The Austin-based minimalist instrumental ensemble Balmorhea uses acoustic instruments to create atmospheric soundscapes. Comparisons to Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor might not be too far off, but where those bands tend to build, swell and fade, Balmorhea maintains a “relaxed, clear-eyed sense of reflection” throughout their 2017 album, Clear Language.

With strings, keyboards, guitars, vibraphone, & the occasional muted trumpet, the multi-instrumentalist core of Balmorhea has crafted a record of expansive layered spacious music, painting in broad brush strokes a feeling of wide-open Americana. Balmorhea joins us in their six-piece formation to play songs from 2017's Clear Language.

RIYL: Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, This Will Destroy Us, Friday Night Lights.

From the 2022 New York Guitar Festival, listen to the space-Americana and pastoral country stylings of guitarist William Tyler, whose music pulls in folk, country, indie, and electronic music. His latest record is Lost Futures (2021), with the experimental guitarist Marisa Anderson for Thrill Jockey, and he’s collaborated with electric harpist Mary Lattimore, pedal steel guitarist Luke Schneider, and the ambient drone project Six Organs of Admittance. He plays solo in The Greene Space for the Soundcheck Podcast.

Set list: "Waltz of the Circassian Beauties", "Missionary Ridge", "Gone Clear", "Not In Our Stars", "We Can’t Go Home Again"

Watch "Waltz of the Circassian Beauties":

Watch "Missionary Ridge":

Watch "Gone Clear":

Watch "Not in Our Stars":

Watch: "We Can't Go Home Again":

Watch the whole show from night 4 of the 2022 New York Guitar Festival:

Somewhere on the spectrum of art music and prog rock, is the band Palm. Underneath airy vocal melodies, they build out an architecturally precise combination of guitars and percussion, plus extra electronic triggered effects like steel drums, backwards samples, and other hard-to-identify noises. With strange and unusual combinations of ever-shifting meter (fives, thirteens, threes, and many other grooves that are really hard to dance to), the Bard-College born, Philadelphia-based outfit trips gaily through fun, smart, and weird pop experiments. They perform music from 2018's Rock Island in-studio. Their 2022 record, Nicks and Grazes, comes out in October.

Set list:

Rock Island by Palm

The guitarra Portuguesa, or Portuguese guitar, looks a bit like a mandolin on steroids, and has a long history of great performers – all of them men. Until Marta Pereira da Costa showed up.  She plays the double six-stringed, teardrop-shaped instrument in its traditional setting – Portuguese fado music – but has also written her own music and collaborated with artists like Iranian singer Tara Tiba and Cameroonian bass player Richard Bona.

Hear works by master player of the guitarra Portuguesa, Marta Pereira da Costa, together with pianist Alexandre Diniz, performed live in The Greene Space, for the 2022 New York Guitar Festival. - John Schaefer

Watch "Terra":

Watch "Verde Anos/Summertime":

Watch "Encontro":

Watch "Minha Alma":

Watch  "Meditando /Fado Lopes" :

Watch "Alfonsina y el Mar”, “Dia de Feira":

Watch the entire concert from Night 4 of 2022's New York Guitar Festival from The Greene Space:

The singer and songwriter known as Sirintip lives here in New York, but like many musicians who are here in New York, she came from somewhere else. She was raised in Thailand, and spent her teenage years in her mother’s homeland of Sweden, before making her way to the city. Her debut LP called Tribus (due out Feb. 9) also seems to come from several places at once. There are jazz harmonies, Thai drums, electronics and singable pop all mixed together to often startling effect. Sirintip and her band play some of these songs live.

Set list:

From the 2022 New York Guitar Festival at The Greene Space, hear Malian guitar virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré. The Malian singer and guitarist's career began with collaborations with two of West Africa’s most celebrated musicians: the kora player Toumani Diabate and Vieux’s own dad, the famous guitarist Ali Farka Touré. Since then he has worked with American singer Julia Easterlin and popular Israeli musician Idan Raichel, in addition to releasing five solo studio albums rooted in the sounds and rhythms of West African blues. His latest record, Les Racines (2022), addresses unrest in his home country, and marks a return to his roots – the style of his father’s playing. He and percussionist Adama Kone perform in The Greene Space. (-John Schaefer)

Set list: "Philipa", "Fafa", "Ali", "Tamala", "Ngala Kaourene", "Djaraby"Watch "Philipa":

Watch "Fafa", "Ali", "Tamala":

Watch "Ngala Kaourene":

Watch "Djaraby":

Some time ago, Malian singer, songwriter, guitarist and actress Fatoumata Diawara did a wonderful and daring thing – inspired by her friend Rokia Traoré, she bought an acoustic guitar, and taught herself to play it. Since then, Fatoumata has put out her debut record, Fatou, collaborated with Damon Albarn's Africa Express, and contributed vocals to albums by Cheikh Lô, AfroCubism, and Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou. Her 2018 record, Fenfo translates as “Something to Say”, and she plays some of those songs, in-studio. (Archives.)

Watch Fatoumata Diawara perform "Fenfo" in-studio:

The New York-based band Innov Gnawa performs the traditional healing music of Morocco: Gnawa - a trancey, rhythmic music that is played on an array of unique instruments — from the lute-like gimbri (sintir), to the metal qarqaba (castinets) with which the kouyos (chorus) keep time and pound out clattering, hypnotic rhythms. One of Innov Gnawa's innovations is to collaborate with modern electronic acts like Bonobo, and continue to update  “The Moroccan Blues”. Innov Gnawa performs music from their 2018 record, Aicha, in-studio. (From the Archives.)

Watch the individual songs below:

Los Angeles-based band Vintage Trouble is a powerfully fun time of old-school soul, southern rhythm & blues, sizzling dance moves, and catchy, crunchy guitar-driven rockenroll.

When describing their own sound, the band uses the term “formatted recklessness.” Yes, and that almost puts words to their timeless and appealing concoction of old-school soul, powerful riffs and high energy showmanship. Vintage Trouble joined us live in the studio in 2018 to shake the walls with their “live-wired, straight-shootin, dirty-mouth'd juke music,” at once spirited and thunderous, possessed and powerful, full of party and good-times. 

Singer, songwriter, violinist, guitarist, whistler, glockenspielist, and actor (on Fargo), Andrew Bird, continues “his subversion of indie rock”, (-Schaefer) by including classical, folk, expansive violin solos, and old-time jazz; and has made a remarkable document of tilting at the windmills of his inner demons during these last few years of isolation and insularity. This latest record, 2022’s Inside Problems, sees Bird once again as an entertaining thinker who can couch dark cultural commentary in joyfully buoyant pop songs, (he prefers this exercise in contrasts.) Andrew Bird plays remotely and chats about his new album for the Soundcheck Podcast. -producer Caryn Havlik