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Great Lake Swimmers releases New Wild Everywhere, a new album, today via Nettwerk. If the leadoff single, “Easy Come Easy Go,” is any indication, one can sense a revitalized spring in their collective steps, and copious fiddle tunes surrounding their now customary felicitous vocal harmonies.

Check out a video of the song performed live at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

We’re saddened to learn of the passing of banjo player and iconic bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs at the age of 88.

We’ll let his pickin’ in the videos below do the talking.

A lot of chatterboxes in the audience, but here’s a video of Magnetic Fields performing “Andrew in Drag” this past week at All Tomorrow’s Parties. The song is the “single” on their new Merge recording Love at the Bottom of the Sea. Merge is also sharing a download of the song via Soundcloud (embed below). And there’s an official video too: here’s the link, but, given the subject matter, some may find it NSFW. Then again, when have the Magnetic Fields been entirely SFW?

Our friends (and the performers on the last Sequenza21 concert) ACME appeared at All Tomorrow’s Parties last week. Quite a coup for the indie classical group, which is enjoying increased crossover success. Below check out video footage of them performing Gavin Bryars’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” live at ATP.

Tonight, Hotel Elefant makes its debut concert at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music (a venue that’s just celebrated its one-year anniversary). The concert features two works by David T. Little. Sequenza 21′s own James Holt will be on hand to host the event; he’ll conduct an onstage interview with Little.

Below, check out one of several preview videos from the ensemble’s YouTube channel (there’s interview footage with several of the program’s composers): composer Leah Maria Villarreal and violinist Andie Springer discuss preparing a new multimedia work entitled “The Warmth of Other Suns.”

Event Details

Thursday, March 15, 2012 – 8pm

Season I | Remembrance

Inaugural Concert featuring composer DAVID T. LITTLE

with works by
CHINARY UNG
PETER BUSSIGEL
LEAHA MARIA VILLARREAL
MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN

Tickets at the door: $15/$10 students with valid ID

The DiMenna Center for Classical Music
Norman S. Benzaquen Hall
450 W 37th St. New York, NY

Andrew Bird has an upcoming collaboration with La Blogothèque and Radio France. He shared a brief teaser of it on YouTube last week.

Meanwhile, he’s also recently released a new full length recording, Break it Yourself via Mom + Pop.

And we’ve got a lengthier, and artsy, video, also posted to Bird’s YouTube channel, for more extended viewing below.

I love this video about Tim Fite’s diligent, almost obsessive, work ethic, both as a visual artist and as a musician.

Fite’s Ain’t Ain’t Ain’t is out now via Anti Records.

Check out album track “We Didn’t Warn You,” streaming via the File Under ? Tumblr page.

Sharon Van Etten has released a video for “Leonard,” a track from Tramp, her excellent new CD (out now on Jagjaguwar). And it’s clear from the embed below that she shares our love for kaleidoscopes!

Congratulations to pianist Peter Poston for winning the David Lang 2011 Competition.

Below is his award-winning entry, a performance of Wed, submitted via YouTube:

Poston will get to perform as part of an all Lang program at le poisson rouge in New York City on May 6, 2012 at 5pm. The concert at LPR includes Andrew Zolinsky performing selections from the CD, a new 4-hand piano work premiered by Zolinsky and Poston, a new 6-hand piano piece for the 3 runners-up – Catarina Domenici, Katherine Dowling, and Denise Fillion – and performances by guitar legend Derek Johnson and other special guests.

This Was Written by Hand

Piano Music by David Lang

Andrew Zolinsky, piano

Cantaloupe Music CD

Wed, the audition piece for the David Lang 2011 Competition, is featured on This Was Written By Hand, David Lang’s latest CD, a recital disc recorded for Cantaloupe by pianist Andrew Zolinksy. It is one of eight “Memory Pieces” included on the disc. This group serves as postminimal “Characterstucke,” an attractive and mercurial group of contrasting miniatures.

Then there is the touching title work. One of Lang’s most organically constructed pieces, it was, indeed, written by hand and intuitively constructed. A meditation on the ephemeral nature of life, it captures a similar poignancy to Lang’s recent vocal work “Little Matchgirl Passion,” but writ smaller, more intimately. To both this and the Memory Pieces, Zolinsky brings a fluid grace and subtlety that abets the spontaneous, almost improvisatory, character of the material.

Leave it to Lambchop to eschew a glitzy promo video in favor of spotlighting Nashville’s underground wrestling community! The single “Gone Tomorrow,” taken from their new Merge CD Mr. M, is accompanied by a mini-documentary about the Stadium Inn, a hotel that doubles as a proving ground for the grappling set.