New Mandy Patinkin & Thomas Bartlett, John Adams Albums | Rhiannon Giddens, Rostam & Pat Metheny News (NONESUCH RECORDS)

Mandy Patinkin &

Thomas Bartlett

Diary: January 27, 2018

The first in a series of musical installments from singer Mandy Patinkin and pianist/producer Thomas Bartlett, Diary: January 27, 2018 was recorded by the two musicians in Bartlett's New York studio. The ten tracks of this first Diary entry include songs by Randy Newman, Rufus Wainwright, Loudon Wainwright, Teitur, Marc Bolan (T. Rex), Stephin Merritt (The Magnetic Fields), and Marc Anthony Thompson (Chocolate Genius). 

Watch a performance video ...

John Adams

Violin Concerto

This recording of John Adams's Grawemeyer Award-winning Violin Concerto was made with his frequent collaborators violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor David Robertson, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis in 2016. The piece features Adams's usual "intelligence, craftsmanship, and quirkiness," says the Boston Globe, and "mingles virtuoso show with soul."

Listen: Rhiannon Giddens Performs on NPR's All Things Considered

Rhiannon Giddens spoke with NPR's All Things Considered about her MacArthur Fellowship, the role of the banjo in her work, and her latest album, Freedom Highway, from which she also performed two songs. 

Hear the interview and performance ...

Mandy Patinkin Named IRC Ambassador

The International Rescue Committee has named Mandy Patinkin an IRC Ambassador, in recognition of his continued efforts to advocate for the welcoming of refugees around the world. "Meeting with refugees from all around the world has made one thing very clear to me," he says: "all they want is a better tomorrow for their loved ones, their family, their children." 

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Watch: Rostam Shares Story Behind Half-Light Title Track

Rostam has shared a video in which he deconstructs the title track to his debut album, Half-Light, part by part, instrument by instrument, vocal track by vocal track, both his and those of featured vocalist Kelly Zutrau of Wet.

Watch the video ...

Pat Metheny to Receive PRS for Music Gold Award at Jazz FM Awards

Congratulations to Pat Metheny, who will receive the PRS for Music Gold Award at the Jazz FM Awards in London next Monday. Metheny begins a European tour in late June. 


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Lake Street Dive

Free Yourself Up

Thomas Bartlett & Nico Muhly

Peter Pears

Brad Mehldau Trio

Seymour Reads the Constitution!

Joshua Redman

Still Dreaming

Olivia Chaney

Shelter

Mandy Patinkin & Thomas Bartlett

Diary: January 27, 2018

John Adams

Violin Concerto

David Byrne

American Utopia

Jonny Greenwood

Phantom Thread

Rhiannon Giddens

Freedom Highway

Thomas Bartlett & Nico Muhly - Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music (NONESUCH RECORDS May 18, 2018)

Longtime friends and collaborators Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and Nico Muhly release a new album, Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music, May 18, 2018, on Nonesuch Records. Peter Pears comprises nine songs written by the duo plus three gamelan transcriptions by ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee that inspired the songs. Peter Pears is available to preorder from the Nonesuch Store and iTunes, where the album tracks "Dominic," "Gambangan," and "Festina" may be downloaded instantly; they can also be heard on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube in the videos below. Bartlett and Muhly perform the Peter Pears music on May 24 at (le) poisson rouge in New York City as part of its tenth anniversary festival, June 6 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, and June 8 at LSO St Luke's in London presented by the Barbican. Details and tickets at nonesuch.com/on-tour.

McPhee lived in Bali during the 1930s, where he studied the gamelan intensively, bringing its sounds with him back to the Americas as one of the first composers to incorporate "world music" into his work. Returning to New York, McPhee moved in a group of artists that lived at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn. Alongside W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, and Gypsy Rose Lee, he found the collaborator with whom in 1941 he would record his westernized transcriptions, for two pianos, of the ceremonial music he had heard in Bali: the composer Benjamin Britten, who would himself travel to Indonesia, and drew heavily on its traditions in his own later works.

In college, Muhly and Bartlett became obsessed with these recordings and started writing music rooted in their textures and interlocking rhythms. The resulting nine songs reflects both artists' recent work—from Muhly's attempts to bridge the gap between post-minimalist composition and many other musical obsessions, to Bartlett's Oscar–nominated work with Sufjan Stevens for Call Me by Your Name. The project is named for Britten's partner, who also lived at 7 Middagh; accompanied Britten to Bali; and sang with a voice arguably as unusual as the one Bartlett deploys on this album. Pears was Britten's link to a wider community of artists; similarly, these songs feature a large cast of Bartlett and Muhly's regular collaborators on strings and metallic pitched percussion.

Bartlett says, "I wanted to not write in the same voice as I wrote Doveman songs, which is essentially "sad heartbroken boy who can barely muster the will to sing", and I was a little sick of that. I ended up going through baby books my mom has from when I was a little kid, finding strange things I had said, and building lyrics off of that—then folding in all of these references to different saints and things that seemed connected to Peter Pears, to Colin McPhee, to that world."

Muhly adds, "How integral the relationship is between someone's life partner and their music informs the lyrics too. McPhee's transcriptions are instrumental, so they don't really "mean" anything, but there's this matrix of connections that are both musical and emotional."

Thomas Bartlett, also known as Doveman, is an American pianist, singer, and producer. He has worked with many Nonesuch artists—including Sam Amidon, David Byrne, the Magnetic Fields, Mandy Patinkin, and Chris Thile—as well as Sufjan Stevens, Glen Hansard, The National, St. Vincent, Father John Misty, The Gloaming, Martha Wainwright, and others. Born in Vermont, Bartlett studied piano in London with Maria Curcio. As teenagers, he and Amidon formed the folk music band Popcorn Behavior (aka Assembly), and released three albums. Upon moving to New York, Bartlett began performing with Chocolate Genius and Elysian Fields. The first Doveman record, The Acrobat, was produced by Patrick Dillett, as was 2007's With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead. In 2008 Bartlett released a solo re-imagining of the Footloose soundtrack. The Conformist (2009), again produced by Dillett, featured members of The National, as well as backing vocals by Hansard, Wainwright, Norah Jones, Beth Orton, and Dawn Landes.

Nico Muhly is an American composer and collaborator whose influences range from American minimalism to the Anglican choral tradition. The recipient of commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and others, he has written more than eighty works for the concert stage. Muhly is a frequent collaborator with choreographer Benjamin Millepied and, as an arranger, has paired with Joanna Newsom, Antony and the Johnsons, Sufjan Stevens, and The National. He has composed for stage and screen, with credits that include music for The Glass Menagerie and scores for the films Kill Your Darlings; Me, Earl and the Dying Girl; and The Reader. Born in Vermont, Muhly studied composition with John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse at The Juilliard School before working as an editor and conductor for Philip Glass. Muhly's previous Nonesuch recordings are the Metropolitan Opera's recording of his Two Boys and his collaboration with Teitur, Confessions. He lives in New York.

A playlist with much of the music Bartlett and Muhly have each collaborated on can be heard below via Spotify and on Apple Music.

01 “Gambangan”

02 “Dominic”

03 “Festina”

04 “Grendel”

05 “Pemoengkah”

06 “Valentine”

07 “Albeus”

08 “Nicholas”

09 “Taboeh Teloe”

10 “Selenite”

11 “Eusebius”

12 “Balthasar”