Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, is Saturday, April 13, 2019, and included among the special releases on that day is Emmylou Harris's The Studio Albums, 1980–83, a new vinyl collection featuring five classic titles—Roses in the Snow, Evangeline, Cimarron, Last Date, and White Shoes—plus a bonus 45 RPM of "That Lovin' Feeling Again” with Roy Orbison b/w "Mr. Sandman." The collection will receive a limited release of 1,100.

New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records release Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Caroline Shaw’s Orange, performed by Attacca Quartet, on April 19, 2019. Orange, which features six of Shaw’s pieces for string quartet, is the first full-length album to exclusively feature her works and is the first release in a new partnership between the two record labels. The string quartet form "has existed for hundreds of years, but there's something, for me, beautiful and ritualistic about coming back to that form," says Shaw. "This album is a celebration of the simple, immediate, unadorned beauty of a natural, everyday, familiar thing." Nonesuch Store pre-orders include an instant download of the track "Plan & Elevation: IV. The Orangery" (a video for which may be seen here) and an exclusive print of a painting created and signed by Shaw and Attacca Quartet.

Mountain Man has released its take on two John Denver tunes: "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "Around and Around." "We love John Denver so much we gave Alex his haircut, and recorded a few of his legendary tunes too," says the trio. "Have a listen! They are so sooooothing, we promise." Mountain Man Sings John Denver is available to download now and can be heard here; a 7" vinyl is due June 7 and may be pre-ordered now. The group tours the US starting in March.

k.d. lang has announced thirteen shows in the UK and Ireland in July as part of her ongoing world tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of her acclaimed album Ingénue. Following sold-out runs in North America and Australia, the latest leg of the Ingénue Redux Tour begins in Hull, ends in Dublin, and includes London's Eventim Apollo. This is her first full UK tour in over a decade. Watch lang perform the song "Sleeping Alone" live on the US tour here.

Sam Amidon begins a tour of the West Coast of the US and Canada, joined by saxophonist Sam Gendel, at Western Front in Vancouver tonight, followed by shows in Seattle and Portland and three stops in California: Berkeley (as special guest of Bill Frisell), Soquel, and Los Angeles. Amidon will join Bruce Horsby and the Noisemakers as special guest on their tour of the Eastern US in June.

Yola marked today's release of her Dan Auerbach–produced debut album, Walk Through Fire, on Easy Eye Sound with a Facebook Live performance of four songs from the new album with Auerbach and friends at his Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville: "Love All Night (Work All Day)," "Ride Out in the Country," "Faraway Look," and the title track, "Walk Through Fire." You can watch the complete session here.

Yola's debut solo album, Walk Through Fire, produced by Dan Auerbach, is out now on Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label. The album "showcases Yola's otherworldly vocals and compelling songwriting," says NPR. "It's the work of an artist sure to stun audiences for years to come." "[S]he arrives an instant, incandescent vocal star," exclaims the Sunday Times. "Rich with vibrato and echoing Dusty in Memphis, her singing elevates a sequence of immaculately upholstered songs to greatness ... Walk Through Fire introduces an artist who is unmistakably the real deal." "Can't. Stop. Listening," says the Sunday Telegraph. "A star in the making, for sure."

Congratulations to John Adams, the winner of the 2019 Erasmus Prize from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. The prize is awarded annually to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the field of humanities, social sciences, or the arts. It will be presented in November 2019 by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and includes €150,000 in prize money. Adams "receives the prize because he has created a new musical idiom by fusing elements from jazz, pop, and classical music," says the Foundation.

Rhiannon Giddens, who made her Boston Pops debut during the 2018 Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, returns for a Pops residency titled Redefining American Music, May 22–25, 2019. For the first two evenings, she joins the Pops to perform music from her own albums, fusing influences from roots, jazz, blues, country, gospel, and Celtic music. The next two nights, Giddens curates a program that spotlights overlooked African American composers, joined by vocalist Darius de Haas and pianist Lara Downes.

Sam Amidon will join Bruce Hornsby as special guest on his tour of the Eastern US in June. The concerts begin at Charleston Music Hall in South Carolina and continue in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and New Hampshire. Amidon and saxophonist Sam Gendel tour the West Coast starting this Monday.

A Thousand Thoughts, a live documentary with the Kronos Quartet, written and directed by filmmakers Sam Green and Joe Bini—which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and has been performed around the world—will continue to tour the US in the coming weeks and months: in Urbana, Nashville, Austin, Detroit, and New York City. The multimedia performance piece blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews to tell Kronos's story. "It's as magical an amalgamation as you can imagine," exclaims the Los Angeles Times.

Pitchfork has published its list of The 50 Best Movie Scores of All Time, including four for which Nonesuch Records has released recordings: Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread and Philip Glass's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (featuring Kronos Quartet) and Koyaanisqatsi.