Crosby, Still & Nash, On tour
So who are these guys who sound like Fleet Foxes, anyway? As storied as their career has been, the mellow charms of Crosby, Stills & Nash haven't enjoyed quite the same respect as the noisier records by their pal, Neil Young. Times, however, seem to be changing. In 2007, the trio reunited with Young for a spirited anti-Iraq war tour and film. And Graham Nash's wonderful debut solo album has been covered in its entirety by Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Bonnie "Prince" Billy et al. Meanwhile, the band are the latest to benefit from sessions with producer Rick Rubin, with a view to a new covers album. It's the trio's own compositions that turn most heads, though: a strange mix of radical sentiment, sweetness and enduring harmony.
Hard Rock Calling, Hyde Park, W2, Sun; The O2, Dublin, Thu
John Robinson
Shadowball, London
In 2007, the British jazz pianist, composer and broadcaster Julian Joseph joined forces with vocalist Cleveland Watkiss and writer Mike Phillips on an opera about the life of George Bridgetower, the black British violinist to whom Beethoven dedicated his Kreutzer Sonata. Now the same team comes together for another ambitious jazz opera on the theme of a black breakthrough into an all-white club: American baseball, which maintained a segregation policy for 60 years until 1947. Shadowball (the term for a warm-up exercise Negro League players used) mirrors the challenges and triumphs of American black athletes through baseball apartheid with the story of jazz, a field in which racially mixed performances were controversial for decades. Hackney Music Development Trust is behind this bold venture, which will also have educational spinoffs involving inner-London children.
Mermaid Conference And Events Centre, EC4, Tue & Wed
John Fordham
Cheltenham Music Festival, Cheltenham
Once upon a time the Cheltenham festival was the most significant showcase for new music in the British musical calendar, but nowadays premieres and commissions must be balanced with more commercially popular concerts. Seemingly able to reconcile those demands, festival director Meurig Bowen has chosen the Schumann bicentenary as a theme, inviting cellist Stephen Isserlis to curate a series devoted to Schumann's chamber music, and installing Brett Dean as his composer in residence, a conductor and world-class viola player who will appear in chamber recitals and in performances of his own works. Along with a dozen premieres there is an opera gala with tenor Alfie Boe, plus a troupe of Tibetan monks.
Various venues, Fri to 17 Jul
Andrew Clements
The Features, On tour
Could be the beards. Could be the fact they're from Tennessee. Could be the friendships with the Kings Of Leon and the Black Keys. Whichever it is that gives the strongest indication they're going to be a vaguely spiky country-rock band, the Features quickly urge you to dispense with that idea. Instead, the quartet work in a more modern, angular vein: second album Some Kind Of Salvation is a bizarre mix of light and dark, part the Knack and part the National. If that sounds unpromising, it's worth noting that Features songs – like Now You Know – speak of a great assurance. This is clearly a band with hidden depths.
King Tut's, Glasgow, Mon; Hare And Hounds, Birmingham, Tue; Hyde Park, W2, Wed; The Borderline, W1, Thu; The Roadhouse, Manchester, Fri
John Robinson
Kurt Elling, London
US vocalist Elling's immense influence was recently caught in the Guardian by Jamie Cullum, when he described Elling's "swooning, Sinatra sound combined with an intellect for the words ... he makes vocalese [wordless vocals] look so easy and sound so gentle, like a saxophone". Elling combines a gentle side with a sometimes spine-chilling one. Sweeping from a sensuous baritone to a chorister's high notes, his achingly slow account of the Irving Berlin classic Change Partners is one of the great contemporary jazz interpretations. Elling shows have the pacing, contrasts, impassioned soliloquies, dry asides and all-round narrative shape of a well-written play, and the importance of his pianist-arranger Laurence Hobgood is hard to overestimate. Even standards lyrics that might seem a bit fulsome for the hip-hop era, are given new meanings by Elling's audacity and technique.
Ronnie Scott's, W1, Thu & Fri
John Fordham
The Dead Weather, Glasgow, London
Jack White is indie's cuckoo in the nest. He turns up in your group pretending it's a casual visit then pretty soon he's taken over. That was the case with the Raconteurs, now it seems the same's true of the Dead Weather. Once providers of Nashville jams between White (the drummer), QOTSA's Dean Fertita, Kills' Alison Mosshart and bass-playing pal Jack Lawrence, the group have taken on more and more of White's personality. Hearing new LP, Sea Of Cowards, you may decide that's no bad thing: it's filled with White's characteristic yelps and some extraordinary guitar. Perspiration they have; if White has anything to do with it, inspiration will follow.
O2 ABC, Glasgow, Sun; Roundhouse, NW1, Mon
John Robinson