Bill Frisell's latest Nonesuch release, Disfarmer, features music inspired by the haunting black-and-white images of the late American photographer Michael Disfarmer. The Houston Chronicle gives it a perfect four stars, calling it "a particularly beautiful suite of music. Frisell's pacing is magnificent, and the album sweeps along with purpose like a gorgeous, spacious epic. It is full of sounds that suggest settings and characters, including the mysterious eccentric who inspired the recording." All About Jazz praises "the effortless interaction and instrumental acumen of its participants ... Frisell's quartet proves capable of empathic exploration throughout."

The Low Anthem stays close to home in Rhode Island this weekend to play the state's most famous musical gathering, the Newport Folk Festival, in its 50th year. NPR has series of features on the festival and will be broadcasting from Newport all weekend long. Ben Knox Miller tells the band's hometown paper, the Providence Journal, that of all the summer festivals the band finds itself playing, Newport is "the one I’m probably most looking forward to."

To mark the release of Shawn Colvin's new Live album earlier this summer, Nonesuch Records teamed up with Martin Guitar to give away a brand-new X-Series guitar, signed by Shawn. The winner: Ms. Megan Crotty, who says of her connection with Shawn's music, "It was love at first listen. I love her unique voice. That, combined with the music and lyrics makes her one of my favorites." Three runners-up were awarded a signed copy of the new Live CD.

Youssou N'Dour spoke with Al Jazeera about the many facet of his life and career, as musician, actor, activist, and UNICEF ambassador. The interview looks at his latest efforts, to combat malaria in Africa through the distribution of mosquito nets, and using the power of his music to spread that message and the one in Egypt, his 2004 album dedicated to Sufi Islam. I Bring What I Love, the film that documents the making of that album, opens in six more cities today.

Steve Reich was born in New York, raised there and California, and has spent much of his life in the City. He has also been spending time in Vermont for more than three decades. Vermont Public Radio spoke with the composer about his career and how the quiet of Vermont has influenced his writing. He was in Massachusetts this weekend for MASS MoCA's Bang on a Can Festival, which culminated in a performance of Music for 18 Musicians. Says the Boston Globe: "Reich’s towering 1976 epic rang out like a renewed statement of purpose: a postmodern hoedown of joyfully interlocking parts."

Musicologist-conductor-pianist Joshua Rifkin’s The Baroque Beatles Book, featuring Baroque-era arrangements of the Fab Four’s Top 40 hits, was among the earliest releases on the then year-old Nonesuch label in 1965 and remained a cult favorite in the catalog over the decades. Now, for the first time, it has been reissued on CD, and, all these years later, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "It’s still a lot of fun ... Give it a listen."

Christina Courtin, whose self-titled Nonesuch debut was released last month, recently spoke with Blurt magazine about the album and her many musical inspirations, from the classical music she studied at Juilliard to classic pop and rock. Altsounds says she's "one of a kind" and "would have fitted in perfectly in the New York Jazz scene of the thirties and forties," suggesting that "she could have easily shared the stage with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald."

David Drew, the British writer, editor, recording producer, and music publisher, has died at the age of 78. As a board member and the head of the contemporary music department at Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers, Drew was instrumental in developing the relationship between Nonesuch and Polish composer Henryk Górecki, a close friend of his, and was involved in the now-famous Nonesuch recording of Górecki's Third Symphony, for which he wrote the liner note. Nonesuch President Bob Hurwitz shares a page from his personal diary on the day of the recording session.

Wilco has made the NPR listeners' list, both for Best Album, Wilco (the album), and twice again for Best Song with "Wilco (the song)" and "One Wing." "One thing was clear," says Bob Boilen, host of NPR's All Songs Considered, "that 2009 has been one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory." Fresh on the heels of their successful summer tour of the US, the band has announced a number of new dates in the country for this October.

Bill Frisell's new album, Disfarmer, which sets to music the haunting, mid-century photo portraits of the late Arkansas photographer Michael Disfarmer, is "extraordinary" and "an absolutely beguiling listen," says the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The effect is like sifting through old photographs with black-and-white imagery that convey all manner of figurative color upon each viewing." 100 Greatest Jazz Albums calls the album "evocative in terms that are all its own ... an outstanding further chapter in Bill Frisell's growth as a major American artist in his own right."

Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica's latest Nonesuch release, a two-disc recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos, is out now. The Times (UK) gives it a perfect five stars, writing of Kremer: "His musical intelligence is so probing, his touch so light, his tone so bird-like, that I feel I’m hearing these five concertos for the first time ... His mind is as quicksilver as Mozart’s pen, excitedly darting from phrase to phrase in an intoxicating journey of discovery." The San Jose Mercury News says, "While listening, the world is right."

John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony, an all-instrumental work based on his 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic, is out now. Conductor David Robertson leads the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in first recordings of both Doctor Atomic Symphony and 2001's Guide to Strange Places. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls it "a pair of brilliant performances." The Guardian says the title piece has "captured in furious brass explosions and Adams's vivid orchestration," and the album "rewards repeated listening."