Nonesuch releases saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau's Nearness, the longtime friends' and collaborators' first duo album, on September 9, 2016. Nearness, a selection of duets recorded live during their recent European tour, is available to pre-order now with an instant download of the album track “Ornithology." Redman and Mehldau are "among the most potent and influential jazz instrumentalists of their generation," says the Ottawa Citizen, creating "world-class improvising before rapt audiences."

Joshua Redman kicks off a tour with his Quartet—pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Gregory Hutchinson—at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz tonight, followed by multiple-set stops in Portland, Seattle, and Denver. The tour moves east for sets at the Elkhart Jazz Festival in Indiana and in the Berkshires. Larry Grenadier swaps in for Rogers as the Quartet holds a six-night residency at the Blue Note in NYC for the Blue Note Jazz Festival. Redman and a different Quartet—pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Jorge Rossy—tour Europe in July, stopping in Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, and Spain.

Following his recent European tour, Joshua Redman is back in the United States to reunite with The Bad Plus, kicking off a seven-city tour at The Kennedy Center's Crossroads Club in Washington, DC, on Friday. The quartet then heads to Missouri for shows in Kansas City and Columbia and a two-night run in St. Louis, followed by shows in Chicago, Buffalo, and Ann Arbor. The musicians head to South America in May for shows in Argentina and Brazil, and return to the US in June for a set at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the Playboy Jazz Festival. The Joshua Redman Quartet will tour the US in the summer.

The ECHO Jazz 2016 Award nominations have been announced, including three for Joshua Redman projects: International Saxophone Instrumentalist of the Year for his work with James Farm on their latest album, City Folk and International Ensemble of the Year to both James Farm and The Bad Plus Joshua Redman and their self-titled debut album. Tigran Hamasyan has been nominated for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year for his Nonesuch debut, Mockroot. The ECHO Jazz Awards ceremony will take place in Hamburg on May 26.

Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch Records artists who were nominated for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, announced earlier today by The Recording Academy: Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Lianne La Havas, Punch Brothers, and Joshua Redman. Together, these artists' Nonesuch releases have garnered a total of eight nominations this year. The 58th Annual Grammy Awards will be held on Monday, February 15, 2016, in Los Angeles and will be broadcast live on CBS.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicked off the final leg of its 2015 tour in Boulder last night, with stops in Arizona, New Mexico, and California in the coming week, culminating with a four-night residency at the SFJAZZ Center. The quartet's eponymous debut album has been named the No. 1 Best Jazz Album of 2015 by PopMatters. "Together," says the site, "the band is particularly wonderful."

There's more than a month to go before 2015 comes to a close, and already the UK music magazines have begun to weigh in on the year's best music. Uncut and Mojo have published their lists of the Best Albums of the Year, and included among them are a number of Nonesuch releases, all firsts of a sort: Olivia Chaney's debut album, Rhiannon Giddens's first solo record, and the debut from the newly minted quartet of The Bad Plus Joshua Redman.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicks off a tour of North America at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts tonight, followed by stops this month in Toronto, Chicago, Madison, Carmel, Columbus, Saratoga Springs, Northampton, and Boston. In December, the band heads West for shows in Boulder, Phoenix, Albuquerque, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, closing out the 2015 touring with a four-night residency at SFJAZZ in San Francisco, December 10–13. The tour features music from The Bad Plus Joshua Redman's recently released self-titled debut album, which the New York Times calls "a knockout," and NPR describes as "a roaring and beautiful summit meeting."

Joshua Redman kicks off a European tour at Musikfest Bremen in Germany this Saturday, joining the Metropole Orkest, Ibrahim Maalouf, and Lalah Hathaway on stage. He then tackles the piano-less trio format with Ole Morten Vågan on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums September 13–19 in Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Norway. In November, Redman returns to Europe to perform with the collaborative band James Farm. Before and after the James Farm tour, Redman resumes his North American tour with The Bad Plus in October and December. 

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, which kicked off the European leg of its tour over the weekend, stopped by the KPLU-FM studios in Seattle during the recent US leg of the tour to discuss and perform from their just-released self-titled debut album, which host Abe Beeson calls "the jazz album of the year so far." Watch the band's KPLU performances of the album's first two tracks, "As This Moment Slips Away" and "Beauty Has It Hard," here.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman has unveiled a brief video of the group—saxophonist Joshua Redman and The Bad Plus, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King—at Brooklyn Recording studio as they made their just-released self-titled debut album. You can watch the short piece, set to an excerpt of the album track "As This Moment Slips Away," here. The band kicks off the European leg of its tour this weekend.

In celebration of Father's Day, NPR's All Things Considered took at a look at the special nature of father-son collaborations in jazz and the unique music that can result from it. NPR's Audie Cornish spoke with bassist-composer Christian McBride, who is also a host of NPR's Jazz Night in America, about this, and their conversation began with a discussion of saxophonists Joshua Redman and his father Dewey Redman. The show opens with the father-son Redman duo performing John Coltrane's "India," from Joshua Redman's album Back East, released on Nonesuch Records in 2007. It was one of his father's last recordings before he died. "I loved hearing those two play together," says McBride. "It was something very, very special."