Colter Wall, with Hayden Redwine
Like Joni Mitchell before him, singer-songwriter Colter Wall grew up in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and has done multiple concert tours of North America and Europe.
But the 30-year-old Wall has not followed in Mitchell’s footsteps by immigrating to Los Angeles, although he was based in Nashville and Kentucky for a few years before moving back to his ranch in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
The earthy, artifice-free sound of Wall’s music is reflected in his rural roots, albeit with a key twist. Raised as a Mennonite Baptist, he is the son of Brad Wall, who served as the premier of Saskatchewan from 2007 to 2018. Colter Wall now has five increasingly accomplished albums to his credit. Their titles mirror the music they contain, most notably “Songs of the Plains,” “Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs” and last year’s “Memories and Empties.”
When Wall performed here at the Belly Up in Solana Beach in 2018, his 20-song setlist featured nine selections by other artists, including Tex Ritter’s “Blood on the Saddle,” Billy Joe Shaver’s “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train,” Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freight Liner Blues” and Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother.” In more recent years, he has tended to feature more of his own songs while also including some of his favorites by artists who have inspired him.
Wall’s baritone voice, deepened by years of cigarette smoking, evokes Johnny Cash, although his vocal phrasing sometimes bring to mind Van Zandt and Willie Nelson, by way of Waylon Jennings and John Anderson.
Wall’s lyrics can be as rugged and no-nonsense as his voice. But he also has a sly sense of humor, as evidenced by these lines from “13 Silver Dollars,” a standout song on his self-titled 2017 debut album: It was a cold and cruel evening sneaking up on Speedy Creek / Found myself asleep and in the snow / For one or two odd reasons I ain’t too proud to repeat.
To call Wall a neo-traditionalist is tempting but misleading. He embraces various folk, blues and country-and-western traditions while resolutely avoiding even anything remotely “neo,” especially the slick aural pap embraced by the country-music establishment.
7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20, and Saturday, Feb. 21. Gallagher Square at Petco Park, 899 J Street, downtown. $35.80-$79.25. ticketmaster.com
Flutist Elena Yarritu will perform at this weekend’s NWEAMO Festival at SDSU with the Dokkaebi Duo, and as a new member of the NWEAMO Chamber Ensemble. (Courtesy Joseph Waters / SDSU).
NWEAMO 2026 Festival “Hybrid Waves from the Pacific Rim and Beyond”
It’s tempting to predict that this year’s NWEAMO Festival (short for New West Evolving Art & Music Organism) will be the most ambitious and diverse in the history of this 28-year-old, all-things-are-possible event. At least it is until you recall just how ambitious and diverse previous iterations of this freewheeling festival have been.
The 2020 edition featured two Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: veteran UC San Diego music professor Roger Reynolds and Philadelphia’s Jennifer Higdon, who is also a three-time Grammy Award winner in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category.
The 2019 edition included a Mercedes-Benz van equipped with nearly $900,000 worth of top-end audio gear, while the 2004 edition featured a futuristic karaoke machine that could synthesize up to 40,000 songs, in real time, with a 64-piece virtual orchestra that followed the melody, tuning and rhythm of whoever happened to be singing. Other editions showcased a software-equipped carpet that produces sound and what was billed as the world’s first random-access, analog robotic DJ system.
To be held this weekend at SDSU’s Smith Recital Hall, the two-day 2026 NWEAMO Festival will open Saturday with three world premieres.
The first is “Dokkaebi,” a flute-and-piano piece written and performed by SDSU music professor and NWEAMO mastermind Joseph Martin Waters, who will be joined by flutist Elena Yarritu. The second, also by Waters, is “Gaian Entanglement Toccata.” A solo piano piece that will be performed by Cho-Hyun Park, it was written by Waters so that “the left hand mirrors the right, upside down, like a reflection in a pond.” The third is Jae Eun Jung’s cello and piano composition “Emotional Contagion.”
Friday’s concert featuring the 70-piece SDSU Symphony Orchestra will also spotlight works by Texu Kim, David Ward Steinman and Christopher Adler, who will perform on a bamboo Laotian mouth organ known as a khaen.
Sunday’s concert will feature the New York Composers Concordance’s performance of Seth & Gene’s Excellent Electroacoustic Adventure, an 80-minute multimedia electroacoustic work that features pianists Seth Boustead and Lesi Mei, guitarist Gene Prtisker, soprano Ljiljana Winkler and alto saxophonist Todd Rewoldt. The program will also include the world premiere of Waters’ piano and electronics piece, “Twinkle,” and compositions by Dan Cooper, Jae Eun Jung, Debra Kaye and Amy Wurtz.
7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, and Sunday, Feb. 22. Smith Recital Hall, 5500 Campanile Drive, SDSU. $25 suggested donation “or whatever you can afford.” nweamo.org
San Diego music mainstay Jamie Shadowlight died in 2024. She will be honored Sunday at a concert that will launch The Jamie Shadowlight Legacy Fund, a newly established nonprofit foundation.
The Jamie Shadowlight Legacy Fund Birthday Benefit Concert
A 2023 San Diego Music Hall of Fame inductee, violinist Jamie Shadowlight was a beloved mainstay of the music scene here.
She died in June, 2024, 15 months after being diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer. Many in the music community came to her support by donating funds and care to help the highly regarded Shadowlight in her time of need.
She will be honored Sunday at a benefit concert that launches the Jamie Shadowlight Legacy Fund, a newly established nonprofit foundation.
Proceeds will help fund scholarships for musicians, who — in the organizers’ words — “embody Jamie’s spirit of innovation and exploration beyond conventional musical boundaries” and support research into Cymatics, a field of study that visualizes sounds and vibration as a source of healing.
The concert will include San Diego vocal favorites Sacha Boutrous and Steph Johnson, Chilean-born troubadour Julia Sage, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Larry Mitchell and The Shadowlight Band, featuring Colombian-born singer and guitarist Santiago Orozco. The house band will feature pianist Irving Flores, bassists Rob Thorsen and Tada Hirano, percussionists Monette Marino, Kofi Andoh and AB Navarez, drummer Jacob Russo, singer Michelle Lerach and others.
San Diego Music Hall of Fame founder Jefferson Jay will be the master of ceremonies.
5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22. WorldBeat Center, 2100 Park Blvd., Balboa Park. $25 and $50. zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/shadowlight-live–222
The genre-blurring band SLM’s UC San Diego concert will make a rare appearance by the group. (Charlie_Weinmann / Courtesy UC San Diego ArtPower)
SLM
The fusion of jazz and electronica music dates back decades and has more recently been extended by such diverse artists as Sam Gendel, Floating Points, Caroline Davis, Flying Lotus, Brandon Seabrook and others.
The one-woman, four-man Los Angeles band SLM, which performs Wednesday at UC San Diego, pushes the envelope with intriguing results.
Both of its albums consist of improv-heavy live recordings that have been manipulated, deconstructed and reconstructed using digital audio work stations and all manner of other post-production tools.
Together, saxophonist Josh Johnson, guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, bassist Anna Butterss and percussionist Booker Stardrum create a constantly shifting aural spectrum. that uses studio technology as a key instrument. Exactly how they pull this off live should be intriguing and then some.
8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 25. The Loft @ UC San Diego, 3151 Matthews Lane, La Jolla. $10-$40. artpower.ucsd.edu/event/sml/