This morning SLC Mayor Ralph Becker and The Salt Lake City Arts Council announced the Twilight Concert Series 2014. The Series returns to Pioneer Park, now in its 27th season, with another diverse and exciting lineup. The series will run July 10 through August 28 every Thursday evening. Performing artists include:
July 10th
Ms. Lauryn Hill
with Thundercat
July 17th
TV On The Radio
with Twin Shadow
July 24th
Charles Bradley And His Extraordinaires
with The Budos Band
July 31st
Wu Tang Clan
with Run The Jewels
August 7th
Local Natives
with special guests TBA
August 14th
Beck
with Future Islands
August 21st
De La Soul
with special guests TBA
August 28th
The Head And The Heart
with special guests TBA
Becker commented, “The Twilight Concert Series is one of the summer traditions that Salt Lake City residents look forward to every year. It’s also one of the events that make our city such a great place to live, work and play. This lineup is truly amazing and a result of the great work of the entire team at the Twilight Concert Series.”
For 2014, tickets are still just 5 dollars for each concert and $35 for season tickets available via www.twilightconcertseries.com. Tickets are also available at www.24tix.com and all Graywhale locations throughout the valley. Day of show entry will be allowed at the gate for $5 (cash only).
Gates open at 5:00pm and music starts at 7:00pm at Pioneer Park located at 350 West 300 South in downtown Salt Lake City. To complement the music, the Twilight Market offers food, beverages and locally made crafts. The Twilight Food Market offers something for every taste, from pizza to specialty food trucks, with vegetarian options and meat-lovers specials, plus a wide range of sweet treats. The Twilight audience can enjoy the artists’ work and purchase such handcrafted items as jewelry, clothing, soaps, and ceramics.
Seating is first come, first served, and a person must be present at all times to reserve seating. Standing room only in the immediate stage area; no chairs or blankets in the immediate stage area. No alcoholic beverages can be brought into the venue. Beer and wine are available for purchase on-site. Pets and smoking are not allowed; service animals are welcome. Full details on this years headlining artists:
Ms. Lauryn Hill
Born in New Jersey to a schoolteacher mother and computer programmer/system’s analyst father, Ms. Lauryn Hill grew up in a home where the sound of music was a household staple. She very early, probably in the second or third grade, discovered a treasure chest’s worth of 45 singles that belonged to her mother and father that chronicled the lives and careers of some of the world’s most renowned and soulfully successful musicians-from the offerings of Motown, Staxx, Atlantic, Capitol and Mercury Records and a plethora of other world changing artists who were influencing music and recreating the world. This love affair with music seemingly outside of her generational trajectory would extend in many different ways from jazz, to soul, to reggae, to rock to classical. An eclectic appreciation and voracious appetite for good music trans-genre, Ms. Hill would establish her own categories that incorporated all types of unique and incredible sounds from both the past and the contemporaneous environment of her youth—this obviously included what was then known as hip-hop and R&B as well, but Puccini didn’t escape her either. She was an interesting and powerful hybrid of musical influences (and stylistic mastery). These influences would dramatically shape her approach to self-expression.
Ms. Hill would establish a reputation in the music world as the lone female member of The Fugees, whose record sales would make them the second biggest selling R&B act worldwide since Michael Jackson. She launched her solo career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). The recording earned a record breaking five Grammy Awards.
TV On The Radio
TV on the Radio The Brooklyn-based group TV on the Radio mix post-punk, electronic, and other atmospheric elements in such a creative way that it only makes sense that their core duo, vocalist Tunde Adebimpe and multi-instrumentalist/producer David Andrew Sitek, are both visual artists as well as musicians. Adebimpe is a graduate of NYU’s film school and specializes in stop-motion animation, which his Brothers Quay-like video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs single “Pin” amply demonstrates. He is also a painter, as is Sitek, who also produced the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Machine EP and their full-length Fever to Tell. Their first EP, Young Liars, which also features the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, as well as the addition of guitarist/vocalist Kyp Malone to the liuneup, was released in summer 2003 to critical acclaim, coinciding with their gigs opening for the Fall. Their first full-length release, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, arrived in spring 2004. The band remained busy for the rest of the year, embarking on its own tours as well as dates with the Faint and the Pixies. That fall, they released the New Health Rock EP and won the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. In 2005, the band kept busy with touring and returned to Sitek’s Stay Gold studio to work on its second album. TV on the Radio signed with 4AD for European distribution of their albums and moved to Interscope in the U.S. In summer 2006 they resurfaced with Return to Cookie Mountain, a more polished but still searching collection of songs that featured David Bowie on backing vocals. The band went in a sleeker direction on 2008’s Dear Science, which featured cameos from Antibalas and Celebration’s Katrina Ford. Following Dear Science, the band went on a self imposed hiatus to work on other creative projects but came back in early 2011 with released their fifth album, Nine Types of Light. – from Allmusic by Heather Phares.
Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires
Charles Bradley’s second record might as well be a self-titled album, Victim of Love. Other artists appreciate their audiences, just as many are grateful for them, but few artists love their fans as much and as sincerely as Charles Bradley. By now, his remarkable, against-all-odds rise has been well-documented – how he transcended a bleak life on the streets and struggled through a series of ill-fitting jobs – most famously as a James Brown impersonator at Brooklyn clubs – before finally being discovered by Daptone’s Gabe Roth. The year following the release of his debut, No Time For Dreaming, was one triumph after another: from stunning performances across the country, rave reviews and spots on Year-End Best Lists from Rolling Stone, MOJO, GQ, Pasteand more. Victim of Love, Bradley’s second record, is a continuation of that story, moving past the ‘heartache and pain’ and closer to the promise of hope.
“The first record taps into maybe two or three feelings,” explains Thomas Brenneck of Menahan Street Band, Bradley’s producer, bandleader and co-writer. “But the range of emotion on this record is huge. The last record was written by a man living in the Brooklyn projects for 20 years. This record is more than just a poor man’s cry from the ghetto. This time, he’s grateful.”
Bradley agrees. “I was singing about all these hardships that I’ve been through. I wanted people to know my struggles first, but now I want them to know how much they have helped me grow.”
Wu Tang Clan
Emerging in 1993, when Dr. Dre’s G-funk had overtaken the hip-hop world, the Staten Island, New York-based Wu-Tang Clan proved to be the most revolutionary rap group of the mid-’90s –and only partially because of their music. Turning the standard concept of a hip-hop crew inside out, the Wu Tang Clan were assembled as a loose congregation of nine MCs, almost as a support group. Instead of releasing one album after another, the Clan were designed to overtake the record industry in as profitable a fashion as possible — the idea was to establish the Wu Tang as a force with their debut album and then spin off into as many side projects as possible. In the process, the members would all become individual stars as well as receive individual royalty checks.
All of the various Wu Tang and solo member projects – a canon that has sold roughly 40 million records collectively – elaborated on the theme the group laid out on its 1993 debut, the spare, menacing Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Taking their group name from a powerful, mythical kung fu sword wielded by an invincible congregation of warriors, the RZA, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (R.I.P.), Method Man, Raekwon the Chef, Ghostface Killah, U-God, Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa and later Cappedonna have proven for more than 20 years to possess witty unpredictable talent and natural game.
Local Natives
Much has happened to Los Angeles’ Local Natives between the release of their critically-acclaimed album Gorilla Manor and their early 2013 follow up, Hummingbird. From rave reviews to brilliant television performances, Gorilla Manor launched the band onto the global stage, saw them headlining theaters throughout America and Europe, opening for bands like Arcade Fire and The National, and winning them lauded slots at major festivals around the world.
The band says Hummingbird was created from the emotional framework of being stretched between two opposite poles. In the two years following Gorilla Manor’s release, the band saw the highest highs and the lowest lows they had ever experienced together. Shining opener ―You & I‖ is the album’s calling card, bathing synthetic drums in warm organs and surfy guitars, and the band’s signature sky-high harmonies. ―Heavy Feet‖ marries hand claps and sparse chords with a driving snare and one of the most remarkable choruses on the album, while ―Ceilings‖ sounds like Fleetwood Mac with a dub bass groove. ―Colombia,‖ written for a member’s mother who passed away unexpectedly last year, is the album’s swollen heart moment, a love letter from a son to a parent which grows in beautiful, orchestral complexity around a simple, plaintive chorus. Like all of Hummingbird, the song carries with it not just a melodic richness, but a quality of catharsis and grace – a moment to be examined and ultimately enjoyed.
Beck
As 2014 album of the year front-runner Morning Phase (Capitol) refuses to budge from the top 40, Beck has extended his rapturously received current tour by nearly a dozen new dates. The newly announced shows begin July 11, and include a stop in Salt Lake City with the Twilight Concert Series on August 14 before concluding with a sure to be legendary August 15 headline at Red Rocks in Morrison CO.
As anyone who caught jaw-dropping recent turns at Coachella, last month’s Austin City Limits TV performance (to air this fall a date TBA in the venerable PBS series’ 40th anniversary season) or elsewhere can attest, Beck’s upcoming dates are not be missed. A glance at the reviews of this most recent run easily puts them among the most enthusiastic raves of his–or anyone’s–career:
―Like a fisherman casting a lure, Beck on Sunday night offered a lesson in how to draw a tired, coming-down crowd and muster one more burst of adrenalin… In doing so, he presented a convincing argument as being a godfather to this holy Coachella mess, one in which said pop music sub genres could not only live harmoniously but also spawn a new vibe‖—LOS ANGELES TIMES
―Stunning… a glorious sampler, as sonorously rich as his brilliant new album‖—OC REGISTER
―A classic, spontaneous Beck performance‖—ROLLING STONE 50 Best Things We Saw At Coachella 2014
De La Soul
In 1987, a trio known as De La Soul formed from Long Island, NY roots and changed the landscape of hip-hop as we knew it. Now, for over 25 years they have rocked us with their De La songs full of inscrutable samplings, whimsically irreverent lyrics, social commentary, light rhythm and laid back rhymes. They have gained respect within and outside the hip hop community with their contributions to rap, as well as jazz, funk, soul and alternative genres. Not only are their musical innovations acclaimed and respected worldwide, but they paved a path for many alternative rap groups to come after them. Del La Soul will return to Salt Lake City this summer backed by a live band to play from a repertoire that includes: 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), De La Soul is Dead (1991), Buhloone Mindstate (1993), Stakes Is High (1996), Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump (2000), AOI: Bionix (2001) and The Grind Date (2004).
The Head and The Heart
It wasn’t that long ago that the members of Seattle’s The Head and the Heart were busking on street corners, strumming their acoustic guitars, stomping their feet and singing in harmony as they attempted to attract the attention of passersby. That unbridled energy informed their earliest original material, which was honed in local clubs before eventually being captured on the band’s 2011 debut album for hometown label Sub Pop.
Then, something unexpected happened. That music began to reach audiences all over the United States and the rest of the world, and The Head and the Heart went from playing open mic nights to selling out headlining shows in prestigious venues. The album became one of Sub Pop’s best-selling debut releases in years. And slowly but surely, ideas began to form for the band’s second
album, imbued with the experiences of traveling the world and cultivating a listenership with a deep connection to the music. The Head and the Heart’s new release, Let’s Be Still, is a snapshot of a band that didn’t exist just four short years ago. Virginia native Jonathan Russell and California transplant Josiah Johnson formed the core songwriting partnership, which was rounded out by drummer Tyler Williams, keyboardist Kenny Hensley, vocalist/violinist Charity Rose Thielen and bassist Chris Zasche, who’d met Russell and Johnson while tending bar at an open mic they frequented. The nascent group dove headfirst into writing, recording and performing, and even moved into the same house to ensure that inspiration could strike at any moment. Let’s Be Still was recorded at Seattle’s Studio Litho with assistance from prior production collaborator Shawn Simmons. Later, the band traversed the country to mix the album in Bridgeport, Conn., with Peter Katis, revered for his work with bands such as the National, Interpol and the Swell.
