Brad Mehldau’s Variations on a Melancholy Theme is out now. The recording features the pianist/composer and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which commissioned this orchestral version of the work—a theme and eleven variations plus a cadenza and postlude. The album also includes an encore, “Variations ‘X’ and ‘Y.'" "I imagine it as if Brahms woke up one day and had the blues," Mehldau says of the piece, which combines the classical form with jazz harmonies. "While the theme evokes melancholy, I let it be used as a springboard for other happy, wild, violent, and reckless emotions as the variations progress." You can watch a video for Variation 4 here.

Rhiannon Giddens’ new album, They're Calling Me Home, recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, released earlier this year on CD and digital, is now on vinyl. Giddens and Turrisi, who both live in Ireland when they aren’t on tour, have been there since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The two expats found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland during lockdown. Exploring the emotions brought up by the moment, Giddens and Turrisi decamped to Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside of Dublin, to record these songs over six days. 

Chris Thile’s Laysongs, out now, is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualize and banter with his ideas about spirituality. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs features the three-part Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth, which was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters (you can watch a performance of the first part here); a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a selection from Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin; “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” based on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; and a Hazel Dickens cover. 

In celebration of Pride Month, Nonesuch Records releases k.d. lang’s makeover, a new collection of classic dance remixes of some of her best-loved songs, today, including on translucent turquoise vinyl. The album brings these remixes, made between 1992 and 2000, together for the first time, and includes “Sexuality,” “Miss Chatelaine,” “Theme from The Valley of the Dolls,” “Summerfling,” and the #1 dance chart hits “Lifted By Love” and “If I Were You.” makeover’s cover art features a previously unseen 1995 portrait of lang by David LaChapelle. Also today, lang has released a video for "Sexuality (Tony Maserati Final Radio Remix)," edited by Robert Edridge-Waks from Marcus Nispel's original "Sexuality" video; you can watch it here.

The Black Keys' tenth studio album, Delta Kream, has debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 chart, their fifth album in a row to debut in the Top 10 in the US. The album, which features eleven Mississippi hill country blues songs by artists including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, is No. 1 on the Mediabase Triple A Radio Charts. Delta Kream is the band’s fourth consecutive top 10 album in the UK, debuting at No. 5, as well as top 10 in countries throughout Europe. "Each song on the record puts the listener in the room with the band," writes Hanif Abdurraqib in a New York Times Magazine feature on the band, "watching smiles spread across their faces as the music they have studied and loved flickers into life through them, effortlessly.”

The Black Keys' Delta Kream is out today on Nonesuch Records. The album celebrates the band’s roots and features eleven Mississippi hill country blues songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover. The band performs on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and on Later… with Jools Holland tonight.

Pianist/composer Tigran Hamasyan releases "Revisiting the Film," featuring drummer/composer Morgan Ågren, today on Nonesuch. You can hear it here. The new single is a variation on "Our Film," a track from his 2020 album, The Call Within. "For years I have been a big fan of Morgan and finally had a chance to collaborate," Hamasyan says. "I hope this is going to be the beginning of our dialogue."

Portuguese singer Mariza celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her career and the centenary of the late Queen of Fado, Amália Rodrigues, with Mariza Sings Amália, her first full album of classics, now available on vinyl, following its CD and digital release, on Nonesuch Records in the US. "The ten covers of songs once sung by Amália on this regal tribute are utterly glorious," exclaims Songlines in a five-star review. "Backed by gorgeous orchestral arrangements by Brazil’s Jaques Morelenbaum, she invests these classic fados with a rich and characterful wisdom that is somehow reverential and innovative at the same time.”

The original motion picture soundtrack for the acclaimed film Sound of Metal, winner of Academy Awards for Sound and Editing, is out now. The album features a score by Abraham Marder and Nicolas Becker, with music written specifically for the film and pre-existing works. The world-renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie is featured on three pieces; other performers include Marder and Becker; actors Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, and Mathieu Amalric; Carolina Santana, Arthur H., and Martha Wainwright. “With its immersive sound design and understated storytelling," says Pitchfork.

Sam Gendel’s album DRM, released by Nonesuch digitally last October, is now available on vinyl. The follow-up to his March 2020 Nonesuch debut, Satin Doll, DRM features Gendel’s solo musical experiments with vintage instruments such as a forty-year-old Electro Harmonix DRM32 drum machine, antique synthesizers, and a sixty-year-old nylon-string guitar—accompanied by his voice. Gendel says: “I’m imagining people listening to [it] and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’, like they’d just encountered some sailing ship in the sky.”

The Black Keys' tenth studio album, Delta Kream, is due May 14 via Nonesuch Records. The record celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards that they have loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph that is on its cover.

Brad Mehldau’s Variations on a Melancholy Theme is due June 11, 2021, on Nonesuch. The recording features the pianist/composer and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which commissioned this orchestral version of the work—a theme and eleven variations plus a cadenza and postlude. The album also includes an encore, “Variations ‘X’ and ‘Y.'" "I imagine it as if Brahms woke up one day and had the blues," Mehldau says of the piece, which combines the classical form with jazz harmonies. "While the theme evokes melancholy, I let it be used as a springboard for other happy, wild, violent, and reckless emotions as the variations progress." You can watch a video with excerpts from the piece here.