Kronos Quartet and Brad Mehldau's performances at Koerner Hall in Toronto this week, part of The Royal Conservatory's 21C Music Festival, will stream live at rcmusic.ca/livestream, this Wednesday, May 25, and Thursday, respectively, both at 8 PM ET. Kronos is joined by special guest Tanya Tagaq for the world premiere her new piece written for Kronos' Fifty for the Future project. Mehldau performs his Three Pieces After Bach, of the Guardian exclaimed: "A dense and dazzling recital of Bach’s classics and the compositions and improvisations inspired by them makes this a powerful, thought-provoking gig."

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA) has announced its 2016–17 season, and featured among the artists performing this season are several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Pat Metheny, Kronos Quartet, and The Magnetic Fields. The season also includes a dance performance set to music by Laurie Anderson and more.

Kronos Quartet begins its first UK tour in many years at the Barbican this Monday, May 9. The tour program includes works by Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, and Terry Riley, a world premiere, and three UK premieres from the Kronos Fifty for the Future commissioning project. Kronos will perform on BBC Two's Later... With Jools Holland live show on Tuesday, May 10, and the one-hour episode on lucky Friday the 13th; the line-up includes Corinne Bailey Rae, Bloc Party, and Sir Elton John.

When Record Store Day took place earlier this month, included among the special releases were the first-ever vinyl edition of Clint Mansell's soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's film Requiem for a Dream, featuring Kronos Quartet, and the first worldwide vinyl release of Emmylou Harris's groundbreaking, Grammy-winning album Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois. Both albums are now available in the Nonesuch Store.

Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) has announced the ten composers—five women and five men—who participating in Year Two of Kronos's Fifty for the Future project in the 2016/17 concert season, including Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass. They join the Year One artists, like label mate Rhiannon Giddens, in creating new works, which Kronos will then premiere around the world. Companion materials for each piece, including scores, will be made available online at no charge. In addition to Anderson and Glass, the Year Two composers include Raven Chacon, Guillermo Galindo, Aleksander Kościów, Nicole Lizée, Anna Meredith, Kala Ramnath, Karin Rehnqvist, and Trey Spruance.

The line-up for the 2016 MusicNOW Festival in Cincinnati has been announced, and among the performers are Kronos Quartet, Punch Brothers, Chris Thile, and Sam Amidon. The three-day festival, founded by artistic director Bryce Dessner, will take place March 18–20. Kronos Quartet will join the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for performances at Cincinnati's Music Hall the first two nights of the festival, performing works by Julia Wolfe and Terry Riley. Chris Thile closes out Friday night's program with a solo set and joins his fellow Punch Brothers to close out the weekend at the Cincinnati Masonic Center Auditorium on Sunday with Sam Amidon.

NPR Music has announced its Favorite Songs of 2015, including tracks from eight Nonesuch Records releases from The Arcs, Rhiannon Giddens, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Kronos Quartet, Lianne La Havas, Punch Brothers, St Germain, and The Staves, as well as Mbonwana Star's World Circuit release. These are across a broad range of genre lists, including rock, folk/Americana, country, electronic, world, and classical. You can hear them here.

Kronos Quartet will make its first tour of the UK in many years, starting with the group's return to the Barbican in May 2016. The program includes Terry Riley’s One Earth, One People, One Love; the world premiere of a new piece by Martin Green of Lau; works by Laurie Anderson and Komitas; and arrangements including The Who’s Baba O’Riley. The evening also features three UK premieres of works by Fodé Lassana Diabaté from Trio da Kali, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Garth Knoxas part of the Kronos Fifty for the Future commissioning project.

Kronos Quartet and Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) will present its second-annual hometown music festival, Kronos Festival 2016: Explorer Series, at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, February 4–7, 2016. The festival features seven concerts over four days connecting area audiences to a wide range of musical voices and traditions from around the world. With virtuoso pipa player Wu Man as its artist-in-residence, the festival includes more than a dozen works, including four world premieres, two US premieres, four West Coast premieres, and two SF premieres.

Kronos Quartet leads a weeklong workshop at Carnegie Hall April 9–15, 2016, open to student and young professional string quartets aged 18–35 to explore new works commissioned as part of Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. The tuition-free workshop culminates in a public performance at Zankel Hall and will also focus on several of Kronos’s signature works. The application deadline is November 17, 2015. Kronos performs at Zankel Hall on April 2. The group performs at the St. Ann's Warehouse opening in Brooklyn this Saturday and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan on Tuesday.

The full line-up for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has been announced, and, as is often the case, featured among the performers are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Punch Brothers, Conor Oberst, and Kronos Quartet. The free, annual outdoor music festival returns for the 15th year to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, in the Hellman Hollow, and will take place October 2–4, 2015.

Congratulations to Kronos Quartet and Nico Muhly, who have been named winners of ECHO Klassik 2015 awards. Kronos Quartet is the winner of the Classics Without Borders award for its 40th anniversary release A Thousand Thoughts, and Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys, recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera, has been named Opera Recording of the Year for 20th/21st century music. The ECHO Klassik awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States. This year's awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on October 18 and will be televised on ZDF in Germany.