The Black Keys have confirmed an extensive, thirty-one-date arena tour of North America. The "Let's Rock" Tour will hit cities including Chicago, Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and Austin. Special guests Modest Mouse will provide support on all dates, and Shannon & The Clams, *repeat repeat, and Jessy Wilson will each open select shows on the tour. The band also headlines 2019's Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas on September 21.

Punch Brothers begin a US tour in Ithaca, NY, on Thursday, with label mate Gabriel Kahane joining as special guest along the way for all but two festival dates. The tour, featuring music from its Grammy-winning album All Ashore, includes shows all along the East Coast and into the Midwest, culminating at the Savannah Music Festival on March 30. Punch Brothers also have a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall in May with Nickel Creek and festival sets at Big Ears, Savannah, Spoleto, Telluride, and RockyGrass ahead. Gabriel Kahane is also at Big Ears and The Kennedy Center this month, and heads to Europe in April.

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi spoke with RTÉ Lyric FM's Culture File about their current tour of Ireland, the many instruments they've brought along, and the repertoire they're performing, including some classical tunes that Giddens has adapted for the folk idiom. Hear the conversation here.

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."