Jack White, Beabadoobee, Pink Martini, and Other Spring Concerts
Image: Courtesy Chris Hornbecker
Editor's note: You’re reading a previous concert preview. Find our current listings here.
The local live music scene doesn’t necessarily fall off during the winter months, but it does slow. Portland just has a lot more to offer touring acts when the sun is shining over it, when outdoor venues make up for the city’s lack—at least for the time being—of concert halls capable of holding a couple thousand people. Summer is when they really take off, but the open-air concert season starts up when Edgefield kicks off its Concerts on the Lawn in May. Before that, the rest of the city seems to build toward that momentum, booking legacy acts and newcomers at a more rapid clip than during the rainy doldrums. This spring ends with two of the biggest names Edgefield will see this year. In the run-up, catch German electronic music royalty Kraftwerk at the Keller, one of the present moment’s fastest-rising singer-songwriters Beabadoobee at the Moda Center, and hometown heroes Pink Martini celebrating their 30th birthday playing back-to-back nights at Rev Hall.
Kraftwerk
8pm Sun, Apr 6 | Keller Auditorium, $39–129+
Düsseldorf’s finest electronic music innovators are touring North America celebrating 50 years of Autobahn, the album that marked the group’s transition to electronic music and the first that brought them to America back in 1975.
Beabadoobee
7:30pm Wed, Apr 9 | Moda Center, $39–238+
After opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, British Filipino singer Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus (aka Beabadoobee) recorded her third album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, at mega producer Rick Rubin’s famed Shangri-La studio and topped the UK charts.
Pink Martini
8pm Mon & Tue, Apr 14 & 15 | Revolution Hall, $39–99+
Makes sense that it takes two years to celebrate Pink Martini’s 30th birthday. Though the always-expanding cast has performed a few anniversary concerts elsewhere, these two local Rev Hall shows mark Thomas Lauderdale and China Forbes’s band’s hometown birthday.
Stella Cole Quartet
7:30pm Apr 21 | The Reser, $44.25
Hard to say what makes Cole’s silky jazz feel contemporary, but it does, and her nearly 750k Instagram followers seem to agree. A rendition of Audrey Hepburn’s “Moon River” and one of Billie Eilish’s “My Future” both come as more-or-less classic arrangements on her debut album from 2024.
Yasmin Williams
7pm Apr 23 | The Reser, $28
Williams’s inventive, virtuosic compositions most often start on the acoustic guitar, but have swelled on her third album, Acadia, to include kora, harp guitar, and banjo in a folksy wave of sound. Continuing the Reser’s American Strings series, ethnomusicologist and historian Kelly Bosworth will interview Williams onstage to start this show.
Image: Courtesy Steve parke
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
8pm Sat, May 10 | Moda Center, $65–295+
Nick Cave is the type of public figure whose fame supersedes any of his individual projects—books, films, newsletter, public speaking engagements—but music is the thread holding it all together. With his band the Bad Seeds, Cave released his 18th studio album, Wild God, last year.
J Balvin
8pm Sat, May 17 | Moda Center, $41–317+
Besides the newest face of Calvin Klein underwear Bad Bunny, Colombian singer J Balvin is arguably the world’s biggest reggaeton artist—the dancehall-inspired hip-hop genre he and Bad Bunny dominate. This Back to the Rayo Tour brings his 2024 album Rayo to North America.
Jack White
7pm Sat, May 24 | Edgefield, SOLD OUT
No Name, White’s sixth solo album released last summer, was a return to his stripped-down, blown-out, screaming blues roots. Despite lacking a title (this world tour is also effectively nameless), the album is “all killer, no filler,” per Pitchfork.
Leon Bridges
6:30pm Wed, May 28 | Edgefield, $87
Ten years since Bridges’s mammoth debut, Coming Home, he’s moved incrementally away from his raw, vintage-hued brand of R&B into a smoothed, more involved production style. Leon, his fourth record, is the biggest jump into the pop sphere.
