Shawn Colvin's new Live album is due out next week. To celebrate, Nonesuch has teamed up with Martin Guitar to offer a brand-new X-Series guitar, signed by Shawn; three runners-up will win a free, signed copy of the CD. All orders of the album in the Nonesuch Store placed by July 21 (including previously placed orders) are registered to win and include, along with the album MP3s, the exclusive bonus download "Another Long One." The Detroit Free Press gives the album four stars, calling it "an intimate, career-spanning solo recording."

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, was released this week. Rolling Stone places it among "the year's best indie records." The Independent calls it "fascinating" and its opening tune "a gorgeous, fragile piece of work." The Guardian concurs, giving the album four stars and stating: "On the beautiful opener, 'Charlie Darwin,' and the startling 'To Ohio, the Low Anthem evoke a hushed, ethereal transcendence similar to the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session. These are magical songs laden with imagery and poignancy." You can hear a live performance of "Ticket Taker" and a chat with the band on the latest New York Times "Music Popcast."

Seya, Oumou Sangare's first album in six years, is out now. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A, citing "grooves limpid enough to dive into" and comparing Sangare to Aretha Franklin, as "a supremely gifted singer who commands R-E-S-P-E-C-T." The Star-Ledger too cites Sangare's "arresting voice ... as strong and lithe as ever," and sees the album as "a series of upbeat, well-produced songs" with melodies that are "something to marvel at."

Nonesuch will release a new recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos by Grammy Award–winning Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica orchestra on July 21. Following their performance of the concertos at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart 2006, the New York Times praised Kremer's "ability to make a work, however familiar, entirely his own, dissimilar in most important details from the way other violinists play it, yet fully within both the spirit and letter of the score.” This two-disc set captures their performance of the five concertos at the Salzburg Festival two days later.

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is out today. The album receives a Paste rating of 90 and is described in the review as "gorgeous chamber folk," another step in "the evolution of folk music ... following the path cleared by Nick Drake and Tim Buckley." Paste concludes: "[T]hese 12 songs are exquisite." The Boston Phoenix hears ties to Tom Waits's Mule Variations in this "excellent" new record, "moving gently among sepia-toned arrangements of pump organs and clarinets and gruff barnyard blues."

Oumou Sangare, the Malian singer/songwriter known as the "Songbird," has released Seya, her first international release in six years. Toronto's Globe and Mail says the album's title, meaning "joy," is certainly reflected in the music, calling it "modern Malian music at its finest: sophisticated, subtle, beautifully produced ... Its cross-rhythms and flowing, hypnotic instrumental lines underpin all she does, and all she does on Seya, whether crooning, chanting, chuckling or singing with majestic power, is excellent."

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is set for release tomorrow. The album's first track, "Charlie Darwin," opens this week's episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. "If you listen to just one song today," insists the show's host, Bob Boilen, "make it this opening track to the new CD by The Low Anthem. It all starts off with a sound that at times feels Gospel and then at the very same time feels agnostic. Those two ideas seem at odds with one another, but then the title of the record's called Oh My God, Charlie Darwin."

Nonesuch releases Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony on July 28, 2009. A purely instrumental work, the piece is drawn from Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic. David Robertson conducts the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra on this recording. Said the New York Times: "[T]he score invites you to hear the music—driving passages with pounding timpani, quizzically restrained lyrical flights, bursts of skittish fanfares—on its own terms, apart from its dramatic context." Also on the album is Adams’ 2001 piece, Guide to Strange Places.

Nonesuch Records and PS Classics are proud to announce the release of the original cast recording of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Road Show—from 2008's Public Theater production featuring Alexander Gemignani and Michael Cerveris—on June 30, 2009. New York magazine described the musical as "a boisterous picaresque about two brothers flimflamming their way from the Yukon to Boca Raton at the turn of the 20th century." Road Show was directed by John Doyle, the score conducted by Mary-Mitchell Campbell and orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, and was produced by Tommy Krasker.

Wilco's new album, Wilco (the album), is due out on Nonesuch in another month, and the critical response has already begun, including, this week, from the band's two hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times gives the album 3.5 stars, asserting that "the band has cemented a reputation as one of the most creative forces in rock today" and concluding that its new songs "stand beside the best that the band has given us." The Tribune calls the band's current members "the most technically accomplished of Wilco’s many lineups ... and Wilco (the album) is a compendium of its best moves."

Kronos Quartet's latest album, Floodplain, is out today. On the album, the Quartet explores vintage pop from Egypt, folk from Azerbaijan, electronica from a Palestinian music collective, and an ambitious piece from Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. The Independent (UK) gives it four stars, calling it "a one-world project handled with suitably welcoming passion and respect." The Oregonian says the evocative metaphor of the album's title is apt for this adventurous group. "Think of Floodplain as creative fertility, as only Kronos can do ... It feels unusually current, even politically current, with music from parts of the world we often only read about. That's what we love about this string quartet: playing that is exploratory, fearless and full of intent."

Wilco (the album) is set for a June 30 release from Nonesuch Records, on CD and a vinyl LP, and is now available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store. The LP is pressed on audiophile-quality, 180-gram vinyl and includes the full album on CD as well. For a sneak peek, visit the band's site, wilcoworld.net, where the complete album is now streaming. American Songwriter says it's well worth checking out: "[W]e’ve heard the record, and we can tell you it’s worth listening to over a pay phone submerged underwater. It’s that good."