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.

Nicholas Payton Performs in One of "Most Exciting Sets" at Jammy Awards (AP), Featured in "All About Jazz"

Last Wednesday, Nicholas Payton performed in what the Associate Press calls one of "the most exciting sets" at the seventh and final Jammy Awards, honoring the best in improvised music. It was an event that made headlines for reuniting all four members of Phish, who picked up a lifetime achievement award at proceedings at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Payton joined former Phish keyboardist Page McConnell and fellow jazz luminaries Roy Haynes, Christian McBride, and James Carter in a jazz tribute. For more on the evening's events, visit ap.google.com.

Payton recently spoke with All About Jazz contributor R. J. DeLuke about his career and the making of his newly released Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, which the site says shows the trumpeter "as a thoughtful composer and a player who pays as much attention to his sound as his plentiful technique."

Here, Payton offers his take on the challenge facing contemporary jazz musicians: that of honoring the past while still forging something new:

We as musicians of today have to negotiate in this great legacy we come from. When you talk about guys who have done so much with the music, like Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans, Chet Baker ... I think the challenge for the younger musician is to learn from and understand what's come before, but not be bound to that as the only means of expressing what you have to say ... I think that's what a lot of guys from the current generation are negotiating. What we love and what is considered jazz music. Only time will tell where this is going and how this will all pan out.

To read the full interview, visit allaboutjazz.com.

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

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Payton Hits Sweet Spot on New Album

"The first poignant tones make it clear that trumpeter Nicholas Payton is hitting a sweet spot on his new CD," writes the Philadelphia Inquirer's Karl Stark in his 3.5-star review of Payton's Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, a blend of "dreaminess with some serious playing." Stark points out two songs on the album written by Payton's father, bassist Walter Payton, the "gorgeous opener" ("Drucilla") and "Nida," with its nod to the Paytons' hometown in "a gentle form of Crescent City funk."

To watch footage from the album recording session featuring both "Drucilla" and "Nida," visit nonesuch.com/intotheblue. To read the Inquirer review, visit philly.com.

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

Washington Post: Nicholas Payton's Nonesuch Debut "Fresh and Inspired"

Nicholas Payton, the headliner at last weekend's Main Street Jazz Fest in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, had performed at the New Orleans JazzFest the week before; it was in that city, his hometown, where Payton recorded his Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, last fall.  The Washington Post's Mike Joyce says the new album "boasts relaxed, self-assured performances" and calls it "a summing-up of sorts, an album that recalls some of Payton's previous acoustic and fusion-inspired work yet manages to sound fresh and inspired---even surprising."

A highlight of the album for Joyce is "the trumpeter's wonderfully evocative interpretation" of music from Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-nominated score for Chinatown. "Warm, spacious, and burnished," writes the reviewer, "Payton's balladry is hard to beat," with additional highlights coming from a "funk-charged romp" ("Nida"), a "smoldering Latin-tinged groove" ("Triptych"), and the "fiery, post-bop coda" ("The Charleston Hop (The Blue Steps)").

To read the review, visit washingtonpost.com.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackson continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pop Matters review concludes:

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

To read the full review, visit popmatters.com.

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

Guardian: Four Stars to Nicholas Payton's Incisive, Intelligent Nonesuch Debut

Nicholas Payton's Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, set for release this Tuesday, receives four stars from The Guardian (UK). Reviewer John Fordham contends that listeners who think they know what to expect from the New Orleans trumpeter "might be very surprised" by his latest work.

Fordham suggests that though "Payton is the kind of technically assured traditionalist who is comfortable playing with Crescent City trad legends, he's steadily been growing into his own man." He offers as proof that Into the Blue "is full of inspired ballad-rhapsodising, unhurried uptempo improvisations that pulsate with feints and twists, and original compositions and reshaped modern urban and Latin grooves that reveal an incisive creative intelligence."

In a song-by-song evaluation, Fordham writes:

Payton takes a long, melodic lope over swingers, but he's epigrammatic and tight on the funky-Latin "Triptych," broodingly elegiac on "Chinatown," and ingeniously and obliquely original ... on "The Crimson Touch." Even if the trumpeter never breaks a sweat, he manages to sound as if he's playing a Dirty Dozen Brass Band groover on the lively "Nida."

To read the full review, visit arts.guardian.co.uk.

You can listen to the complete album track of "Chinatown" as well as "Drucilla" and "Let It Ride" at nonesuch.com/intotheblue, where you'll also find behind-the-scenes video footage from the recording session, with the master take of "Drucilla" plus outtakes of "Nida" and "Triptych."

Also in the news, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra announced its 2008-09 jazz series today: Payton is slated to appear at Orchestra Hall on March 13, 2009, as part of a Blue Note 70th anniversary celebration, with Bill Charlap, Ravi Coltrane, Pat Martino, Steve Wilson, Peter Washington, and Lewis Nash. For more information, visit the Detroit Free Press at freep.com.

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Click here to pre-order Into the Blue now and download the album MP3s on release day (4/22) at no extra charge. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more.

Nicholas Payton Celebrates Louis Armstrong Tonight in Orchestra Hall

Trumpeter Nicholas Payton will join trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, heading a stellar band, for a celebration of the music of Louis Armstrong, tonight at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Singer Kermit Ruffins will portray Armstrong in a semi-staged performance that brings together episodes from the legendary trumpeter's life with the songs for which he became so well known, including "What a Wonderful World" and "Mack the Knife." For ticket information, visit minnesotaorchestra.org.

Payton's Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, is due out this coming Tuesday. You can pre-order the album now in the Nonesuch Store or by clicking here and download the album MP3s on release day for no additional cost.