Journal
- Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Rhiannon Giddens reunites with her former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Justin Robinson on What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, due April 18. Produced by Giddens and Joseph "joebass" DeJarnette, the album features Giddens on banjo and Robinson on fiddle, playing eighteen of their favorite North Carolina tunes. Many were learned from their late mentor, legendary North Carolina Piedmont musician Joe Thompson; one is from another musical hero, the late Etta Baker. Giddens and Robinson recorded outdoors at Thompson’s and Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House, accompanied by the sounds of nature, including two different broods of cicadas, which had not emerged simultaneously since 1803, creating a true once-in-a-lifetime soundscape. A video of “Hook and Line,” a traditional tune from Joe Thompson’s repertoire and filmed at his home in Mebane, NC, may be seen here. The duo, along with four other string musicians, embarks on Rhiannon Giddens & The Old-Time Revue Tour April 25.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, Video
- Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Yasmin Williams stopped by Acoustic Guitar to perform songs from her new album, Acadia, and more and to discuss the album. You can watch the session here. "Yasmin Williams is known for extending the boundaries of solo fingerstyle guitar, with progressive techniques and original compositions that blossom out of traditional folk and roots touchstones," writes Acoustic Guitar's Joey Lusterman. "On her latest record, Acadia, she expands her distinctive sound world even further." Williams kicks off a US tour later this month.
Journal Topics: Artist News, VideoFriday, January 17, 2025Julia Bullock sings in San Francisco, where a new John Adams piano concerto is premiered. Jeremy Denk performs at Union College. Gabriel Kahane goes solo at Michigan State. Brad Mehldau sits in with Al Foster in NYC.
Journal Topics: On Tour, Weekend EventsMonday, January 13, 2025Congratulations to composer and pianist Timo Andres on receiving the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Elise L. Stoeger Prize—a $25,000 cash prize, awarded biennially by CMS to recognize significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition. Andres says: “I feel equally challenged and freed to take risks when I write chamber music, and writing it, I’ve learned the most about becoming a better composer and musician. To be recognized in this medium by one of its greatest institutional standard-bearers is a huge and unexpected honor.”
Journal Topics: Artist NewsFriday, January 10, 2025Across NYC this weekend, Makaya McCraven continues his Winter Jazzfest artist residency with three shows, Mary Halvorson continues her residency at The Stone, Punch Brothers kick off season two of The Energy Curfew Music Hour at Minetta Lane Theatre, and Rachael & Vilray perform at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Also in the US, Hurray for the Riff Raff's Austin City Limits set airs on PBS, and Gabriel Kahane is in Orlando. Across the Atlantic, Julia Bullock sings at Saffron Hall in UK.
Journal Topics: On Tour, Weekend EventsWednesday, January 8, 2025David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, is due April 4. Performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, conducted by André de Ridder, the album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells. Longstreth says that while Song of the Earth—his biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music—"is not a ‘climate change opera,’” he wanted to “find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humor, rage.”
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, VideoTuesday, January 7, 2025Composer Steve Reich talks about creating his 1970–71 piece Drumming—which the Village Voice hailed as “the most important work of the whole minimalist music movement"—in a new video from his publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Steve Reich and Musicians gave the world premiere performance of Drumming at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in December 1971. Their 1987 Nonesuch recording is included in the forthcoming Steve Reich Collected Works, a twenty-seven disc box set, due March 14.
Journal Topics: Artist News, VideoTuesday, January 7, 2025Legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint (1938–2015) is featured on a new stamp from the US Postal Service, available January 30—the forty-eighth in its Black Heritage stamp series. Ethel Kessler, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp using a photograph by Bill Thompkins. A free first-day-of-issue event will be held at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center in New Orleans.
Journal Topics: Artist NewsThursday, December 19, 2024As 2024 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time for a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year—our 60th anniversary year. Here, in words and music, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude.
Journal Topics: Artist NewsWednesday, December 18, 2024We've cracked open a copy of the upcoming nine-LP, four-CD deluxe edition of Wilco's A Ghost Is Born, due February 7, in a new unboxing video. Take a look inside here.
Journal Topics: Artist News, VideoWednesday, December 18, 2024Happy holidays! To add some merry to the mix, we've got Nonesuch for the Holidays, a playlist of holiday tunes both classic and soon-to-be-so from The Staves, Rachael & Vilray, Chris Thile, The Magnetic Fields, David Byrne, Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Joachim Cooder, Mountain Man, John Adams, Julia Bullock, Boston Camerata, The Nutcracker, and more. You can hear it here.
Journal Topics: Artist NewsTuesday, December 17, 2024Classical singer Julia Bullock, who performs in John Adams's El Niño with Davóne Tines and AMOC at NYC's Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine this Thursday, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. She chose recordings by the Gipsy Kings, k.d. lang, Jan DeGaetani, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Dawn Upshaw, Sanford Sylvan, Caetano Veloso, and John Adams.
Journal Topics: Artist News, Nonesuch Selects, VideoFriday, December 13, 2024Cécile McLorin Salvant, Sullivan Fortner perform at Carnegie Hall and University of Iowa. Mary Halvorson, Tomas Fujiwara play free at The Whitney Museum in NYC. John Adams, Steve Reich are performed in Paris. Emmylou Harris is in Washington, DC. Yasmin Williams tours California.
Journal Topics: On Tour, Weekend Events