“In many ways, John Adams is the quintessential California composer,” Nadia Sirota writes in the introduction to Adams’ audio interview with the California Festival, a statewide initiative showcasing contemporary classical music, including live performances at venues across the state over the past three weeks. Adams, a resident of Northern California since moving there from New England in 1971, talks about his early days in the area and the inspiration behind some of his most influential early works, like Christian Zeal and Activity, Phrygian Gates, Shaker Loops, and Harmonielehre. You can hear what he has to say here.

Natalie Merchant was on Radio Popolare in Milan to discuss her new album, Keep Your Courage, and more and perform the title track to her 2001 album, Motherland, live in the studio. The session comes ahead of the close of Merchant's European tour and her first shows in Italy in over 20 years, in Milan and Chiara this weekend. You can hear the conversation and performance here. Merchant will return to Italy to host a new workshop at Fondazione Prada’s Accademia dei bambini in Milan on January 28.

“Rhiannon Giddens added to her impressive list of accomplishments earlier this year when the Grammy winner and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant recipient won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music as co-composer of the opera Omar,” Kallao says of his guest on NPR’s World Cafe. “The highly decorated singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, composer, and author is relentlessly busy, so we are thrilled to talk to her about her new album, You’re the One.” You can hear their conversation and a live performance of songs from the Grammy-nominated new album and from earlier albums Freedom Highway and Tomorrow Is My Turn here.

The Staves’ new album, All Now, produced by John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen), is due March 22, marking their debut album as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, after their sister Emily’s departure. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” Jess says of the period after the February 2021 release of their album Good Woman, as the band—like everyone—was forced to sit with their thoughts. Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.

Yussef Dayes, who begins a US tour in Brooklyn on Thursday, has shared a live-performance video filmed in the Malibu mountains, backed by a hazy, golden-hour sunset. He and longtime collaborators Rocco Palladino, Venna, Elijah Fox, and Alexander Bourt perform thirty minutes of music from his critically lauded debut album Black Classical Music and more. You can watch it here, along with a performance of the album's title track on BBC Two’s Later… With Jools Holland from Friday.

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs 12th-century trobairitz (female troubadour) Almucs de Castelneau's "Dame Iseut," from her Grammy-nominated new album, Mélusine, accompanied by Sullivan Fortner on harpsichord and Keita Ogawa on percussion, in the Unicorn Tapestries Room at The Met Cloisters in a new video out now as part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s performance series, MetLiveArts. This is the third of three performances Salvant filmed in the Met’s Unicorn Tapestry galleries of songs from the album. You can watch it here.

As part of Kronos: Five Decades, the year-long celebration of Kronos Quartet’s 50th anniversary, the group is publishing five decade-spanning playlists curated by its founder and violinist David Harrington. The latest, featuring music Kronos performed in its second decade, 1983–1992, is out now. It includes works the quartet recorded on Nonesuch by Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Philip Glass, John Zorn, Henryk Górecki, Kevin Volans, Thomas Tallis, Astor Piazzolla, Jack Body, Terry Riley, and Arvo Pärt. You can hear it on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube here.

Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch nominees for the 66th Grammy Awards: the premiere recording of Thomas Adès's Dante, performed by LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, for Best Orchestral Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and the album's producer, Dmitriy Lipay, for Producer of the Year, Classical; Darcy James Argue's Secret Society for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for Dynamic Maximum Tension; Julia Bullock for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for Walking in the Dark; Rhiannon Giddens for Best Americana Album for You're the One and Best American Roots Performance for the album track "You Louisiana Man"; Cécile McLorin Salvant for Best Jazz Vocal Album for Mélusine and Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals for the album track "Fenestra," arranged by Godwin Louis; Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway for Best Bluegrass Album for City of Gold; and The Blue Hour for Best Engineered Album, Classical.

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra)'s new album, The Past Is Still Alive, is due February 23 on Nonesuch. Segarra created the album during a period of personal grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury. They use their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, and to honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. Though made in North Carolina by the Bronx-born, New Orleans-based Segarra and produced by Brad Cook, the record brings listeners to places far beyond, evoking vivid experiences of small shops and buffalo stampedes in Santa Fe, childhood road trips and Florida storms, struggles of addiction in the Lower East Side, and days-long journeys to outrun the cops in Nebraska. Hurray for the Riff Raff will lead a headline tour of the US and Europe from February through May.

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs Michel Lambert’s 1660 air de cour “D'un feu secret,” from her new album, Mélusine, accompanied by Dušan Balarin on theorbo (a type of French lute) and Sullivan Fortner on harpsichord, in the Unicorn Tapestries Room at The Met Cloisters in a new video out now as part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s performance series, MetLiveArts. This is the second of three performances Salvant filmed in the Met’s Unicorn Tapestry galleries of songs from the album, following the title track last week and ahead of “Dame Iseut” next week. You can watch “D'un feu secret” here.

Rhiannon Giddens’s second book, We Could Fly, is out now on Candlewick Press. The picture book, a companion to her debut book, Build a House, gives wing to a tale of grace and transcendence, with illustrations by acclaimed artist Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. The new book draws on lyrics from the song “We Could Fly,” which Giddens wrote with Dirk Powell and recorded for her 2017 Nonesuch album, Freedom Highway. It draws on a heritage of African folklore for a dialogue between a mother and daughter, paired with illustrations that celebrate love, resilience, and the spiritual power of the “old-time ways”—tradition and shared cultural memory—to sustain and uplift. You can watch the video here.

“Over its journey, The Big Interview has spoken to musicians, authors, actors, and historians. This week’s guest is all of those things and probably a few others we’ve missed,” Andrew Mueller says of Rhiannon Giddens, his guest on Monocle’s The Big Interview podcast. They talk about her new album, You’re the One, and more of “her remarkable career and mission to highlight the untold stories of people who have contributed to musical history in the US.” You can hear their conversation here.