Allen Toussaint's Nonesuch solo debut album, The Bright Mississippi is set for release tomorrow. "Mr. Toussaint brings to these songs his own elegant, reserved sensibility," says the New York Times. "He doesn’t rip them apart or interrogate them on the harmonic or rhythmic terms with which they’ve usually been met; he shines them up and levels them out into slow-rolling and grandiloquent New Orleans songs, full of tremolo chords and serenity no matter whether they were written by Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk or Django Reinhardt." The Chicago Tribune gives four stars to the "top-notch" new album; The Independent gives it four stars too and describes Toussaint as "the jewel in New Orleans's crown," citing one track as "a bravura performance that bears out Van Dyke Parks's estimation of Toussaint as 'the greatest piano player alive.'"

Wilco helped mark national Record Store Day this past Saturday with the limited release of their new concert DVD, Ashes of American Flags, through independent music retailers and on nonesuch.com. Fans in Knoxville got to celebrate up-close with Wilco as the band signed copies of the DVD at the local store The Disc Exchange, video coverage of which was posted online by the Knoxville News. Jeff Tweedy spoke with Spin about Wilco's forthcoming studio album, due out in late spring, described as "a mix of pastoral Americana rock (think 2007's Sky Blue Sky) and experimental studio sounds (2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)."

Allen Toussaint's Nonesuch solo debut, The Bright Mississippi, is set for release on Tuesday, April 21. You can catch a glimpse of the songs, songwriters, and guest artists on the album and take a look behind-the-scenes with Toussaint at piano and producer Joe Henry at the boards in a short video on nonesuch.com/media. The Detroit Free Press gives the album four stars. Rolling Stone says it's "pure Toussaint, emotionally and structurally expansive, yet as keenly done as one of Toussaint's perfectly knotted ties." Dusted magazine says, "It’s quite simply one of the best albums we’ll hear in 2009."

Sara Watkins's self-titled solo debut is out today on Nonesuch. To mark the occasion, Sara is in New York City, where she'll perform on Soundcheck this afternoon at 2 PM ET, with her brother and Nickel Creek band mate, Sean Watkins, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, both of whom are among the stellar list of guest artists on the new album. Sara begins an extensive US tour later this week and returns to New York on Monday to perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Sara Watkins's self-titled debut is set for its Nonesuch release next Tuesday, April 7, and the new album "is quietly authentic as it mesmerizes," says the Huffington Post. "Sara's strong yet sometimes whispered vocal approach on these tracks conveys all it needs to without one ounce of overkill ... picture Emmylou Harris with touches of Edie Brickell and Rickie Lee Jones." Sara offers her own interpretation of songs by a diverse range of writers and as many of her own self-penned tunes, which the review calls "musically engaging, and they also reveal Sara as a serious lyricist with a mission ... Sara Watkins firmly establishes the woman as folk's newest herald, and a future force of nature to be reckoned with." Q magazine lists the album track "Give Me Jesus," arranged by Sara and Chris Thile, among the Top 50 Essential Tracks of the month.

Sara Watkins, whose self-titled solo debut album is due out from Nonesuch on April 5, is the subject of a feature article in the Charlotte Observer. She's set to play two shows in North Carolina opening for John Prine this weekend: at Charlotte's Ovens Auditorium tomorrow night and Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville the following night. The Observer says that on the new album, Sara "continues to explore different genres from torchy, playful western swing (Jimmie Rodgers' 'Any Old Time') to pop-rock (Davíd Garza's 'Too Much') to the aching chamber folk (Jon Brion's 'Same Mistake')." Three additional songs from the album are now streaming on Nonesuch Radio.

Amadou & Mariam's Welcome to Mali was released in the States yesterday, and the complete album is streaming today on spinner.com. On the new record, says Vanity Fair , "traditional African beats and melodies underly everything from electronic synth-pop to hip-hop tracks featuring Somali rapper K’Naan." The Root calls the couple "global pop’s band to watch—M.I.A. be damned—as heirs to the storied West African musical throne and as embodiments of the worldly, cosmopolitan flair that defines 21st century hipness ... Before it’s done, the album moves through hip-hop, R&B, rock, traditional Malian and more—often simultaneously." It's all mixed "with an accessible poppy feel," says The Root, "and the result is just plain cool."

Amadou & Mariam's Welcome to Mali makes its US debut with its Nonesuch release today. Details cites "the mind-blowing" Damon Albarn–produced opening track as "a soulful and modern masterpiece"; Time Out New York calls it the album's "jewel in its crown." Blurt describes the album as one of "pure sensual joy, a raft of infectious-rhythmed, ebulliently performed funk-rock-desert-electro-dance songs ... in a music so generous, so inclusive and celebratory that you cannot help feeling a wave of optimism." And in difficult times, "It's just what you need ... really ... Welcome to Mali is for the good times, even in bad times."

Wilco's forthcoming as-yet-untitled Nonesuch release is featured in Rolling Stone's Spring Music Preview, a look "inside 45 of the Year's Biggest Albums." The magazine talks to Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline about the recording process for the new record. "After the live, urgent feel of 2007's Sky Blue Sky," says Rolling Stone, "Wilco is exploring more studio experimentation ... anchored once again by Tweedy's sly, insightful and often heartbreaking lyrics." The article suggests, "An early preview of the disc gives off a strong country vibe, with lots of pedal steel and acoustic guitar."

Amadou & Mariam's latest album, Welcome to Mali, is set for US release on Nonesuch tomorrow. The duo is the subject of a number of feature-length articles about changing perceptions in the West of African musics beyond "world music." The New York Times places them "among the world’s most renowned African musical acts" and says the new album is "less an abandonment of the group’s culture than an updating of it." The Los Angeles Times cites the success of Amadou & Mariam, who "helped define the current African shift," and of Youssou N'Dour, Oumou Sangare, and Rokia Traoré, as examples that "the American cliché of African music is falling apart—or, really, exploding." Detroit Free-Press gives Welcome to Mali four stars, calling it "a spirited invitation to dance away those recession-induced blues and welcome spring ... This is a feel-good album. Don't miss it."

"Composer, pianist and living legend Allen Toussaint has helped shape the sound of R&B, soul and funk while infusing a little bit of New Orleans into it," says KCRW in naming as yesterday's Top Tune the Thelonius Monk–penned title track of Toussaint's forthcoming Nonesuch solo debut, The Bright Mississippi. Toussaint will perform during both weeks of the 40th anniversary New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which runs April 24–30 and May 1–3. Given his prominent place in the festival and the city's musical history, it's no surprise that Toussaint has made his way onto the official JazzFest 2009 poster, by artist James Michalopoulos.

Richard Goode's series of concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra comes to a close Tuesday night. The Boston Globe, in a preview of this May's release of Goode's complete piano concertos with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, looks back at the pianist's 1993 collection of the Beethoven piano sonatas and says it "stands as one of the most important statements made about this music in recent decades." Goode, whom the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls "a musician's musician," will perform Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto this weekend with David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.