Wilco is set to release a new concert DVD, Ashes of American Flags, on Nonesuch, Saturday, April 18, at independent retailers and nonesuch.com nationwide as part of national Record Store Day. The film, shot in high-def and produced and directed by Christoph Green and Fugazi’s Brendan Canty, presents Wilco live in concert during their 2008 tour. Culled from concerts in five quintessentially American venues—Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Tipitina’s in New Orleans, The Mobile Civic Center in Mobile, The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC—it captures the energy, poignancy, and musicality of a Wilco concert and tour.

Brad Mehldau will be joined by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter at Carnegie Hall tonight for the world premiere of his new work Love Songs. The piece, written for von Otter, is Brad's third Carnegie Hall commission for voice and song; it is set to poems by Sara Teasdale, Philip Larkin, and e. e. cummings, each poet with a different perspective on love. Mehldau and von Otter will perform a number of American popular songs as well. On the first half of the program, pianist Bengt Forsberg will accompany von Otter on works by Sibelius, Hahn, and Schumann, and perform piano works by Ravel and Dukas.

Orlando "Cachaíto" López, the legendary Cuban bassist, died in a Havana hospital yesterday, after complications from a routine operation. Born in Havana in 1933, Cachaíto came from one of Cuba’s foremost musical dynasties, which included his father, Orestes López and uncle, Israel "Cachao" López, and he was considered by many as the finest bass player in the world. The "heartbeat of the Buena Vista Social Club," bass player Cachaíto was the only musician to have played on every album in the Buena Vista Social Club series.

London's Wigmore Hall has announced the first group of concerts that Brad Mehldau has programmed as artistic director of an annual, two-season jazz series there. Scheduled for the first season, 2009-10, are two solo events, a duo concert with label mate Joshua Redman, a Brad Mehldau Trio concert, and a recital with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, with whom he premieres his Love Songs tomorrow at Carnegie Hall.

Shortly after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed offered a list of "rich, wise, inclusive original voices" he might invite to the White House to signal his commitment to the arts. Others have even suggested the appointment of an arts czar. Given all the demands currently weighing on the President, though, Adams explains, in a Newsweek interview, that music appreciation has to start on a much more basic level. "[T]he one and only way to interest people in classical music is to get them to play it as children," Adams asserts. "I think people should just be exposed all the time to great art. That sounds like a really simple, grandiose statement, but I think it's really true."

Grammy week is under way, which means not only the culminating awards ceremony, which will be held this Sunday night, but also various special events, including a conversation with and performance by Allen Toussaint tonight at the Grammy Museum, and an invitation-only ceremony honoring Toussaint and Elliott Carter with the Trustees Award Saturday night. Toussaint will also perform on the live broadcast of Sunday's awards ceremony with an eclectic group of fellow New Orleans artists. Nonesuch artists and albums have been nominated for a total of 13 Grammys this year.

Laurie Anderson performs Burning Leaves, a selection of songs and stories from her various solo shows, in Cleveland, Ohio, this Saturday. She is also a featured artist in the new Guggenheim Museum exhibit The Third Mind, on the influence of Asian among American artists. In the House. In the Fire. Stories 1972–2008, a collection of spoken stories and sounds associated with Laurie's performance work, is included in the exhibit, which runs through April 19. In conjunction with the exhibit, Laurie performs two live solo shows, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the museum next month.

k.d. lang has been nominated as both Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year in the 2009 JUNO Awards for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Over the years, she has won a total of eight JUNOs, dating all the way back to her 1985 win for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year. This year's Producer of the Year nomination is particularly noteworthy, given that Watershed is k.d.'s first self-produced project.

Polish composer Henryk Górecki has been awarded the St. Gregory the Great Medal by Pope Benedict XVI, reports the Polish Radio news service. It states that Cardinal Dziwisz, the Archbishop of Kraków, declared the medal, in his words, "an expression of the gratitude of the universal Church for the composer’s hard work and sacrifice, for his testimony of faith and unbroken spirit, for his wonderful compositions which have a lasting place in the treasure house of sacred music, and also an expression of the church’s anticipation of more pieces that will uplift our hearts to God."

David Byrne, Wilco, Allen Toussaint, and Toumani Diabaté (sharing the stage with Béla Fleck) will be among the scores of incredible performers at the 2009 Bonnaroo festival. This year's incarnation of the event will be held June 11–14 in Manchester, Tennessee. In other festival news, Coachella, in Indio, California, has also announced its lineup for 2009. The Black Keys are among the headliners for the festival's opening night, April 17, as are such legendary performer/songwriters as Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney.

The Magnetic Fields and k.d. lang have both been nominated as Outstanding Music Artist in the 20th annual GLAAD Media Awards for their 2008 Nonesuch releases, Distortion and Watershed, respectively. The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and the issues that affect their lives.

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer George Perle died on Friday, January 23, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. He was 93. Perle, often considered one of the most lyrical of a new generation of atonal composers, wrote prolifically, including symphonic, chamber, vocal, and piano works. Perle often referred to his style of writing as "12-tone tonality." Richard Goode, in his liner notes to a Nonesuch recording of Perle works, wrote of the composer's music: "In its sobriety and playfulness, its rhythmic unpredictability, its delicate balance of harmonic and contrapuntal energies, it often brings Haydn to mind ... Whatever the emotional intensities expressed, one feels a language has been found that is exactly suited to its expressive requirements."