Devendra Banhart begins a twenty-five city North American tour—his first since 2017—featuring music from his new album, Ma, at The Majestic Ventura Theater in Ventura, California, tonight, and includes shows in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico City, Detroit, Toronto, Brooklyn, and more. He tours Europe in early 2020. Banhart has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every US ticket sold (excluding a festival in Austin) will go to World Central Kitchen and every ticket bought in Canada, $1 will go to support Rainbow Railroad.

Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko) has released a video for "Every Woman," a new song from her upcoming album, directed by Lino Asana and filmed on location in Mendocino County, CA. You can watch it here. "'Every Woman' is the thesis of my album," she says, "so I wanted the visuals to represent transparency and to create a world for this thesis statement to live inside of. It's an ode to all those who feel different and who actively search and fight for space." Vagabon begins a fall tour this week.

Congratulations to Laurie Anderson, the 2020 recipient of The Vanguard Award & Residency at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in NYC. The program celebrates the work and influence of an icon of American popular culture. She will be honored at the third-annual Vanguard Gala on February 3, with an all-star slate of artists and friends, with musical direction by Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond and Chris Bruce, and her residency will take shape in a Sunday night performance each month, from March to December. "I love Sunday evening shows," Anderson says. "The end of the weekend is such a no man’s land—an interesting time to play with new combinations."

The first worldwide vinyl release of Sam Phillips's critically acclaimed 2001 Nonesuch debut album, Fan Dance, is due on Valentine's Day 2020, as the latest fan-selected title on Run Out Groove. Remastered and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, the LP comes in an old-school tip-on style jacket with booklet, limited and individually numbered. It is available to pre-order via Run Out Groove and the Nonesuch Store until November 7, and then pressed and numbered to a limited quantity based on total orders. The Boston Globe calls it "a stunning work of intimacy and emotional range."

The line-up for the 2020 Big Ears Festival has been announced, and as usual, featured among the performers are several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Devendra Banhart, Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, and Caroline Shaw. Big Ears will be held at venues throughout downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, March 26–29, 2020. Weekend passes go on sale this Thursday.

Composer-performer Daniel Wohl, whose album État was released on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records in May, has released a video for the album track "Orbit." The generative music video, made by Ben Heim, is driven by sound data extracted from the music, evolving over time with the sonic landscape and can be seen here. Wohl will be the special guest of A Winged Victory for the Sullen on the duo's European tour early next year. The fourteen-concert tour begins in Amsterdam on February 20 and stops in Germany, Belgium, Ireland, and the UK.

Yola was named among "the best things we saw" at Farm Aid 2019 by both Rolling Stone, noting "her powerhouse vocals," and Billboard, which reports of the festival's "breakthrough artist": "An imposing presence with a massive, gospel-fired voice, Yola held the midday crowd riveted with songs from her debut album Walk Through Fire." One such festival performance, of the song "It Ain't Easier," can be seen here. It has just been announced that she will perform at Holiday Cheer for FUV at the Beacon Theatre in NYC in December and at Chris Stapleton's benefit concert in Kentucky next April. Fittingly, Yola has been nominated as Live Act of the Year in the UK's Independent Festival Awards.

¡Spangled!—a collaboration between Guatemalan-born singer-songwriter Gaby Moreno and American musician, songwriter, arranger, and producer Van Dyke Parks—is out now. The ten-song set spans more than a century, including a bolero from Panama, a bossa nova from Brazil, a song by Moreno, Trinidadian songwriter David Rudder's "The Immigrants," and an elegiac ballad from the Southwest US: Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, and Jim Dickinson’s “Across the Borderline,” performed with Cooder and Jackson Browne.

Rachael & Vilray—the debut album by Lake Street Dive singer-songwriter Rachael Price and composer, singer, and guitarist Vilray—is out now. The album features ten original songs by Vilray and two covers. "The voices of acoustic duo Rachael & Vilray are magical enough on their own," says Chronogram, "but when they blend in song the results are utterly sublime." Rachael & Vilray, who released a new lyric video of "Do Friends Fall in Love?" today, perform on Live From Here on October 26 and tour the US in November and December.

Joshua Redman and Brooklyn Rider's Sun on Sand is out now on Nonesuch. The album comprises eight works from a suite by composer Patrick Zimmerli. Each piece in the suite, which premiered at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2014, represents a different expression of light. Bassist Scott Colley and drummer Satoshi Takeishi perform as well.

Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks were on NPR's Alt.Latino to discuss and share tracks from their new album, ¡Spangled!. "She's been an Alt.Latino favorite, and her latest album continues to give me reason to admire her," says host Felix Contreras. "Van Dyke Parks's arrangements on ¡Spangled! lift Gaby Moreno's voice into a place that will delight and surprise her longtime fans as well as impress those who are just discovering her ... ¡Spangled! is a stunning collection of music ... It's a fabulously gorgeous album." Hear the episode here.

David Byrne’s American Utopia begins its strictly limited engagement on Broadway at the intimate Hudson Theatre on Friday, with the official opening on October 20. The performances run through January 18 and follow a sold-out, year-long critically acclaimed international tour and pre-Broadway run in Boston. "A marvel of humanity and hope," exclaims the Boston Globe, "American Utopia brings wonder back to the world."