The Shed has a modest name and enormous ambitions.
Opening April 5, it’s the cultural component of the gigantic Hudson Yards development in New York City: an eight-story structure that includes galleries; rehearsal space; a theater that can adapt to seated or standing-room events; and a shell that can enclose an adjacent plaza into a performance space.
Its mandate is to commission and present world premieres of new and innovative works, and its artistic director and chief executive, Alex Poots, arrives after a decade as artistic director of the Manchester International Festival in Britain and, in recent years, of the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
The Shed’s first full-scale offering celebrates the heritage and scope of African-American music. Over five nights from April 5-14, “Soundtrack of America” sets out to explore a “family tree” of American music, from spirituals to hip-hop, with a lineup of 25 young performers to bring out continuities and breakthroughs.
“Soundtrack of America” arrives with unquestioned credentials. The series is conceived and directed by filmmaker and video artist Steve McQueen, whose “12 Years a Slave” won the Oscar for best picture in 2014. His brain trust includes illustrious producer Quincy Jones; crate-digging hip-producer No I.D. (aka Dion Wilson); and keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, who was Michael Jackson’s musical director and has worked with Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton and Bruno Mars.
The performers announced so far — five each night — include 2019 Grammy winners like Fantastic Negrito and PJ Morton; the genre-meshing New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas; Judith Hill, who sang backup for Prince and Michael Jackson, among many others; rapper and singer Smino; the eerily idiosyncratic, falsetto-loving songwriters Moses Sumney and serpentwithfeet; and Jon Batiste, who leads the band Stay Human on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” The African-American musical family tree gives them a boundless source of potential material.
The Shed has also announced another major musical production, May 6-June 1: a premiere from Björk, who introduced her “Biophilia” in 2011 at the Manchester International Festival. Björk describes it as “my most elaborate stage concert yet, where the acoustic and digital will shake hands”; her backup includes a seven-woman Icelandic flute ensemble. The title, promisingly, is “Cornucopia.”
— JON PARELES
Also looking forward to ...
Robyn
A Robyn show is a bit different from other pop concerts. It isn’t an over-the-top spectacle of rotating set pieces and wardrobe changes, or a showcase of vocal acrobatics and choreographed backup dancers.
It is sweaty and straight-up — pop church and pop group therapy, a place for fans of the Swedish singer and songwriter, who first hit the United States in the late 1990s, to experience Robyn’s transcendent, deeply addictive music beside her.
From February to April, including a stop at Madison Square Garden in New York on March 8, she’s touring to support “Honey,” her first full album in eight years, which came after a half-decade of psychoanalysis and a series of personal challenges. Her loyal listeners have been anxiously waiting to share their euphoria and pain.
— CARYN GANZ
Massive Attack
In 1998, the British trip-hop trio Massive Attack unleashed its third album, “Mezzanine,” a brooding, sensual, chilly, paranoid record of sputtering grooves and gauzy atmospherics that wound its way into popular culture everywhere, from “The Matrix” to the TV show “House.”
The band has released two more albums in the 21 years since, but the gravitational pull of “Mezzanine” remains potent, and the group — now a duo consisting of Robert del Naja (known as 3D) and Grant Marshall (Daddy G) — is playing a series of shows marking its (belated) 20th anniversary. The brief tour, which hits Boston on March 14 and wraps in San Diego on April 2, promises to be an enveloping, dynamic visual extravaganza.
— CARYN GANZ
Big Ears Festival
The Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, has become a point of pilgrimage for all sorts of experimental listeners: Indie classical, avant-garde jazz, ambient electronic music and post-rock are all well accounted for here.
The festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary, March 21-24, overtaking nearly a dozen spaces across the city’s downtown. All are within walking distance of one another, but each is comfortable and acoustically sound enough that you’ll forget what you’re missing a few doors down.
This year’s acts range from virtuoso vocalist Theo Bleckmann (paying tribute to Kate Bush) to the radical improvisers in the Art Ensemble of Chicago to the psychedelic, soulful explorations of rock band Spiritualized. Big Ears 2019 doubles as a 50th-anniversary celebration of ECM Records; the influential label will present 20 performances throughout the festival, featuring artists from across its eclectic roster.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.