Dan Auerbach's forthcoming solo debut album, Keep It Hid, is featured in the latest episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. The show's host, Bob Boilen, explains that, though it's been a while since he's been a fan of electric guitar–based blues, other than Led Zeppelin, "I may change my mind after hearing a new record by Dan Auerbach." Keep It Hid, says Boilen, has "a good variety of songs that are tinged by psychedelia, at times a bit of gospel, country, and blues."

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce the release of The Bright Mississippi, Allen Toussaint’s first solo album in more than a decade, on April 21, 2009. Produced by friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, the record includes songs by jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton, Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn. Toussaint and Henry created a band of highly regarded musicians for the sessions: clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, and percussionist Jay Bellerose; Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman each join Toussaint for a track as well.

Revolutionary Road has been nominated for four Golden Globe awards. The Sam Mendes–directed film adaptation of the landmark novel by Richard Yates is up for Best Motion Picture, Drama; Best Director for Mendes; Best Actor, Drama, Leonardo DiCaprio; and Best Actress, Drama, Kate Winslet. Nonesuch will release the film's soundtrack on December 23, with original music by Thomas Newman, plus three songs from the film’s era by The Ravens, The Orioles, and The Ink Spots. Also nominated for a Golden Globe, for Best Motion Picture Made for Television, is A Raisin in the Sun, starring Audra McDonald, Sean Combs, and Phylicia Rashad.

To celebrate Elliott Carter’s 100th birthday, Nonesuch will release Elliott Carter: A Nonesuch Retrospective, a four-disc set, in February 2009. The discs include most of the recordings Nonesuch made of Carter’s music between 1968 and 1985, with performances by such acclaimed musicians as Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish, the Composers Quartet, Jan DeGaetani, Fred Sherry, Arthur Weisberg, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine; plus a 58-page booklet with photos, score examples, texts, an essay by Paul Griffiths, and tributes by musicians and composers.

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.