Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan’s StandArt—his first album of American standards—will be released on April 29. StandArt includes songs from the 1920s through the 1950s, by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern, and others; it also includes a piece Hamasyan improvised with his bandmates—bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Justin Brown—and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Other special guests include saxophonists Joshua Redman and Mark Turner. StandArt is available to pre-order with an instant download of Hamasyan’s take on Elmo Hope’s “De-Dah,” the video for which can be seen here. Hamasyan embarks on a US tour in June and has upcoming dates in France, Israel, Switzerland, and Spain.

Cécile McLorin Salvant has released her take on the Sting song "Until," from her Nonesuch debut album Ghost Song, due March 4; you can watch the video here. "This is the weirdest, moodiest set of lyrics," she says. "I feel like lyrics can morph into what you want them to be depending on when you listen. Of course it’s about love and romance, but there are these weird turns it takes, the dance at the center of the song. And that idea of catching the world in an hourglass is so great to me. I’m obsessed with hourglasses; I draw a lot of them in my visual art. It’s one of my favorite memento mori moments—the beauty of it and also the finality of it."

Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, longtime friends and collaborators, reunite with an album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who have inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: THE SONGS OF SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGHEE, out April 22 on Nonesuch Records. With Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano and Cooder on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo—joined by Joachim Cooder on drums and bass—the duo recorded eleven songs drawn from recordings and live performances by Terry and McGhee. A video for the track “Hooray Hooray” may be seen here, as well as an interview with Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal about the record. 

Composer/singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane releases Magnificent Bird on March 25. On the album, Kahane chronicles the final month of a year spent off the internet, reveling in the tension between quiet, domestic concerns, and the roiling chaos of a nation and planet in crisis. “Sit Shiva,” the album’s first single, out now, finds Kahane skirting the rules of his digital hiatus in order to mourn, online, the death of his maternal grandmother; in typical fashion, he mines not just pathos, but humor and grace amidst his family’s grief. You can watch the video here. Pre-orders of Magnificent Bird from Bandcamp and Nonesuch Store include an exclusive, limited-edition print autographed by Kahane, while they last.

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider has released a video for 'Agnus Dei' from her acclaimed album Mass for the Endangered, performed by Gallicantus led by Gabriel Crouch. The video is the sixth and final in the series by visual artist CandyStations, aka Deborah Johnson.

Acclaimed singer, songwriter, and musician Molly Tuttle will release her Nonesuch Records debut album, Crooked Tree, April 1 with her new bluegrass collective Golden Highway; vinyl follows May 13. You can watch Tuttle and her band perform the title track live here. Recorded live at Nashville’s Oceanway Studios, Crooked Tree was produced by Tuttle and Jerry Douglas and features collaborations with Sierra Hull, Old Crow Medicine Show, Margo Price, Billy Strings, Dan Tyminski and Gillian Welch. The album explores Tuttle’s love of bluegrass, which she discovered though her father, a music teacher and multi-instrumentalist, and her grandfather, a banjo player. Across these thirteen tracks, all of which were written/co-written by Tuttle, she honors the bluegrass tradition while also pushing the genre in new directions. Tuttle and Golden Highway—Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo)—launch a US tour tonight.

Punch Brothers’ album Hell on Church Street is out now on Nonesuch Records. The album is the band’s reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album Church Street Blues. The record features a collection of songs by Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Bill Monroe, and others. An in-the-studio video of the band playing the album track “Pride of Man,” written by Hamilton Camp, may be seen here. Punch Brothers are now touring the US, heading to California this week, followed by stops across the country, including Chicago, New York, and Boston.

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) releases “PIERCED ARROWS,” a new song on Nonesuch today. The track is from Segarra’s Nonesuch debut, LIFE ON EARTH, out February 18; its video, which you can see here, is directed by New Orleans-based artist Lucia Honey. Segarra calls it "a heartbreak song, lost in the realm of memory. Being stuck in the past, and finding the rapidly changing world uncanny and bizarre. Trying to outrun trauma. Finding a meeting place between tough and tender. Memory replaying inside/beside you, triggering fight or flight responses.”

Wilco's induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, recorded live in Austin, Texas, on October 28, 2021, was broadcast on PBS in a special installment of the series this past weekend. The ceremony salutes Wilco and its fellow inductees, Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escovedo, with performances by Jason Isbell, Rosanne Cash, Margo Price, Sheila E., Lenny Kaye, Japanese Breakfast and more. A special 90-minute online edition, including exclusive content from the celebration, with performances by John Doe, Terry Allen, and Bill Callahan, can be seen here, along with an excerpt from the special featuring a group performance of "California Stars."

David Byrne was on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers remotely to discuss American Utopia on Broadway, the adaptations he and the cast and crew made to keep the show going—in an "unchained" (aka unplugged) version—during recent Covid-19 outbreaks, and the Spike Lee–directed film of the show, which is up for a Grammy Award for Best Music Film. You can watch their conversation here.

All six parts of Laurie Anderson's Norton Lectures, Spending the War Without You: Virtual Backgrounds, are now available to watch again indefinitely. Given virtually over the course of the year on Zoom through the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, the series examines the challenges faced by artists and citizens alike as culture is reinvented. "I tried to create, over these six talks, something that would be useful to you, a kind of portable philosophy," Anderson says in her introduction. "And you can tell me if that worked at all." You can watch it all here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant has released "Thunderclouds," from her Nonesuch debut album Ghost Song, due March 4; you can watch the video here. "I suffer from insomnia, and so do others in my family, and in one way this song is about having to suffer in darkness," she says. "It’s again celebrating something that is dark—that line, ‘Sometimes you have to gaze into a well to see the sky.’ It’s talking about looking down into the depths of a situation to truly see the beauty of it."