Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, was on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform "Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)," from their 2024 album, The Past Is Still Alive. You can watch it here.

Portuguese fado singer Carminho stopped by the NPR offices in Washington, DC, to perform a Tiny Desk Concert of songs from her albums Portuguesa and Maria and her EP Carmimho at Electrical Audio. "The world of Portuguese fado is full of emotion that is on display within seconds of this performance by vocalist Carminho," says NPR's Felix Contreras. 

Congratulations to John Adams and Davóne Tines, who have been nominated for BBC Music Magazine Awards—"celebrating the best new classical music recordings"—Adams for the Opera Award for his Girls of the Golden West (on which Tines performs) and Tines for the Vocal Award for his solo recording debut, ROBESON. Winners will be chosen by public vote and announced at an awards ceremony at Kings Place in London on April 23.

Composer/trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, whose new album, honey from a winter stone, is out next week, stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. He chose recordings by Joni Mitchell, Paul Jacobs (performing Schoenberg), Jonny Greenwood, Mary Halvorson, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Steve Reich, and Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade.

Yasmin Williams stopped by Acoustic Guitar to perform songs from her new album, Acadia, and more and to discuss the album. You can watch the session here. "Yasmin Williams is known for extending the boundaries of solo fingerstyle guitar, with progressive techniques and original compositions that blossom out of traditional folk and roots touchstones," writes Acoustic Guitar's Joey Lusterman. "On her latest record, Acadia, she expands her distinctive sound world even further." Williams kicks off a US tour later this month.

Congratulations to composer and pianist Timo Andres on receiving the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Elise L. Stoeger Prize—a $25,000 cash prize, awarded biennially by CMS to recognize significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition. Andres says: “I feel equally challenged and freed to take risks when I write chamber music, and writing it, I’ve learned the most about becoming a better composer and musician. To be recognized in this medium by one of its greatest institutional standard-bearers is a huge and unexpected honor.”

David Longstreth’s Song of the Earth, a song cycle for orchestra and voices, is due April 4. Performed by Longstreth with his band Dirty Projectors—Felicia Douglass, Maia Friedman, Olga Bell—and the Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, conducted by André de Ridder, the album also features Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie), Steve Lacy, Patrick Shiroishi, Anastasia Coope, Tim Bernardes, Ayoni, Portraits of Tracy, and the author David Wallace-Wells. Longstreth says that while Song of the Earth—his biggest-yet foray into the field of concert music—"is not a ‘climate change opera,’” he wanted to “find something beyond sadness: beauty spiked with damage. Acknowledgement flecked with hope, irony, humor, rage.”

Composer Steve Reich talks about creating his 1970–71 piece Drumming—which the Village Voice hailed as “the most important work of the whole minimalist music movement"—in a new video from his publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Steve Reich and Musicians gave the world premiere performance of Drumming at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in December 1971. Their 1987 Nonesuch recording is included in the forthcoming Steve Reich Collected Works, a twenty-seven disc box set, due March 14.

Legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint (1938–2015) is featured on a new stamp from the US Postal Service, available January 30—the forty-eighth in its Black Heritage stamp series. Ethel Kessler, an art director for USPS, designed the stamp using a photograph by Bill Thompkins. A free first-day-of-issue event will be held at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center in New Orleans.

As 2024 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time for a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year—our 60th anniversary year. Here, in words and music, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude.

We've cracked open a copy of the upcoming nine-LP, four-CD deluxe edition of Wilco's A Ghost Is Born, due February 7, in a new unboxing video. Take a look inside here.

Happy holidays! To add some merry to the mix, we've got Nonesuch for the Holidays, a playlist of holiday tunes both classic and soon-to-be-so from The Staves, Rachael & Vilray, Chris Thile, The Magnetic Fields, David Byrne, Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Joachim Cooder, Mountain Man, John Adams, Julia Bullock, Boston Camerata, The Nutcracker, and more. You can hear it here.