As 2010 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of 2011, it's time to take a look back and remember all the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists this year. Several of these artists and their 2010 Nonesuch releases were nominated for Grammy Awards; many have made music critics' year-end best lists. Here, in chronological order, is a look back:

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The Magnetic Fields kicked off the year with the January 26 release of Realism, the follow-up and flip-side to the brash noise-pop of their 2008 album Distortion, with no synths, no drum kits, and every instrument unplugged. Singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt calls it "folk," but with its wide range of instrumentation and orchestrated arrangements, says Merritt, "Realism is a more kaleidoscopic approach to a genre.” The BBC called it "absolutely prime Merritt." Back in January, nonesuch.com released a series of video interviews with Merritt and bandmate Claudia Gonson discussing the new album. You can watch them all at nonesuch.com/media.

In other Magnetic Fields news, 2010 also saw the release of Strange Powers, a new film documenting a decade of music-making from Merritt and the band. The film is still playing in theaters across North America. For further details, visit strangepowersfilm.com.

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Another documentary of note, I Bring What I Love, which follows Youssou N'Dour upon the release of his controversial Grammy-winning album, Egypt, made quite as splash at the film festivals around the world. With the film's theatrical release came the soundtrack album on Nonesuch, featuring all-new recordings of music from throughout N’Dour’s career plus two new songs, richly representing the music and message of N’Dour the artist and the humanitarian. Said the Chicago Tribune of the film: “N’Dour’s piercing brilliance as a singer and the irresistible Afro-Caribbean beat of his band’s compositions bring the issues home.” You can watch the trailer for the film at nonesuch.com/media.

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The new year also brought a new invention from the ever forward-thinking Pat Metheny, with the January release and subsequent worldwide tour of Orchestrion. "Ten years into the new century," Metheny said, "it feels like time to try to create something particularly connected to the reality of this unique period in time.” What he’s created, Orchestrion, was an adventurous “solo” recording that paired the composer-guitarist with a phalanx of remarkable, custom-made instruments played via solenoid switches and pneumatics.

The Guardian called Orchestrion his "most ambitious experiment" yet. NPR, naming the album to its list of the Best Jazz of 2010, says Metheny "has turned himself into a one-man band, with fantastic results ... Metheny is technically meticulous, yet organic, as always."

Metheny unveiled his new album and its instruments in a seven-minute film you can watch at nonesuch.com/media.

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February was quite a month for k.d. lang. First came the Nonesuch release of Recollection, the retrospective album celebrating her remarkable 25 years of music making, the deluxe edition of which includes a CD of favorites like "Constant Craving," "Smoke Rings," and k.d.'s take on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"; a disc with tracks that never appeared on k.d. lang albums; one of previously unreleased tracks; and a DVD of music videos and TV appearances. Nonesuch.com featured a montage of highlights from that DVD, which you can watch at nonesuch.com/media.

Just days after the album's release, lang gave what may have been the most memorable performance of her career, when she returned home to Canada to perform "Hallelujah" at the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, wowing billions of television viewers around the world. The Vancouver Sun called it "a stirring, spiritual rendition" of the song "that literally hushed the crowd." You can download this version of the song at iTunes.

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Also in February, the virtuosic, multi-instrumental trio Carolina Chocolate Drops made their Nonesuch debut with the release of Genuine Negro Jig, which the BBC called "magnificent. The band was nominated for an Americana Music Award for Duo or Group of the Year and spent much of the year bringing what the Boston Globe calls its "contagious, abundant joy" to audiences around the world, including at the Cambridge Folk Festival and in their debut performance at the Bonnaroo festival. The band also made unforgettable appearances on NPR's Fresh Air and World Cafe, which you can hear again online at npr.org.

Genuine Negro Jig has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album and has been named among the Best Albums of 2010 by NPR, Paste, fRoots, MOJO, the Sunday Times of London, San Jose Mercury News, and Charlotte Observer, among many others.

You can meet the band and hear about the making of the album in a video at nonesuch.com/media. To download a free track off of Genuine Negro Jig, click here.

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Ali and Toumani, the second and last album pairing kora master Toumani Diabaté and the late guitar virtuoso Ali Farka Touré, was released on World Circuit / Nonesuch Records on February 23. Recorded in 2005, with contributions from Cachaíto López on bass, the album is the successor to the Grammy-winning In the Heart of the Moon and is the last recorded by both Touré and López. Pitchfork called it "uncommonly beautiful." NPR called it "breathtaking."

Ali and Toumani has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album. You can watch performances from the studio recording at nonesuch.com/media and download a free track off the album here.

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In March, Brad Mehldau released Highway Rider, a double-disc of original work that reunited the pianist/composer with producer Jon Brion for the first time since Largo. The album features performances by Mehldau’s trio—drummer Jeff Ballard and bassist Larry Grenadier—as well as drummer Matt Chamberlain, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and a chamber orchestra, with orchestrations by Mehldau. The Guardian called it "the real deal."

All of the featured artists on the album gave the world premiere live performance of Highway Rider at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, followed by the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall, and a tour of Europe, starting at the Barbican in London. The New York Times, reviewing the New York premiere of the piece at Carnegie Hall, called it Mehldau's "grandest effort yet."

The Highway Rider track "Don't Be Sad" made New York Times critic Nate Chinen's list of the year's best songs. The album was included among the best jazz albums of 2010 by the Los Angeles Times and NPR, which says the album "brings together a jazz quintet and a chamber orchestra for a program of modern work unlike anything heard in recent memory."

You can go behind the scenes of the Highway Rider recording sessions at nonesuch.com/media.

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Caetano Veloso released his latest album, zii e zie, on Nonesuch in March, marking the legendary Brazilian singer/songwriter's 25th year with the label. Working with the youthful trio he introduced on 2007’s brash, rock-oriented Cê, Veloso fashioned a set rooted in samba but filtered through rock and funk, with songs that range from the bluntly political to the frankly sexual. The Times of London declared, “The Brazilian master remains in a league of his own.”

Veloso and his young band made a brief tour of the United States following the release of the album, during which Veloso was a guest on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. Veloso, said host Jacki Lyden, "is consistently one of the most literate and beguiling forces in music."

Go behind the music in a series of video about zii e zie at nonesuch.com/media.

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David Byrne, never one to shy away from an intriguing project, joined up with DJ Fatboy Slim for Here Lies Love, a double-disc song cycle exploring the life of Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos. The album features a who’s who of indie rockers, dancefloor divas, and established stars, including Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Natalie Merchant, Kate Pierson, Santigold, and St. Vincent. The Wall Street Journal called it "a fountain of funk and dance music that's entirely accessible."

The Boston Globe included the album on its lists of the year's best, saying "the head Talking Head and the superstar producer/DJ combine disco heat, Latin rhythms, and pop melodies to bring to enchantingly hummable life a pop opera about Imelda Marcos. Seriously."

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Stephen Sondheim celebrated his 80th birthday in March, a momentous milestone that was marked in many ways throughout the year, including the naming of a Broadway theater in his honor; the release of Finishing the Hat, his book of his collected lyrics, which made the New York Times Sunday Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2010; and musical tributes by leading orchestra's in concert hall across the globe, like the New York Philharmonic concert at Lincoln Center that was later televised on PBS's Great Performances.

In April, Nonesuch and PS Classics released the cast recording of the first-ever Broadway revival of Sondheim's acclaimed musical A Little Night Music, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. The San Francisco Chronicle described the play as "an irresistible waltz through some of Sondheim's most memorably melodic songs" and said this "cast album is a treasure." USA Today called the album "the next best thing to seeing Lansbury's divine performance." Zeta-Jones won a Tony Award for her performance. The cast album has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.

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Natalie Merchant, one of the featured singers on Here Lies Love, released her own very special project this year: Leave Your Sleep, her first studio recording in seven years. On this double album, Merchant offered the most ambitious project of her celebrated, 25-year major-label career, adapting the works of such poets as Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and Robert Graves into a musically kaleidoscopic set of new songs, working with folk, jazz, reggae, and R&B players as well as gorgeously arranged chamber ensembles.

Leave Your Sleep was included on the list of the Best Music of 2010 according to the Bob Edwards Show and Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis. DeCurtis calls it "a bold statement," one that "conveys the mystery, wonder and surreal logic of childhood in a way that is childlike in the best possible sense." The Toronto Star features the album in its list of the Top 10 in roots music for 2010, calling it "gloriously ambitious."

It is included among the best albums of the year by Songlines and in the fRoots Critics' Poll of Albums of the Year; it also topped the fRoots poll as the best-packaged album of the year. "Artistic skill can produce a must-have artefact of beauty, along with enhancing the listening pleasure by providing ambience and information," said the magazine, calling Leave Your Sleep "a classic example of how to do things well."

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For fans of hip-hop, funk, and jazz, Tony Allen, holder of the Afrobeat flame following the death of pioneer Fela Kuti, is revered as the genre's leading living figure. NPR exclaimed: "Tony Allen is easily one of the most gifted and influential percussionists of all time." Secret Agent, his World Circuit / Nonesuch debut, released in April, finds him "continuing his late career high," says Pitchfork, "never more confident."

Check out the behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Secret Agent and the video for the title track at nonesuch.com/media.

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On his debut album, Shy and Mighty, pianist-composer Timothy Andres offers what the New York Times called "a richly imaginative 10-movement work for two pianos," performed by Andres and pianist David Kaplan. The New Yorker's Alex Ross called it "the kind of sprawling, brazen work that a young composer should write," achieving "an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene."

The New York Times recommended Shy and Mighty in its annual Holiday Gift Guide, praising "the inventiveness and originality of Mr. Andres’s own compositional voice." Alex Ross named the album among the year's notable recordings.

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Punch Brothers released Antifogmatic, their second Nonesuch album, in June, showcasing the growing collaborative power of this virtuosic, genre-blurring combo. "Antifogmatic brims with color, wit, flash and tenderness," said the Wall Street Journal, "all conveyed with remarkable musicianship and high spirits." The quintet honed these songs over impromptu sessions at New York's The Living Room, then recorded them live at LA's Ocean Way studio with producer Jon Brion.

The group's live show is also something not to be missed, with their sets often featuring both their self-penned tunes and incomparable covers of artists they admire, like Of Montreal, Fiona Apple, and Radiohead. One such tune, Radiohead's "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box," made Paste magazine's 20 Best Cover Songs of 2010. The band already has a full performance schedule lined up for the new year, including a cover-heavy p-Bingo Night at New York's Bowery Ballroom in January and return to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in June.

Antifogmatic was chosen as one of the best albums of the year by American Songwriter and PopMatters. Their song "New Chance Blues," a bonus track off the album, has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. You can download the track for free on their website, punchbrothers.com.

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Though it was released five months into the year, The Black Keys' latest album, Brothers, certainly came to mark what the Chicago Tribune recently described as their "breakthrough year." The album has received six Grammy nominations and was named iTunes’ Album of the Year and Rolling Stone’s No. 2 Album of the Year. It has landed on countless year's best lists including NPR, Time, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, American Songwriter, Magnet, Mojo, Q, Clash, and Uncut, among many others. Bandmates Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carnery are also currently featured on the cover of Spin magazine’s Best of 2010 issue as Artist of the Year.

In celebration of their breakout year, the duo will perform three sold-out New Year’s shows at Chicago’s prestigious Aragon Ballroom, and will kick off what's sure to be another great year as musical guests on the Saturday Night Live season opener, with host Jim Carrey, on January 8.

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John Adams's music played a central role in the creation of the film I Am Love, by Italian director Luca Guadagnino, which has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film by the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Movie Awards. The film's star and producer Tilda Swinton told the Wall Street Journal that she and Guadagnino "shot and edited their film to a soundtrack of John Adams's work, before securing any rights to the composer's music. Luckily, the high-stakes gamble paid off and Mr. Adams gave his approval."

Indeed, Nonesuch released the film's soundtrack, featuring a number of works by Adams, in June. The Times of London gave the film five stars, noting its "sublime score." The BBC called the album "one of those rare soundtracks that merits—and rewards—repeated listening."

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Laurie Anderson released her first studio album in nearly a decade with the arrival of Homeland in June. Guest artists include Lou Reed, Antony Hegarty, Fourtet's Keiran Hebden, and Anderson's own male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.3 and called it "an exquisite state-of-the-union dispatch as only Anderson, America's darkly comic conscience, can provide." Interview said "Anderson proves that time has only sharpened her critical eye," calling Homeland "harrowing and hilarious ... a gift of perspective." It has lately made year-end best lists from the Los Angeles Times and NPR member station WNYC, which places it among the year's Best Genre-Defying Album. "Flow," the album's haunting closing track, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance; you can download it for free here.

The album track "Only an Expert" struck a chord with the world not long after the dangers so-called experts at BP had just unleashed off the shores of the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of remix artists submitted their own reworkings of the song in a contest via Indaba Music, the winners of which you can hear here. Anderson performed her own revised version of the song, reflecting the Gulf oil spill, on Late Night with David Letterman.

You can watch a series of videos featuring Fenway Bergamot, as well as an excerpt from the making-of documentary featured on the album DVD at nonesuch.com/media.

This year also saw the premiere of Anderson's new theater piece, Delusion, which she unveiled at the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver and continues to perform all over the world, including a two-week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She and her husband Lou Reed also curated the Vivid LIVE festival in Sydney, Australia, in which she premiered her Music for Dogs, and served as grand marshals of the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in Brooklyn over the summer. They will curate a month of programming at The Stone in New York this coming February.

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Ry Cooder wrote the song "Quicksand" in response to Arizona's 2010 immigration law, SB 1070. A slow-burning rocker that tells the story of six would-be immigrants making their way from Mexico to the Arizona border, "Quicksand" is available exclusively on iTunes, with all proceeds will going to support MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund.

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Radiohead drummer Philip Selway released his first solo album, Familial, in August. With its sublimely fragile, haunting, and heartfelt songs, the album came as a surprise to many. "But when you listen to the beautifully produced pieces Selway came up with on Familial," NPR explained, "it's easy to see him not as a percussionist, but as a genuine singer-songwriter." Familial was included on NPR's list of the Best Album Covers of 2010.

In September, Selway, Nonesuch Records, and Indaba Music launched a search for collaborators to remix the Familial track "Beyond Reason." You can hear the winning entries here.

Watch the official video for the album track "By Some Miracle" at nonesuch.com/media.

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Björk has joined Icelandic poet Sjón to write "The Comet Song" for the animated film Moomins and the Comet Chase, featuring the beloved characters created by Finnish illustrator and author Tove Jansson in the 1940s. The song is available exclusively at iTunes, with all proceeds going to UNICEF to support the victims of the floods that hit Pakistan earlier this year.

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In September, Gidon Kremer, whom the Boston Globe calls "one of the most important violinists before the public today," and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra released De Profundis, featuring 12 pieces from Kremer's performing repertoire. The composers he selected for the album span nearly two centuries, from Schubert to Schnittke, for an album that "plays through like a fascinating mix tape, with a surprise around every corner," said NPR. "It's fantastic."

Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica brought the music of De Profundis to concert halls across North America this fall, leading the Los Angeles Times to describe it as a "profound, pioneering" album, and the San Jose Mercury News to call it "superb."

De Profundis was included on the year-end round-up from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which called it "a salve for the spirit in a chilly time," and the Oregonian, which described the playing as "first class."

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Nonesuch released an album with two Steve Reich compositions—Double Sextet and 2x5—on September 14. Double Sextet—which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009—is performed by eighth blackbird. "Beautifully poised throughout," says the BBC, "Double Sextet stands as arguably one of Reich’s finest works." The Philadelphia Inquirer places it "among the finest pieces of our time." Bang on a Can perform 2x5, which Gramophone calls "Reich’s smartest, most sonically nourishing recording for years."

In October, Nonesuch teamed up with Indaba Music in a search for collaborators to remix the third movement of 2x5. Reich chose the winners, which you can hear here. The grand prize Winner, Dominique Leone, told the BBC World Service: "Steve Reich's music is so based in rhythm, so when you can take little chunks of it and manipulate that and exploit the rhythm that's already there, it's not very difficult to make something that sounds good."

The Double Sextet / 2x5 album was named among the year's best in classical music by iTunes, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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Also on September 14, Nonesuch Records released A Crimson Grail, Rhys Chatham’s work for large electric guitar orchestra. Chatham prepared this outdoor version of the piece, featuring 200 guitarists, 16 bassists, five conductors, and one percussionist, for the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival performance heard on the Nonesuch album. The BBC calls it "a remarkable, engrossing work" that "achieves an immersive, exultant sense of the sublime." The New York Times says: "It might justly be considered 'music to pray to.’”

Director Steve Lippman, aka Flip, created a short, experimental film using three excerpts from A Crimson Grail as the score. The film was shot on rolls of expired, unexposed Kodachrome Super 8mm film, adding in some new cartridges of Color & B&W Ektachrome. You can watch it at nonesuch.com/media.

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Ben Folds and Nick Hornby had been fans of one another's work for some time before they came together to create their own collaboration, the album Lonely Avenue, for which Hornby wrote the lyrics and Folds supplied the music and vocals. "The collaboration clicks," said the Associated Press. "There's a depth to the lyrics rare in pop songs, and they inspire top-notch work from the ever-inventive Folds." For a sampling of all the critical praise the album has received since its September release, click here.

Lonely Avenue was among the albums of the year according to NPR listeners, BBC Radio Scotland's Tom Morton, and Monocle magazine. Hornby made USA Today's Pop Candy list of 100 People of 2010. To learn about the collaboration straight from the source and watch the animated video for the album track "From Above," visit nonesuch.com/media.

Folds also made a splash this fall as a judge in the NBC a cappella singing competition The Sing-Off, which just came to a close in a live finale show. The New York Times described him as "one of the better reality-competition judges television has seen." NPR called him "wonderful." And the Baltimore Sun suggested that Folds "should be a judge on every show ever." You can read Folds's blog from the series at nbc.com.

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When it was released on World Circuit / Nonesuch Records in October, AfroCubism, the collaboration between some of the finest musicians from Cuba and Mali, was already a decade and a half in the making. When the Havana recording session planned for the project was derailed some 15 years ago, the album that would become Buena Vista Social Club was recorded instead. Now, the original concept has come to fruition, featuring guitarist Eliades Ochoa of Buena Vista Social Club fame, kora master Toumani Diabaté, ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaye, vocalist Kassé Mady Diabaté, guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, balafon player Fode Lassana Diabaté.

The New Yorker says it was a "collaboration well worth the wait." The New York Times described it as "a rich yet subtle fusion of African and Cuban sounds." The Guardian calls it "an elegant, gently exquisite album"; the Observer says it's "a delight."

AfroCubism was included on several year's best lists, including those of the Boston Globe, AOL Spinner, NPR member station WNYC, Barnes & Noble, Mojo, Uncut, and fRoots.

You can watch a number of videos from the AfroCubism recording sessions at nonesuch.com/media.

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The last Nonesuch release of 2010 arrived just in time for the holidays: the soundtrack to the film True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen's 2010 film adaptation of the 1968 Charles Portis novel, starring Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon, out this week. For this latest collaboration with the Coen brothers, composer Carter Burwell looked to 19th-century hymns as the backbone to his score. Digital versions of the album, including the free MP3s that come with  Nonesuch Store orders of the CD, contain a bonus track: Iris DeMent’s rendition of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” which plays during the film’s closing credits.

True Grit has been nominated for 11 Critics' Choice Awards and six Chicago Film Critics Awards, including Best Score nominations for Burwell from both, and is set to open the Berlin International Film Festival in February. For more on the film and to find out where it is playing in your area, visit truegritmovie.com.

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There is, of course, much more great music to come in 2011. Pre-orders are already available for several Nonesuch releases: the Carolina Chocolate Drops' EP with Luminescent Orchestrii; Queen of Rock Wanda Jackson's Jack White-produced album The Party Ain't Over; Brad Mehldau's 2CD+DVD Live in Marciac; Jessica Lea Mayfield's Nonesuch debut Tell Me, produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach; and Smart Flesh, The Low Anthem's self-produced follow-up to their Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

To reserve your copy of any of these albums, or to pick up a copy of any of the 2010 albums listed above, head to the Nonesuch Store, where all CD, LPs, and DVDs are 33% off through New Year's, in celebration of the store's 3rd anniversary.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Nonesuch Records!