John Adams has been honored with the 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors. "This award represents the greatest honor our nation bestows in opera, and recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to opera in the United States and have become cultural treasures of the nation," says the NEA. Adams's first opera, Nixon in China, will receive its Canadian premiere with the Vancouver Opera next March for the Cultural Olympiad 2010. Also included in the Olympic Games' arts celebration are performances by Kronos Quartet and by Laurie Anderson.

Stephen Sondheim, in London recently for Trevor Nunn's revival of A Little Night Music, sat down for a revealing interview with The Times, which calls him "a one-off all right, a Colossus bestriding the second half of the 20th century." The composer was celebrated last night at a Washington, DC, gala concert, starring Bernadette Peters and Michael Cerveris, to benefit the Signature Theatre and inaugurate its Sondheim Award.

Nonesuch Records will release the self-titled label debut from singer-songwriter Christina Courtin on June 23. The New York Times says Courtin’s voice “feels uniquely otherworldly, as if it couldn’t possibly be entirely human born.” The album is co-produced by Courtin, a graduate of The Juilliard School; jazz bassist Greg Cohen; and her frequent band mate singer/guitarist Ryan Scott. Cohen and Scott also contribute bass and guitar to the recording. Several  acclaimed musicians join them, including keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Jim Keltner, pedal-steel player Greg Leisz, Punch Brothers violinist Gabe Witcher, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion.

Terry Riley's groundbreaking Minimalist masterwork In C turns a remarkable 45 years young this year. To celebrate, Kronos Quartet has gathered about 60 performers, many of whom participated in the piece's premiere in San Francisco in 1964, to join them and the composer to perform the work in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium for the first time. Playbill calls the piece "the minimalist musical be-in that altered the course of music history." New York magazine says, "Carnegie Hall’s extravaganza should yield a rich, polychrome stew of sound."

Nonesuch Records congratulates Steve Reich, who has been awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his piece Double Sextet. The piece received its world premiere on March 26, 2008, at the University of Richmond, in Richmond, Virginia, in a performance by the ensemble eighth blackbird, which commissioned it. The Pulitzer citation calls Double Sextet "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear." Reich has also been nominated for the 2009 Classical BRIT Awards Composer of the Year Award, for Daniel Variations.

Emmylou Harris is among a select group of leaders in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector to be elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a center for independent policy research. The scholars, scientists, jurists, writers, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders includes Nobel laureates and recipients of the Pulitzer and Pritzker prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, Academy, Grammy, and Tony awards, and the National Medal of Arts.

Nonesuch Records has signed North Carolina–based trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a young string band in the centuries-old Piedmont banjo and fiddle musical tradition. The group’s members—Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson—all trade duties as singers and swap instruments, too. The band, which has toured continuously since its formation in 2005, has several US concert dates this spring before taking a summer sabbatical, during which Giddens is expecting her first child. They will resume touring in the fall; their label debut is scheduled for early 2010.

Youssou N'Dour and global non-profit IntraHealth International have teamed up with Indaba Music to launch a global remix contest, featuring Youssou's song "Wake Up (It’s Africa Calling)," from his most recent Nonesuch release, Rokku mi Rokka (Give and Take). Artists like Duncan Sheik, Nas, and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck have donated remixes of the song to raise funds for the IntraHealth OPEN initiative, which provides health workers in developing countries with the latest open-source software technologies. Now, the same tracks used by those artists are being made available to the global music community on Indaba, an online music collaboration tool, allowing fans to rework the song themselves.

Audra McDonald returns to the stage in this summer's Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night. Audra, a four-time Tony winner, is making her Public Theater debut in the role of Olivia, joining a stellar cast that includes Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway, who stars as Viola, and Raúl Esparza, star of the 2007 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company. The show, directed by Daniel Sullivan, will run June 10–July 12 at the Delacorte Theater in New York's Central Park.

David Byrne will open the 2009 season of Celebrate Brooklyn!, one of New York City's longest running, free, outdoor concert series, with a free concert ($3 suggested donation) in Brooklyn's Prospect Park Bandshell the night of Monday, June 8, its organizers have announced. The series, which has offered free concerts in the Park since 1979, launches its first-ever Opening Night Green Gala, preceding the concert, to support the festival's programs and its efforts to present more environmentally responsible events, including the first-ever large-scale bike parking area at a cultural event in New York.

To mark the start of National Poetry Month, Steve Reich will join a diverse array of noteworthy public figures, including musicians, actors, and writers, among others, at Lincoln Center's newly remodeled Avery Fisher Hall tonight to read their favorite poems by some of America's best-loved poets. Among those scheduled to read along with Reich are Joan Baez, Mia Farrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chip Kidd, Wynton Marsalis, and Zadie Smith. Proceeds from the event, titled Poetry & The Creative Mind, benefit the Academy of American Poets and will help provide free classroom materials to more than 200,000 schools across the US this month.

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce the signing of Rhode Island–based trio The Low Anthem. Later this spring, the label will release an updated version of the band’s album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, which had a limited but critically praised independent release late last year. Rolling Stone says the music on Charlie Darwin feels “homemade” and “solemnly beautiful,” and NPR Music called the song “To Ohio” a “tender stunner” in choosing it as a Song of the Day, saying, “At times languid and haunting, but with detours into Tom Waits-esque stomping and hollering, The Low Anthem’s music seems equally informed by Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, The Band and a late-night ride home in Joni Mitchell’s car.”