Eighth Blackbird with Shara Worden, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly
Save that tax refund, because May is going to be lousy with brilliant live music. Bridging the Apr/May divide are local heroes Eighth Blackbird alongside My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, the National's Bryce Dessner and composition/piano paragon Nico Muhly. Other than Philip Glass's Two Pages (1968), the program is comprised entirely of music written in the past five years, including works by Tristan Perich, Steve Mackey, David Lang, Muhly, Dessner and Worden. We are especially curious to hear a world premiere original by 8bb pianist Lisa Kaplan, scored for piano four hands. 

Entering the world of A.A. Bondy’s first two albums, 2007’s American Hearts and 2009’s When the Devil’s Loose, one pictures tin lawn chairs, a six-pack of Shiner Bock and a battered Airstream. The former Verbena frontman’s milieu is in fact far more immersive than the chapped vocals and slack guitar strumming of these records let on. On the new Believers, the tone shifts from Americana-infused balladry to something with a bit more polish.

Flying in just two days after appearing in Central Park’s Naumburg Bandshell, New York City’s Knights, not to be confused with the semiprofessional rugby team, return to Highland Park for a follow-up to their well-received Ravinia debut in 2010. When we last caught up with founders (and brothers) Colin and Eric Jacobsen at an impromptu Manhattan gathering of Juilliard grads, the evening was spent comparing old Beethoven solo-piano LPs. What was clear from that evening, and what is crystal from watching these talents perform, is that their verve for classical music exists just as enthusiastically offstage as on. No surprise then that the group counts Yo-Yo Ma as one of its advocates and collaborators, or that the brothers’ other project, Brooklyn Rider, is an NPR darling.

Traverse the halls of the music schools of Northwestern or DePaul and you will inevitably hear the tortured strains of Tchaikovsky’s tedious Variations on a Rococo Theme through the practice-room doors. Like the Lalo Violin Concerto (Symphonie Espagnole), the piece has a habit of bringing out the worst in performers as well as inspiring teachers to reach for the nearest bottle of Xanax.

Standing at the sticky lip of the stage is not the ideal vantage point for a Crystal Stilts show. No, you’re better off on one of the Empty Bottle’s stools, disappearing a Wild Turkey and wondering when the hell you’re going to leave that soulless day job.

Classical can always use a hand in the sex appeal department. Lithe men in loincloths might sound like a billing for a show farther uptown, but for the indefatigable drummers of Kodo, the costume is more functional than libidinous. The Japanese percussion masters descend on Symphony Center this Monday, carting their arsenal of taiko—skin and wood drums ranging in size from salad bowls to hot tubs. The famed group pounds out ancient rhythms collected from Shinto shrines and folk traditions as well as new works by members and mentors.

If Andrew Bird is the porcelain teacup of violin playing, Chuck Bontrager is the pewter beer stein. With a devilish bifurcated beard, the Humboldt Park metalhead shreds Tool guitar solos on his Viper, a V-shaped, fretted seven-string fiddle. On Saturday 20, New Millennium Orchestra’s Bontrager and his side band, Vicarious, perform one of their highest-profile gigs to date, the eclectic Ripple Effect festival, a sort of Burning Man circus.

Ólöf Arnalds’s sophomore album, Innundir skinni, generated fan anxiety with the news that it would incorporate more elaborate, nonacoustic orchestrations. For Arnalds, the departure was a risk, given the acclaim lavished on her spare folk debut, Við Og Við.

A still-stagnant economy is forcing music lovers to trade beloved LPs for rent money. So a night out at Ravinia may seem extravagant after parting ways with one’s von Karajan collection. But on Wednesday 25, the festival serves up seats—not lawn—to one of the most exceptional concerts of its season…for $10.

Interpol bassist Carlos Dengler has joined the retreat…from Interpol. Neither the band nor the purveyor of its crucial low end has disclosed anything more revealing than a Hollywood divorce statement (“He has decided to follow another path, and to pursue new goals”), but given the precipitous defection of fans since 2002’s Turn on the Bright Lights, it’s clear the NYC brooders are poised at the proverbial fork in the road.

Barring Erykah Badu disrobing onstage to re-create her eyebrow-raising music video for “Window Seat,” the only act threatening to out-spectacle Lady Gaga this weekend is hair-metal übergroup X Japan. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. But festivalgoers bypassing worthy Brooklynites Yeasayer on Sunday 8 will witness one of the rarest performances ever to sonically obliterate a Lolla stage. The pants are suffocatingly tight, the makeup excessive and unapologetic, the drumming machine-gun fast and the ballads so melodramatic you’ll be clutching your Hello Kitty plush for reassurance. Here are five good reasons this Mothra-sized Tokyo export will be the sleeper highlight of the festival.

Listening to Susanna Wallumrød and Morten Qvenild reinterpret Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, KISS and Joy Division is the equivalent of donning a pair of red-lensed sunglasses: The picture remains undistorted, but the panorama takes on an unfamiliar luminosity. The duo’s third full-length, 3, was released in 2009, but Susanna and the Magical Orchestra is only now embarking on its inaugural North American tour. The Norwegians already enjoy traction with indie audiences through unimpeachable reworkings of Leonard Cohen’s devastator “Hallelujah,” as well as Wallumrød’s solo work, most notably in her spectral duets with singer-songwriter Will Oldham.

If there is such a thing as a new paradigm in music, the Books may be it. With a just-south-of-precious moniker, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong have made careers out of mining thrift stores for found audio, assembling bits and pieces from home videos and hypnosis tapes, to create an aural backdrop for their guitar/banjo/vocal/cello compositions. Sampling is a well-trod scheme for musicians, but the pair’s peerless talent lies in its use of esoteric and previously unheard clips, as well as its refusal to use these files as a nostalgic gimmick.

“Those Marines knew what they had coming,” an inebriated fan shouted, interrupting Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s otherwise stellar Logan Square Auditorium set in 2008, the last time the group made its way down from Montreal. Singer-guitarist Efrim Menuck’s sometimes anarchic worldview might inadvertently invite such outbursts, but the Mt. Zion cofounder immediately shut down the request for “God Bless Our Dead Marines.”

Often in thrillers—and every movie M. Night Shyamalan ever made—there’s that eureka montage in which the main character realizes his whole reality is a lie. At that moment, the soundtrack ominously swells. With expansive string cascades and spectral electronics, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson frequently dwells in this territory, especially on his latest, And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, his original score to Marc Craste’s animated film Varmints.

Only in L.A. would you find a gaggle of coke-hoovering coeds unaware that they are being exclusively targeted from the stage with the lyric “I hate California girls.” The Magnetic Fields’ singer-pianist Claudia Gonson relished sharing this tour tale with Chicago audiences in March of 2008, following the release of their full-length Distortion.

One of the most in-demand concert pianists, Yefim “Fima” Bronfman must have an absurd number of frequent-flier miles. His current itinerary takes the Soviet-born Uzbekistani from Schenectady to Dubrovnik to Osaka, stopping everywhere in between. The 51-year-old returns to Chicago to join guest conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, a work largely eclipsed by the composer’s second, more instantly popular piano concerto.

A T-shirt at Pitchfork Fest read, I LISTEN TO BANDS THAT DON’T EVEN EXIST YET. The nostalgia-fearing indie audience embraces the unknown, meaning many groups’ careers are over before a second album. Classical-music prodigies often suffer a similar fate. But 21-year-old pianist Lise de la Salle has avoided the perils of childhood stardom by eschewing hubris and displaying reverence for her pianistic predecessors.

Head over to the Harris Theater entrance on Randolph. Observe any instrument-lugging musician’s reaction to the Lang Lang promo on the Harris’s video screens. If it’s anything other than eye rolling, chances are that musician is busy texting. Attempting to channel his inner Run-DMC with a pair of glistening black Adidas, the Chinese pianist’s head is thrown back in a moment of perfectly staged, grotesquely self-involved ecstasy. It’s not that classical music couldn’t benefit from some image upgrades, but it’s hard to see this as anything other than a product.