Toumani Diabate's "gorgeous new album, The Mande Variations," writes Jace Clayton in the art and culture magazine Frieze, "demonstrates that a millennium of oral tradition is powerful cosmopolitanism; make any attempt to oppose tradition with modernity and you'll miss out on the stunning freedoms embodied in his work."
Toumani, a 72nd-generation Malian griot, honors the traditions of his ancestors while still bringing his timeless instrument to contemporary audiences well beyond Mali's borders. Says Clayton: "The sound a kora makes in his hand is like sunshine dappled through tree leaves: high and warm and flowing. Notes cascade. Time eddies."
While it may be tempting for some to consider a solo-instrument acoustic recording well suited to settle simply into the background, Clayton suggests that even listeners who set out to do so are inevitably "immersed, following an intricate melodic riff (played on one hand) as it dances around a relaxed bass figure (played on the other)."
Clayton finds in each song "a fantastic, polyglot genealogy, at once Malian and international" and, that being the case, "something radical about refusing to erect a line between an ancient locality and a modern cosmopolis, about letting 71 generations of collective memory speak and listen today."
The San Diego Union-Tribune gives the album four stars, with reviewer George Varga, writing that listeners "don't need to know a thing about West African music or the harp-like, 21-stringed kora that Toumani Diabate plays to be captivated by the aural beauty of" The Mande Variations. Toumani, says Varga, "creates shimmering melodies and improvisations that are steeped in tradition but sound utterly fresh and vibrant."
Toumani Diabate performed an intimate set of music from The Mande Variations, his first solo album in more than two decades, last Friday at LSO St. Luke's in London that earned a perfect five stars from both The Independent and The Guardian, and closed with a special guest turn from Buena Vista Social Club bassist Cachaito Lopez, on a tune from In the Heart of the Moon, Toumani's collaboration with the late Ali Farka Toure.
The Independent's Tim Cumming calls the concert "a stunning performance" after which Toumani "left us in no doubt ... he has grown into a musician of world stature working at the height of his powers."
The crowd's high expectations were met, reports Cummings, as it was "treated to Diabaté's in-the-moment unraveling of The Mande Variations." In response, the writer asserts, "Where your jaw drops is down to you, but drop it will." He draws particular attention to the piece "Cantelowes," which he calls "an intense listening experience; a music of beauty that demands your full attention, and whose abstractions seem to flow just beyond your grasp." Listen to the album track "Cantelowes" here:
The Guardian's Robin Denselow says the "historic set" from Toumani, "the world's finest exponent of the kora," offered further proof that he "is a star, not just by Western, but by global standards."
Throughout the concert, Toumani showed his command of the instrument, from "his skill in simultaneously playing both a mesmeric riff and delicate accompaniment" to his talents "mixing grand melodic themes and furious decorative flurries ... and showing off his rapid-fire, virtuoso improvisation and embellishments."
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.
Laurie Anderson kicks off her four-night residency at the Barbican Theatre in London tonight. The shows are part of the Barbican's bite08 festival of music, dance, and visual art taking place over the next month, as well as the Spring 08 Contemporary Events series, which also includes a sold-out performance by Toumani Diabate at the LSO St. Luke's this Friday and the UK premiere of Philip Glass's Waiting for the Barbarians in June.
Before tonight's show at the Barbican, Laurie will stop by the BBC studios for an appearance on the Nemone radio show, which begins 1 PM GMT on BBC Radio 6 Music. To listen live online, visit bbc.co.uk. You can also listen again to the show online for the following week.
Laurie made an earlier appearance on BBC radio yesterday on the Radio 4 program Woman's Hour. You can listen to that now at bbc.co.uk/radio4.
"When we’re lucky enough to host a musician with the singular vision and dedication of Malian griot and kora prodigy Toumani Diabate," says Other Music's Josh Madell, "it makes us all take pause. It was an honor to have him play for us at Other Music, and even more so to sit with Diabate and learn."
Here are two videos Other Music created from the event.
This first segment highlights both Toumani's masterly teaching and playing skills:
This second segment contains a performance Toumani dedicates to all the kora players who preceded him:
Toumani Diabate's latest release, The Mande Variations, his first solo recording since his debut album 20 years ago, "is a welcome surprise," says Banning Eyre in his review of the album for NPR's All Things Considered, "for no two of his recordings have ever reprised the same format."
Toumani, "by many accounts the greatest living kora player today," according to NPR, has been involved with a variety of projects in the two decades between solo recordings, and that long and varied career, says Eyre, "has demonstrated that the kora can recount history on its own."
"In the hands of a master like Diabate," Eyre concludes, "the kora belongs to an African classical art form that has been evolving and growing for hundreds of years. With this work, Diabate defines the very state of that art."
To listen to the review on All Things Considered, visit npr.org.
Toumani is in London this week for three shows with Björk at the Hammersmith Apollo. The Independent (UK) in its review of Monday's opening-night performance, called Toumani's kora introduction to Björk's "Hope," off her latest album, Volta, "magical."
Click here to add Toumani's The Mande Variations CD ($16), plus the free album MP3s, to your Shopping Cart.
Toumani Diabate, on his recent release, The Mande Variations, has recorded his first solo kora album in two decades. Pitchfork gives it an 8.3 rating, with reviewer Joshua Klein calling it "the real thing, casually captivating from start to finish, with Diabaté's modesty and restraint keeping his virtuosity and the rigor of his compositions from calling conspicuous attention to themselves."
In contrast to his 2006 album Boulevard de l'Independence, with his full Symmetric Orchestra, The Mande Variations is "just Diabaté and his unadorned kora," writes Klein, "recorded with maximum clarity as he pays tribute to his roots and peers."
Pitchfork points to the many collaborations with which Toumani has been involved over the years, with artists from Björk to Ali Farka Toure (In the Heart of the Moon), as "a real testament to Diabaté's talent that an instrument as distinctive as the kora can be made to fit in such disparate surroundings," and sees the new solo album "as a sort of crash course in the kora's versatility."
"It's haunting stuff, no doubt," concludes the review, "... in the awe inspired by hearing music this pure woven from the hands of a man."
Click here to add Toumani's solo CD, The Mande Variations, plus the free album MP3s, to your Shopping Cart now. You can also click here to add Toumani & the Symmetric Orchestra's Boulevard de l'Independencewith free album MP3s, and here to add Toumani's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure, In the Heart of the Moon, plus the free album MP3s. Each CD with MP3s is just $16. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more.
Björk has announced that Toumani Diabate will join her and her band for three shows on her Volta tour later this month, in London. The performances will take place on April 14, 17, and 20 at the Hammersmith Apollo. The shows precede Toumani's own European tour, which gets under way on April 25 at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.
Toumani last joined the Icelandic star in a memorable guest appearance on stage at the Glastonbury festival last summer; he performed the kora on her latest album, Volta, on the track "Hope." For more information, visit bjork.com.
Click here to add Toumani's recently released CD, The Mande Variations, plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.
Toumani Diabate will launch a European tour next month in support of his new solo album, The Mande Variations, with the first stop in Paris on April 25. See below for complete tour information.
Here is a performance of "Cantelowes," the closing track off The Mande Variations, from the album's live world premiere earlier this year at the prestigious El Real Alcazar
de Sevilla in Spain. The Independent (UK) called the event "a performance that surpasses
anything ... for sheer scale of ambition and technical achievement."
Fri 4/25/08
Paris, France
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
Sat 4/26/08
Paris, France
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
Sun 4/27/08
Madrid, Spain
Centro de la Villa
Fri 5/2/08
London, UK
St Lukes
Sat 5/3/08
Manchester, UK
Royal Northern College of Nusic
Sun 5/4/08
Gateshead, UK
The Sage
Tue 5/6/08
Bristol, UK
St George's
Wed 5/7/08
Dartington, UK
Great Hall
Fri 5/9/08
Kampen, Netherlands
Stadsgehoorzaal
Sat 5/10/08
Groningen,
Netherlands
De Oosterport
Sun 5/11/08
Brussels, Belgium
Ancient Belgique
Tue 5/13/08
Eindhoven,
Netherlands
MC Frits Philips
Thu 5/15/08
Antwerp, Belgium
Zuiderpershuis
Fri 5/16/08
Utrecht, Netherlands
Rasa
Sat 5/17/08
Rotterdam,
Netherlands
De Doelen
Sat 5/24/08
Berlin, Germany
Passionskirche
Sun 5/25/08
Hamburg, Germany
Fabrik
Mon 5/26/08
Frankfurt, Germany
Brotfabrik
Wed 5/28/08
Oporto, Portugal
Casa da Musica
Sat 5/31/08
Lisbon, Portugal
Culturgest
Click here to add The Mande Variations CD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.
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 SonglinesWorld 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.
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.
Toumani Diabate's new solo album, The Mande Variations, has been named a "CD Pick of the Week" by WNYC's Soundcheck, which calls the recording "an African gem with classical music status." The Mande Variations was selected for the list by the show's executive producer, Gisele Regatao.
You can listen to this week's "CD Picks" segment, with an excerpt of "Elyne Road" from The Mande Variations, at wnyc.org. You can listen to the complete track here:
Click here to add The Mande Variations CD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $16.
Toumani Diabate is currently playing the Southern Hemispheric runnings of the 2008 WOMAD festivals, which began last weekend with WOMADelaide in Adelaide, Australia, and moves to the coastal city of New Plymouth, New Zealand, this weekend.
Much attention was directed towards Mali's Toumani Diabate, who has cemented his place in the pantheon of great musicians. He created luscious cascading loops, plucked on his sleek kora, the 21-stringed African harp.
Toumani performed Sunday night with his Symmetric Orchestra, with "a well-timed powerhouse display of the majesty of West African Manding music," writes Rofe. But for the reviewer, "the musical highlight" was a kora duet the next day between Toumani and his cousin Mamadou of "Elyne Road" off Toumani's latest Nonesuch release, The Mande Variations. It was a performance Rofe calls "a sweet moment of musical intimacy."
Click here to add The Mande VariationsCD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.
Toumani Diabate's latest album, The Mande Variations, his first solo project in more than two decades on the kora, a 21-string harp, earns five stars in Time Out New York. Reviewer K. Leander Williams finds that elements both of the past (Toumani's esteemed, centuries-long musical heritage) and present (as seen in recent collaborations with the likes of Björk and Damon Albarn), come to bear on the new record of 21-string . Writes Williams:
It's not a strict return to roots; the pastoral melodies may reach back centuries, but Diabaté spikes them with slyly contemporary chord voicings and rhythms. The way his taut basslines bolster the themes (and vice versa), you'd think Diabaté had a finger for every string.
Click here to add The Mande VariationsCD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.
Toumani Diabate and his Symmetric Orchestra will be in Australia this weekend for the latest WOMAD festival, WOMADelaide, which will be held over three days in Adelaide's Botanic Park and feature 35 artists from more than 20 countries, including the US band Beirut, Cape Verdean morna legend Cesaria Evora, and Romanian Gypsy phenoms Taraf de Haïdouks. Toumani and the band will then head over to New Zealand for that country's WOMAD festival the following weekend. For more information, visit womad.org.
Toumani's latest CD, The Mandé Variations, his first solo record since the groundbreaking Kaira in 1987, is available now, and the Boston Herald gives it an A-. The Herald's Kevin R. Convey writes that the new record
not only recalls the traditonalism of his groundbreaking international debut in 1985 ... but also recaps how far he's come with its Hendrixian fireworks, Ennio Morricone quotes and tumbling waterfalls of shimmering notes captured in astonishing fidelity.
The Mandé Variations, Convey concudes, "sounds like the work of a lifetime."
Click here to add The Mande VariationsCD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.
This week's edition of All Songs Considered features music from Toumani Diabate's The Mande Variations. Host Bob Boilen prefaced the playing of the album's closing track, "Cantelowes," with this introduction: "I don't know why I think the music of Mali is the most beautiful music in the world, but I do. Its most magical musician must be Toumani Diabate." The new album, he exclaims, "is the most beautiful recording of the kora that I've ever heard."
You can listen to the episode at npr.org or play the track, "Cantelowes," here:
Click here to add The Mande VariationsCD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.
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.
The New York Times's Jon Pareles includes the album in his Playlist this week, calling it "the work of a modern virtuoso rethinking an age-old instrument." Toumani, writes Pareles:
turns the syncopated propulsion of griot songs into cascading counterpoint, or hangs simple melodies in midair, or constructs filigrees with each note as precisely weighted as the phrases of a Renaissance lute piece. On its own, in close-up, the kora sounds radiant.
David Hutcheon, writing in The Times (UK), describes the circumstances under which journalists from across Europe made their way to Spain for a live display of Toumani's "dazzling virtuosity." Reports Hutcheon: "the magic is complete: countless notes tumble from his instrument, as if he is playing every part of an orchestra. The solo performance holds us spellbound."
The Mande Variations comes 21 years after his last solo record, the seminal album Kaira, and, says Hutcheon, the new record "picks up where his earliest recordings left off ... But now Diabate has far more power as a musician, and the tunes are just starting points for his improvisations."
The Guardian's Robin Denselow gives The Mande Variations four stars, calling it a "remarkable" follow-up to the "exquisite" Kaira. You can read the album review at arts.guardian.co.uk. Denselow also spoke with Diabate about the new record and about various collaborations with the likes of Björk, Damon Albarn, Taj Mahal, and Ali Farka Touré; read that article at music.guardian.co.uk.
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The Evening Standard also gives the album four stars and names it a CD of the Week. Writes critic Simon Broughton:
The West African kora is one of the most seductive instruments on the planet---a sublime concoction of calabash gourd, cowskin and fishing line. And Toumani Diabaté, from a hereditary family of musicians in Mali, is its greatest exponent. With filigree, rippling melodies, the music is soft, elegant and profound ... [It] takes you to another world.
Broughton offers more of Toumani's story in a separate article for New Statesman magazine. In it, he praises the album's "gloriously clear sound" and calls The Mande Variations "probably the most ambitious album of solo kora music ever recorded." To read the article, visit newstatesman.com.
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The Independent also gives the album four stars. Reviewer Andy Gill says it proves "worth the wait" of those years since Kaira; he sees the new album as "offering a dazzling demonstration of the breadth and virtuosity of Diabaté's playing, and of the innovative tunings and tactics with which he expands the instrument's traditional range." To read the review, visit independent.co.uk.
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The Telegraph's classical music critic Ivan Hewett was surprised and skeptical, at first, when he received what he assumed must be "world" music and therefore outside his purview. But, he writes, "I was enchanted, and now play it all the time, even when I ought to be getting on with something else."
Of the kora, Hewitt writes that it possesses "among the most sheerly seductive sounds of any instrument in the world." And as for Toumani, he praises
the pleasure to be had from the dizzying virtuosity of Diabaté's playing. He'll take the end of a melodic phrase and spin it into a whirling Catherine-wheel figuration out of sheer joie de vivre ... [T]his music has playfulness in abundance.
Regardless of whether, ultimately, this music would be better labeled classical or otherwise, "it's wonderful on its own terms."
Listen to "Ali Farka Toure" (6:20), track three off the new record, here:
Click here to add The Mande VariationsCD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.
The List magazine out of Scotland gives Toumani Diabate's The Mande Variations four stars, finding the album "absolutely beautiful." The List's Florence Thompson calls Toumani "one of those great Malian musicians that cannot be knocked." She first refers back to his previous record, Boulevard de l’Independence, made with his Symmetric Orchestra, praising it as "perhaps the most exhilarating, individual album to ever emerge from Africa this decade," and sees the new record as a great showcase for the "introspective side to the incredible musician's skills."
Toumani Diabate and his Symmetric Orchestra performed to a packed house at New York City's Bowery Ballroom this past Thursday with label mate Fernando Otero opening the show. You can catch a few minutes of Toumani and the band's electrifying set here:
Another recent performance, a solo showcase by Toumani at the Royal Palace in Seville, Spain, was reviewed in the Financial Times as part of a profile of the Malian kora master. The Times' David Honigmann poetically describes Toumani's performance this way: "Some passages are impossibly fast; others as calm as moonlight reflecting in one of the ponds outside."
The article also revisits some of Toumani's numerous collaborations, including his work on Björk’s latest album, Volta, on which "Diabate's playing weaves confidently through Björk's crowded, stuttering electronic beats," and his Grammy-winning album with Ali Farka Touré, In the Heart of the Moon. One of the songs on Toumani's forthcoming solo album, The Mandé Variations, shares its name with that late, great Malian guitarist. "Ali Farka Touré was unique," Diabate tells Honigmann. "He did a great job all his life."
The Mandé Variations will be available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store next week, two weeks before the official release date.
Fernando Otero's Nonesuch debut, Página de Buenos Aires, is available now in the Nonesuch Store. He'll play his own show at Joe's Pub this Wednesday.
Argentine-born pianist-composer Fernando Otero kicked off last night's festivities at Bowery Ballroom with an opening set (pictured at right) supporting label mate Toumani Diabate and the Symmetric Orchestra. Otero, performing on keyboard with Nick Danielson on violin, gave a short preview of what's to come in his headlining gig at Joe's Pub this Wednesday, February 6. The New York Times says the upcoming show "should be no less intriguing or kinetic" than Fernando's "impressive new Nonesuch debut," Página de Buenos Aires.
Reviewing the new record, Newsday's Ed Morales says Fernando "plays with tango in a thoroughly original way." Morales pegs Otero as "equally at home collaborating with the Kronos Quartet as he is sitting in with Chico O'Farrill's Jazz Orchestra at Birdland or Paquito D'Rivera's latest configuration."
On Página de Buenos Aires, in one piece rushing "up and down the scales like a poet racing to the roof to catch the sunrise, lugging the accordionlike bandoneón all the way," then next evoking "the kind of loneliness and regret that can only come from living more than 5,000 miles from the nearest authentic tango bar," Otero proves to be "an extremely agile, promising player and composer whose abstract vision is grounded by a soulful sense of time and space."
For information on Wednesday's show at Joe's Pub, with video footage of Fernando and Nick performing at an earlier event, visit joespub.com. For more on Fernando's collaboration with Kronos Quartet, El Cerezo (The Cherry Tree), which the Quartet will premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 22, visit carnegiehall.org.
Toumani Diabate performed a special solo set last night for a packed crowd at Manhattan's Other Music record store, and he's set to play New York's Bowery Ballroom tonight joined by his full Symmetric Orchestra, with Argentine-born pianist/composer Fernando Otero opening the show. It's sure to be a stellar set, judging by the band's Tuesday night show in Chicago, which the Chicago Tribune says provided some welcome heat to a frigid winter's night.
Reviewing Tuesday's show for the Tribune, writer Aaron Cohen says the Malian kora player's "virtuoso performance" proved "why he is one of his country's foremost musical ambassadors." Writes Cohen of Toumani and his Symmetric Orchestra:
Under Diabate's low-key direction, the combination of electric guitars and funk bass with the kora and equally ancient six-string ngoni sounded like a natural blend, especially during mid-tempo grooves.
Those grooves invariably gave way to Diabate's compelling solos ... His arpeggios showed he can perform cascades of notes while making this flow fit the context of a tune, and holding down the ensemble's rhythmic foundation.
And for the hardy Chicago bunch who "defied snow and subzero windchill" to attend the show, "the warmth behind it all couldn't have been more welcome."
To read the review, visit chicagotribune.com. For tickets to tonight's show in New York, click here. For information on Toumani's forthcoming release, The Mandé Variations, click here.
Toumani Diabate is currently making his way across the US as part of a national tour. He performed in Minneapolis earlier this week at the Dakota Jazz Club and, while in town, stopped by the Minnesota Public Radio studios for a live set on The Current.
On the show, Toumani speaks with host Steve Steel about his roots, coming from a long line of kora players, and his past collaborations with a broad range of artists like Taj Mahal, Björk, and Ali Farka Toure. The live set includes the songs "Elyne Road," off the forthcoming album Mande Variations; "Kaira," from his Grammy-winning album with Toure, In the Heart of the Moon; and "Bany," which he dedicates to the King of Mali.
Toumani Diabate will be giving a free, solo in-store performance at Manhattan's Other Music record store tonight at 8 PM. He'll be playing tomorrow night at New York's Bowery Ballroom with his band, The Symmetric Orchestra, and label mate Fernando Otero opening, but tonight's in-store is Toumani's only solo performance on this US tour.
For more information on tonight's event, visit othermusic.com.
Toumani Diabate has kicked off a US tour that will take him from the Minneapolis Dakota Jazz Club tonight to the Diana Wortham Theater in Asheville, North Carolina, next week, with a number of stops along the way. His Chicago show tomorrow night tops Tribune writer Greg Kot's list of "shows you can't miss." Writes Kot: "Even as he plays rock festivals such as Glastonbury and collaborates with Björk, he has not allowed multiculturalism to dilute his fiercely singular style."
On Toumani Diabate's last tour through New York City, last July, rain forced his scheduled free outdoor concert, planned as part of the Hudson Festival, to move indoors to the more hospitable and intimate setting of the nearby Stuyvesant High School auditorium.
This time around, Toumani's keeping things indoors, performing at New York's Bowery Ballroom on Thursday, January 31, with label mate Fernando Otero opening. Brooklyn Vegan marks the upcoming show with a bunch of great pics from last summer's lively Stuyvesant High set. Check them out at brooklynvegan.com. For information on the Bowery show, visit boweryballroom.com.
Toumani will also be giving a short preview of his Thursday night set with a free in-store solo performance at Manhattan's Other Music record store at 8 PM the night before. Visit othermusic.com for more information.
Boston-based World Music/CRASHarts will be presenting Youssou N'Dour and the Super Étoile band this Monday, December 10, at the Somerville Theatre. Today's Boston Globe previews the next phase of the organization's winter and spring schedule, which includes a broad range of artists from around the world, from Toumani Diabaté's pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, also at the Somerville, on February 2, to New York's own Laurie Anderson, who will bring her new piece, Homeland, to the Boston Opera House on March 29.
To read the Globe preview, visit boston.com. For the complete schedule and ticket information, visit worldmusic.org.
Last month, the San Francisco Jazz Festival was the site of the world premiere of Glenn Kotche's Anomaly, which the composer performed together with Kronos Quartet. This month, two more Nonesuch artists join the festival's 25th anniversary celebration, when Caetano Veloso performs at the Nob Hill Masonic Center this Saturday, November 17, and Youssou N'Dour hits the stage for the festival's closing night, Friday, November 30.
Later this year, for a series of special winter concerts, SF Jazz presents two groups with ties to Nonesuch as well. On January 25, 2008, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, the Bulgarian women's choir that released a Grammy-winning series of records on Nonesuch through the mid-'90s, and, the next night, Toumani Diabaté's pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, which released the triumphant Boulevard de l'Indépendence last year.
For more information on these events, visit SFJazz.org.
Nominees for the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music have been announced, and Toumani Diabaté’s Symmetric Orchestra is among them, for the second year in a row. The winning artists will be revealed on April 17, 2008, at a ceremony in London, airing on Radio 3 the next day; a concert featuring the Award winners will take place that summer.
And following the success of a recent tour through Europe and North America, the Symmetric Orchestra will make its way to Australia and New Zealand next year.
Toumani Diabate's "gorgeous new album, The Mande Variations," writes Jace Clayton in the art and culture magazine Frieze, "demonstrates that a millennium of oral tradition is powerful cosmopolitanism; make any attempt to oppose tradition with modernity and you'll miss out on the stunning freedoms embodied in his work."
Click here to add Toumani Diabate's The Mande Variations CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost. 
