10 THENEWYORKER,MARCH16, 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY XAVIERA ALTENA; PREVIOUS PAGE: © THE ESTATE OF RICHARD BERNSTEIN / COURTESY THE ARTIST
Avant-garde violin and experimental R. & B. find a shared language in
the music of Sudan Archives. Her first EPs, an eponymous collection
from 2017 and its follow-up, “Sink,” from 2018, served as formal intro-
ductions to her singular style, astutely weaving Sudanese and Ghanaian
instrumental influences into an electronic tapestry. “Athena,” the singer’s
début full-length, waters the seeds of those previous releases and grows
them into the most fully realized songs of her career; each one finds a
new way to showcase the gorgeous contours of her voice, the expanse
of her productions, and the shape-shifting qualities of her violin. Sudan
Archives—who performs at Bowery Ballroom on March 12—is carv-
ing a path all her own, one bow and string at a time.—Briana YoungerEXPERIMENTALR.&B.
1
NIGHTLIFE
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.
Peter Bernstein
Village Vanguard
Although Peter Bernstein cut his teeth, in
the early nineties, alongside such audacious
players as Brad Mehldau, you won’t find the
guitarist messing with tone-altering effects or
covering Radiohead tunes. Bernstein treads
well-worn paths but still keeps danger levels
high; his fluidity and pinpoint sensitivity to
his cohorts allow special things to happen on a
bandstand as a matter of course. His associates
here include the celebrated pianist Sullivan
Fortner.—Steve Futterman (March 10-15.)
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
Blue Note
The trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Ad-
juah is fine with you calling his music jazz,
as long as it’s a description and not a defini-
tion. Open-eared improvisation, groove, and
texture—grabbing influences from his home
town of New Orleans, or from West Africa, or
from whatever’s coursing through the airwaves
today—are all part of the plan; rigid expecta-
tions, however, are not.—S.F. (March 10-15.)Leif
Public Records
The Welsh-born London electronic musician
Leif Knowles has spent most of his career as a
cult favorite, crafting house and techno tracks
with a scruffy, handmade feel that borders
on the otherworldly; more recently, he’s gar-
nered wider attention with the gallery-ready
experimental ambience of such releases as his
2019 album, “Loom Dream.” On the decks,
he induces dance-floor tremors even when
his selections veer toward the gauzy.—Mi-
chaelangelo Matos (March 12.)Sorry
Union Pool
Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen, the young
Londoners who pilot Sorry, met in day school
and predominately record at home. Despite the
cozy circumstances, this band sings only to the
night: a mildly debauched rock habitat popu-
lated by needy souls hotly pursuing ill-advised
romances. For this appearance, a few weeksahead of its début album, “925,” Sorry greets
an American crowd for the first time. The New
York band youbet, an intimate pop vehicle
for the lithe singer-songwriter Nick Llobet,
opens.—Jay Ruttenberg (March 12.)Kandace Springs
Jazz Standard
No one could accuse the understated yet tough-
minded singer Kandace Springs of disrespecting
her elders. On her new album, “The Women
Who Raised Me,” Springs reëxamines the leg-
acies of a broad swath of iconic musicians, in-
cluding Bonnie Raitt, Nina Simone, and Lauryn
Hill, linking the likes of Sade’s “Pearls” to Billie
Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” by way of her own
contained passion.—S.F. (March 12-15.)Cassy
Avant Gardner
The house-music artist Cassy Britton earned
global notice as a mid-two-thousands resident
at Berlin’s Panoramabar, where she spun austere
minimal techno with rough-and-ready brio.
For more than a decade, her focus has been
shifting to glossier house—her 2019 EP, “Next
Generation,” features spacious nineties-throw-
back house jams full of romping tom-toms and
echo-trailed vocal samples. That feel extended
to her Ibiza Play House events last summer
and will apply to this Bushwick appearance as
well.—M.M. (March 14.)Angélique Kidjo
Carnegie Hall
Angélique Kidjo entered the world in 1960,
the same year that her native Benin declared
its independence. At Carnegie Hall, the inde-
fatigable singer salutes that anniversary and
those of other West African nations along
with her own sixtieth birthday. Kidjo barely
needs a microphone to transfix an audience,
but she has assembled a starry support cast
nonetheless, including the Senegalese titan
Baaba Maal, Brittany Howard of Alabama
Shakes, and the Nigerian Afropop singer
Yemi Alade.—J.R. (March 14.)ShooterGang Kony
Baby’s All Right
Chaos rules the music of ShooterGang Kony,
whose unruly lyrics are surpassed only by
off-kilter flows that dare you to question
rhythm and time. At first glance, the Sacra-
mento rapper can come off as irreverent or
heartless, but on his gripping new album, “Red
Paint Reverend,” he balances dark humor and
shit talk with doses of sobering introspection—
quiet reminders that, although the songs may
sound West Coast breezy, the stakes remain
high. For this show, he opens for the similarly
loose Vallejo trio SOB X RBE.—Briana Younger
(March 14.)Jorge Drexler
Town Hall
Though the Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler
has fiddled with electronic sounds and pop