The singer Mariam Doumbia and her husband, the guitarist/vocalist Amadou Bagayoko, have been making music together since they first met and fell in love at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali’s capital, three decades ago. They now perform to crowds of thousands (often tens of thousands) in cities worldwide. Three years in the making, Amadou & Mariam’s new album, Welcome to Mali, has been released in the UK and is being embraced as enthusiastically as its predecessor, the Grammy-nominated Dimanche à Bamako. Because Music / Nonesuch Records releases Welcome to Mali in the US on March 24, 2009.

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce that singer/songwriter/guitarist Dan Auerbach, best known as half of The Black Keys, will release his solo debut, Keep It Hid, on February 10, 2009. Dan will begin a national tour with performances in New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC, with opening acts Those Darlins and Hacienda, the latter also lending support as Auerbach’s backing band.

Rokia Traoré's latest Nonesuch album, Tchamantché is due to hit stores in the US come January. It was released earlier this year in the UK to rave reviews. The Independent calls it her best yet and recommends her set this Wednesday at London's Jazz Café as a "show you shouldn't miss." The album earned a perfect five stars from The Guardian, which called it "an intriguing, sophisticated and often intimate set that is quite unlike any of the other great music Mali has produced." The Times gives the album four stars, exclaiming that with it, "the breadth of her artistic vision has emerged fully formed in her music." The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, and The Evening Standard all give Tchamantché four stars as well, and The Daily Telegraph named it Pop CD of the week upon its release.

Saxophonist Joshua Redman’s 2007 album Back East was his first recording as the leader of an acoustic sax/bass/drums trio. The seminal 1957 Way Out West by his hero Sonny Rollins provided a conceptual impetus for Redman’s album. Among other accolades, the New York Times called Back East, “the most agile and personal record of his career.” Going one step further on concepts from that album, Redman entered the studio with four friends and colleagues—Brian Blade (drums), Larry Grenadier (bass), Gregory Hutchinson (drums), and Reuben Rogers (bass)—who, with Redman, became a rotating, and intertwining, pair of trios. Together they recorded what became Redman’s new Nonesuch album, Compass, which will be released on January 13, 2009.

Today marks the release of the two-CD set Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, capturing the unforgettable concert event from the legendary Cuban musicians at the esteemed venue a decade ago. To celebrate the release, Ry Cooder stops by WNYC's Soundcheck this afternoon. The Sunday Times (UK) says there's "a poignant air to this recording" of "what was clearly a night of overwhelming emotion ... [T]his was one of those once-in-a-lifetime evenings when the collective spirit of old Havana carried all before it." Nonesuch offers those in the New York City area a rare opportunity to catch the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary about the group, projected onto the big screen at Lincoln Center.

John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.

Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, released last week on high-grade vinyl and set for release as a double CD next Tuesday, is featured on the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered. The show's host, Bob Boilen, introduces "Silencio," the touching duet between Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, by saying of the entire set: "What I love about this music is how gently it all hangs together. It's both relaxed and precise at the same time."

Tonight at the 92nd Street Y in New York City: The Composer's Voice: John Adams. John Adams will talk with Juilliard dean Ara Guzelimian about his career; his opera Doctor Atomic, which receives its New York premiere at the Met next week; and his new memoir, Hallelujah Junction, just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The program also features "musical illustrations" by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, baritone Jordan Shanahan, and pianist Linda Hall.

The Glass Box, the 10-CD Nonesuch retrospective covering 40 years of the works of Philip Glass, hits stores today, just one day after the New York City Opera announced that it has commissioned the composer to create a new opera on the life of another iconic American figure, Walt Disney. The new work for City Opera will be Glass's 24th opera and will honor his 75th birthday when it premieres in 2012–2013. In the nearer future, City Opera has scheduled Glass's Einstein on the Beach for 2009–2010; it will be the company's first production in its newly refurbished home at Lincoln Center.

Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile released their debut duo album on Nonesuch this week, as well as a deluxe version of the recording with a DVD of performance videos and a behind-the-scenes look at their collaborative process. Tonight, in Boulder, Colorado, they launch a month-long tour that will come to a close at Carnegie Hall. Northern Colorado's Longmont Times-Call speaks with Thile about working with his hero and concludes that tonight's audience is in for "a shot at transcendence."

Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile's self-titled debut duo album is due out tomorrow, and their month-long tour of the States in support of the record kicks off Thursday in Boulder, Colorado. New York Times critic Nate Chinen writes that, though "the mandolin ace" and "the accomplished bassist" first came together almost a decade ago as "prodigy with his mentor," the new collection "wisely presents them as equals," featuring "a busy dialogue between bluegrass and classical music, with blinding displays of dexterity as well as stretches of poplike lyricism."

John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, receives its first recording with the Nonesuch release out Tuesday, followed by Hallelujah Junction, a two-CD Adams retrospective and memoirs of the same name. "Adams's sound-world is still expanding," writes The New Statesman. "In this, the composer's seventh decade, his musical fertility still springs anew." Pitchfork gives A Flowering Tree an 8.4, asserting: "There are few living American composers writing works as universal and relevant as John Adams—and that deserves everybody's attention." The Telegraph, in its review of the forthcoming book, declares: "A musician's memoir would probably not be your first choice for light reading, but make an exception for Hallelujah Junction."