Palaver Strings, a musician-led string ensemble from Portland, Maine, spends a two-day performing residency at Tourists in North Adams, Mass., tonight and Saturday at 8pm. Friday night’s show will showcase Palaver members solo and in small chamber ensembles. Saturday night’s concert will feature the full Palaver Strings ensemble and special guests jazz pianist Chris Pattishall and South African vocalist Vuyo Sotashe. (Fri-Sat, Jan 10-11)
Guitarist-composer Gary Lucas returns to Spencertown Academy in Spencertown, N.Y., on Saturday at 7:30pm. The acclaimed guitarist and Grammy Award-nominated songwriter will perform a program of original compositions, blues, tributes to his collaborators including Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley, covers of 1930s Chinese pop, Wagner, Rolling Stones, electronic soundscapes, and more. In my review of Lucas’s concert at the Academy last winter, I wrote: “In Gary Lucas’s musical world, genre doesn’t exist. A classical transcription hints at country-blues and 1930s Chinese pop has overtones of jazz.... No matter what he plays, it all comes out in his unique musical language called Gary Lucas music.” (Sat, Jan 11)
Artists from the Australian contemporary circus company Circa will join forces with violinist Miranda Cuckson for What Will Have Been at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., on Saturday at 2pm. Created by Yaron Lifschitz, the piece is described as “a sublime display of interlocking bodies, awe-inspiring movement and pure physical beauty [that] will challenge your perceptions of what the human body is capable of, performed to a fusion of the music of Bach played by Cuckson and spine-tingling electronica.” (Sat, Jan 11)
Singer-guitarist Robert Burke Warren brings his annual Bowie Birthday Bash back to the Colony in Woodstock, N.Y., on Saturday at 7pm. Warren will be joined by a seven-piece band, vocalists, and special guests in a concert paying tribute to the late, great David Bowie (who died nine years ago this week), re-creating numbers from throughout Bowie’s expansive career, including 1969’s “Space Oddity,” selections from his 1970s heyday, numbers from his Berlin trilogy, Serious Moonlight-era cuts, and tunes from his final album, 2016’s Blackstar. (Sat, Jan 11)
Also of note:
New-folk singer-songwriter Dar Williams performs solo at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra holds forth at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, N.Y., on Saturday at 7:30pm, and Sunday at 3pm, for a concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers, and Forgiveness, Suite for Spoken Word & Orchestra.
Violist Laura Sacks will join pianist Steven Beck for a free concert of works by Bach, Glazunov, Liebestraum, and Reinecke, plus the Piano Sonata No. 14 by Beethoven, at Saugerties United Methodist Church in Saugerties, N.Y., on Sunday at 3pm, in a concert presented by Saugerties Pro Musica.
Drummer-composer Bobby Previte and his Quartet A -- featuring saxophonist Keith Pray, bassist Otto Gardner, and pianist John Esposito, perform at the Avalon Lounge in Catskill, N.Y., with a free concert on Sunday at 6pm.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.