Dystopian tales are not out of the realm of reality in 2021—but, fortunately, this work of fiction is more sci-fi than reality. In advance of Halloween weekend, Stanford Live will host students, staff and community members with two performances of “War of the Worlds.” The performance—which comes to the States from a sell-out run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival—is inspired by H.G. Wells’ infamous novel and Orson Welles’ radio adaption, but feels even more relevant in the spooky season of a pandemic world. Dive into the horror of a story that has scared the masses for the last 124 years. Just remember: it’s not real.

War of the Worlds
Thu-Fri, 7:30pm, $15+
Bing Concert Hall, Palo Alto

Perhaps best known for their terrific movie scores (including the iconic soundtrack for Minority Report), the Kronos Quartet’s constantly-changing membership have spanned four decades and over 900 commissioned works across a plethora of genres. Documentarian Sam Green (The Weather Underground) collaborated with the group to create a new kind of biographical piece: a documentary composed of archival footage of the quartet and interviews with frequent collaborators (including famous composer Philip Glass), all set to a live score to be performed by the Kronos Quartet whenever the documentary is screened.

A Thousand Thoughts
Wed, 7:30pm, $15+
Bing Concert Hall, Palo Alto

iskwē’s star continues to rise as a singer-songwriter, though she’s been on her grind diligently since 2013. In the same way her Cree heritage and Western upbringing defy neat categorization, her music chooses to blend two worlds together in inventive fashion. Often described as electro-pop, her 2021 release The Stars shows her rearranging past material with a powerful arsenal of cellos, violins, piano and live drums—her pained vocals ringing true throughout. Live, she brings a spectacular light show, dazzling costumes and a full array of visual stage drama to reinforce her singular sound.

iskwē
Wed-Thu, 7:30pm, $35
Bing Concert Hall, Palo Alto

Rhiannon Giddens casts quite a shadow in the realm of bluegrass and Southern folk these days. The singer-songwriter is a banjo and fiddle virtuoso who first garnered critical praise for her work in the North Carolina-based combo the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Recently named the Frank Sinatra Chair in the Performing Arts at Santa Clara University, her insights were featured on the luminous Ken Burns special, Country Music. Giddens comes to Stanford to share her explorations in a new collaboration with Italian-born jazz pianist and percussionist Francesco Turrisi.

Rhiannon Giddens
Fri, 7:30pm, $40+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

Baritone Russell Braun and pianist Serouj Kradjian perform a “dramatic recital” about the life of Hanns Eisler, who fled Nazi Germany to score films in Hollywood, winning Oscar nominations before being blacklisted and deported for his communist beliefs. Braun portrays Eisler while performing the composer’s Hollywood Songbook, which the baritone describes as “private, intimate texts” about Hollywood as experienced by someone who “never let go of his connection to Germany.” The performance repeats on Saturday.

Hell’s Fury
Fri, 7:30pm, $30+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

It must be a mixed bag to land a gig as a late-night TV bandleader. On one hand, it’s an elite club, a sweet paycheck and a chance to connect with a potentially huge audience. On the other, you’re never allowed to show what you can really do. Fans of Late Night with Stephen Colbert will easily recognize Batiste, who fronts the Colbert house band. They may not know that Batiste has been part of the next generation of musicians steeped in the rich culture of New Orleans jazz and R&B. His 2018 record Hollywood Africans is a good place to start.

Jon Batiste
Sat, 7:30pm, $35+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

“This is what I saw,” says National Geographic photojournalist David Guttenfelder. The veteran photographer, who has worked for the venerable globetrotting magazine for more than two decades, is one of the only Westerners to capture modern images of the cloistered and insulated countries of Cuba and North Korea, where he helped open the country’s first Associated Press news bureau in 2011. In this installment of National Geographic Live, titled “A Rare Look—North Korea and Cuba,” Guttenfelder presents a slide show like no other, contrasting the grandeur of state-coordinated propaganda shoots with revealing slices of everyday life in two of the world’s least understood nations.

Nat Geo Live
Wed, 7:30pm, $35+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

Each year the Steinbeck Center presents the Steinbeck Award, celebrating musicians, writers, documentarians, thinkers, artists and activists whose work embodies the empathetic spirit and values of John Steinbeck. Previous recipients include Bruce Springsteen, Rachel Maddow and Ken Burns. This year, British folk-pop superstars Mumford & Sons are set to accept SJSU’s illustrious prize in a celebration at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall. The award is going to Mumford & Sons both because they’ve written songs inspired by Steinbeck and also because they’ve demonstrated a serious commitment to social engagement through their Gentlemen of the Road project, which supports global and local charities fighting for social justice.

Mumford & Sons
Wed, 7:30pm, Sold Out
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

Those without truly adventurous musical tastes need not apply. There’s really no reason to engage with Senyawa otherwise, even on a hypothetical level. It’s akin to asking a 6-year-old to try the haggis; the bar for persuasion is just too high.

An experimental duo from the island of Java in Indonesia, Senyawa lie somewhere at the intersection of noise, punk, metal, world and indigenous music, though they don’t like to use any such terms when describing their art.

Indeed, vocalist Rully Shabara and instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi’s creations are so insistently avant-garde that they defy any conventional comparison to any other musical artist, living or dead. Consider that the group’s primary tool for producing rhythm and melody is a many-times-redesigned zither-like bamboo string instrument called the bambuwukir. It is Suryadi’s own invention, is not mass-produced and is not available to anyone but its creator. That’s the dictionary definition of “unique.”

Vocalist Shabara is every bit as experimental and boundary-busting. Some of what of he does could be called “singing,” as we in the West understand it. But much of his style is something else altogether, a hard-to-scan mixture of rapping, barking, screeching, melodic keening and what could be interpreted as animal calls. In places where actual words are called for, Shabara reaches for the various native tongues of his island nation.

On his bamboo instrument, Shabara’s partner Suryadi provides accompaniment that ranges from the sharply percussive to—when he employs a bow on his strings—something very much like the richness of cello. The duo’s own Tumblr site refers to Suryadi’s style as “modern-primitive.”

Novice listeners might assume the music of Senyawa is drawn from some centuries-old tribal tradition of Indonesia. Such an assumption would be wrong.

“I did not start or study traditional music,” says Shabara. His approach is taking some elements of traditional music as he knows it, and combining them with his own musical impulses. “It’s more about trying to bring both extremes together and naturally merge them.”

The end result has catapulted the duo to international prominence, mostly in Asia and Europe. Audiences outside Indonesia often regard the group as a curiosity (The blog The Weirdest Band in the World ranks Senyawa number 25 on its “Weird 100,” right behind an artist named Anklepants who performs in a mask that features an animatronic penis for a nose). In Indonesia, however, the band remains relatively unknown.

The duo has been performing since 2011 and just released their seventh album in 2018. They were the subject of a short 2012 documentary film from French documentarian Vincent Moon titled Calling the New Gods, and have performed around the world with a number of avant-garde musical acts, from the Japanese grindcore band Melt Banana to Seattle-based “death-doom” artist Stephen O’Malley.

Senyawa is really a product of two musicians who are blazing their own paths: Suryadi as a creative “what-if” instrument-builder whose inspirations come from materials and form, and Shabara, who believes that a vocalist doesn’t have to “front” a group or even be intelligible to provide a musical complement to the instrumentation. When two such expansive thinkers collaborate, it’s going to result in something unusual.

The duo’s exposure to American audiences has been limited. Shabara says Senyawa has played San Francisco and Los Angeles once each. In the studio, the duo has taken advantage of looping and other electronica enhancements, but in a live setting, they depend much more on in-the-moment creativity.

Shabara’s approach to vocalizing is to unhinge the singer from his traditional spot in a group, to treat the human voicebox as just another instrument, and not necessarily a conveyor of language. Of Senyawa’s albums, Shabara says some of them are almost all sung in language. Others are entirely improvised vocal sounds.

“It’s about exploring the extremes of human voice, yes,” he says. “But for us, it’s also about accessing channels to reach a certain state where you can manage the energy.”

Senyawa
Jan 26, 7pm, $20
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford

Sure, you can listen to your neighbors’ off-key version of “We Three Kings” on your doorstep without leaving the house. But wouldn’t you rather get your holiday music fix from a Grammy-winning jazz legend? The great Dianne Reeves belongs in the lineage of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and she’s been bringing her magic to Christmas music for many years now. At this Stanford concert, she’ll take on a number of classics including “The Little Drummer Boy,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and—though sadly it’s not in the Bay Area forecast—“Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.”

Dianne Reeves
Fri, 7:30pm $40+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford