Concert Previews

For the last 14 years, Eels has been the musical vehicle of E, the stage name of singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett. With a rotating cast of musicians, Everett has released nine studio albums and a slew of live recordings and compilations over the last decade and a half, culminating in a trilogy whose final installment,

Tomorrow Morning,

was released last month. The trilogy's themes of desire, loss, and redemption not only characterize the albums, but Everett's career as a whole. With his raspy, weathered, yet poignant voice, Everett brings a quotidian, empathetic element to every genre he covers - from tender and melancholy balladry to foreboding '60s psych, or aggressive grunge to experimental pop.

- Katherine Silkaitis

Once a genre defined by ringing guitars, college radio, and purposely under-produced recordings, indie rock is now a loose term used to explain everything from Animal Collective to the Arcade Fire. So it seems the perfect time to reintroduce new fans to the original architects. Two decades ago, Pavement, based in Stockton, Calif., and signed by Matador, was king of indie rock, releasing one heralded album after another. The impact still reigns: In March, the band released a greatest-hits compilation,

Quarantine the Past

. More recently, "Gold Soundz," from

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

, was voted by Pitchfork.com as the No. 1 song of the 1990s. In the midst of this celebration has been a reunion tour, which stops by the Mann Center on Friday. Local songwriter and indie torchbearer Kurt Vile opens.

- Michael Pollock

Though she was inspired by Monk and Ellington and studied with Mary Lou Williams, among others, Philadelphia jazz pianist, composer, and educator Sumi Tonooka has long been her own artist with a style that was (and is) as thoroughly mainstream as it is coolly twisted and abstract. The internationally regarded Tonooka has long had a presence in her hometown, playing on records from Bobby Zankel and John Blake. Throughout the '80s alone, you couldn't hit WRTI-FM without hearing an announcement for one of her many solo gigs hot on the heels of albums such as

With an Open Heart.

Her playing style is fluid, dexterous, bluesy, and often pastoral with deeply jolting, even jarring, rhythms. If you ever listened to her work with longtime bassist Rufus Reid and the drumming of Bob Braye, you knew the passionate daring of their interplay. Tonooka's recent album with saxophonist Erica Lindsay,

Initiation

, shares that sense of unbound swinging bliss but with a sultry, smoky set of reeds to guide the proceedings.

- A.D. Amorosi