Chicago-based percussionist, composer and producer Makaya McCraven stopped by Amoeba Music in San Francisco for a shopping trip and a chat for Amoeba’s What’s in My Bag? series, in which he picks up music by Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Billy Cobham, Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela, Yusef Lateef & Archie Shepp, NNAMDÏ, Charles Stepney, Thelonius Monk & John Coltrane, Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers featuring Wynton Marsalis, Harvey Mason, Augustus Pablo & King Tubby, Bobby Broom, Joshua Abrams' Cloud Script, and Miles Davis. You can take a look inside here.

Hurray for the Riff Raff—aka Alynda Segarra—has released an acoustic version of “SAGA,” a song from their acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut album, LIFE ON EARTH. You can watch a lyric video for the track here. 

Natalie Merchant's new single, “Come On, Aphrodite,” featuring singer Abena Koomson-Davis (Resistance Revival Chorus), is out now. It's the first track released from Merchant’s upcoming album, Keep Your Courage, and establishes the record’s themes of love and passion as essential to the human experience. Merchant’s ninth solo studio album, and the first new material since 2014’s self-titled record, Keep Your Courage is set for release on April 14 on Nonesuch. She will tour the US starting this spring; European dates will be announced shortly.

Composer John Adams, in two new videos from his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, talks about his early experiences with music and finding his voice as a composer. In the first video, he shares some childhood experiences that led him to want to become a composer. In the second, he recounts a crisis of musical identity he went through in his 20s and 30s and how he found his own musical language, informed by the minimalist pioneers, jazz, Stravinsky, and others.

Brad Mehldau has shared videos of him performing and discussing "Golden Slumbers" from his new album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, at New York’s Village Vanguard. You can watch both here. It's the third and final in a series of such videos from the album, following the title track performance and discussion and his "I Am the Walrus" performance and discussion. “'Golden Slumbers,’ certainly ‘Hey Jude,’ ‘Let It Be’ are songs that, for me, feel like ... something church like. Maybe it has something to do with the cadences that are in there. They’re just so righteous,” Mehldau says. “For me, it has a healing quality.”

Rachael & Vilray—the duo of singer/songwriter Rachael Price (Lake Street Dive) and guitarist/singer/songwriter Vilray—have unveiled a video for “Any Little Time,” a song from their new album, I Love a Love Song!, that features Vilray on vocals. You can watch the video, filmed in the studio in Los Angeles and directed by Jacob Blumberg, here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new album, Mélusine, is due March 24 on Nonesuch; vinyl is due May 19. Mélusine is a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the 12th century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl. They tell the folk tale of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday after a childhood curse by her mother. The track “D’un feu secret,” Michel Lambert’s 1660 air de cour, is available today, along with an animated video by Amanda Bonaiuto that may be seen here.

Natalie Merchant, whose new album, Keep Your Courage, is due April 14, performs the title track to her 2001 album Motherland in a new Blackberry Sessions video. She was joined by guitarist Erik Della Penna in making the video while at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee in November as part of its annual Americana Music Association weekend. You can watch it here. Merchant will tour the US tour this spring, going into the fall. European dates will be announced shortly.

Composer John Adams, in a new video from his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, discusses how great operas throughout history confront deep issues of our human existence, and how contemporary operas—including his own Doctor Atomic, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Nixon in China—explore themes of humanity, intolerance, and power through the lens of recent history. You can watch it here. All of the above and more are included in the forty-disc box set John Adams Collected Works released last year on Nonesuch.  Adams will conduct his opera Girls of the Golden West performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, featuring Julia Bullock among others, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, January 27–29.

Molly Tuttle performs “Castilleja,” from her Grammy-nominated album with Golden Highway, Crooked Tree, in a new video made at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee during its annual Americana Music Association weekend. You can watch it here.

I Love a Love Song!, the second album from Rachael & Vilray, is out now. The album features eleven new songs written by Vilray plus the 1930s classic "Goodnight My Love" written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel. "This is a beautiful collaboration," says BBC Radio 2's Jamie Cullum. "I totally and utterly love that ... I will be listening to that throughout the year." "I Love a Love Song! is a truly lovely album, front to back," says No Depression. "More than anything, it’s two accomplished solo performers coming together with a mutual respect and love of musical standards with the goal of responding in kind." You can watch a new live performance video of the album track "Hate is the Basis (of Love)" here.

“I Am the Walrus,” from Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, is out today, along with videos of Mehldau performing the song and discussing it at New York’s Village Vanguard, which you can watch here. The live solo album, due February 10, features interpretations of nine songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one by George Harrison, plus a David Bowie classic that draws a connection between The Beatles and pop songwriters who followed.