MONO, HOLLY HUNT
(Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell) As listeners, we rarely get to witness a band reach a stylistic fork in its musical road. Usually, those moments—those processes, those artistic shifts—happen away from the public eye between albums and tours. Details and decisions are left to the imagination, built around whatever the band chooses to share publicly when it's time to hype the work. But when Japanese post-rock veterans Mono released two distinct albums last fall, it seemed to provide a clear peek at their own fork. The Last Dawn continues the band's decade-plus arc of packing post-rock songs with epic crescendos and orchestral embellishments; the results are beautiful, if not exactly cutting-edge. Rays of Darkness, however, finds Mono ditching the strings, cranking up the distortion, and adding black-metal howls to the mix. Rays is darker and noisier and more interesting than its companion—here's hoping Mono follows that path going forward, at least for a while. BEN SALMON

THE GENIUS OF BRAHMS
(PSU Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park) Johannes Brahms does not hold the keys to my heart the way other composers do, and yet I am recommending this all-Brahms extravaganza without reservation for one simple reason: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. An indefatigable fiddler with decades of stage cred under her (no doubt bedazzled) belt, Salerno-Sonnenberg is a rare performer instantly able to captivate whatever audience is in front of her with whatever music happens to be on the program. For this gig at PSU (the second of two nights), she tackles a Sonata for Piano and Violin that Brahms wrote in 1886 while on vaykay in the Swiss mountainside, which might explain the radiantly buoyant mood sustained throughout. The classical taplist also features the powerhouse Piano Quartet No. 2 and a super-fly collection of Hungarian dances performed by four hands on one piano. With this evening's concert, the folks at Chamber Music Northwest kick off their impressive month-long festival, so a brilliant opportunity to elevate several of your summer nights is officially under way. BRIAN HORAY