Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday has been celebrated in many ways, including concerts with renowned interpreters of the composer's music, like Bernadette Peters, who taks to the Sunday New York Times about her new role in A Little Night Music. Times critic Anthony Tommasini offers own birthday wishes to the composer in a video featuring the writer at the piano performing and discussing some of his favorite Sondheim musical moments. After one such piece, he says: "It's that kind of detail that makes Stephen Sondheim so important to musicians and composers, but it is also what makes the show so rich and meaningful, and why he is so beloved by so many people, including me."

Kronos Quartet performs a free outdoor concert at New York's Damrosch Park for the Lincoln Center Out of Doors series, featuring the world premiere of Christine Southworth's Super Collider, performed with Gamelan Galak Tika on the new Gamelan Elektrika, plus works by Steve Reich, Café Tacuba, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Raz Mesinai. Prior to the concert, Gamelan Galak Tika will lead a free workshop on the kecak, Bali's famed "Monkey Chant."

Lonely Avenue, the new album from Ben Folds and Nick Hornby, is now available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with an exclusive, limited-edition Folds/Hornby-penned manuscript score from the album track "Picture Window," a number of which will be signed by the artists. The record, due out September 28, is available for pre-order on CD, vinyl, and in a deluxe edition that includes the CD, four short stories by Hornby, and photos by Joel Meyerowitz in a hardbound, 152-page book.

The Black Keys will make their debut in the Rock Band Music Store of downloadable content for the Xbox 360, PlayStation3, and Wii on August 17. The Black Keys Pack 01 will feature “Strange Times” and “I Got Mine,” off 2008's Attack & Release, and “Your Touch” off the band's Nonesuch debut album, Magic Potion.

As Natalie Merchant and her band perform songs from Leave Your Sleep in California this week, new shows have just been added in the Northeast this fall featuring a full symphony orchestra. LA Weekly calls Leave Your Sleep "the most sonically adventurous project of her career." The Atlantic, reviewing the Seattle show, says it "worked—in wondrous ways," calling it "a tour de force ... an artist's creative and courageous venture into new territory altogether."

Punch Brothers' latest Nonesuch album, Antifogmatic, was just released on vinyl, while the band is out West performing songs from the album. Already on the road for a month now, Punch Brothers announce their fall tour, adding several new dates throughout the South. "Most shows are now on-sale," reports Noam Pikelny on the band's newly redesigned website. "People might be lining up outside of these venues already. There's just no way to tell for sure."

Sara Watkins has begun the month-long Summer Love Tour with Garrison Keillor and the cast of A Prairie Home Companion. She tells the Grand Rapids Press: "One of the things I'm looking forward to is getting to hear [Garrison] tell stories every night." Watkins will also perform on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on September 2 and has been nominated as Artist of the Year in the San Diego Music Awards.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the free outdoor music festival held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with a stellar line-up of performers that includes a number of Nonesuch artists—Carolina Chocolate Drops, Randy Newman, Emmylou Harris, and T Bone Burnett—along with several artists familiar to fans of Nonesuch. The festival will be held October 1–3.

Punch Brothers' latest Nonesuch album, Antifogmatic, which was released earlier this summer on CD and described on NPR's Weekend Edition as "10 delectable tunes," is now available on vinyl. The vinyl edition includes the album pressed on 140-gram vinyl plus a CD of the complete album. Actor/comedian Ed Helms offers a "Slobbering Rave" of the band's music in Paste, calling "an impossibly perfect mixture of down-home charm and staggering sophistication."

AfroCubism—the great world music album that never was—has finally been realized and is due for release from World Circuit / Nonesuch Records this October. To coincide with the release of the album, AfroCubism the band, featuring some of Cuba and Mali's finest musicians, will embark on its first full tour this fall. In North America, where the album is due for release on Nonesuch October 19, the group will stop in Montreal, Boston, and New York.

Philip Selway's solo debut album, Familial, is due out at the end of the month. Selway spoke with Billboard magazine for an interview that was also published via Reuters. Billboard refers to "the album's pared-down, acoustic sound," about which Selway says: "It's a world apart from what I do in Radiohead."