Kronos Quartet will make its first tour of the UK in many years, starting with the group's return to the Barbican in May 2016. The program includes Terry Riley’s One Earth, One People, One Love; the world premiere of a new piece by Martin Green of Lau; works by Laurie Anderson and Komitas; and arrangements including The Who’s Baba O’Riley. The evening also features three UK premieres of works by Fodé Lassana Diabaté from Trio da Kali, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Garth Knoxas part of the Kronos Fifty for the Future commissioning project.

Kronos Quartet and Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) will present its second-annual hometown music festival, Kronos Festival 2016: Explorer Series, at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, February 4–7, 2016. The festival features seven concerts over four days connecting area audiences to a wide range of musical voices and traditions from around the world. With virtuoso pipa player Wu Man as its artist-in-residence, the festival includes more than a dozen works, including four world premieres, two US premieres, four West Coast premieres, and two SF premieres.

Kronos Quartet leads a weeklong workshop at Carnegie Hall April 9–15, 2016, open to student and young professional string quartets aged 18–35 to explore new works commissioned as part of Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. The tuition-free workshop culminates in a public performance at Zankel Hall and will also focus on several of Kronos’s signature works. The application deadline is November 17, 2015. Kronos performs at Zankel Hall on April 2. The group performs at the St. Ann's Warehouse opening in Brooklyn this Saturday and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan on Tuesday.

The full line-up for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has been announced, and, as is often the case, featured among the performers are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Punch Brothers, Conor Oberst, and Kronos Quartet. The free, annual outdoor music festival returns for the 15th year to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, in the Hellman Hollow, and will take place October 2–4, 2015.

Congratulations to Kronos Quartet and Nico Muhly, who have been named winners of ECHO Klassik 2015 awards. Kronos Quartet is the winner of the Classics Without Borders award for its 40th anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts, and Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys, recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, has been named Opera Recording of the Year for 20th/21st century music. The ECHO Klassik awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States. This year's awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on October 18 and will be televised on ZDF in Germany.

In honor of groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley’s 80th birthday, Nonesuch Records releases One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley—a five-disc box set of four albums of his work composed for, and performed by, his longtime friends and champions Kronos Quartet—as well as the individual record Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, today (July 10 outside of North America). You can take a quick look inside the box in a new video here. "All of the pieces," says the Independent, "are, typically, timeless." Kronos continues the celebration with its Terry Riley Festival this weekend at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco.

In honor of groundbreaking American composer Terry Riley’s 80th birthday, Nonesuch Records releases One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley—a five-disc box set of four albums of his work composed for, and performed by, his longtime friends and champions Kronos Quartet—as well as the individual record Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley, on June 23, 2015 (July 10 outside of North America). Riley and Kronos met more than 35 years ago, and since then, the quartet has commissioned 27 works from him, more than from any other composer in the group’s history. Pre-orders include an instant download of the piece G Song, which you can hear here. Kronos Quartet continues its celebration of its friend with the KRONOS PRESENTS: Terry Riley Festival, June 26–28 at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco.

The winners of the Songlines Music Awards 2015 have been announced, and among them are Kronos Quartet, which has won for Cross-Cultural Collaboration of the Year for its 40th anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts, and Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté, who were named Best Group of the Year for their father-son duo kora album, Toumani & Sidiki, released on World Circuit Records.

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2015–16 concert season, the organization's 110th, which will feature performances from artists and works by composers familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Kronos Quartet, Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, Youssou N'Dour, John Adams, Timo Andres, and Jacob Cooper.

The Big Ears Festival 2015, which took place in Knoxville, Tennessee, late last month, was the subject of a feature profile on PBS NewsHour on Friday. The piece looks at how the festival "breaks barriers for open-minded music lovers," not least from performers like this year's artists in residence, Kronos Quartet, and their fellow Nonesuch artists to perform at Big Ears, Rhiannon Giddens, Laurie Anderson, Sam Amidon, and Tyondai Braxton. Kronos's David Harrington and Giddens talk with NewsHour about this idea and how it manifest itself in their own music. You can watch the piece here.

The 2015 Big Ears Festival takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, this weekend including performances from artists-in-residence Kronos Quartet, Laurie Anderson, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, and Tyondai Braxton. Big Ears is held in venues throughout downtown Knoxville. Click here for a schedule of the Nonesuch artists' events at this weekend's festival. 

Robert Plant, Kronos Quartet, and Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté have been nominated for Songlines Music Awards. Plant’s label debut, lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar, and Kronos Quartet's 40th-anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts are nominated for Cross-Cultural Collaboration of the Year. Kora master Toumani Diabaté and his son Sidiki are up for Best Group of the Year for their album Toumani & Sidiki. All of these albums were included among Songlines' Best Albums of 2014. Songlines will release a compilation album featuring all nominated artists. Winners will be announced on May 1.