Sam Amidon's new album of reimagined folk songs, Lily-O, was released last week to critical acclaim. Now, the New York Times' Nate Chinen adds his praise, calling it "hauntingly beautiful." He cites the take on Rosa Lee Watson's "Your Lone Journey" as the song that "brings out the album’s most moving performance. Mr. Amidon sings in a muted voice, trusting the lyrics to make their own impression. The song arrives near the album’s close, so its heavenward glance doubles as a seamless transition." Amidon kicks off a fall tour of US and Europe this Saturday, October 11. 

Music photographer Danny Clinch has published his first-ever monograph, Danny Clinch: Still Moving, which chronicles his work, including images of several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal—The Black Keys (pictured), Chris Thile, David Byrne & Brian Eno, and Jeff Tweedy—among many others, like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, and Neil Young. Danny Clinch: Still Moving is published by Abrams and is available now.

Kronos Quartet has been named Artists-in-Residence at the 2015 Big Ears Festival, which will be held in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, March 27–29, 2015. Throughout the festival weekend, Kronos will weave an array of performances, presenting classic contemporary works and a multi-faceted array of musical collaborations with other festival artists. A limited number of specially priced Big Ears weekend passes go on sale tomorrow, October 8. The initial Big Ears Festival 2015 lineup will be unveiled on Tuesday, November 4, with passes going on sale November 7.

Some 800 lucky fans will have the chance to see Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters in one of their most intimate gigs to date. This Thursday, October 9, 2014, they will play a late-night set at the Brooklyn Bowl. Heading straight to the venue after an appearance on The Colbert Report that night, they will take the stage just after midnight. The special event will feature a DJ set from Questlove to start off the night. Tickets will go on sale this Tuesday, October 7, at 3pm ET.

John Adams will lead the Yale Philharmonia in a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City on Sunday, October 19. The program opens with Stravinsky’s Orpheus, followed by Adams’s Beethoven-inspired piece Absolute Jest (also featuring the Brentano String Quartet in its debut year as Yale’s quartet-in-residence), and Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major. The artists will also perform the program at Yale University's Woolsey Hall on Friday, October 17. 

Pat Metheny Unity Group launches a tour of Asia at the Sejong Center in Seoul on Sunday. The band then heads to Japan for a three-night run at Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo and stops in Osaka, Nagoya, and Kobe, and to China for a headline set at the JZ Music Festival in Shanghai. The Unity Group then begins a four-city tour of Australia, with stops in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Canberra, culminating at the Sydney Opera House. From there, it’s up to Singapore for a show at the Esplanade Concert Hall. The band kicks off the next leg of its North American tour in November.

Today marks the release of composer Steve Reich’s album Radio Rewrite on Nonesuch Records (October 6 in the UK). The album features the first recording of the 2012 title piece, which references two songs by Radiohead and is performed by Alarm Will Sound led by Alan Pierson; Electric Counterpoint (1987), performed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood; and Piano Counterpoint, a 2011 transcription by Vincent Corver of Reich’s 1973 Six Pianos, performed by pianist Vicky Chow. 

Lily-O, a new album of reimagined folk songs by Sam Amidon is out now (with vinyl to come October 28).The album was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson and features jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Chris Vatalaro. "As well as being master craftsmen," says fRoots, these musicians "create atmosphere—cinematic, mesmeric and groove-rich." The Guardian gives the album four stars, calling it "a compellingly quiet, intense affair ... subtle and intriguing." The Independent, in its four-star reivew, says Amidon's "ability to imbue traditional songs with an ahistorical immediacy has never been better realized than on Lily-O." Esquire UK calls it "magical." MusicOMH gives four-and-a-half stars to this "gorgeous" album.  

Today marks the release of Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys—recorded live during the Metropolitan Opera’s 2013 production with conductor David Robertson and director Bartlett Sher—on Nonesuch Records. The opera, with a libretto by award-winning playwright Craig Lucas, is loosely based on true events and follows a lonely detective whose investigation of a seemingly simple crime draws her into a complex web of online intrigue. Alice Coote sings the role of Detective Inspector Anne Strawson and Paul Appleby sings Brian, the 16-year-old boy at the center of her investigations. Two Boys is Muhly’s Nonesuch debut.

The recordings made by Abelardo Barroso with Orquesta Sensación in Havana during the 1950s represent one of the pinnacles of the golden age of Cuban music. Now, on the album Cha Cha Cha, World Circuit, the label behind Buena Vista Social Club, releases a re-mastered selection of 14 of their most irresistible recordings. World Circuit releases the album in North America via Nonesuch Records on November 24; it is available to preorder now in the Nonesuch Store with an instant download of the album track "La Hija de Juan Simón."

Punch Brothers were the inaugural artists-in-residence at Oberlin Conservatory through Oberlin’s American Roots Residency Fund, established by actor-comedian-alum Ed Helms. Conservatory students from a broad range of disciplines participated in the band's three-part residency on campus in the 2013–14 academic year. Oberlin has now put together a video recounting the residency, showing highlights from throughout the year's workshops and performances and talking with the band and Helms, who says: "I’ve kind of stopped being surprised at the ways in which the Punch Brothers blow my mind." See what the band has to say and watch highlights from the residency here.

Robert Plant and his band The Sensational Space Shifters gave the culminating concert of the Nonesuch Records at BAM series celebrating the label's 50th anniversary, performing songs from his new album, lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar, and several Led Zeppelin favorites. "Robert Plant was just brilliant Sunday night in Brooklyn," says NPR's Bob Boilen, who hosted NPR's live video stream of the event. "Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters played a stunning set of music that did what Robert Plant does best: mixing up American blues, British rock, North African rhythms and even some electronica with that voice, still filled with passion after all these years." Watch it again for a limited time here.