journal.nonesuch.com

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.

Henryk Górecki Receives Honorary Doctorate from Krakow Music Academy

Polish composer Henryk Górecki, who will celebrate his 75th birthday later this month, received an honorary doctorate from the Music Academy in Krakow at a ceremony that included a concert of the composer's choral works in the city's Franciscan Church. The 1992 Nonesuch recording of his Third Symphony, performed by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, went on to become the most successful recording of contemporary classic music in history.

More recently, Kronos Quartet, which recorded the composer's first and second string quartets in 1993, released the premiere recording of his long-awaited third quartet, "... songs are sung," last March.

For more information on Górecki's receipt of this honorary degree, visit the Polish Radio website at polskieradio.pl.

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Click here to add Kronos Quartet's recording of Górecki's String Quartet No. 3 directly to your Shopping Cart for $14 and download the album MP3s at no extra charge.

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.

LA Times: Kronos Quartet Offer "Passionate, Superb" Playing in Disney Hall Performance

Kronos Quartet was joined by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq at Walt Disney concert Hall in Los Angeles last Saturday for a night of premieres, not least Tagaq's own LA debut. Mark Swed, the Los Angeles Times music critic, writes: "The playing all evening was passionate and superb. If ever an ensemble has found a fountain of youth, it is this one."

Two highlights of the event included the Los Angeles premiere of Nunavut, an improvised collaboration between the vocalist and the Quartet, and the world premiere of Tundra Songs, composed by Canadian composer Derek Charke. In the former, says Swed, Tagaq's "erotic energy is unmistakable" with each of the Quartet members contributing "increasingly complex interlocking textures."

The latter, reads the review, is an "extraordinary" piece that proved a "mesmerizing" showcase of "Tagaq's ability to inject a life force into sound" and allowed her to become "one with the strings and the prerecorded soundscape." Swed calls Tundra Songs "another keeper" in Kronos's large and ever-growing catalog of works written for it.

Among the "engaging pieces" performed by Kronos on the rest of the program was the Los Angeles premiere of "Tusen Tankar," a Scandinavian folk song arranged by the group that the Times calls "as haunting as a Bergman film"; it is the Nonesuch Store-exclusive bonus download on Kronos's latest recording, Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic.

To read the concert review, visit latimes.com.

Variety's Richard S. Ginell, in his review of the performance, says that "even after three decades of continuous activity, the Kronos Quartet continues to come up with fresh ideas from out of the blue." As examples, he points both to the Disney Hall boundary-pushing program and to the group's recording of The Cusp of Magic. To read that review, visit variety.com.

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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.

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.

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.

Kronos Collaborator David Lang Awarded Pulitzer; Franghiz Ali-Zadeh Named UNESCO Artist for Peace

Frequent Kronos Quartet collaborator David Lang has been awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition The Little Match Girl Passion, which was premiered last October in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. Lang's collaborations with Kronos Quartet include the string arrangement for Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream score, recorded for Nonesuch, and the opera The Difficulty of Crossing a Field.

Another Kronos collaborator, Azerbaijani composer-pianist Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, recently began a two-year tenure as a UNESCO Artist for Peace, after an April 3 ceremony in Paris. Her works for string quartet and piano were recorded on Kronos Quartet's 2005 album Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh.

The post recognizes Ali Zadeh's "efforts to raise public awareness on musical education for orphans and children in need, her contribution to spreading UNESCO's message of peace and tolerance, and her dedication to the ideals and aims of the Organization," according to UNESCO's website. The composer shares this distinction with an esteemed group of Artists for Peace including Gilberto Gil; Chico Bouchikhi, a founder and former member of the Gipsy Kings; and conductor Valery Gergiev.

Listen to "Reverse Time," movement two from Ali-Zadeh's Apsheron Quintet, with the composer on piano, off Kronos Quartet's Mugam Sayagi:

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.

Glenn Kotche Plays Works from "Mobile" at NYC's The Kitchen

Glenn Kotche is in New York City for two sets, tonight and tomorrow night, with The National's Bryce Dessner at the famed downtown performance venue The Kitchen, before heading to Australia next week to join Wilco for a number of tour dates there and in New Zealand.

At The Kitchen, Glenn will perform works from his Nonesuch solo album, Mobile, and adaptations from Anomaly, a piece he wrote for and premiered with Kronos Quartet at the San Francisco Jazz Festival last October. He'll also play new arrangements of works by João Gilberto, Buddy Holly, and label mate Steve Reich. Each set begins at 8 PM. For more information, visit thekitchen.org.

Washington Post: Kronos Quartet's "Cusp of Magic" Is Itself "Magical"

The Washington Post has reviewed a handful of notable new albums by artists with "the makeup of a chamber ensemble, the mind-set of a rock band"---the sort for which "Kronos Quartet paved the way," in the words of Post critic Anne Midgette. The Quartet's latest Nonesuch release is the premiere recording, with pipa player Wu Man, of Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, which Midgette's colleague Stephen Brookes calls "at turns luminous, frightening and unbearably lovely." It's music, he says, that "shimmers with the elusive delicacy of a dream ...  and evokes those transitional moments in life when the sharp edges of reality become blurred, and anything seems possible."

Brookes finds Riley's composition "magical," explaining:

You have the sense of being swept into a surging ocean of memory, where lullabies float up over mysterious drones, nervous waltzes twist suddenly into quirky little marches, and nothing is ever quite what it seems ... Riley's touch remains both sure and deft throughout, and the effect is powerful.

To read the complete review, visit washingtonpost.com. Listen to "Royal Wedding" (6:14), the fourth movement from The Cusp of Magic, here:

For more music from the album, visit nonesuch.com/cuspofmagic.

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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 $13.97.

Kronos Quartet's "Cusp" Plays to Composer's Strengths

Kronos Quartet's latest Nonesuch release is the premiere recording of Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Dusted magazine's Kevin Macneil Brow credits the composer with having created an "enthralling work from a wide palette of diverse ideas and influences that might well have defeated a lesser composer." Brow goes on to praise the performers as well for their ability to "engage and interact in ways that combine earthy energy and celestial delight with an underlying sense of gravity and dignity."

What keeps Cusp's "diverse ideas" together, he writes, is "Riley's vision and integrity, his willingness and commitment to allow these ideas and voices their full expression." Also, the review concludes,

One should not underestimate the way Kronos plays to Riley's strengths---the vigorous colloquy of bold imagination, musical line and voice, the solid and purely present physicality that this music, although often metaphysical in mood and theme, ultimately asks for.

To read the complete review and listen to an excerpt of the album, visit dustedmagazine.com.

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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 $13.97.

Paul Taylor Dance Performances to Feature Kronos Music

Songs from Kronos Quartet's 2002 album Nuevo will be featured throughout the Paul Taylor Dance Company's residency at New York City Center beginning tonight. Running through March 16, the programs include 19 different works, most notably last year's De Sueños (Of Dreams) and De Sueños Que Se Repetin (Of Recurring Dreams), which are set to the Kronos tracks; they will be performed separately throughout the residency and on the same program for the Company's Gala event March 4.

In a profile of the choreographer that examines the creation of the pieces, the New York Times calls the  Sueños pieces among his trickiest. To learn more, visit nytimes.com.

For program and ticket information, visit nycitycenter.org.

Kronos Quartet Returns to Carnegie Hall

Kronos Quartet returns to Carnegie Hall tonight with a performance in Zankel Hall as part of Carnegie's Signatures and Nonesuch at Carnegie series. On the program are five world premieres, including Fernando Otero's El Cerezo (The Cherry Tree) and John Adams's Fellow Traveler, as well as the New York premiere of Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream Suite. The concert begins at 7:30 PM and will be preceded at 6:30 by a conversation in Zankel Hall with David Harrington and Carnegie's director of artistic planning, Jeremy Geffen, open to all ticketed concertgoers.

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In The Advocate review of the Quartet's latest album, The Cusp of Magic, with Wu Man, critic Charlie Richards calls the piece one of composer Terry Riley's "most optimistic, light-hearted, and easily accessible works to date." About the piece, Richards continues:

Despite Riley's [72] years, The Cusp of Magic has a fresh and youthful feel that is lacking in the music of many of Riley’s younger colleagues. Those who already love Riley will most likely adore it, and even those who don't may find themselves charmed by it.

The review is similarly praiseworthy of the album itself:

It is hard to imagine a performance of the piece being given with as much care, love, clarity and tough-edged musicianship than the one exhibited here by Kronos and Wu Man, and, as usual with Nonesuch, the engineering is faultless.

In the end, Richards recommends the album both "to those who love new music---and even to those who have shied away from it in the past."

To read the full, track-by-track review, visit advocate.com.

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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 $13.97.

Click here to add Fernando Otero's Nonesuch debut, Pagina de Buenos Aires CD plus free album MP3s to your Cart for just $13.98.

SF Weekly: Kronos' "Cusp of Magic" Is "A True Gem"; WNYC Pick of the Week

The staff at New York Public Radio, WNYC's Soundcheck has named Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic a CD Pick of the Week this week.

Closer to the Quartet's home base on the West Coast, SF Weekly calls the album "a true gem." Critic Mark Keresman looks to the many sources of inspiration composer Terry Riley weaved together for The Cusp of Magic that make it "a wide-ranging work, alternately contemplative and celebratory, always rhythmic." Keresman concludes: "Without being New Age–drippy, The Cusp of Magic represents a glorious clash of cultures, focusing on commonalities rather than disparities." To read the review, visit sfweekly.com.

After a performance Friday night in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, which includes the world premiere of label mate Fernando Otero's El Cerezo (The Cherry Tree), Kronos heads upstate to SUNY Purchase to perform Terry Riley's Sun Rings this Sunday.

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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 $13.97.

Click here to add Fernando Otero's Nonesuch debut, Pagina de Buenos Aires CD plus free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart for just $13.98.

Washington Post: Kronos Performance Explains the "Enthusiastic Following"

On Sunday, Kronos Quartet, as part of its residency at the University of Maryland, was joined by pipa virtuoso Wu Man for a performance of two pieces the players had recorded together: Tan Dun's Ghost Opera, recorded for Nonesuch in 1997, and Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, which was released on Nonesuch earlier this month.

The Washington Post's Anne Midgette writes that the performance "shed light on how they have developed such an enthusiastic following." As she sees it, "It is that their concerts aspire to be about something," with each of the two pieces they performed "rich in layers of meaning and allusion."

Midgette praises The Cusp of Magic and its composer in particular, writing:

Riley, tagged as "the father of minimalism" since writing the seminal "In C" in 1964, is a master of the repeating musical patterns that are a defining feature of this mislabeled genre. Intricate and offbeat, these patterns drive the music forward from the start of this piece's first, eponymous movement ...

To read her full concert review, visit washingtonpost.com.

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The Quartet next plays tonight at Tulane University in New Orleans on a program that includes Sigur Rós's Flugufrelsarinn, Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, and Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream Suite, the last of which the group will also perform this Friday at Carnegie Hall in New York. The New Orleans Times-Picayune recently featured a profile of the ensemble, quoting composer/pianist Stephen Prutsman, a longtime Kronos collaborator, who calls them "the most flexible quartet out there." To read the article, visit blog.nola.com.

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Click here to add The Cusp of Magic CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Tusen Tankar," directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $13.97.

SF Chronicle: Wild Applause to Kronos's "Cusp of Magic"; Listen on NPR's "Weekend Edition"

Kronos Quartet concludes a three-day residency at the University of Maryland this Sunday with a performance of Tan Dun's Ghost Opera and Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic with pipa virtuoso Wu Man. The San Francisco Chronicle gives "Wild Applause" to the recently released recording of the Riley piece, calling its title a perfectly apt description of the work. The Cusp of Magic, writes the Chronicle's Joshua Kosman in the album review, is "a sweeping, enchanting fairy tale of a piece, full of elegant virtuosity and an elusive sense of wonder, and the performers ... bring out all its restless charm." Ultimately, the piece, concludes Kosman, is "full of good spirits and a profound sense of wonder at life's renewal."

To read the review, visit sfgate.com. For information on this weekend's live performance of The Cusp of Magic, visit claricesmithcenter.umd.edu.

For folks who can't make it to Maryland, The Cusp of Magic will also be featured on NPR's Weekend Edition on Sunday. The segment, scheduled to first air around 9:45 AM ET, includes an interview with Riley, Kronos violinist David Harrington, and Wu Man.

Check npr.org for local listings or to listen to the show online.

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Click here to add The Cusp of Magic CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Tusen Tankar," directly to your Shopping Cart now for only $13.97.

Kronos Leads Three Events at University of Maryland

Chesapeake-area residents will have their say in the Presidential primaries today. They'll also have a number of opportunities this week to catch Kronos Quartet, which comes to College Park for three events at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

On Wednesday, Kronos offers an informal reading of works by students at the UM School of Music. The free reading begins at 7 PM at the Center's Dance Theatre.

The next afternoon, the Quartet conducts a free, open working rehearsal with composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, whose new piece, hold me, neighbor, in this storm ..., the group will premiere this fall. The Valentine's Day event will take place at 2 PM in the Center's Dekelboum Concert Hall.

The culminating event of the Kronos residency at the University will be the Sunday, February 17, performance of Tan Dun's Ghost Opera and Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic. The Quartet will be joined by special guest Wu Man, with whom both pieces were recorded for Nonesuch. Their recording of The Cusp of Magic is available now in the Nonesuch Store.

For information on all these events, visit claricesmithcenter.umd.edu.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Awarded Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance

As part of the 50th-annual Grammy Awards celebration, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was posthumously awarded the Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance for Neruda Songs, performed with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Composer Peter Lieberson wrote the piece for his wife; he was recently awarded the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for the piece.

Another winner at the Grammys was Judith Sherman, the longtime producer of Kronos Quartet and Steve Reich. She received the award for Classical Producer of the Year for albums including the Kronos recording of Górecki's String Quartet No. 3: "... songs are sung."

For the complete list of winners and nominees, visit grammy.com.

Philadelphia Inquirer Profiles Terry Riley and His Muse, Kronos

Last week, Nonesuch released The Cusp of Magic, Kronos Quartet's recording, with Wu Man, of the piece composer Terry Riley wrote for them in 2004. In yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper's music critic David Patrick Stearns profiles Riley, examining his long and varied career, not least his relationship with Kronos, "his most frequent muse."

Riley's latest pieces, writes Stearns, put "together combinations of people, music and sound that prompt audiences to contemplate deeper meanings in what may or may not be moments of playfulness," like those on the new record, which includes sounds from the toys Kronos violinist David Harrington and his granddaughter have played with. The composer's current output, says Stearns, reflects "a composer who has hit his peak creative years and accumulated the most singular pedigree in serious American music—partly because he has trafficked in areas that weren't so serious."

To read the article, visit philly.com. To purchase The Cusp of Magic, visit nonesuch.com/store.