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.

Charlottesville's "The Hook" Talks with Chris Thile Before Tonight's Punch Bros. Set There

Punch Brothers began the next leg of their US tour last night at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, and performs at the Satellite Ballroom in Charlottesville, Virginia, tonight. Leading to tonight's show, Chris Thile spoke with the Charlottesville weekly The Hook about his career, the new band, and their Nonesuch debut record, Punch. Says The Hook's Vijith Assar, Chris has gone from being "the world's premiere young hotshot mandolin player" expected to be "the savior of bluegrass," to moving in "a new, decidedly more progressive route." You'll find the interview at readthehook.com.

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

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.

JamBase: "Mind-Blowingly Talented" Punch Brothers Make for Musical Mavericks

Punch Brothers are the subject of an in-depth feature article in JamBase centered around a lengthy discussion with Chris Thile and Noam Pikelny about the group's Nonesuch debut, Punch. The piece weighs in on Punch Brothers' place in today's music scene, in which, writes the article's author, Dennis Cook, "not only can we listen to the latest sounds from our own time, our own country, but also virtually anything since recorded music began from every time period, every continent, every culture." That confluence of musical sounds and styles, says Cook, is the perfect setting for Punch Brothers, "a mind-blowingly talented acoustic quintet that got their starts in the bluegrass and pop worlds but has diligently forged into mysterious waters ... [They] are sonic citizens of the world creating a unique sound that couldn't have emerged at any other time in musical history."

On an album that so seamlessly blends so many musical influences while creating something entirely different, the band members "are developing their own way of speaking to each other in their own self-defined musical context," Cook writes. "Each guy seems to be stretching himself and the boundaries of what can be done on their instrument, taking the banjo, mandolin, etc. outside of established corridors and seeing where else it might fit."

In the album's centerpiece, The Blind Leaving the Blind, the JamBase contributor sees "a group synergy that carries the music along but also conveys a sense of shared gravity, each member's efforts pulling the others forward and outward and inward, shifting from instrument to instrument, personality to personality, and subtly affecting the music as it moves."

True to form of Mark Twain, the man whose story "Punch, Brother, Punch!" inspired the band and album names, the "ideal of the learned maverick is part and parcel of the Punch Brothers," writes Cook, "each of whom is a brilliant instrumentalist and singer but never in the straightjacket way most high level musicians tend to be ... For a group equally inspired by Bach and The Beatles, as energized by Ralph Stanley as they are by Radiohead, the old formats are bound to feel constrictive after a while."

Rather than simply discard those old forms or see their diverse favorite musics as distinct genres or classes of high and low, Chris Thile tells JamBase he's looking instead for that common threads that make good music good:

You have these areas where certain things excel in each ... When a folk song really succeeds musically it succeeds for the same reasons that a Mozart symphony succeeds musically. And when a classical libretto is successful it's often touching for the same reasons as a Dylan lyric is touching. It's all the same stuff, and the higher your sampling rate the more true your product will be.

What results, concludes Cook, is "an album of deep, often fierce and frightening emotions, and anyone who's ever felt life on that level (meaning all of us) could well be touched by it."

As Chris says, "With Punch, I really took some risks for the first time, and God, the boys really took some risks, man! I've found a group of guys to collaborate with that honestly the piece couldn't have come out without them,"

To read the complete article, visit jambase.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Thile's "Prairie Home Companion" Appearance Now Online

Punch Brothers' Chris Thile sat in with the Prairie Home Companion band this past Saturday for the Minnesota Public Radio show's live broadcast from New York's Town Hall. You can listen to the episode in its entirety at prairiehome.publicradio.org, and hear Chris perform Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain" with singer/guitarist Pat Donohue (segment 3) and a solo version of "Wayside" (segment 5), written by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, from his 2006 album How to Grow a Woman from the Ground.

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

Punch Brothers, Orchestra Baobab to Perform Free Summer Concerts in NYC

Punch Brothers will be performing in a free concert this summer at New York City's Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City, as part of a series of free outdoor concerts, BrooklynVegan reports. The show will take place on Wednesday, July 23, at 7 PM.

Also slated to perform in the series is Orchestra Baobab (pictured at right), who'll take the stage earlier in the summer, on June 25, at 7 PM; the group's new album, Made in Dakar, is slated for release on May 20.

In other Punch Brothers news, Chris Thile has scheduled some solo dates over the next few weeks while the band gears up for the next leg of its tour in May. Chris will perform at The Living Room in New York April 19 and 21 and May 4. For the April 21 show, he'll be joined by guitarist Michael Daves. For more information and tickets, visit livingroomny.com. For more tour information, click here.

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

Chris Thile to Be Special Guest on This Week's "A Prairie Home Companion"

Punch Brothers' Chris Thile will join Garrison Keillor and the rest of the folks at A Prairie Home Companion as they bring their Minnesotan magic to the Big Apple this Saturday, April 12. The show will be broadcast live from New York City's Town Hall, beginning at 6 PM ET, and will feature Chris and singer-songwriter Nellie McKay as special guests, in addition to the winning entries from their Spring Sonnet contest and, of course, The News from Lake Wobegon.

For more program and station information, or listen to the show online as it airs, visit prairiehome.publicradio.org.

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

Punch Brothers Bring "Ambitious Union of Bluegrass, Classical, Jazz" to Boston

As Punch Brothers take their tour to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts tonight, the Boston Globe spoke with Chris Thile and Noam Pikelny about the band's roots and the creation of their Nonesuch debut, Punch, which the Globe calls "an ambitious union of bluegrass, classical, and jazz."

In the interview, Noam reveals an uncomfortable truth (of which Chris claims to have been unaware) about their initial meeting, at the 2005 Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The band's banjo player tells the Globe's Linda Laban:

I was completely inspired by the session we had that night. There was plenty of talking and drinking of beer; it felt like we had a lot of catching up to do. I was staying up in the mountains and you had to take the gondola up there. I got kicked out of the hotel where Chris and I were jamming at 5 in the morning, but the gondola wasn't running for another two hours. So I slept on a park bench.

To read the complete interview, visit boston.com.

Punch Brothers have had to postpone the remainder of their April dates until May, due to a family medical issue, and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. This Wednesday's show in Sellersville, PA, is now scheduled for Thursday, May 15. The April 10 show at the Satellite Ballroom in Charlottesville, VA, is now scheduled for May 16. The April 11 shows in Annapolis, MD, are now scheduled for May 17, with the early show at 1 PM and the late show at 4 PM. And the April 12 show in Knoxville, TN, will now be held on May 21. The rest of the shows on the tour, including the guys' triumphant, and hopefully bench sleep-free, return to Telluride, on June 22, should remain unaffected.

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

Punch Brothers Bring "Elegently Sculpted Work" to Ann Arbor Tonight

Looking forward to tonight's Punch Brothers performance at The Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Detroit Free Press columnist Brian McCollum calls the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch, "one of the best records so far this year, an elegantly sculpted work that doesn't let its high-end chops overshadow its heart."

For further tour information, click here.

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

New Yorker Blog: Chris Thile "Stands Above" Most Composers of His Generation

Chris Thile is the recipient of the "overwhelming admiration" of the New Yorker's Russell Platt, who writes in the magazine's "Goings On" blog that, despite Chris's not being "properly a classical musician ... [his] work is so wide-ranging and restlessly imaginative that he stands above most of the 'classical' composers that my generation has managed to produce."

Platt cites the classical compositional influences heard on Thile's The Blind Leaving the Blind, the centerpiece of Chris and his fellow Punch Brothers' Nonesuch debut, Punch, and suggests its lyrics are reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's. He finds the other pieces on the album "no less enthralling in their ingenious whirl of influences (including Philip Glass and French chanson)."

To read the complete entry, visit newyorker.com.

Punch Brothers began the second leg of their US tour this week and make three stops in North Carolina this weekend. For tour information, click here.

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

Toumani Diabate, Punch Brothers Selected for Songlines' "Top of the World"

Toumani Diabate graces the cover of the April/May issue of Songlines magazine, out of the UK, on newstands now. He's also included in "Top of the World," the magazine's editor's-choice collection of the ten best new releases, which features the track "Ali Farka Toure" off Toumani's new solo kora album, The Mande Variations.

Listen to "Ali Farka Toure" here:

Songlines' Nigel Williamson calls the album title's reference to Bach's Goldberg Variations "a good analogy, for there's a courtly grace and elegance to these eight long, solo instrumental pieces." Williamson also cites the works' rhythms as being "of an astonishingly subtle complexity" and finds "a voluptuousness in Toumani's endlessly varying contours of interdependent melody, harmony and rhythm that is quite engrossing."  He marvels: "How a solo instrument recorded without overdubs can sound so lush and layered is remarkable ... This is a heroic record in every sense."

The Mande Variations debuts at the top spot on the Songlines World Music Chart.

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Also featured in Songlines' "Top of the World" collection is "Sometimes" off Punch Brothers' Punch. Reviewer Chris Jones calls the album the "masterpiece" that finds Chris Thile to be "a fully matured artist." Of the album's central work, the four-movement The Blind Leaving the Blind, which Thile wrote in response to the pain of divorce, Jones writes:

its intricate changes of pace divide episodic verses that drip with both knotty metaphor and confessional wisdom. Despite references to late night drinking and sorrow, you’re left with an undeniable feeling of the resilience of the spirit, finding salvation through the healing power of music. This is therapy, but of the kind that you feel privileged to witness.

For the complete reviews and more on the "Top of the World" selections, visit songlines.co.uk.

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Click here to add The Mande Variations CD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.

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

Chris Thile Performs Tonight for NYC Venue's 10th Anniversary

Chris Thile will perform a special solo set tonight at New York's intimate performance space The Living Room as part of a monthlong tenth-anniversary celebration of the club. Chris's set is scheduled to kick off at 11:30 PM, following a number of other performances beginning at 7:30 PM at the Lower East Side venue.

The tenth-anniversary celebration began last night with a tribute to the music of Elvis Costello and continues through April 4 with performances by Norah Jones, Ron Sexsmith, Jesse Harris, Joseph Arthur, Joan as Police Woman, and Ollabelle.

For more information, visit livingroomny.com.

Punch Brothers start up the next leg of their US tour in support of Punch next week with a performance at Singletary Recital Hall in Lexington, Kentucky, on Wednesday, March 26. For more tour dates, click here.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $16.

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.

Punch Brothers on "World Cafe" Today

Punch Brothers and their album Punch will be featured on NPR's World Cafe today with host David Dye. The show is broadcast from XPN out of Philadelphia and can be heard on more than 180 stations nationwide. For more information and local listings, visit worldcafe.org. You can also listen live online today at 2 PM ET at xpn.org. The audio will also be archived later this evening at npr.org.

Punch Brothers Make Musical Magic While Winter Weather Hits

Despite the weekend's spring forward to Daylight Saving Time, winter still managed to get the better of Punch Brothers. Regrettably, the guys had to postpone their scheduled Saturday night performance at the 930 Listening Room in Louisville, Kentucky, due to a major winter storm. They did manage to play the night before at the Southern Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, despite the already wintry weather, for what the Columbus Dispatch's Curtis Schieber says was "nearly two hours of magical music making."

In his concert review, Schieber calls attention to the affinity between Chris Thile and his fellow Punch Brothers, "who not only share his love of integrating diverse styles into the mix but with whom he shares an uncanny instrumental intuition." Shieber found, at the Columbus show, that this bond "served the five best during the centerpiece of the concert, Thile's extended four movement suite, The Blind Leaving the Blind." He also cites the recording of the piece on Punch, and recognizes that all five band members

are marvelously suited to the task, as the piece demanded precision and abundant technique to make the recording successful. Last night, it came alive with a richly organic interplay and a deep sensitivity for the material and each other.

To read the complete review, visit dispatch.com.

Punch Brothers are taking a couple of well-deserved weeks off from touring before starting up again in Lexington, Kentucky, but will be featured on NPR's World Cafe tomorrow afternoon. You can listen live on xpn.org beginning at 2 PM. For further tour information, click here.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $15.98.

SF Chronicle Gives Chris Thile Pop Quiz on "Mind-Blowing" "Punch"

Chris Thile hardly had a second's rest backstage at The Tonight Show while prepping to perform with Punch Brothers on the show last week. The San Francisco Chronicle was there looking for some background information on how they created their new, "totally mind-blowing" album, Punch. The Chronicle's Aidin Vaziri suggests it may have something to do "with the virtuoso's complete disregard for musical rules." To read the "Pop Quiz" interview, visit sfgate.com.

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The New York Daily News examines some of that musical rule-breaking by Chris and the band, whom writer Jim Farber says "match prickly banjos with stately violins and contrast plucky mandolins with urbane acoustic guitars" on the new album.

Farber feels the band accomplished "the rare feat" of combining musical styles to create an album of "folk and classical at once." He continues: "If that's not enough, it also has traces of free jazz in its innovative bass lines and odd guitar chord playings."

To read the article, visit nydailynews.com.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $15.98.

Punch Brothers Discuss the Excitement of Breaking New Musical Ground

Though he was born in Southern California, Chris Thile has roots in Murray, Kentucky, about an hour south of Paducah, as well, so it'll be a bit of a homecoming for him when he and Punch Brothers play the Clemens Fine Arts Center in Paducah this Sunday. The Paducah Sun's Adam Shull spoke with Chris and fellow Punch Brother, fiddler Gabe Witcher, about their Nonesuch debut, Punch.

"What we've attempted to do is provide music for people who love getting into music," Gabe tells the Sun, "getting in deep with the music and exploring a record."

The centerpiece of the record is The Blind Leaving the Blind, the new four-movement suite by Chris that combines a classical-music form, bluegrass instrumentation, jazz-inspired improvisation, and virtuosic technical skill to form something else entirely. As Gabe reports:

It was the first time a lot of us have attempted to play music that required as much as it did as far as technical ability and concentration ... I think for a musician there are few things as exciting as breaking new ground, possibly not from an overall music sense but from a personal standpoint.

Chris concurs, telling Shull:

As a musician you're always reaching beyond yourself for (something) and when you actually grab a hold of it, it's electrifying. That is what being a musician is all about: groping in the dark and finally you make a little bit of progress ... we were able to go beyond what we already knew.

To read the complete interview, visit paducahsun.com. For more tour information, click here.

The Montreal Gazette gives the new album four stars. "Thile is writing about the deeply personal, in personal terms," writes reviewer Mark Lepage. He sees in Punch "Thile's prodigious virtuosity ... fused to the soaring, yet austere, progressive tone and arrangements of his virtuoso musicians." To read the review, visit canada.com.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $15.98.

Punch Brothers Make "Tonight Show" Debut Tonight

Punch Brothers will be making their very first appearance as a band on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight on NBC. The guys will play "Punch Bowl," the first track off their new record, Punch. You can preview that track and the song "Nothing, Then" at nonesuch.com/punch. You can also hear "Punch Bowl" here:

The Tonight Show starts at 11:35 PM ET. For more information, visit nbc.com.

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On this week's All Songs Considered podcast, you can hear the album's closing track, "It'll Happen." The show's host, introduces the Punch Brothers track with this: "After seeing Chris Thile play for our webcast with his band Nickel Creek, I was sure that I had just seen the most astonishing musician I had ever seen live." You can listen to the latest episode of All Songs Considered on npr.org here and the webcast of Nickel Creek's "Farewell (For Now)" concert, recorded live last November, here.

Punch Brothers' appearance on All Things Considered, originally scheduled for Wednesday, will now air on today's show. The show airs from from 4–6:30 PM ET on WNYC, 93.9 FM in New York, and 5–7 PM PT on KCRW, 89.9 FM in Los Angeles, and can be heard streaming live on the stations' respective websites. Visit npr.org for further local listings or to listen to All Things Considered online beginning around 7 PM ET.

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In a four-star review of the new album in The Guardian, Robin Denselow compares the boundary-breaking tunes on Punch to label mate Rokia Traoré's collaboration with the Kronos Quartet on her album Bowmboï. "What we have here," he writes of Punch, "is a new musical style," one he calls "intriguing, unusual and very classy." Denselow refers to Thile for his "extraordinary virtuoso playing, writing and singing" and, equally important, for his moving "the American country-folk scene into an unexpected direction. He's a mandolin player, but in his hands the instrument becomes more versatile than ever."

In the album's centerpiece, The Blind Leaving the Blind, Denselow finds Thile matching "his charming, easy going vocal work against passages where guitar, bass, banjo and fiddle follow the intricate twists and turns of his writing."

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

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In today's New York Times, music critic Nate Chinen explores the history and the recent resurgence of bluegrass and roots music in the City, citing as an example a set Chris Thile joined in on at the intimate Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side as one of many events taking place in the new roots music scene.

Chris spoke to the Times about the ever-evolving musical form with which he has long been associated, and working against an outdated misperception that going to a folk-music concert is a staid affair. “There’s a perception we have to fight through as folk musicians," he tells Chinen. "Like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to go to this concert and get in touch with our roots.’ That’s totally valid, but it’s also like visiting a museum.”

To read Chinen's article on the contemporary roots music scene in New York, visit nytimes.com.

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George Varga of the Bend Weekly out of Oregon calls The Blind Leaving the Blind "equal parts folk, bluegrass, jazz and contemporary classical," praising the piece as "a brave and daring work, especially in an era of ring-tone-length attention spans and lowest-common-denominator pop music."

Varga finds that "the music unfolds over time to reveal a rich tapestry of styles and sounds that require---and reward---attentive listening." Chris himself confirms in the Weekly: "that that is exactly what we're trying to do."

To read the article, visit bendweekly.com.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $15.98.

Daily Telegraph: Punch Brothers Take Bluegrass into New Territory

Punch Brothers and their Nonesuch debut, Punch, are featured on this week's edition of NPR's All Songs Considered, along with label mate Toumani Diabate and his latest, The Mande Variations. Listen now online at npr.org/music or download the podcast.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph (UK), music critic Ivan Hewett places the members of Punch Brothers "among America's folk music elite," describing them this way: "All five are virtuoso players who can toss off the wild, high-speed improvisations for which bluegrass is famous."

Even with bluegrass as their common experiential thread, Hewett recognizes that with Punch, the band is "taking bluegrass into new territory." In an interview with the Telegraph, Chris Thile explains what he was looking to do with his latest effort and why.

"I want to enlarge the palette," Thile says. "I think it's a desire of modern musicians to complete the musical characteristics of whatever tradition they've grown up in."

Thile and the band, Hewett concludes, are succeeding in their efforts:

It's a delicate task, to renew a tradition without destroying the very thing that makes it special. But on the evidence of their first album the Punch Brothers are well on the way to achieving it.

To read the article, visit telegraph.co.uk.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping Cart for $15.98.

Tune in to Punch Brothers on "All Things Considered" Today

Update: This evening's Punch Brothers appearance on All Things Considered has been postponed due to unexpected breaking news coverage. The Nonesuch Journal will add further scheduling information as it becomes available.

Tune in to NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon to hear Punch Brothers' discuss Punch, their Nonesuch debut, with Craig Havighurst. The show airs from from 4–6:30 PM ET on WNYC, 93.9 FM in New York, and 5–7 PM PT on KCRW, 89.9 FM in Los Angeles, and can be heard streaming live on the stations' respective websites. Visit npr.org for further local listings or to listen to All Things Considered online beginning around 7 PM ET.

The band will also be featured on NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, available tomorrow through npr.org/music, as will label mate Toumani Diabate, whose new album, The Mandé Variations, was released this week as well.

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Click here to add the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, including the bonus download, "Bailey," direct to your Shopping cart for $15.98.

Click here to add The Mandé Variations CD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. 

Punch Brothers Celebrate Release of Debut Record; Perform on "Tonight Show"

Tomorrow marks the release of Punch, the Nonesuch Records debut from Punch Brothers---Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Gabe Witcher, Noam Pikelny, and Greg Garrison---and to get release week started right, we've launched nonesuch.com/punch, where you can learn more about the group and hear two tracks off the album: "Punch Bowl" and "Nothing, Then."

To close out this very special week in style, the guys will be performing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this Friday, February 29. The show starts at 11:35 PM ET; for more info, visit nbc.com.

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You can still pre-order the album at the Nonesuch Store today and download your free album MP3s tomorrow, with the bonus instrumental track, "Bailey." Or add the album directly to your Shopping Cart by clicking here.

Punch Brothers Bring Their "Breathtakingly Impressive" Music on the Road

Just a week into their inaugural US tour as Punch Brothers, Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Greg Garrison, Noam Pikelny, and Gabe Witcher have already been widely recognized for their stellar playing abilities, and this past Wednesday, another celestial body, the moon, in full eclipse, added extra effect as backdrop to the band's performance at New York City's picturesque Allen Room. The venue's high glass wall looked out onto Central Park under a haunting lunar eclipse as the band celebrated Thile's 27th birthday in truly high style with a set that included songs off their Nonesuch debut, Punch, as well as songs by Radiohead, the Beatles, and the Strokes.

The New York Times' Stephen Holden writes that The Blind Leaving the Blind, the centerpiece of the set and of Punch, "expands the frontier of an emerging style of what might be called American country-classical chamber music." In the new, four-movement piece, writes Holden, "Mr. Thile demonstrated his sensitivity as a composer, ensemble player and singer."

Holden also says of Chris that to call him "the Les Paul of his instrument describes only one aspect of a musician who could just as rightly be compared to a great classical guitarist." He continues:

Although Mr. Thile, an alumnus of Nickel Creek, can toss off witty, jazz-flavored bluegrass solos with breathtaking velocity, his technique is merely the starting point for serious experiments in genre bending that incorporate music ranging from Bach to Radiohead.

To read the review of Wednesday's show, visit nytimes.com.

Punch Brothers continue their US tour when they join the more than 30 bands to converge on Tacoma, Washington, this weekend for the 15th annual Wintergrass Festival for "four days of unforgettable bluegrass musicality," as the event organizers would have it. The festival kicked off last night and continues through the weekend with Punch Brothers headlining in an 11:15 PM set tonight. In addition to the scheduled performances, the festival includes dancing, workshops, vendors, and, most inviting, informal jam sessions among attendees, amateur and professional alike. For more information, visit wintergrass.com.

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Just before kicking off their US tour, Punch Brothers toured the UK. They'll be featured this weekend on British radio, first with a session on tonight's episode of BBC Radio Scotland's Brand New Country, dedicated to the finest music in the country songbook. The show begins at 8 PM GMT, with an encore performance the same time Sunday; listen live around the world at bbc.co.uk/scotland. On Saturday, the band will be featured on BBC Radio 3's World Routes, an exploration of music from around the world with host Lucy Duran, at 3 PM GMT. Listen live at bbc.co.uk/radio3. You can also listen to each show all week at the respective sites' "listen again" features.

Music critics in the UK have responded to the new record as well, with the Sunday Herald out of Scotland giving it four stars and The Sun crediting Punch Brothers with having "invented a new genre ... jazzgrass."

The Independent calls the new record "breathtakingly impressive stuff." The paper's Andy Gill praises the band as being "an association of expert country musicians whose debut does for bluegrass what The Gospel at Colonus did for gospel---develops a folk art into high art." To read the review, visit independent.co.uk.

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Click here to pre-order the Punch Brothers debut CD, Punch, plus free MP3s of the album, set to release on Tuesday, with the exclusive bonus download "Bailey."

Happy Birthday to Chris Thile

Nonesuch Records wishes Chris Thile a very happy 27th birthday today. Chris and his Punch Brothers band mates, Chris Eldridge, Greg Garrison, Gabe Witcher, and Noam Pikelny, will be celebrating the big day with a performance tonight in New York at the Allen Room at Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time Warner Center. It's part of Lincoln Center's American Songbook series.

For information on tonight's show and the upcoming American Songbook events, including k.d. lang's three nights of performances next week, visit lincolncenter.org.

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Click here to pre-order the Punch CD plus free album MP3s, with the exclusive bonus download "Bailey," for only $15.98. The CD and the downloads will be available starting February 26.

NY Sun: Punch Brothers Catapult Forward with a Nod to Tradition

With their US tour now in full swing, Punch Brothers have made their way through New York State and will be featured on WNYC, New York Public Radio's Soundcheck at 2 PM ET today. The band will play some songs live from the WNYC studio and discuss their Nonesuch debut, Punch. The show airs in the New York City area on the radio at 93.9 FM and streams live at wnyc.org.

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In an article for the Chicago Tribune, writer David Royko follows the ties between bluegrass and classical music all the way back to Pete Seeger's "Goofing Off Suite" from the early 1950s, but recognizes that Chris Thile, with The Blind Leaving the Blind---the classically structured composition at the heart of Punch---and Punch Brothers have created something new.

Looking at the structure of the new piece, Royko writes that while it uses "some sophisticated techniques beyond basic sonata form," it is "grounded in the sonic and---in spirit---aesthetic world of bluegrass." And for all its complexity,

the music remains direct, intensely expressive---with melodic passages that stay in the memory----and reaches a satisfying, powerful climax which, like many symphonies, does not come at the very end, but prior to a dramatic coda.

Royko recognizes the classical inspirations of Brahms and Debussy in the new work, but says that "the music is refreshingly original." Furthermore, he concludes: "This is no crazy quilt with visible seams, but an organic statement that not only starts a fresh branch on the newgrass tree, but on new music, period."

Chris credits his band mates, whom Royko calls a "like-minded bunch of dazzling twentysomething virtuosi," with helping to turn his hopes of creating this new music into a reality. Says Royko, "Leaving space for improvisation reflects Thile's progressive, jazz-influenced background, and his own improvising on the eight-string mandolin has reset the bar for all who follow."

To read the article, visit chicagotribune.com.

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The New York Sun's Steve Dollar concurs, writing of the forthcoming record, Punch

showcases a bristling enthusiasm for fleet daredevilry on all manner of stringed instruments, at once emulating a model of tradition and catapulting the group forward into the unknown. The pieces were written with a sweeping allowance for improvisation, which skews the sound toward a kind of contemporary classical feeling.

The band will be performing tomorrow night at The Allen Room in New York City, as part of Lincoln Center's American Songbook series, and Lincoln Center's producer of contemporary programming, Jon Nakagawa, tells the Sun: "We like to say that the great tradition of American popular songwriting goes from Stephen Foster to Stephin Merritt. Chris's songwriting is very much in that tradition."

To read the article, visit nysun.com.

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Late last week, the band performed in Vermont, where the Bluegrass Blog had a chance to chat with Chris Thile and Chris Eldridge. In discussing the creation of the new piece, Thile credits his band mates, confirming that it "is absolutely colored by the players." To read the interview, visit thebluegrassblog.com.

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This past Sunday, the guys played to a capacity crowd at The Egg in Albany, New York, leading the Albany Times Union's Greg Haymes to note: "The mandolin is one of the tiniest stringed instruments, but in the hands of a master like Chris Thile, it can make a mighty, mighty sound ... While rooted in bluegrass, the mandolinist has definitely pushed well beyond those boundaries." 

Haymes praises the playing of everyone in the band, calling each "an individual master of his instruments," but asserts that "what makes the Punch Brothers such a powerful and unique band is their ensemble work."

In addition to the new pieces off Punch, among the highlights in Sunday's "wildly diverse" set, reports the Times