Congratulations to Audra McDonald, whom Musical America has named Musician of the Year, and to Instrumentalist of the Year Jeremy Denk. The Musical America Awards recognize artistic excellence and achievement in the arts and will be presented in a ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City on December 17.

The Savannah Music Festival has announced the line-up for its 25th anniversary season, to be held March 20–April 5, 2014, and among the artists scheduled to perform are several familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Punch Brothers; Chris Thile, in a duo concert with fellow mandolinist Mike Marshall; and Fatoumata Diawara and Bombino sharing a double bill for two shows.

Rokia Traoré kicks off a six-date tour of the UK with a performance at the Brighton Corn Exchange tonight, followed by stops in Leeds, Edinburgh, Derry, and Manchester, before culminating in a show at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Traoré and her band then head to New York City to launch a two-week North American tour at Jazz at Lincoln Center for the White Light Festival. Songlines has just named Traoré's new album, Beautiful Africa, among the Best Albums of 2013.

The soundtrack to the forthcoming Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis is due out November 11 on Nonesuch Records. But there's no need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full all week as an NPR First Listen. "Among many other accomplishments, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen helped change the direction of contemporary music with the soundtrack to their 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?," writes NPR's Stephen Thompson. "As with O Brother, music is integral to Inside Llewyn Davis," he continues; the soundtrack functions "both as a stand-alone collection of frequently gorgeous music and as a companion piece to a movie in which many different strains of folk collide as part of a scene taking shape."

On the acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums, Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to lyrics by folk legend Woody Guthrie for which he had not written music or made recordings. On Black Friday, November 29, 2013, Nonesuch Records will reissue the first two volumes on vinyl and release, for the first time on vinyl, a third volume comprising 17 previously unreleased recordings made during the original sessions, which was first released in the 2012 three-CD-plus-DVD set Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Each volume is pressed on 2-LP, 180-gram vinyl at Pallas MFG in Diepholz, Germany. The albums are available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell made their Austin City Limits duo debut, performing together for the first time on the ACL stage, when the duo's set aired on PBS on Saturday. You can watch the complete episode here. Harris and Crowell will be featured again on a special ACL show on November 23, featuring highlights from the Americana Music Association Honors and Awards, at which they took home the awards for Duo of the Year and Album of the Year for Old Yellow Moon. Their North American tour, with Richard Thompson, is in the Pacific Northwest and Canada this week.

Pianist Jeremy Denk was a guest on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show yesterday. He talks about his latest Nonesuch release, a recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, and performs from the piece. "I think of Bach as this really generous spirit," Denk says, "encompassing all of humanity's possibilities in a more perfect way than most humans are able to. For me, this piece has an incredible geniality and charm and invention, and then these moments of tremendous pathos." Listen to the interview and performance here.

Randy Newman was joined on stage by his son Amos Newman for an hour-long keynote Q&A at the 2013 Billboard & The Hollywood Reporter Film & TV Music Conference, held in LA earlier this week. The conversation touched on a number of topics related to Newman père's career as a singer-songwriter and as the composer of film scores, not least for a number of Pixar pictures. You can watch an excerpt of the discussion, including some thoughts on Kanye West and talk of a new solo album, here.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell make their Austin City Limits duo debut, performing together for the first time on the ACL stage, this Saturday, November 2, on PBS stations across the US. The performance was recorded at The Moody Theater in Austin this past June as part of a world tour supporting their album Old Yellow Moon. You can watch a preview of the show—their performance of the album track "Invitation to the Blues"—and an ACL interview here. Harris and Crowell tour California, the Pacific Northwest, and Western Canada with Richard Thompson starting this weekend.

Devendra Banhart's music video for "Für Hildegard von Bingen," from his Nonesuch Records debut album, Mala, premiered today on MOCAtv, the video channel of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. It was directed by Isaiah Seret and written by Seret and Banhart. On "Für Hildegard von Bingen," Banhart casts a contemporary life for the 12th-century Catholic mystic and composer. Watch the video here.

Iron and Wine kicks off the second leg of its North American fall tour at LA's Orpheum Theatre on Thursday, Halloween night. Sam Beam and the band perform up the West Coast, making stops in Oakland, Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle, with opening sets along the way from Laura Mvula. Iron and Wine then heads inland for shows in Missoula, Salt Lake City, Denver, Lincoln, and Kansas City, before landing in Nashville and Atlanta in mid-November, with support on those dates from Jesca Hoop. On December 10, Iron and Wine headlines the Holiday Cheer for FUV concert benefitting New York public radio station 90.7 FM WFUV. 

Sam Amidon, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves have all contributed songs to Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War, a new collection of Civil War–era tunes recorded by contemporary artists, to be released on ATO Records on November 5. The album, which is streaming in full via Garden and Gun in advance of the release, features Amidon on "Wildwood Flower," the Chocolate Drops on "Day of Liberty," and Thile and Daves on "Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel," as well as performances from Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Ralph Stanley, Dolly Parton, Steve Earle, T Bone Burnett, and Thile's Punch Brothers band mate Noam Pikelny. Nonesuch Records released the soundtrack to Ken Burns' acclaimed documentary The Civil War in 1990.