Kronos Quartet kicked off the fourth-annual MusicNow Festival last night with its first of two MusicNow performances at Cincinnati's Memorial Hall; the group performs again tonight with a program of music from Africa, Mexico, India, Greece, and the Middle East. Toumani Diabaté, who was scheduled to appear as well, has had to cancel due to an illness. The festival's organizers report that they are working to reschedule his performance for another day.

Kronos Quartet and Toumani Diabaté are set to headline the fourth-annual MusicNow festival in downtown Cincinnati's Memorial Hall, which runs tonight and tomorrow night. The festival is curated by Cincinnati native Bryce Dessner, of The National. For tonight's concert, Kronos will perform two new pieces commissioned for the festival, including one by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry; opening are The Books. Tomorrow night, the Quartet will open the show with music from across the globe, before Diabaté takes the stage with songs from The Mandé Variations.

John Adams has been named the first-ever Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, beginning next season, the orchestra's first with Music Director Designate Gustavo Dudamel. "John’s work, vision and big knowledge of all music, especially new music, is so deep," says Dudamel. The 2009/10 season gets under way with an Opening Night Gala concert, pairing Mahler's First Symphony with the world premiere of Adams's City Noir. As Creative Chair, the composer curates the West Coast: Left Coast festival, beginning late November, with a residency by Kronos Quartet; a new work by Thomas Newman; a jazz trio with Joshua Redman; and concerts led by Adams.

Kronos Quartet has been named the sole Perspectives artist in Carnegie Hall 2009/10 concert season. Perspectives: Kronos Quartet will feature five concerts over the course of the season, and the Quartet will lead a Professional Training Workshop through The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. Kronos has also been made the ensemble-in-residency for next season's West Coast: Left Coast festival at Disney Hall, curated by John Adams as the LA Philharmonic's first creative director. This season, Kronos has been added to the roster for the MusicNOW festival, premiering a piece by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry.

Kronos Quartet is in Paris to help launch the International Year of Astronomy, organized by UNESCO. The year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first astronomical observations with a telescope. Opening ceremonies were held this morning, and conference events continue through Friday. In the closing ceremony, Kronos will give the French premiere of Terry Riley's Sun Rings, which features celestial sounds captured by plasma wave receivers and images from NASA's archives.

Since the last Nonesuch Journal entry of 2008, which laid out scores of year-end best-of lists featuring Nonesuch albums and artists, still more critical praise has come in placing this music among the year's best.

Kronos Quartet's performance in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Friday night featured a number of first performances: three New York premieres, including that of Glenn Kotche's Anomaly, and three world premieres. Also on the program was the piece that first launched the group in 1973: George Crumb's Black Angels. The New York Times says, for Kronos, it was "a springboard for an extraordinary career of boundary-breaking discovery and innovation." Friday night's "vivid, powerfully realized staging" added still more to the power of the piece, at one point eliciting "a collective gasp" from the audience.

The Grammy nominations are in, and a big congratulations goes out to the many Nonesuch artists whose work has been recognized by the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards. Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Brad Mehldau, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Toumani Diabaté, Youssou N'Dour, Stephen Sondheim, Jonny Greenwood, and Isabel Bayrakdarian were all recognized for their recent Nonesuch releases, as were producers Danger Mouse and Judith Sherman for their work on Nonesuch albums this year.

John Adams's A Flowering Tree and Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic have been named among NPR's Top 10 classical CDs of 2008, the latter a seamless blend of Eastern and Western influences, the former demonstrating the power of Adams's "imaginative musical language." Audiophile Audition gives A Flowering Tree five stars and exclaims: "John Adams has produced a masterwork." With this "shimmering soundscape," Adams has written "some of the most purely gorgeous music of recent years," all captured on this "beautifully recorded" album. "Most strongly recommended!"

Kronos Quartet joined legendary Azerbaijani singer Alim Qasimov and his ensemble at London's Barbican this past Friday for the center's annual Ramadan Nights celebration of Sufi music. The Guardian says the pairing produced an "outstanding" concert from the "intriguing collaboration" between Qasimov, "certainly one of the most thrilling, unashamedly emotional performers on the planet," and the Quartet, which showed "daring" and "range with a virtuoso set."

Kronos Quartet is in London this weekend for what promises to be a whirlwind of events at the Barbican: both its Open Weekend and Ramadan Nights, its annual festival of Muslim music. Kicking things off, Kronos performs tonight with the man who has been called Azerbaijan's greatest singer, Alim Qasimov, and his ensemble, including his daughter, Fergana. The Times (UK) calls the power of their vocals "devastating" and quotes Kronos's David Harrington as placing Alim Qasimov "up there in the top five of all time" among the world's greatest singers.

Glenn Kotche joins Kronos Quartet at the Ravinia Festival's Martin Theatre in Highland Park Wednesday night for the Chicago premiere of Anomaly, a piece he wrote for the Quartet. Also included on the program from Kronos are a number of Chicago premieres, including that of John Adams's Fellow Traveler. The Chicago Sun-Times recommends the event, calling the Kotche-Kronos pairing "a collaboration waiting to happen," given the group's ever-adventurous search for new works outside the typical string-quartet mold and the drummer's own diverse musical interests.