Rhiannon Giddens will host a new ten-episode podcast series, Aria Code, presented by The Metropolitan Opera and WQXR. The podcast, which will debut on Tuesday, December 4, will take a closer look at some of opera's legendary arias."I studied opera at the Oberlin Conservatory and fell hard for the music," says Giddens. "Even though I've branched out in very different directions, opera stayed with me and I wanted to figure out why. In Aria Code, we really get inside these arias—decoding them with singers and other experts to understand the magic. I'm so excited to take listeners on this journey."

Gaby Moreno and Dannielle DeAndrea came together to record Bill Monroe's "The One I Love Is Gone" for the Hootenanny One Mic Series in Los Angeles. The performance—which follows Moreno's recent Spanish-language take on Paul Simon's "American Tune" with Davíd Garza for the series—was captured in a new video you can watch here.

Lake Street Dive is on Spotify's Under Cover podcast, discussing the creative process of taking on someone else's song and making it their own, as they did with Annie Lennox's song "Walking on Broken Glass" for Spotify Singles. You can hear the Under Cover conversation and Lake Street Dive's take on "Walking on Broken Glass" and their own song "Good Kisser" here.

The line-up for the 2019 Big Ears Festival has been announced, including several Nonesuch artists: Rhiannon Giddens, Punch Brothers, Gabriel Kahane, and Mountain Man. Big Ears will be held at venues throughout downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, March 21–24, 2019. Weekend passes are on sale now.

Punch Brothers have announced a tour of the United States in March 2019 with label mate Gabriel Kahane as special guest. The two-week tour begins at the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York, on March 14, and includes shows all along the East Coast and into the Midwest.

Congratulations to Olivia Chaney, whose new album, Shelter, has been nominated as Album of the Year in the 2018 fRoots Critics Poll! Winners will be announced on BBC Radio 3's Music Planet on Friday, December 7.

Fleet Foxes' special limited-edition collection marking the tenth anniversary of their debut album, First Collection 2006–2009, is out now. The package features content spanning the early days of Fleet Foxes' career, including the self-titled full-length debut album on 12" vinyl, as well as the Sun Giant EP on 10" vinyl and the first vinyl releases of both the very limited-edition, previously only self-released The Fleet Foxes EP on 10" and B-Sides & Rarities on 10". The Sunday Times calls it a Must-Have Reissue, and Mojo names it Vinyl Package of the Month. Take a look inside in an unboxing video here.

Gabriel Kahane was on PBS NewsHour last night to discuss his Nonesuch debut album, Book of Travelers. The album is a musical travelogue about the looping railway journey across the US he embarked upon the day after the 2016 US election and the people he met along the way. For the show's "Brief But Spectacular" segment, he offers his own take on "why trains in America are the road to radical empathy." You can see what he has to say in the piece here.

Joshua Redman, Brian Blade, Scott Colley, and Ron Miles tour select North American cities with songs from their new album, Still Dreaming, starting at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Saturday. The brief tour then heads west for concerts in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. The group will be in the UK and Europe in February.

Congratulations to Robert Plant, who has been nominated as UK Artist of the Year in the 2019 UK Americana Awards. The awards will be presented at a ceremony held at Hackney Empire in East London on January 31, 2019. Plant was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 UK Americana Awards ceremony.

Rhiannon Giddens has announced a duo tour of Ireland with Italian percussionist / accordionist Francesco Turrisi for March 2019. The duo discovered a shared creative ground after their paths crossed a few years back, spanning gospel, jazz, blues, country and folk, and this is their first nationwide tour of Ireland. The eleven-city tour begins at The Sugar Club in Dublin on March 5 and runs through March 16.

To mark last week's return of Steve Reich's Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years, we asked Reich to share a few of his favorite songs and compositions in a new playlist. The eclectic set includes works from across the centuries and genres, by John Coltrane, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Miles Davis, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Pérotin, Radiohead, Bob Dylan, and Bach. You can hear it here.