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Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

John Adams's opera A Flowering Tree received its Midwest premiere in Chicago's Millennium Park on Wednesday, with the composer conducting. The Chicago Opera Theater continues its production on Saturday with Adams conducting again. Tickets: chicagooperatheater.org.

On Sunday, at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, DC, The Choral Arts Society of Washington, under the direction of Norman Scribner, will perform Adams's oratorio El Niño, which received its world premiere at the Châtelet in Paris in 2000, directed by Peter Sellars with soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, Willard White, who recorded the piece for its Nonesuch release. Tickets: kennedy-center.org.

Also on Sunday, the San Fransisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, led by Benjamin Schwartz, will perform Adams's 1995 piece Lollapalooza at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, along with Stravinsky's Le Chant du rossignol and Dvořák's "New World" Symphony (sfsymphony.org); and the American Philharmonic Sonoma County, led by Gabriel Sakakeeny, will perform Short Ride in a Fast Machine at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California (wellsfargocenterarts.org).

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Laurie Anderson will bring her latest performance piece, Homeland, to Spain this weekend: at Auditorio de Garcia in Santiago de Compostela in the country's northwest tonight and Auditorio de Murcia, in Murcia in the southeast on Sunday night.

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After a couple of days in New York that included stops at Late Night with Conan O'Brien and WNYC's Soundcheck and a sold-out show at Terminal 5, The Black Keys are moving on to Philadelphia for a sold-out set at the Electric Factory tonight, then to Boston for a show at the Orpheum Theatre Saturday night. Its the last gig on this leg of the US tour before they head to Europe. Tickets: boston-theater.com.

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The European leg of the Raising Sands tour continues, with T Bone Burnett joining Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on stage in Stockholm, Sweden, tonight at the Stockholm Hovet (globearenas.se), and Oslo, Norway, on Sunday at the Oslo Spektrum (oslospektrum.no).

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Richard Goode joins the Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France, with Peter Oundjian conducting, tonight at Salle Pleyel in Paris for a program of works by Jacques Hétu, Mozart, and Brahms. Tickets: sallepleyel.fr.

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Kronos Quartet is in Europe this month, performing tonight at the Internationales Congress Center as part of the Dresden International Music Festival in Dresden, Germany. The Quartet performs Terry Riley's 2002 piece Sun Rings, which was commissioned for the group by the NASA Art Program among many others. Tickets: musikfestspiel.com.

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Nicholas Payton began a four-night residency at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley in Seattle, Washington, as the special guest of vibes master Bobby Hutcherson. For this presentation of KPLU 88.5 NPR and the Pacific Jazz Institute, Payton and Hutcherson are joined by Joe Gilman on piano, Glen Richman on bass, and Eddie Marshall on drums. Remaining performances this weekend include two sets each tonight and tomorrow night, plus a 7:30 set on Sunday. Tickets: jazzalley.com.

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Punch Brothers are back in full swing with the next leg of their US tour. They'll be at the the Satellite Ballroom in Charlottesville, Virginia, tonight (satelliteballroom.com); the Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, Maryland, for two all-ages sets on Saturday, at 1 PM and 4 PM (tickets.ramsheadonstage.com); and the Mountain Stage Little Theatre in Charleston, West Virginia, on Sunday (mountainstage.org).

You can check out a recording of the band in concert on Live from Folk Alley now on folkalley.com. There's both video and streaming audio, as well as downloadable audio for members of the site, from a performance at The Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio, on April 2.

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Laura Veirs's solo tour continues with three stops this weekend: tonight at The 9:30 Listening Room in Louisville, Kentucky (the930.org); Saturday at The Basement in Nashville (thebasementnashville.com); and Sunday at The Earl in Atlanta (badearl.com); all with opener Liam Finn.

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Wilco two sold-out shows at The Pageant in St. Louis, Missouri, with opener Retribution Gospel Choir, featuring Alan Sparhawk of Low (thepageant.com). It's their last scheduled tour date before they ramp things up again for two shows in Alaska at the end of July with The Whipsaws.

Photos from Adams's "A Flowering Tree" Chicago Premiere

As the Nonesuch Journal reported yesterday, John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, received its Midwest premiere last night in Chicago's Millennium Park, with the composer conducting. The Chicago Opera Theater production stars Natasha Jouhl as Kumudha, a young girl with the power to turn herself into a flowering tree; Noah Stewart as the Prince; and Sanford Sylvan, who has originated leading roles in two Adams operas (Chou En-Lai in Nixon in China and the title character in The Death of Klinghoffer), as the Storyteller. The next performance is this Saturday, with Adams conducting again.

Below are photos from the production and the dress rehearsal, starting with shot of John Adams leading rehearsal. Click on the image for the full-size photo, courtesy of the Chicago Opera Theater:

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Click here to add The Death of Klinghoffer (2 CDs) directly to your Shopping Cart for $29 and download the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Chicago Tribune: John Adams's "Luminously Beautiful" Opera "A Flowering Tree" Opens in Chicago

John Adams's opera A Flowering Tree receives its Midwest premiere tonight in the Chicago Opera Theater performance at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millenium Park. The composer will conduct the opening night performance as well as the second performance, this Saturday. Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein says the piece offers "the light of hope and renewal" and concludes: "Nobody who loves contemporary opera and music theater can afford to miss it."

A Flowering Tree, based on a Southern Indian folktale, is "Adams's answer to Mozart's The Magic Flute," writes von Rhein. "Both operas invoke the magic of transformation, both physical and spiritual." He goes on to write, "Adams' music is luminously beautiful, the entire opera a glorious multicultural paean to the ecology of the soul."

To read the article, with more details, visit chicagotribune.com. To learn more about the Chicago Opera Theater's production, its companion arts festival, India Blooms in Chicago, and tickets, visit chicagooperatheater.org. Check in with the Nonesuch Journal in the coming months for news of the premiere recording of A Flowering Tree, due out on Nonesuch this fall.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine receives two very different performances this weekend: first, tonight, at the Frauenthal Center, Muskegan, Michigan, by the West Shore Symphony Orchestra, led by Scott Speck. On Saturday night, the piece will be one of many Adams works included in the Hamburg Ballet's performance of choreographer John Neumeier's Parzifal: Episodes and Echo (pictured at right) at the Staatsoper in Hamburg. Also included are Tromba Lontana, Christian Zeal and Activity, The Wound-Dresser, El Dorado, and The Dharma at Big Sur. Tickets: hamburgballet.de.

The Black Gondola, the composer's orchestration of Liszt's La Lugubre Gondola, will receive two performances this weekend by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Trevor Pinnock, first at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam tonight, and then at de Vereeniging in Nijmegen, Netherlands, tomorrow. Tickets: concertgebouw.nl.

Also receiving two performances is Road Movies, which violinist Midori and pianist Charles Abramovic will play Saturday at Zeche Zollverein, in Essen, Germany, and on Sunday at Zehntscheuer in Rottenburg.
Also on Sunday, Adams's Chamber Symphony will be performed by the Tokyo Sinfonietta, led by Yasuaki Itakura, at Cité de la musique in Paris.

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Laurie Anderson brings her Homeland tour to the sparkling KKL Luzern Concert Hall in Switzerland tonight (tickets: kkl-luzern.ch) and then to Modena, Italy, for a performance at the Teatro Communale on Sunday.

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The European leg of the Raising Sand tour continues with T Bone Burnett joining Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in a sold-out concert at Philipshalle in Dusseldorf, Germany, Saturday night, and the Forest National Arena in Brussels on Sunday. Tonight, BBC Two will air the group's performance on Later ... with Jools Holland. You can watch a video preview of their set, the song "Killing the Blues," at bbc.co.uk/later. Also on Later tonight: Emmylou Harris, with a song from her forthcoming Nonesuch release, All I Intended to Be.

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Kronos Quartet has begun its tour of Europe, heading to Leon, Spain, tonight, for a performance that includes John Adams's Fellow Traveler, written for Kronos in celebration of Peter Sellars's 50th birthday. The Quartet will then bring the piece to Bucharest, Romania, on Sunday for a performance at Sala Radio that also includes Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, which the group premiered in 1999 and recorded for Nonesuch in 2001.

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The Blues Alley in Washington, DC, hosts Nicholas Payton tonight for the second night in a row; there will be an 8 PM and a 10 PM set. Tickets: bluesalley.com.

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Dawn Upshaw celebrates Mother's Day at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Sunday with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in a program including the New York premiere of She Was Here, composer Osvaldo Golijov's arrangement of Schubert Lieder. (Tickets: carnegiehall.org.) Dawn spoke on WNYC's Soundcheck with host John Schaefer earlier this week on being dubbed "The Composers Muse," as she will be honored at a Meet the Composer benefit later this month.

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The next stop on Laura Veirs's solo tour, with opener Liam Finn, is Denver, Colorado, tonight for a show at the Walnut Room presented by Radio 1190. (Tickets: thewalnutroom.com.) On Sunday, they'll head to Omaha, Nebraska, for a set at the Slowdown's Front Room. (Tickets: theslowdown.com.)

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Wilco heads to the Southwest, with openers Retribution Gospel Choir (featuring Alan Sparhawk of Low), for a concert tonight at the University of New Mexico's Pope Joy Hall in Albuquerque (tickets: unmtickets.com), before heading to Austin, Texas, for two sold-out nights at Stubbs BBQ, beginning Sunday.

Joshua Redman Awarded 2008 Harvard Arts Medal

Congratulations to Joshua Redman, who was awarded the 2008 Harvard Arts Medal at a ceremony last Thursday evening at the New College Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Medal honors a distinguished Harvard graduate or faculty member who has achieved excellence in the arts and made a contribution to education or the public good. Redman is the 14th Harvard Arts Medal recipient. Previous honorees include John Adams, Peter Sellars, Yo-Yo Ma, John Harbison, and John Updike.

Harvard's president, Drew Gilpin Faust, presented Redman with the award, followed by a conversation with the musician moderated by actor John Lithgow. The ceremony helped kick off the Arts First 2008 weekend of arts events at Harvard. For more information, visit news.harvard.edu.

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Joshua Redman and the SFJAZZ Collective's Nonesuch catalogs are now available in the Nonesuch Store. Click here to add Redman's 2007 CD, Back East, directly to your Shopping Cart for $16 and download the album MP3s at no extra charge.

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Below are just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

The San Francisco Ballet will perform to John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony (2007) each night this weekend in Mark Morris's new piece, Joyride, for the final nights of the Ballet's New Works Festival Program B, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. "If you appreciate ballet that offers dazzlingly sophisticated musicality," says the San Francisco Chronicle, "then you could hardly do better than Mark Morris's Joyride." Tickets: sfballet.org.

The Thüringer Symphoniker, led by Oliver Weder, will pair Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Tromba Lontana for performances in Unterwellenborn, Germany, tonight and Saturday. Both pieces appear on the 1987 Nonesuch recording, The Chairman Dances. More info: boosey.com.

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Laurie Anderson continues her four-night residency at the Barbican in London through Saturday. Folks in the UK can catch Laurie on Later with Jools Holland tonight at 11:35 PM GMT, on BBC Two.

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Toumani Diabate will play a special concert in the intimate space of LSO St. Luke's in London, performing songs from his new solo CD, The Mande Variations, as part of the Barbican's Spring 08 Contemporary Events series.

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Bill Frisell's new quintet, featuring Chris Cheek on sax and clarinet, Larry Grenadier on bass, Ron Miles on cornet, and Rudy Royston on drums, will make its European debut on Sunday in Cheltenham, England's Everyman Theater as part of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Tickets: cheltenhamfestivals.com.

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Kronos Quartet plays its last US date of the season this Saturday before heading to Europe for the rest of May. The group will perform at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, with special guest Tanya Tagaq, for the LA premiere of their collaboration Nunavut and the world premiere of Derek Charke's Tundra Songs. (The Canadian Press has a profile of Tagaq, a throat singer from Arctic Canada, and Charke, a Nova Scotian composer, at canadianpress.google.com.) Kronos will also give the LA premiere of Tusen Tankar, the Nonesuch Store-exclusive bonus track on its latest release, The Cusp of Magic, and perform Sigur Rós's Flugufrelsarinn. Tickets: laphil.com.

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After making her way across Australia, k.d. lang returns to the Sydney State Theatre with her Watershed tour tonight and for a just-added second show, on Saturday, before heading to New Zealand next week.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio will perform two sets tonight at Western Michigan University's Williams Theater in Kalamazoo as part of the Gilmore Keyboard Festival's Jazz Club series. Tickets: thegilmoreiscoming.com.

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Friends of the Sheldon in St. Louis, Missouri, present Randy Newman at that city's Sheldon Concert Hall Sunday night for a concert to benefit the Hall's education programs, both in schools and at the venue. Tickets: thesheldon.org.

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Nicholas Payton, fresh off his performance at the New Orleans JazzFest last weekend, headlines the Main Street JazzFest in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the festival's Main Stage Saturday at 7:30 PM. "Opportunities to see a jazz artist of Payton's caliber in the Middle Tennessee area are few and far between," says the Nashville Scene. All events are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule of events: mainstreetjazzfest.com.

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Punch Brothers' Chris Thile will play a late-night solo set at the Living Room on New York's Lower East Side at 11 PM Sunday night. Tickets: livingroomny.com.

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Steve Reich's 1994 piece for two marimbas, Nagoya Marimbas, will be performed tonight at the Royal Northern College of Music's Haden Freeman Concert Hall in Manchester, England, by the RNCM Percussion Ensemble's Ian Wright and Paul Patrick. On Satudray, the full, 46-minute version of the composer's Desert Music (1983), for amplified voices and orchestra, will be performed at Fairfield University's Quick Center in Connecticut, by New York's Shen Wei Dance Arts ensemble.

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Wilco will be in Winnipeg, Manitoba, tonight to play the Burton Cummings Theatre (named "one of Winnipeg's Seven Wonders" in a recent Winnipeg Free Press reader survey) and will head back south of the 49th parallel for a sold-out show at the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman, Montana, Sunday night.

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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).

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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.

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations" Featured on WNYC's "New Sounds"

Steve Reich's Daniel Variations was the featured album on last night's episode of New Sounds on WNYC, 93.9 FM, now available in full on wnyc.org.

The album's title piece, written in memory of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, "justifiably has drawn a fair amount of attention and acclaim," says the show's host, John Schaefer. Yet also on the disc is "a piece that's too good to overlook," declares Schaefer: Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings. Schaefer plays that piece in its entirety, closing the show with an excerpt from Daniel Variations.

Between the two new Reich recordings, New Sounds features a seminal early work by John Adams: Shaker Loops, "the work that really announced his presence on the new music scene," in Schaefer's words. The piece, first written in 1978 and revised for string orchestra in 1983, is performed on this recording, from 1996, by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by the composer.

You can listen to the entire program on wnyc.org.

Daniel Variations, which the Sydney Morning Herald calls "a powerful composition," will receive its Australian premiere this Friday at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

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

All About Jazz: "Cusp of Magic" Proves Kronos/Riley Pairing "A Truly Rare Musical Symbiosis"

"Few string quartets on the scene today are as intrepid as Kronos in the exploration of unconventional form and methods to extend the reach of a centuries-old instrumental configuration," writes John Kelman in his All About Jazz review of the Quartet’s latest release, The Cusp of Magic, composed for the group by its frequent collaborator Terry Riley. "Few composers possess a body of work defined by such a rich palette of references as Riley," Kelman continues. "It's no surprise, then," he concludes, "that Kronos and Riley have collaborated so often and so well, with The Cusp of Magic providing further evidence of a truly rare musical symbiosis."

To read the complete review, visit allaboutjazz.com.

Kronos will perform at the Modavi Center at UC Davis this Friday at 8 PM, in a program featuring Steve Reich's Triple Quartet and John Adams's Fellow Traveler, as well as works by newer collaborators: composers whose works the Quartet commissioned as part of its "Under 30 Project" for musicians under the age of 30.

Kronos returns to the Center the following Friday for a performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company of John Cage's Thirty Pieces for String Quartet.

For more program information, visit kronosquartet.org.

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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.

Steve Reich's "Daniel Variations" to Be Performed at 2008 Bang on a Can NY Marathon

Bang on a Can has announced the schedule for this year's Bang on a Can Marathon and a preliminary listing of the program. A performance of Steve Reich's Daniel Variations, by Signal ensemble, will be a highlight of the 12-hour event, to be held at New York's World Financial Center Winter Garden from 6 PM on May 31 though 6 AM on June 1. Also slated are works by John Adams, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, and many others, including Alarm Will Sound's take on the Beatles' Revolution No. 9. For more information, visit bangonacan.org.

To listen to the first movement off Daniel Variations, in stores now, visit nonesuch.com/stevereich.

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Click here to add the Daniel Variations CD directly to your Shopping Cart now for $14 with the album MP3s at no extra cost, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

New York Magazine Celebrates 40 Years of New York Culture

New York magazine is celebrating its 40th year with a special anniversary issue. In it, the magazine's culture critics give their take on the most essential New York works of art since the publication's inception, creating "The New York Canon: 1968-2008."

The classical music list, written by Justin Davidson, offers a wide range of artists and events, from Steve Reich's Drumming, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971, to the John Adams-curated opening-week festival of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in 2003. Among the other quintessential New York moments in between are Laurie Anderson's United States I-V, the epic, two-night event in 1983 from that "great American raconteuse"; the US premiere of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991, which, despite the surrounding controversy, "contained ravishing music"; and Audra McDonald's 1998 debut solo album, Way Back to Paradise, with music by emerging songwriters like Adam Guettel, and the "killer concert at Joe's Pub" that launched it.

Listen to Audra perform "The Allure of Silence" (Adam Guettel / Lindy Robbins) from Way Back to Paradise:

Included in the theater canon, according to New York magazine's Jeremy McCarter, is the arrival of Stephen Sondheim's Company in 1970, which "brought new complexity and darker shadows to Broadway" ("Even now," McCarter writes, "other songwriters are struggling to catch up."), and the 2005 revival of the composer's 1979 work Sweeney Todd.

On the pop music list, by Hugo Lindgren and Ben Williams, is Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light, on which David Byrne and Brian Eno create a sound that would inspire for decades to come, and The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs, "a distinctly New York masterpiece."

To read the complete list from New York magazine, visit nymag.com.

Austin360: Steve Reich SxSW Showcase "A Hit"

Steve Reich's music was a focal point of the South by Southwest festival's first-ever classical music showcase, Reich, Rags, & Road Movies: Music by Steve Reich & Friends, Wednesday night. Austin360's local music-scene blog, "Music Source," says it was "a hit." Randy Harriman reports from the show that the packed house "responded enthusiastically."

The first half of the program included John Adams's Road Movies; works by Michael Torke and Elliott Carter; and Reich's New York Counterpoint, performed by the San Antonio-based SOLI chamber ensemble. The second half was devoted entirely to Reich's music, with a performance of Electric Counterpoint by guitarist C. E. Whalen and four pieces played by New York's So Percussion ensemble: Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagoya Marimbas, Drumming, and Clapping Music. Writes Harriman:

The highlights of the evening had to be the Reich pieces played by So Percussion. Who would have thought that sticks and human hands could move at the speed of hummingbird wings---literally turning into blurs, from which emerged amazing sounds?

To read the full report, visit austin360.com.

The Wall Street Journal's music critic Jim Fusilli reports from Austin as well, speaking with Reich about his forthcoming Nonesuch CD, Daniel Variations, due out April 8. To read the details of their discussion, visit blogs.wsj.com/sxsw.

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Click here to pre-order the Daniel Variations CD now for $14 and receive the album MP3s at no extra cost on release day, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Kronos Quartet, Glenn Kotche, Punch Bros., Gipsy Kings to Perform at Ravinia 2008

The schedule for the 2008 Ravinia Festival has been announced, and among the 150 events to be held during its run this summer will be performances by Punch Brothers (July 21), The Gipsy Kings (August 2), and Kronos Quartet featuring Glenn Kotche (September 3).

Kronos Quartet perform John Adams's Fellow Traveler, which they recently premiered at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, and will give the Ravinia premiere of Glenn Kotche's Anomaly, with Glenn joining the Quartet for the event. You can read his thoughts on the piece in an essay he wrote for the Nonesuch Journal last year.

For a complete schedule of events for the Ravinia Festival, which runs May 31 through September 14, just outside of Chicago, visit ravinia.org. Tickets go on sale April 17.

While Glenn is performing in New York this week, Kronos is in Nashville for a performance of Terry Riley's Sun Rings with the Vanderbilt University Concert Choir, led by Pamela Schneller, tomorrow night at Vanderbilt's Ingram Hall. The concert will be preceded by a lecture-demonstration tonight, fittingly, at the University's Dyer Observatory; the Quartet will be joined by the Observatory's director, Rick Chappell, whose research centers around the Sun-Earth environment, and former Hubble Space Telescope Chief Scientist Dr. Bob O'Dell. For more information, visit vanderbilt.edu.

From there, Kronos will travel to Germantown, Tennessee, for a performance of works by Sigur Rós, Clint Mansell, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, among others, before heading to Springfield, Illinois, where the group will give an encore presentation of Sun Rings, this time with the Springfield Choral Society, led by Marion van der Loo, on Tuesday, March 18. The Springfield Journal-Register gives a preview of the event in an article by arts editor Nick Rogers. In the article, Rogers explores the astronomic roots of Riley's piece, and the Quartet's involvement in its inception. Violinist David Harrington tells Rogers:

As a listener, and a performer, I feel there's this opportunity to think about the world we're all a part of, and I come away from it feeling energized and almost recommitted, really, to the power of what a musical experience can be.

Adds violist Hank Dutt: "I think [Terry] wanted to look at man from the universe's perspective, and that's actually a very humbling experience. And it's more peaceful than anything."

To read the article, visit sj-r.com.

Steve Reich, John Adams Music in SXSW Showcase

Steve Reich and John Adams will be among the composers whose works will be featured in the first-ever South by Southwest (SXSW) festival showcase presented by the classical and jazz music publisher Boosey & Hawkes.

The showcase, titled Reich, Rags, & Road Movies: Music by Steve Reich & Friends, will take place tonight at Austin's St. David's Episcopal Church (304 East 7th Street at San Jacinto Blvd.), from 9-11 PM, with Reich as the guest of honor. The program will include a performance of Adams's Road Movies by pianist Michelle Schumann of the Austin Chamber Music Center and violinist Ertan Torgu; Reich's New York Counterpoint by San Antonio's SOLI chamber ensemble, Electric Counterpoint (originally written for Pat Metheny) by guitarist C. E. Whalen, and Music for Pieces of Wood, Nagoya Marimbas, Drumming, and Clapping Music by So Percussion; as well as works by Michael Torke and Elliott Carter. For complete program and ticket information, click here.

Steve Reich will also participate in a discussion with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore tomorrow at 1:15 PM at the Austin Convention Center. For more information, click here.

Reich's latest Nonesuch release, Daniel Variations, is set for release on April 8.

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Click here to pre-order the Daniel Variations CD now for $14 and receive the album MP3s at no extra cost on release day, along with the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus download Dance Patterns.

Austin Hosts SxSW with Steve Reich, Black Keys; Follows with "The Wire" Creator, David Simon

Thousands of music, film, and new-media types from across the world are converging on Austin, Texas, this week for the 2008 South by Southwest Festival. Among the participating artists will be Steve Reich, whose music will be performed with that of John Adams's at a showcase tomorrow night, and who will join Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore for a discussion the following afternoon; and The Black Keys, who will perform late-night tomorrow and at the Village Voice party on Friday.

And next week, Austin keeps things interesting even after the festival-goers depart. The University of Texas's College of Communication will present David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire, who will deliver the 2008 William Randolph Hearst Fellow lecture there on Tuesday, March 18, at 6 PM. The William Randolph Hearst Fellow Award honors individuals with distinguished careers in communication; former Fellows include Helen Gurley Brown, Walter Cronkite, Spike Lee, and Dan Rather. The free event will be held at the Austin City Limits studio on campus and is open to the public. For more information, visit utexas.edu.

Fans of The Wire are still coming to grips with the fact that there are no new episodes left to look forward to. Writing in McSweeney's, über-fan Scott Blaszak tells of his humorous, fictionalized (one hopes) efforts to encourage his nearest and dearest to catch the series finale, suggesting extreme (and perhaps extralegal) measures to spread the good word about "the smartest, most resonant drama in the history of television." Even for those who've missed the show, now's a good time to catch up on seasons one through four on DVD and prepare for the release of the fifth season on DVD while listening to the show's soundtracks.

And for those who are fully caught up through the end, Chicago Tribune's television critic Maureen Ryan has a loving and thorough run-through of her favorite moments from all five seasons. Countless fans are sure to share her sentiment when she concludes:

From the mayor's office to the police department to the grungiest back alley, The Wire showed us people so richly nuanced and detailed and real we wouldn't be surprised to meet them in the street. After five seasons, it's exceedingly hard to let them go.

To read the article, visit featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com.

Film Composer Leonard Rosenman Dies at 83

Leonard Rosenman, the Oscar-winning composer of such classic film scores as East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, died Monday of a heart attack. He was 83 years old.

"With the composers Bernard Herrmann and Alex North," writes the New York Times, "Mr. Rosenman was widely credited with bringing film music---long awash in Tchaikovsky-inflected Romanticism---squarely into the 20th century."

Along with North (A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus), Georges Delerue (Jules et Jim, Shoot the Piano Player), and Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, Rosenman's works were included in a series of film-music albums recorded for Nonesuch in 1997. Allmusic.com cites the collection, which includes music from the iconic James Dean films East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, in remembering the composer:

Rosenman's music was uncompromisingly contemporary in style, and was among the first film composers to utilize advanced compositional techniques such as serialism and microtones in major motion pictures ... [though] many film score buffs weren't even aware of Rosenman's work until the release in 1997 of Nonesuch's outstanding The Film Music of Leonard Rosenman, conducted by composer John Adams.

Listen to the main title tracks to each film from that recording by Adams and the London Sinfonietta:

East of Eden

Rebel Without a Cause

John Adams's "Doctor Atomic" to Make Met Premiere Next Season

When the Metropolitan Opera curtain goes up on John Adams's Doctor Atomic this October, it will be the first of the composer's operas to be performed at the Met, but certainly not the last. In announcing the house's 2008-09 season, its 125th anniversary, the Met's general manager, Peter Gelb, said the event would not be "just a flash-in-the-pan John Adams appearance," reports the New York Times: Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China, will be a part of the Met's 2010-11 season.

Doctor Atomic was given its first performance on October 1, 2005, by the San Francisco Opera, with libretto and staging by Peter Sellars and musical direction by Donald Runnicles. The Met premiere will be directed by Penny Woolcock (who helmed the film version of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer) and will be conducted by Alan Gilbert in his Met debut.

To hear a clip from the opera, visit earbox.com.

To learn more about the upcoming Met season and purchase subscription tickets, visit metoperafamily.org.

Adams's "The Dharma at Big Sur" to Be Performed by Brooklyn Phil, Lelia Josefowicz at BAM

Violinist Leila Josefowicz will join the Brooklyn Philharmonic, led by conductor Michael Christie, in performing John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this Saturday. The concert will take place at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House beginning at 7:30 PM. Also on the program are works by Takemitsu and Barók. For program and ticket information, visit brooklynphilharmonic.org.

Nonesuch released the premiere recording of The Dharma at Big Sur along with My Father Knew Charles Ives in 2006. To hear excerpts from the album, click here.