> CONCERT SAMPLER
Live music highlights Nov. 10 to 16:
Majid Jordan “Small Talk” Majid Al Maskati gained some notice singing backup on 2013’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home” from you know who and, in the same year, rebranded as Majid Jordan with producer pal Jordan Ullman, with whom he’d toiled as Good People. The pair quickly signed to Drizzy’s OVO label. Their own contemporary R&B has found an audience, although no killer chart-topping hit. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time; their soul is intimate, dreamy stuff. This pair of shows at the former Sound Academy ends a six-week tour so they should be in champagne-popping mode. (Thursday and Friday, Rebel, 8 p.m.)
Amanda Palmer “Machete” The one-time Dresden Doll is pugnacious and punky and hard to ignore, coming in for her first solo visit in five years. The most recent, typically U-turning recording was July’s You Got Me Singing, a covers album made with her father Jack. Before that was 2014 bestselling book The Art of Asking, which grew out of a TED talk, which grew out of her million-dollar Kickstarter campaign to get a record made. She’ll take those two guises, musician and author, and tell stories in song, with a piano and ukulele standing in for pen and paper. (Friday, Queen Elizabeth Theatre, doors 7 p.m.)
Johnny & the G-Rays “There She Was” With direct links back to the ground zero of Toronto’s mid-1970s punk scene, the foursome were more celebrated back in the day for their work with outfits like the Diodes and the Viletones. But while some of that latter material hasn’t aged all that well, the more straightforward rock ’n’ roll they cranked out as Johnny & the G-Rays still manages to move a room. Originals Johnny MacLeod, Harri Palm and Bent Rasmussen are back to mark the 40th anniversary of first getting together. Three well-bred Toronto types, Alex Radeff & Donkey, Lorraine Leckie and Long Branch, help with the auld lang syne. (Saturday, Rivoli, doors 8:30 p.m., tickets at the door.)
Sad13 “Less Than 2” Singer/guitarist Sadie Dupuis’s main gig is fronting intellectual indie outfit Speedy Ortiz. Now under moniker Sad13 she’s just released side project Slugger, a DIY effort exploring gender identity and female empowerment, with lead single “Get a Yes” a synthy celebration of consent and “Less Than 2” a playful diatribe on image and sexuality. It’s poppier work, but Dupuis’s arch poeticism and punk attitude shine brightly. With a new band of three femme co-conspirators in tow, she should satisfy anyone who likes art that rocks. (Sunday, Smiling Buddha, doors 8 p.m.)
Berliner Philharmoniker “Mahler’s Symphony No. 7” Sir Simon Denis Rattle will retire in 2018 to bring to an end 16 years helming the world’s most acclaimed (and fractious, in his telling) orchestra, meaning this visit with the touring Philharmonic is his last call in Toronto and thus this fall-winter’s highlight classical concert. Rattle made his 1987 debut with the Berlin institution, guest-conducting Mahler’s “Sixth Symphony” and clinched his nomination for the chief conductor’s job, leading them through Mahler’s sprawling and unkempt “Seventh”: “the black sheep” of his canon, he calls it, and a thunderous way to say goodbye. (Tuesday and Wednesday, Roy Thomson Hall, 8 p.m.)
Gabriella Cohen “Sever the Walls” Cutting her teeth in psyche-garage band the Furrs, this indolently dark Aussie performer has gone solo with Full Closure and No Details, an eclectic, self-produced album generating some buzz. Cohen sing-drawls tunes that seem to have sprung from immersion in Bob Dylan’s basement tapes and ’60s girl-group recordings, with pointed songstress Dory Previn thrown in for good measure. Nu Music Night at the ’Shoe is just stop No. 3 on the North American debut tour for this young up-and-comer. (Tuesday, Horseshoe, doors 8:30 p.m.)