David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, 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, is out now. 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. “Heroic in its scope and shifting moods,” exclaims Mojo in a four-star review. The New Yorker calls it “an album that captures the beauty, and the peril, of nature." And Pitchfork named it one of the 50 Most Anticipated Albums of Spring 2025.

Laurie Anderson is at Rewire Festival in The Hague. Mary Halvorson is in Germany and Switzerland. Emmylou Harris celebrates Guy Clark in Evanston and Milwaukee. Gabriel Kahane joins Oregon Symphony members in Portland; Ringdown plays nearby. Brad Mehldau is at SFJAZZ with Christian McBride, Marcus Gilmore. Mandy Patinkin is in upstate New York. Cécile McLorin Salvant performs in New Jersey. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway join Brooks & Dunn in Illinois.

Little Island in NYC announced its 2025 summer season, including performances by Davóne Tines in The Gospel at Colonus, Laurie Anderson and Sam Amidon in an Arthur Russell marathon curated by Thomas Bartlett, Amidon leading a shape-note singalong, Jeremy Denk with Conor Hanick, and Ringdown in a collaboration with choreographers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, plus several concerts curated by Cécile McLorin Salvant.

Rhiannon Giddens has joined with music writer Kristina R. Gaddy to create the songbook Go Back and Fetch It: Recovering Early Black Music in the Americas for Fiddle and Banjo, due in September 2025 from UNC Press. Presenting music from 1687 through the 1850s in modern treble clef and banjo tablature, along with the stories behind each song, Gaddy and Giddens take readers on a journey from the Caribbean across the Americas.

The Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN—which kicked off with a set by Jeff Parker and his Tortoise bandmates and a solo set from Ambrose Akinmusire—continues with performances by Parker, Akinmusire, Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly, Mary Halvorson, and others. Kronos Quartet is at Carnegie Hall in NYC and Zellerbach Theatre in Philadelphia. Brad Mehldau is with Ian Bostridge at Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway tour with Brooks & Dunn in Charlotte and Charlottesville.

The band Tortoise has shared its first new music since 2016 today: the digital single “Oganesson,” in anticipation of a larger body of work to be released soon via International Anthem & Nonesuch Records (details TBA). The track was released just as the band performs both new music and classics from their thirty-year catalog at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Classical singer Julia Bullock and pianist/conductor Christian Reif stopped by the NPR offices in Washington, DC, to perform a Tiny Desk Concert. "These songs refract love in various tints, and further illustrate why Bullock is one of today's most discerning and expressive singers," says NPR's Tom Huizenga. "If you want to know how to program and deliver a vocal recital, this is your masterclass." As on her 2022 debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, which won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, the set features a wide range of music, in this case everything from a 17th-century lament by Barbara Strozzi to two songs by Connie Converse, whose work she sings on the album as well. You can watch it here.

Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson have shared “Going to Raleigh” from their upcoming album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow. Originally released in 1939 by western North Carolina string band The Carolina Playboys, this version (learned by Robinson from Evelyn Shaw) was recorded at the historic former plantation Mill Prong House & Preservation in Red Springs, NC, where they filmed a video as well. You can watch it here.

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra), who just closed out a US tour as special guest of Bright Eyes, will join Ani DiFranco on tour for two weeks late this summer. The shows start in Deerfield, MA, on August 27 and continue in upstate New York, Vermont, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Segarra has also added new dates to their previously announced spring and summer headlining tour, with second shows in San Francisco and Chicago and new stops in Healdsburg, Louisville, and St. Louis, all ahead of fall dates with The Head and the Heart. 

Chris Thile, who recently announced a solo US tour in October, has just announced a solo tour of Europe in November. The shows start in Schiltigheim, France, with stops in Rome, Milan, Paris, Chalon-sur-Saône, Montbéliard, London, Bristol, Manchester, Dublin, and Barcelona.

David Longstreth hosts three listening parties / performances of music from Song of the Earth, his upcoming album with Dirty Projectors and s t a r g a z e, at Public Records in Brooklyn. Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is performed in NYC. Jeremy Denk plays Bach in Worcester. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly bring MESTIZX to Chicago. Emmylou Harris headlines LA Folk Festival. Hurray for the Riff Raff concludes tour with Bright Eyes in Kansas City and St. Louis. Nathalie Joachim performs Ki moun ou ye at University of Notre Dame. Gabriel Kahane joins Orchestre National de Lyon to perform from Book of Travelers. Kronos Quartet is in Richmond. Mandy Patinkin is in Palm Desert. Yasmin Williams tours Colorado.

"Bank On," a new song with Portraits of Tracy, from the album Song of the Earth, David Longstreth’s song cycle for orchestra and voices he performs with his band Dirty Projectors and the chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, is out now, along with a lyric video you can watch here. "Bank On" features a vocal solo from Felicia Douglass, a Longstreth verse inspired by Songs in The Key of Life (but with harpsichord), a signature Dirty Projectors female-harmony chorus, and a thundering Mahler-esque brass fanfare.