Sara Watkins is back in the studio to record her second solo album for Nonesuch Records. The album, which will be produced by Blake Mills, is due out sometime next year. In the mean time, Watkins will be taking fans inside the recording process as it happens, offering a sneak peek of what's to come when she posts audio clips from each day's session. The first day's clip is now available; hear it here.

Wanda Jackson will join Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings to pay tribute to the late Amy Winehouse on VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul, premiering tonight at 9 PM ET on VH1. Jackson famously performs Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" on her latest album, The Party Ain't Over. The VH1 Divas show, a tribute to the heritage of soul music and the cities in which it flourished, also includes performances from Mary J. Blige, Kelly Clarkson, Chaka Khan, Mavis Staples, and more, all backed by the show’s house band, The Roots.

Cesaria Evora, the Cape Verdean singer known as the "Barefoot Diva," died on Saturday at the age of 70. The Grammy Award-winning singer was the best-known performer of "morna," Cape Verde's national music, and released four acclaimed albums on Nonesuch Records between 1995 and 1999: Cesaria Evora, Cabo Verde, Miss Perfumado, and Mar Azul. The New York Times wrote of her Nonesuch debut: "Somewhere on the spectrum between Sade and Billie Holiday sits Ms. Evora, a singer from the Cape Verde Islands whose songs of loss and longing are as heart-rending as they are spellbinding."

The Brad Mehldau Trio’s seven-disc box set The Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001, featuring longtime Brad Mehldau Trio bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy, earns four stars in the Guardian, which says "the trio created a private world for their listeners to get lost in, and this is the definitive representation of it." The review cites the trio's "almost telepathic intuitiveness" that led to a "mind-boggling" performance. The Financial Times gives it four stars as well, saying it "documents Mehldau’s virtuosity" and confirms "this trio as both yardstick and model for contemporary piano jazz." The Buffalo News calls the set "indisputably great." KPCC says: "Mehldau makes renegade jazz, and this comprehensive collection shows him at his finest."

The NPR Music listeners have spoken, choosing their 100 favorite albums of 2011. "The Black Keys swooped into the No. 6 slot with El Camino," says NPR, "an album just a few days older than the poll itself." "I was pretty thrilled by this list," says NPR's Bob Boilen in the All Songs Considered countdown of the Top 25. Also among the Top 100 listener favorites are Björk's Biophilia and Emmylou Harris's Hard Bargain. Björk's "Virus" is among the NPR Music staff's favorite songs of the year, as is James Farm's "Polliwog."

Congratulations to The Black Keys: the band's new album, El Camino, debuted this week at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 with sales of 206,000 units—far and away the band’s best single-week performance and their highest chart position to date! By comparison, the band’s previous best week was for Brothers, which debuted in May 2010 with sales of 73,000 units. The band will embark on the first leg of their US tour this March, with shows in arenas like Boston’s TD Garden, Chicago’s United Center, and New York’s Madison Square Garden, which sold out in 15 minutes, resulting in the swift addition of a second concert. Special guests Arctic Monkeys open on the tour.

Emmylou Harris will be honored by the Grand Ole Opry on the occasion of her 20th anniversary as an Opry member on January 21, 2012, at the historic Ryman Auditorium. Her 20-year milestone will be celebrated with performances by the honoree, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Shawn Colvin, making her Opry debut, and more.

The line-up for the 2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has been announced, and among the artists performing at next year's Jazz Fest are three performers familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Cheikh Lô, and New Orleans' own Allen Toussaint. All three are performing during the festival's opening weekend, April 27–29, 2012, at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans.

Brad Mehldau’s seven-disc box set The Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 is now available on both sides of the Atlantic via Nonesuch Records, following last week's North American release and this week's European release. "[F]or five years from 1996 the Brad Mehldau Trio were playing music together that few at the time could ignore and which with The Art Of The Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 still more will arrive at," predicts Jazzwise magazine. The Trio's work is showcased "in the greatest depth possible ... all documented in one place in a carefully annotated box set with additional unreleased material."

The Black Keys followed a week of performances in NYC celebrating the release of their new album, El Camino, with a weekend on the West Coast. They performed at KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas, at which "the guys could have converted almost anyone in attendance to the Church of Keys with the way the audience hung on to every word and guitar stroke," reports MTV, and at the Video Game Awards (VGA). You can watch their VGA performance of the El Camino tune "Lonely Boy" here.

Sara Watkins—who, with her brother Sean, is currently on tour in California with the Blind Boys of Alabama—will soon be heading back into the studio to record her second solo album for Nonesuch Records. The album, which will be produced by Blake Mills, is due out sometime next year. Watkins will be taking fans inside the recording process as it happens when she posts audio clips from each day's session to her Facebook page and website.

James Farm, the self-titled debut album from the collaborative band featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland, has made NPR Music's list of the ten Best Jazz Albums of 2011. "All contribute songs to the group's repertoire, and in doing so, they've clearly soaked up grooves and chord progressions from today's pop music without ever forcing the issue," says NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon. "Then they worked out these textures and tunes on the road for a while before pressing record. The harvest feels unlike an all-star collective, and more like a homegrown band."