Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi perform the 17th century piece "Si Dolce è'l Tormento" by Claudio Monteverdi in a new video. It was filmed by Laura Sheeran at Hellfire Studio in Dublin during the making of their new album, They're Calling Me Home, which features the song. You can watch it here. Giddens will release an Audible Original, To Balance on Bridges, July 22, as part of Audible's Words + Music series in the US. In the 1.5 hour audio-only memoir, Giddens recounts her life from childhood to present and explores her discovering many different types of music. She performs tracks from several of her acclaimed albums and leads listeners through a multitude of musical styles, confronting questions on race, culture, appropriation, and class.

Congratulations to the cast and crew of Spike Lee's film of David Byrne's American Utopia, which has been nominated for six Emmy Awards: Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded); Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special; Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Special; Outstanding Music Direction; Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Variety Series or Special; and Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Special. Winners will be announced on Sunday, September 19, just two days after David Byrne's American Utopia returns to Broadway at the St. James Theatre. 

"They were both fearless, pushing back against the severe music that seemed to dominate the modern composition landscape during the 1960s and 1970s, the same music that was, by the way, a major part of Nonesuch’s identity during that period," writes Nonesuch Records Chairman Emeritus Bob Hurwitz, in a remembrance of composers Louis Andriessen and Frederic Rzewski. "Neither was afraid to reference vernacular music, and jazz, and popular and folk music, and most importantly, both embraced a tonal language that was out of favor at the moment they were coming of age as composers. Their music was deadly serious at times, and polemical and political, but it could be humorous, and always filled with humanity."

Dan Auerbach will make his directorial debut in a documentary feature about Dr. John, aka Mac Rebennack. RadicalMedia has announced its partnership with Auerbach for the project, which will tell a story about the storied musician and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, who died in 2019, and his impact in music and on the culture. Auerbach, who produced Dr. John's 2012 Grammy-winning Nonesuch album, Locked Down, says: "I’m still learning bits about him that I never knew, and I hope the movie provides a lens into the story of the life of Dr. John."

Punch Brothers guitarist Chris "Critter" Eldridge is on the podcast Inside the Musician's Brain to talk with host Chris Pandolfi of The Infamous Stringdusters from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where Punch Brothers, a mainstay of the festival, returned to perform last month. "Critter is really an astounding acoustic guitar player," says Pandolfi. "I've always loved his playing." You can hear their conversation here.

The Black Keys perform "Poor Boy a Long Way From Home," an R.L. Burnside tune from their new album, Delta Kream, live from Mississippi at Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Blue Front Café, the oldest active juke joint in America, in a new video. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are joined by Kenny Brown on guitar and Eric Deaton on bass, both long-time members of the bands of blues legends including Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. You can watch it here.

Rachael & Vilray—Lake Street Dive singer-songwriter Rachael Price and composer, singer, and guitarist Vilray—kick off a ten-concert tour of the United States with three performances in Colorado this weekend, including a set as special guest of The Avett Brothers at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The tour continues throughout July and into August with shows in Illinois, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and Maine.

Lake Street Dive has announced a dozen new tour dates for the fall, with shows in Nevada, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey through October. They follow the band's previously announced summer and early fall shows.

Composer Louis Andriessen died today at a care home in Weesp, North Holland, at the age of 82. Andriessen was once described by the Guardian as “not only the leading Dutch composer of our time, but one of the most important figures in European music in the last half century, whose influence has spread far beyond that of his own works.” Over thirty years, he released nine recordings on Nonesuch, from De Staat in 1991 to his final work, The only one, earlier this year.

Lake Street Dive's Rachael Price and Mike Calabrese are the guests on the latest episode of the Your Last Meal podcast. The talk with host Rachel Belle about how they met in college, the dive-bar origin of the group's name, and, of course, per the show's title, the meal they would choose as their last. You can hear their surprising choices and join Belle in going down the rabbit holes to which they lead in the episode here.

Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion have released a video of "To the Sky," a track from their new album, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, performed live. You can watch the video, directed by Maureen Towey and filmed at Bok in Philadelphia, here. "'To the Sky' quietly awakens with gentle humming and a softly rumbling marimba," writes NPR Music's Tom Huizenga. "Gradually the song blooms, and near the end Caroline Shaw's voice bursts open in pure radiant sunshine. It's another stunning moment in the career of the composer." The new album "showcases Shaw's flexible voice—clear as a mountain stream, flowing with expression in many directions."

Rhiannon Giddens spoke with WNYC's Radiolab for its miniseries The Vanishing of Harry Pace and with NPR's Radio Diaries for its feature "The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records," both about the groundbreaking life of Pace, who, a century ago, founded Black Swan Records, the first major Black-owned record company, and launched the careers of Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong, and what happened next. "This period—basically between emancipation and the Harlem Renaissance—it is the key to our American character," Giddens says.