The Black Keys' twelfth studio album, Ohio Players—a title inspired by the legendary Dayton, Ohio, funk band of the same name—features several collaborations between band mates Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney with various friends and colleagues, like Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, Beck, Noel Gallagher, Greg Kurstin, and others. “We had this epiphany: ‘We can call our friends to help us make music,’" Carney says. Auerbach adds, “No matter who we work with, it never feels like we're sacrificing who we are. It only feels like it adds some special flavor ... But when it came time to finish the album, it was just Pat and me.”

Cloudward features eight new compositions by guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson she performs with her sextet Amaryllis: Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet). Laurie Anderson is featured on one track. "All the music on Cloudward was written in 2022 … when things started moving forward," Halvorson says. "This band, for me, was quite simply working, both musically and personally, and the main thing I felt while writing the music was optimism."

Grammy-nominated Haitian-American singer and composer Nathalie Joachim's new album, Ki moun ou ye, is due February 16 on Nonesuch / New Amsterdam Records. On the album, Joachim takes listeners through an intimate collection of music that ponders its title’s question: “Who are you?” Inspired by the remote Caribbean farmland that her family continues to call home after seven generations and performed in both English and Haitian Creole, the work examines the richness of one’s voice—an instrument that brings with it DNA, ancestry, and identity—in a vibrant tapestry of Joachim’s voice, and intricately sampled vocal textures underscored by an acoustic instrumental ensemble.

"This is my reaction to being assaulted by information," composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire says of his Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, featuring a trio with two musicians he has long admired, guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley. Uncut exclaims: "This is subtly profound music, full of meditative, focused beauty." "A quiet rush of gorgeous sound where space, tone and beauty come together in one of the most impactful albums of 2023," says DownBeat. "This is one of the most interesting recordings to come along in a very long time by one of the most interesting artists of our time."

The original cast album of Adam Guettel’s Broadway musical Days of Wine and Roses, with a book by Craig Lucas, starring Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James, is now available to stream and download; the CD is due in the spring. This searing musical is based on the 1962 film and original 1958 teleplay of the same name, about a couple falling in love in 1950s New York and struggling against themselves to build their family. “Repeated listenings compound the amazement,” the New York Times says of Guettel’s work, which “has always offered that kind of challenge—initially leaving a feeling of: Beautiful, but wait, I need to hear it again—and those up for it have a way of coming away shining like Moses down from the Mount. The new score has the same effect.”