Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is out now. It features four new compositions by each musician plus one collaboration. The duo, long admirers of each other’s musicianship, began playing together periodically back in 2009. They rehearsed the music on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings in January 2025, just before performing it at the NYC club The Stone; they recorded the album the next day at Sear Sound. “I think it’s partly a shared aesthetic and an ease of communication. I feel comfortable to try whatever,” Halvorson says. Akinmusire concurs, “I think it’s rare to find an improviser that all goes and nothing has to go at all. It’s rare to feel like you don’t have to do anything and you can do anything. And that’s what I love about playing with Mary.”

John Adams’s music is being performed throughout the Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, CA, this weekend. Steve Reich's The Four Sections can be heard free at Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series. Cécile McLorin Salvant has two shows in Massachusetts. Chris Thile plays Bach at Virginia Arts Festival in Norfolk. Yasmin Williams tours California with Crane Wives.

Robert Plant with Saving Grace and Suzi Dian announce Up the Sharp End, September 18–October 15, 2026—a US tour in celebration of their critically acclaimed recent album, Saving Grace. The band, which completed two sold-out US legs last fall and this spring, performs in the Midwest and the West, with stops in Saint Louis, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Chicago, among others; special guest Rosie Flores joins. Artist presales begin Wednesday, June 10 at 10am local time, with general sales beginning Friday, June 12 at 10am local time. 

Malian balafon player Neba Solo and donso n’goni player Benego Diakité have shared a live performance video of "Ba Ngolo," a song from their album A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking, shot in the Bamako garden where the basic tracks for the project were recorded; you can watch it here. The album is the first of a series of releases from Nonesuch and its longtime partner, Nick Gold, former head of World Circuit Records. Co-produced by Gold, Ousmane Haïdara, and Sonny Johns, it was released on Etoile Audio / Nonesuch Records in February.

John Adams is being performed in Germany, UK, Chicago, and Portland, OR, where Steve Reich's music is on the program as well. Timo Andres performs in Banff and is performed in NYC. Emmylou Harris tours South Carolina. Molly Tuttle is in Florida and Nashville.

Cécile McLorin Salvant has shared "Left Over," a new track, written by Salvant, from her upcoming album With Every Breath I Take, due June 26 on Nonesuch. On the album, her first with orchestra, Salvant and Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley perform timeless songs newly arranged by composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue. You can watch a video for “Left Over,” filmed during the recording session, here.

Congratulations to composers Steve Reich, Jonny Greenwood, and Sarah Kirkland Snider on being shortlisted for Germany's Opus Klassik Awards. Reich's Jacob's Ladder / Traveler's Prayer is up for World Premiere Recording of the Year; Greenwood's score to the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another for Film Music/Score of the Year; and Snider's album Forward into Light for New Classic/Neoclassic. 

Congratulations to Cécile McLorin Salvant, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Mary Halvorson, all of whom have won JJA Jazz Awards. Salvant has won Female Vocalist of the Year and, with pianist Sullivan Fortner, Duo of the Year; Akinmusire Trumpeter of the Year; and Halvorson Guitarist of the Year. All three have new albums out this month: Salvant's orchestral album With Every Breath I Take on June 26 and Akinmusire and Halvorson's duo album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings on June 12.

Guitarist/bandleader Jeff Parker has released the Happy Today album-length concert film. It was captured by director Charlie Weinmann at the 2025 performance at Los Angeles’s Lodge Room that became Happy Today, the acclaimed third album from Parker’s long-running ETA IVtet—drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, saxophonist Josh Johnson. You can watch it here.

Ambrose Akinmusire is in residence at NYC's Village Vanguard. John Adams’s music is performed across Germany. Laurie Anderson is in Milan and Lisbon. Flea closes out European tour in Paris. Punch Brothers are in Tennessee and Georgia. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Oxford. Molly Tuttle joins Little Feat in New Haven and upstate NY. Yasmin Williams tours the Carolinas.

Chris Thile has been named the Music Director for the 81st Ojai Music Festival, to be held June 10–13, 2027. Thile will be making his first Ojai Festival appearance, as will Cécile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner, who are working with him to develop a new version of Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, receiving its world premiere there. Caroline Shaw, whose work was featured during four prior Festivals, will be in residence as composer and performer. "Ojai programs are surprising, revelatory, and affirming of the creative vitality of today’s most talented and searching artists," says Artistic and Executive Director Designate Teddy Abrams. "The 2027 Festival offers this exceptional platform to one of the greatest musical minds I know: Chris Thile is transcendent in the broadest sense, defying genre and reframing the mandolin itself."

Cécile McLorin Salvant has released the video for the title track to her upcoming debut orchestral album, With Every Breath I Take. The video captures the recording of the song, written by Cy Coleman and David Zippel and arranged by Darcy James Argue, with The Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley in December 2025, filmed by Ward Brandsma, plus footage of Salvant by Ebru Yildiz. You can watch it here.