, by Mark Gooding and the Harrow Young Musicians Philharmonic.

More information: boosey.com.

---

Kronos Quartet plays the last of three performances at the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, tonight: John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Tickets: mondaviarts.org.

---

Laurie Anderson will bring Homeland to the Moscow International Performing Arts Center in Russia on Saturday. On Sunday night, Laurie will join the weekend-long Symposium on Sound, a gathering of scientists, performers, and artists, at Leiden University in the Netherlands, for a discussion of the event's theme of mutual influence between art and science, especially as it relates to sound. Info: veenfabriek.nl.

---

T Bone Burnett continues his tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at New Orleans' famed Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest. The three are scheduled to take the Acura Stage this afternoon at 3:30 PM. Next, they'll head to Birmingham, Alabama, where they'll play the BJCC Arena Saturday night. Tickets: nojazzfest.com (4/25); bjcc.org (4/26).

---

Bill Frisell closes out his two week residency at New York's Village Vanguard with performances all weekend. Playing with Bill are Chris Cheek on sax, Ron Miles on trumpet, Tony Scherr on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. Tickets: villagevanguard.com.

---

Satyagraha, Philip Glass's 1980 opera centered around Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa, continues tonight at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The performance is sold out. More information: metoperafamily.org.

---

Richard Goode will perform a free concert in New York City as part of the annual Free for All at Town Hall concert series. See the post in today's Nonesuch Journal for more information.

---

Emmylou Harris takes the stage at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in downtown Nashville tonight for Premiere Evening, an annual fund-raising event to benefit the Center's educational and cultural programming. Tickets: tpac.org.

---

k.d. lang's continues the Australian leg of her Watershed tour at the Entertainment Center in Adelaide Saturday night. Tickets: theaec.net.

---

Brad Mehldau is in Quebec, Canada, tonight for a solo show at the Palais Montcalm. He returns to the States on Saturday for a performance with the trio with whom he recorded the new album Live at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and a Sunday night show at the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theater in Philadelphia. Tickets: palaismontcalm.ca (4/25); hop.dartmouth.edu (4/26); pennpresents.org (4/27).

---

Youssou N'Dour will perform a special benefit concert tonight at New York's intimate venue Joe's Pub as part of a fund-raising effort for the Youssou N'Dour Foundation and his worldwide advocacy efforts. The acoustic set will be modeled on the smaller sets he leads at his club in Dakar. Tickets: joespub.com.

---

Randy Newman will play a solo date tonight at the Riley Center at Mississippi State University's Meridian Campus. Tickets: msurileycenter.com.

---

Nicholas Payton stays close to home for New Orleans' Jazz Fest. He and his quintet will take the stage in the WWOZ Jazz Tent at 4:05 PM on Sunday. Among the other performers at this year's festival are Stevie Wonder and Al Green, as well as Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett (see above). Tickets: nojazzfest.com.

---

Steve Reich's Eight Lines will be performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain led by Ludovic Morlot tonight at Cité de la musique, Salle des concerts, in Paris.

Reich's Desert Music, will presented at the University of California, Berkeley, Saturday, as Drumming will be performed by percussionist Colin Currie at the Concert Hall in Perth, Scotland. Currie earned four stars in the Herald (UK) for his performance there earlier this week of Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood that "mesmerised." Also Saturday, the Smith Quartet brings the Triple Quartet to the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building in Oxford, England.

On Sunday, Reich's Cello Counterpoint will be performed at the Purcell Room in London by Endymion and his Vermont Counterpoint can be heard at Ford Hall at Ithaca College, with Melissa Wertheimer on flute.

More information: boosey.com

---

The national tour of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, based on the 2005 Broadway production helmed by John Doyle, began its run at Chicago's Cadillac Palace Theatre early this week. Performances continue there through May 4. Tickets: sweeneytoddtour.com

SF Chronicle: Adams Piece "Lived Up to the Buzz" in Mark Morris Dance with "Dazzlingly Sophisticated Musicality"

The San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary season in 2008, and the final programs are anything but a look backwards. The season comes to a close with the forward-looking New Works Festival, which began on Tuesday of this week with the first of three programs to run through May 6.

Program A includes works by choreographers Paul Taylor, Christopher Wheeldon, and Yuri Possokhov, the last featuring the late Indian film composer Rahul Dev Burman's "Aaj Ki Raat" (Tonight's the Night) that Osvaldo Golijov arranged for Kronos Quartet's Caravan . The San Francisco Chronicle's dance correspondent Rachel Howard calls it the "improbable triumph of the evening," with Possokhov pulling a number disparate pieces together "with theatrical flair."

Program B debuted on Wednesday, with works by Stanton Welch, Julia Adam, James Kudelka, and Mark Morris. The last, titled Joyride, features John Adams's Son of a Chamber Symphony, co-commissioned by Morris and Alarm Will Sound, which gave the piece its premiere performance last fall. For this week's opening, the composer conducted, and, says the Chronicle's Rachel Howard, "it lived up to the buzz."
About Morris's piece, Howard writes:

if you appreciate a ballet that offers dazzlingly sophisticated musicality, that takes classical attention to form and channels it into a modern ethos---if you cherish a ballet sure to show you something new every time you see it---then you could hardly do better than Mark Morris' Joyride.

Summing up the evening's program as a whole, Howard finds that it "fulfilled the festival's larger potential: revealing the many faces of ballet today."

To read the full Chronicle review of Program A, click here, and of Program B, click here.

The festival's third program, Program C, premiered last night and includes Jorma Elo's Double Evil, set to Philip Glass's Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra and Vladimir Martynov's Come In!, the latter which Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica recorded on the album Silencio in 2000.

For complete program and schedule information, visit sfballet.org.

Payton Brings the "Fun Ride" of "Into the Blue" to NPR's "Favorite Sessions"

Nicholas Payton sat down with WBGO-Newark producer Josh Jackson for a 40-minute interview and performance last fall, fresh from recording his Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue. With the album out this week, the show is now available at npr.org as part of the Favorite Sessions series, on which public radio hosts from around the country present their favorite in-studio sessions.

"I'm always looking for unique moments, times and places when musicians are creating at a high level, and try to bring those moments to anyone who will listen," says Jackson. "This was the moment to get them," he says of Payton and the band. "The iron was hot."

Jackson continues:

Into the Blue shows a creative musician who knows himself, working with band mates who truly understand each other. That combination makes for a fun ride. The music's underlying rhythms are another key to its friendly vibe ... This music is actually danceable, a rare treat for jazz that sounds like now.

Summing up their interview, Jackson reports: "Payton has a keen perspective on the mind of an improviser, and he lays it all out in this session."

To listen to this Favorite Sessions episode, visit npr.org.

---

Click here to add the Into the Blue CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Washington Post: Mehldau Offers "Imaginative, Expansive Performances" on New Live Discs

The Brad Mehldau Trio's 2-disc Live album comprises more than 2 1/2 hours of music, with "plenty of unexpected accents, contours and tangents," writes the Washington Post's Mike Joyce, that "should keep even die-hards content for a long time."

Among those particularly contoured pieces, the review points to the trio's rendition of Oasis's "Wonderwall," Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and John Coltrane's "Countdown." The risks Brad is willing to take when creating his "inventive interpretations" of these familiar tunes, Joyce concludes "ultimately pay off with imaginative, expansive and harmonically probing performances."

To read the review, visit washingtonpost.com.

An additional three hours of music is available now as an album of MP3s exclusively in the Nonesuch Store. It contains the complete music from all three Friday night sets during the Trio's weeklong residency at New York's Village Vanguard at which the Live CDs were recorded. Friday's versions of just "Fit Cat" and "Secret Beach" appear on Live, so The Complete Friday Night Sets offers 13 additional tracks.

---

Click here to add the two-CD Live set directly to your Shopping Cart for $17, along with that album's MP3s at no additional charge.

Click here to add the Trio's Complete Friday Night Sets all-MP3 album to your Cart for $20.

Richard Goode to Perform Free Concert at NYC's Town Hall This Sunday

Richard Goode will be at New York City's Town Hall this Sunday at 5 PM as part of the special annual series Free for All at Town Hall. As the title suggests, tickets are free and open to the public, in keeping with the organizers' efforts to bring the highest-quality classical music performances to the widest possible audience, without the barrier of ticket costs. "We believe that great music belongs to everyone," says Free for All's presenters "and that all should feel welcome at concerts by the greatest performers of our time."

For Sunday's event, Richard Goode's first-ever Free for All at Town Hall concert, the pianist will perform works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Debussy. Tickets will be made available starting at noon on Sunday.

For more information, visit freeforallattownhall.org.

The Black Keys Featured on NPR's "All Songs Considered"

The Black Keys' latest album, Attack & Release is featured on the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered. "Their previous four records were very heavy on loud guitars and very blues based," says the show's host, Bob Boilen, by way of introduction. Before playing the album track "Psychotic Girl," he continues: "Their new CD is produced by Brian Burton, also known as Danger Mouse, and though it's still basically a drums and guitar record, there are more quiet moments and more subtle moments going on here." You can listen to the episode at npr.org.

Also, tune in on May 13 when the All Songs Considered concert series will webcast the sold-out Black Keys show live from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

---

Click here to add The Black Keys' Attack & Release CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $13 and download the album MP3s at no extra charge.

Daily Telegraph: "Wonderful" Punch Brothers Evidence of Folk/Classical Harmony

The music of Chris Thile, "leader of that wonderful bluegrass band the Punch Brothers," says the Daily Telegraph's Ivan Hewett, is an example of the converging worlds of folk and classical music. While at one time this would have been anathema to contemporary classical composers---those of the mid-20th century modern era---and even today may take some convincing among traditionalist fans of either, the lines between the two genres has blurred, with each influencing the other. As roots musicians move out of their traditional roles as folk entertainers and onto the concert stage, writes Hewett, "they play to be listened to---just as classical musicians do---and that brings on a need for more sophisticated forms."

And as he wrote in an earlier article on Punch, Punch Brothers' Nonesuch debut album, "It's a delicate task, to renew a tradition without destroying the very thing that makes it special. But on the evidence of their first album the Punch Brothers are well on the way to achieving it."

To read today's article, "Why Folk and Classical Are in Harmony," visit telegraph.co.uk.

---

Click here to add Punch Brothers' Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download "Bailey," directly to your Shopping Cart for $16.

Nels Cline Plays Three Nights at New York's Jazz Standard

Wilco guitarist Nels Cline is in New York City this week for three shows at the Jazz Standard. Last night, he sat in with the Jeff Gauthier Goatette on an early set before performing a duo show with his twin brother Alex. Tonight and tomorrow night, he returns to the club for four sets in the singer-free Nels Cline Singers, with Davin Hoff on bass and Scott Amendola on drums and live electronics. For more information, visit nelscline.com.

BBC Radio 2 Recounts Nonesuch Records' Early Years in "Jac Holzman's Elektra Story"

All this month, and running through May 12, BBC Radio 2 is airing a six-part documentary called Jac Holzman's Elektra Story, as part of the network's Monday night Music Club. Over the course of the series, host Paul Gambaccini takes listeners through the two heady decades from Holzman's founding of Elektra Records, in 1950, through 1973, when it became part of the Warner family. During those years, artists from Judy Collins to Tim Buckley to The Doors were signed to the label, and, in 1964, Holzman created Nonesuch Records, primarily as a showcase for high-quality, budget classical recordings.

In part three of the documentary, which aired last night, the company founder recounts the company's earliest days and his hopes for the new endeavor. Musician Joshua Rifkin was involved from the start and went on to record a series of highly successful recordings of Scott Joplin piano rags for Nonesuch in the early 1970s. He sums up the label's initial appeal this way: "Inexpensive classical record labels had been there before, but they looked like a budget production. And it was Jac's brilliant idea to think that one could do something that really looked distinctive, did not look low-rent, had a definite identity of its own."

To listen to the latest episode of Jac Holzman's Elektra Story, visit bbc.co.uk.

Listen to Rifkin's performance of Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag (1899) here:

SF Classical Voice: Kronos's Latest Offers "Fantastic Journey" Through Riley's "Extraordinary" Piece

On the latest Nonesuch release from Kronos Quartet, the group offers the premiere recording of longtime collaborator Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, taking the listener on a "fantastic journey," writes Jason Victor Serinus in San Francsico Classical Voice, through the 2004 piece, which Kronos commissioned in honor of the composer's 70th birthday.

"Peyote rituals, Chinese lullabies, Indian ragas, children's toys, sacred bonds, and secular madness all dance and swirl in ritualistic fashion in Terry Riley's extraordinary The Cusp of Magic," Serinus writes, from the opening first movement's "entry into the mystical" through the fourth movement, with its "passages of great rhythmic intensity," and the "ear-catching" fifth to "the irresistible rhythms and colors" of the last, ending "with an ecstatic flourish" that sounds to the reviewer like a resounding "Yes!"

To read the review, visit sfcv.org.

Kronos is currently in Davis, California, where they performed over two nights this past weekend at the UC Davis Mondavi Center, with programs featuring Steve Reich's Triple Quartet and John Adams's Fellow Traveler on Friday and works from the albums Requiem for a Dream, You've Stolen My Heart, and Nuevo, as well as their collaboration with Sigur Rós on Saturday. This coming Friday, Kronos will join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Mondavi Center for a special "MinEvent," performing John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet. For more information, visit mondaviarts.org.

---

Click here to add Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Tusen Tankar," directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $14.

k.d. lang Offers Support for Tibet As Olympic Torch Reaches Australia

As the Olympic torch makes its way to Australia's capital city of Canberra in preparation for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, k.d. lang has offered her support to the people of Tibet. In an open letter published today in The Age newspaper out of Melbourne, where she is in the midst of a three-day residency at Hamer Hall, k.d. writes: "It is unfortunate the Olympic Games are being impacted by this situation, but it presents a rare opportunity to bring focus to the heart-breaking situation of the Tibetan and Chinese people who have suffered serious human rights abuses. Oppression should be stopped."

In her letter, she includes specific suggestions for opening the dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government and concludes:

The Tibetan culture is part of our global heritage. Its original personality and purity needs to be kept intact. I urge the world community to focus their efforts to protect the Tibetan culture, so that it can continue to be a source of inspiration for the rest of the world.

To read the full text, visit theage.com.au.

Orchestra Baobab, Fernando Otero to Play Chicago's Millennium Park This Summer

Chicago's Millennium Park has announced this summer's season of its free outdoor world-music series, Music Without Borders. Performing this summer at the Park's Jay Pritzker Pavillion are Orchestra Baobab, who will play on June 28 at 8:30 PM, and Fernando Otero, who will open for the Bajofondo Tango Club, led by composer Gustavo Santaolalla, on August 27, at 6:30 PM. You can read more about the series in today's Chicago Tribune or by visiting milleniumpark.org.

---

Click here to add Fernando Otero's Pagina de Buenos Aires CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the album MP3s at no extra cost.

Click here to add Orchestra Baobab's 2002 album Specialist in All Styles to your Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no extra cost. For more options, visit the Nonesuch Store.

Nicholas Payton Releases Nonesuch Debut, "Most Mature and Fully Realized Album" (Pop Matters)

Today marks the release of Nicholas Payton's Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, and, writes Pop Matters' Will Layman, for the renowned trumpeter, who has "had an unusually ripe and attractive sound" from the very beginning, the new album feels "like a self-discovery." The site gives Into the Blue an 8 out of 10 and notes both the genuineness and the variety apparent on the album that combine to make something new:

Into the Blue was recorded in New Orleans with Payton's regular group, but it is not a recital that uses the delta city as a gimmick. Rather, the feeling here is one of letting go---Payton seems just to be playing, letting his horn speak plainly and naturally in a variety of settings ... This amalgam of sources, however, has now been filtered through Payton's own conception, and the cross-breeding has produced something pleasingly new. Nicholas Payton, it would seem, has grown up before our ... ears.

Layman compliments Payton's solo playing, finding "a cinematic feeling" in the songs that allows each solo to seem "like a journey over a tumbling landscape." He also praises the pairing between the trumpeter and pianist Kevin Hays, which creates "a sense of precision and fullness that gives the disc stylistic range." Approaching that diversity of styles, the entire band, says Layman, is able to "make all these transitions with utmost ease ... Nothing is cluttered or overplayed." Furthermore, he credits producer Bob Belden, who has helped to bring about a number of Miles Davis reissues from the 1960s and '70s, with finding "ways to encourage Payton to explore his Miles-ian side without resorting to explicit Davis mimicry."

The Pop Matters review concludes:

Into the Blue is Nicholas Payton's most mature and fully realized album because it breaks new ground without abandoning the past. By invoking both his personal history (the clarion cry of his early playing as well as the groove-based recent work) and some of the history of the music, Payton has built something that knows what it is about. ... [He] has put himself in a superb position to define himself as a mature jazz artist.  And now we know: he is as much a storyteller as he is a player, and that creates certain anticipation for more great music to come.

To read the full review, visit popmatters.com.

---

Click here to add the Into the Blue CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Steve Reich "Double Sextet" Premiere Amazes the Ear (LA Times); "Daniel Variations" Proves "Powerful, Thoughtful, Loving" (Independent)

Double Sextet, a new work by Steve Reich, received its New York premiere last Thursday at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall by the new-music ensemble eighth blackbird, which went to show that the group "is now in another league," according to the New York Times. Reviewer Allan Kozinn says that the "vigorous" new piece "begins with Mr. Reich's signature chugging rhythms but quickly moves a fair distance, as intricate rhythmic counterpoint and thickening harmonies displace the repetitive opening figure."

Following the piece's West Coast premiere last Tuesday, at the Orange County Performing Artscenter, the Los Angeles Times Music Critic Mark Swed wrote that Double Sextet, with its interplay between pre-recorded music and the live performance, creates "the kind of explosion of fractured rhythms that never ceases to amaze the ear." Swed continues:

Musicians, forced to keep count as though their lives depend on it, typically treat Reich's music as a left-brain activity. But the left brain can't hold all that music, and for listeners, all those fractured rhythms spill over onto the right side, where there is room for spatial perception. A really good performance, then, feels like a barely controlled explosion between your ears.

Tuesday's was a really good, rocking, rollicking performance.

For the New York performance review, visit nytimes.com; for Swed's review, visit latimes.com.

---

The latest recording from Steve Reich, Daniel Variations, was released on Nonesuch earlier this month. The Financial Times' Andrew Clark calls the album's title piece "a meditative requiem" on the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and credits the Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Grant Gershon, with making "splendid sense" of the work. Paired with that piece on the recording is Reich's Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings, from 2005, about which, Clark writes, "Reich fans should be well pleased, especially given a performance, by the London Sinfonietta under [Alan] Pierson, as lively and precise as this." To read the review, visit ft.com.

The Observer's Anthony Holden calls Daniel Variations "haunting" and the Observer Music Monthly's Mike Barnes finds it "restlessly syncopated with woodwind, percussion, vibes and pianos examining each theme from a number of angles. The piece moves from a brooding introduction to a sublime denouement ..." For more, visit music.guardian.co.uk.

In the Independent on Sunday, reviewer Anna Picard also points to the piece's restlessness, finding it "propelled by darting vibes and dancing violins" that proves to be "a powerful,thoughtful, loving piece." She also compliments the London Sinfonietta for its performance of the second piece, which she calls "a work of classically Reichian dazzled ecstasy." For that review, visit independent.co.uk.

---

Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD, plus free album MP3s, directly to your Shopping Cart for $14, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Other Music Video Showcases Toumani Diabate In-Store

New York's Other Music, which played host to a guest-DJ set by The Black Keys as part of Record Store Day this past Saturday, presented Toumani Diabate in a rare in-store solo lecture-demonstration earlier this year for the Live at Other Music series, to celebrate the release of his new album, The Mande Variations.

"When we’re lucky enough to host a musician with the singular vision and dedication of Malian griot and kora prodigy Toumani Diabate," says Other Music's Josh Madell, "it makes us all take pause. It was an honor to have him play for us at Other Music, and even more so to sit with Diabate and learn."

Here are two videos Other Music created from the event.

This first segment highlights both Toumani's masterly teaching and playing skills:

This second segment contains a performance Toumani dedicates to all the kora players who preceded him:

For more from the series, visit digital.othermusic.com.

---

Click here to add Toumani's The Mande Variations CD ($16), plus the free album MP3s, to your Shopping Cart.

Chicago Opera Preps for Adams's "A Flowering Tree" with Monthlong Festival

This past weekend, Chicago Opera Theater began India Blooms in Chicago, its monthlong festival of Indian culture in preparation for the May 14 Midwest premiere of John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree. The work features a libretto by Adams and his longtime collaborator Peter Sellars, adapted from an ancient southern Indian folktale and poetry translated by the late A. K. Ramanujan, a scholar at the University of Chicago. The composer will conduct the May 14 Chicago premiere and the succeeding performance, on May 17; three more performances will follow; all will take place at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.

As part of India Blooms festival, each performance of the opera will be preceded by a lecture, free to ticket holders, featuring artistic contributors like Joana Carneiro, who will conduct the opera in its May 20, 23, and 25 performances, and sound designer Mark Grey.

For ticket information and all the related festival events, visit chicagooperatheater.org.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Mehldau Grooves on Trio "Live" CDs

The Brad Mehldau T