Mountain Man resumes its first US tour in six years in Texas this week, with sets at South x San José in Austin today and Willie Nelson's Luck Reunion on Thursday, and a headline concert at the Heights Theater in Houston on Saturday. The trio takes music from its new album, Magic Ship, to venues across the country this spring and festivals including Big Ears next week and Newport Folk and Pickathon this summer. 

The Philharmonie de Paris has announced its 2019–20 season, and featured among the performers taking the esteemed venue's stages are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Laurie Anderson, Rokia Traoré, Kronos Quartet, and Pat Metheny, as well as works by Steve Reich.

The Black Keys return with the song "Lo/Hi," the first new music from the band since its 2014 album, Turn Blue. "Lo/Hi" was written and produced by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, and recorded at Nashville's Easy Eye Sound studio. Hear it here.

Daughter of Swords, the solo project of Mountain Man's Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, has released the track "Gem," the first peek into her solo output. The song is the first music from the debut Daughter of Swords album, due later this year on Nonesuch. While album details are still to come, "Gem" can be downloaded on iTunes now and heard streaming here. Daughter of Swords will open for Sylvan Esso at NYC's Beacon Theatre in November.

Chris Thile is the guest on NPR's The Thistle & Shamrock. He talks about bringing Live From Here to Carnegie Hall this Saturday for the hall’s Migrations: The Making of America festival, and, says host Fiona Ritchie, he explores "how his music traces his roots into Scots and Irish traditional music, and like all American music has been enriched by the movements of people, learning, sharing, and exchanging with one another."

Kronos Quartet and Kronos Performing Arts Association (KPAA) will present its fifth-annual, three-day hometown music festival, Kronos Festival 2019, at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, May 30–June 1. This year, the festival highlights the voices of singers, storytellers, and activists over three evening concerts—including one with Nonesuch label mate Sam Amidon—a Saturday morning family concert, and Kronos Labs, free public events that are new this year.

Yola will be at SXSW Music Festival in Austin to perform from her album Walk Through Fire in an official showcase on March 13 at Central Presbyterian Church and at Luck Reunion on March 14. She will also perform at a number of SXSW radio sessions, showcases, and parties. Yola is on NPR Music's list of "a hundred handpicked highlights from among the thousands of acts playing SXSW 2019."

Gaby Moreno begins a six-city tour of Australia with two performances at The Fyrefly in St Kilda, Victoria, on Thursday and Friday. The tour continues with three sets at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in Victoria and concerts in Adelaide, Sydney, Gold Coast, and Brisbane.

Rhiannon Giddens begins a duo tour of Ireland with Italian percussionist/accordionist Francesco Turrisi at The Sugar Club in Dublin tonight, followed by stops in Dún Laoghaire, Wexford, Tinahely, Limerick, Tralee, Clifden, Ennis, Letterkenny, Belfast, and Newbridge. "The ties that bind, and the bridges that unite us. These recurring themes form the basis of the musical alchemy that Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi revel in these days," says the Irish Times. "At the heart of the duo’s music is an intention to break down the othering that leads to walls being built, and tolls (both monetary and emotional) being taken."

Mountain Man, which resumes its first US tour in six years next week, has shared a video featuring a performance of the songs "Window" and "Moon"—both from the trio's Nonesuch debut album, Magic Ship—from a sold-out hometown show at the Haw River Ballroom in North Carolina from late last year. You can watch it here.

Yola was on NPR's Morning Edition to discuss her Dan Auerbach-produced debut album, Walk Through Fire, out now on Easy Eye Sound. "The way that [Yola] taps into the softer, more theatrical side of classic country and soul along with the grit isn't the expected approach in the Americana world she now calls home," says NPR's Jewly Hight. "But she's at the place in her career where she's not about to be boxed in." Listen again here.

Olivia Chaney begins a tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland with a sold-out Whitstable Sessions Music Club set on Sunday. The tour includes concerts in London, Southampton, Cambridge, Bristol, Manchester, and Dublin, culminating in Belfast on March 29. Chaney performs on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune on Monday, March 4.