Music Picks

Always a hit with audiences everywhere, veteran conductor/pianist/pied piper Marvin Hamlisch brings his inimitable style back to the Seattle Symphony with five performances of songs we love, from Broadway to jazz to pop. Don’t sit in the front row unless you want to be singled out by Hamlisch! He always brings the best with him: this time, vocalists Ashley Brown, recently seen reprising the title role in Mary Poppins; and Brian Stokes Mitchell, a versatile guy you’ve seen and heard on TV, film, in cabaret, on Broadway and the contemporary classical stage.

Destroyer renders the irony from yacht rock to arrive at the sound of a depleted soul. Starting out solo in 1996, Vancouver-dwelling main man Dan Bejar offered a pinched, Gibbard-esque warble and a home-recorded acoustic guitar. After joining up with Canuck superstars the New Pornographers and releasing nine Destroyer records over the years, he achieved apotheosis with 2011's Kaputt. The record is sinister in its smoothness, its veneer of languid grooves, sax solos and synth hums suggesting a gaping, excruciating void beneath. Bejar, who now sings in a loose, louche coo, is a...

Throw Me the Statue recently returned to Seattle after two years spent in Los Angeles absorbing the local culture. Bandleader Scott Reitherman now flaunts a tan and new music, which he debuted in April with an impressive, if chaotic, set at Neumos. For this episode of City Arts’ quarterly interview show, Reitherman will strip some of that chaos away when he plays bare bones versions of his new songs. Also taking the stage are Portland chanteuse Kelli Schaefer and dramatic, clever songwriter Jose Bold.

Who’da thunk Rachmaninoff counted as an “American master?” But he does, having composed his Third Piano Concerto “especially for America.”  This popular work—romantic, lush, threaded with Russian melancholy, replete with dazzling fireworks—is part of an American Master’s program given by the Seattle Symphony. Add to this Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, a glittering, marvelous mix of jazz, rock, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway that's great fun to hear. Plus the iconic Charles Ives, who mixed the town band and popular songs (you’ll recognize them) into a classical, irreverent...