Gabriel Teodros and Khingz, Bambu, Sleep of Old Dominion, Orbitron, DJs B-Girl, Phatrick, Tecumseh
(Neumo’s) The first big local hiphop show for 2008 features Mass Line’s Gabriel Teodros, Seattle’s most progressive rapper and one-half of Abyssinian Creole. The other half is Khingz, who also performs tonight and is expected to drop a solo effort this year. As Abyssinian Creole, Teodros and Khingz were at the center of the powerful discharge that instigated, in 2005, the current wave of local hiphop that is led by Blue Scholars. Abyssinian Creole’s contribution to that remarkable year was Sexy Beast, a CD that in sound and themes is opposite to the mood and climate of the Northwest. What Sexy Beast made apparent was the diversity of local hiphop: It can come from anywhere (East Africa, Haiti) and be about anything (love, immigration, meditation). CHARLES MUDEDE

Quartet for the End of Time (Town Hall) For the latest installment of Town Hall’s TownMusic series, cellist Joshua Roman has scrapped the standard notion of a classical concert. Instead, he’s assembled a compelling program that mixes rock and classical without watering down either genre.

At first glance, the second half of the concert may exert the broadest appeal; Roman and a chamber quartet back up singer, actor, and Stranger Genius Award winner Sarah Rudinoff and John Osebold of “Awesome” in a medley of songs by Radiohead.

Musicians love the odd structures and the let’s-write-a-pocket-symphony ambition that emanates from Radiohead. I do, too. I’m curious to listen for sonic links between Radiohead and the first half of the concert, which begins bravely with music by a living classical composer—Dan Visconti’s Fractured Jams,written in 2006—and one of the most intense chamber works of the 20th century, Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen. Scored for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano, Messiaen (1908–1992) wrote the Quartet in 1941 while imprisoned in POW camp. CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI