Arctic Monkeys, On tour
You can take the band out of Sheffield but you can't entirely take Sheffield out of the band. That would seem to be the case with the Arctic Monkeys, and their new album, Humbug. Recorded with Josh Homme in the California desert, then mixed at Electric Lady studios in New York, it might be seen as an attempt to establish the group as part of a robust rock heritage. More riff-based even than Favourite Worst Nightmare, Humbug at times finds Alex Turner fighting for his wry observations to be heard over the din. Respect is due for moving the game on, but while they're creditable rockers, it's when they write tunes they can take on the world.
Sheffield Arena, Sat; Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, Mon; Wembley Arena, HA9, Wed & Thu; NIA, Birmingham, Fri
John Robinson
Between Two Worlds, London
With the orchestra's chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski as its artistic director, the London Philharmonic's Alfred Schnittke festival has quite a sense of missionary zeal about it. If some of Jurowski's previous forays into contemporary music have been questionable to say the least, he is on slightly firmer ground with music by the Russian-born Schnittke, who died in 1998. Though a few of Schnittke's works have become as good as repertory pieces, he remains a puzzling figure in 20th-century Russian music, and much of his considerable output remains little performed in the west. The LPO's series promises to fit some more pieces into the jigsaw, and opens with a significant UK premiere – extracts from his third and unfinished opera The History of D Johann Faustus. It's a reworking of the Faust legend with which Schnittke identified very personally – "Faust is the theme of my whole life," he told a friend, "I am already afraid of it".
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Wed to 1 Dec
Andrew Clements
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield
Huddersfield festival hasn't quite seemed itself over the last couple of years, thanks to artistic director Graham Mackenzie's greater emphasis on rather parochial improvised events and installations at the expense of the mainstream new music on which the festival built its international reputation. This year's programme promises a return to something akin to what Huddersfield regulars would recognise, with a feast of premieres ranging across the stylistic spectrum. Jonathan Harvey, 70 this year, is the composer in residence, while the other major figure receiving special attention is the leading figure in Portuguese new music, Emmanuel Nunes. There's a day marking Louis Andriessen's 70th birthday too, as well as significant premieres from James Dillon and Richard Barrett, and the festival gets underway with the first performance in Britain of Wolfgang Rihm's -ET LUX-, featuring the Arditti Quartet and the Hilliard Ensemble.
Various venues, Fri to 29 Nov
Andrew Clements
Bill Frisell/Mike Gibbs/BBC Symphony Orchestra, London
Considering that the guitarist Bill Frisell played one of the highlights of last year's London Jazz Festival in an astonishingly productive and varied year for him, it might seem that this orchestral collaboration – one of the most eagerly anticipated of all the 2009 Festival's 250-odd gigs – could have a fight on its hands to do better. Frisell has released a good deal of his own inimitable reprofiling of American folk music this year, with Elvis Costello pointing out in the notes to his album that the guitarist is always playing American folk songs, whatever style he's operating in. That record featured elegiac multi-guitar reveries, rockabilly, jazz, slurred blues, prancing rags and even a drawling account of Sitting On Top Of The World - but this gig will operate on a much bigger soundstage. The great composer-arranger Mike Gibbs has arranged Frisell's most atmospheric pieces for symphony orchestra.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Thu
John Fordham
Charlie Hunter, London
When he brought out Songs From The Analog Playground for Blue Note a few years back, the unique Californian eight-string guitarist Charlie Hunter (he can play a howling lead guitar and a mimicry of a rumbling Hammond organ line at the same time on it) mixed rap, soul vocals and grooving jazz swing, with DJ Mos Def and singers Theryl de Clouet, Kurt Elling and Norah Jones. But he made the chemistry work in unexpected ways, the repertoire including Willie Dixon, Roxy Music and Nick Drake. Hunter's roots span the melodic complexities of bop guitar, the gospelly blast of Hammond-organ trios, and the fire and drive of blues, soul and R&B. On the opening night of the 2007 London Jazz Festival, Hunter and his group got so funky as the evening wore on and as the revellers got ecstatically louder, there seemed no reason why he wouldn't go on all night. He's likely to do the same this year.
Ronnie Scott's Club, W1, Thu & Fri
John Fordham
Monsters Of Folk, Cardiff, London
It sounds like a festival for the bearded. As it turns out, Monsters Of Folk is less frightening than that, a project both ironically and, for the most part, erroneously named. An idea conceived of by three of the more clubbable/will-work-with-actresses figures in the indie rock community, Monsters Of Folk is a band where each member – under the guidance of music brain Mike Mogis – actually reins in the excesses of the others. Generally incapable of not playing a guitar solo, within this foursome, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James is on wonderfully emotive form. Conor Oberst, often a terrible whinger, here bucks his ideas up. Even M Ward, a Richard Hawley-like classicist who has spent time making indie-folk with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him, is less soporific than usual. What's left is a metaphorical and audibly pleasant harmony, rooted in classic US rock, evocative of the open road, and all round, a sideline that's just as interesting as the quartet's solo events.
Coal Exchange, Cardiff, Mon; Troxy, E1, Tue
John Robinson
