Multi-instrumentalist Yussef Dayes will release his highly anticipated debut solo studio album, Black Classical Music, September 8.Dayes’ drum licks and Rocco Palladino’s bass are the anchors to this nineteen-track debut solo studio album, with Charlie Stacey (keys/synths), Venna (saxophone), Alexander Bourt (percussion), and a host of features including: Chronixx, Masego, Jamilah Barry, Tom Misch, Elijah Fox, Shabaka Hutchings, Miles James, Sheila Maurice Grey, Nathaniel Cross, Theon Cross, and the Chineke! Orchestra—the first professional orchestra in Europe to be made up of majority Black and ethnically diverse musicians. You can watch the video for the title track, featuring Venna & Charlie Stacey, here.

Congratulations to Cécile McLorin Salvant, Makaya McCraven, and Jeff Parker, each of whom has won the Deutscher Jazzpreis in Germany. Salvant won for International Vocal Album for her Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song; McCraven for International Drums/Percussion; and Parker for International String Instrument. Winners were announced at an awards ceremony in Bremen today.

Brad Mehldau’s acclaimed 2002 Jon Brion–produced album Largo, which turned 20 last year, will receive its first-ever vinyl release, on Nonesuch Records on June 16. The 2LP black vinyl edition is available to pre-order now. Mehldau experiments with electronic instrumentation on this set of original and borrowed tunes, including Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” and The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.” "Gorgeous and brilliant,” raved the Boston Globe. “Mehldau has crafted a new-jazz soundscape that bursts with pop smarts."

The premiere recording of Thomas Adès’ Dante—a ballet score in three acts based on Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia—recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in concert at Disney Hall, is out now on Nonesuch Records. Dante was first performed at the Royal Opera House as part of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project for the Royal Ballet, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and with designs by visual artist Tacita Dean. “In any new shortlist of great ballet scores by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten, and Bernstein, Dante must newly be included for its musical invention alone,” exclaims the Los Angeles Times. “There is not a second in its 88 minutes that doesn’t delight. All of it is unexpected and wanted.” The collectable limited vinyl two-LP edition includes artwork by Dean and photography from the Royal Ballet’s performance.

To commemorate Earth Day, Hurray for the Riff Raff has released a digital deluxe version of their acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut. Along with the album's original eleven songs, the deluxe edition has seven additional tracks, three of which are previously unreleased: an acoustic version of "POINTED AT THE SUN" and two originals from the Life on Earth sessions, "LET HER IN THE SKY" and "RESISTANCE ROCKERS," the Kelly Gallagher–directed video for which can be seen here.

Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion perform Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. Jeremy Denk plays Nijmegen Piano Biennale. Emmylou Harris is in Dallas. Kronos Quartet joins the ballet in San Francisco. Natalie Merchant’s Keep Your Courage tour continues in Pennsylvania. Joshua Redman is in Toronto. Cécile McLorin Salvant performs with American Pianists Awards finalists in Indianapolis. Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway tour Texas.

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, is this Saturday, April 22, 2023, and among the special releases out that day are the previously unreleased full-length live recording of The Black Keys' very first show at Beachland Tavern in Cleveland in 2002, on tangerine-colored vinyl; the first-ever vinyl release of The Magnetic Fields’ 2004 Nonesuch debut album, i, on gold-colored vinyl; and an alternate version of Wilco's landmark album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, featuring unique performances of all eleven songs, originally released as a bonus CD with the September 2022 issue of Uncut.

Natalie Merchant has released the video for "Big Girls," a song from her new album, Keep Your Courage. The song is one of two duets on the album sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, along with "Come on, Aphrodite." That video and the new video for "Big Girls," which you can watch here, were directed by Matthew Shattuck. Merchant's tour continues with shows in Pennsylvania and Virginia this week. 

Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, has announced its 2023–24 concert season, including performances by Brad Mehldau (both solo and with his Trio), Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kronos Quartet, Rhiannon Giddens with Silkroad Ensemble, and Attacca Quartet.

Natalie Merchant's new album, Keep Your Courage, is out now on Nonesuch Records. Produced by Merchant, the new LP is her ninth solo studio album, and the first of all-new material since 2014’s self-titled record. Keep Your Courage "has some of Merchant’s best songwriting," says the AP. NPR says: "That lush, layered contralto voice can belong to only one person." Mojo calls it "her most beautiful in decades." "Welcome return of a unique voice,” says Uncut. “An album contemplating what it is that keeps us plodding forwards despite everything. Merchant’s conclusion is, as always, wittily expressed and beautifully sung.” Merchant kicks off an extensive tour in Poughkeepsie, NY, tonight.

Natalie Merchant kicks off her Keep Your Courage tour with two sold-out shows in Poughkeepsie. John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony gets its Taiwanese premiere; Nixon in China is in Germany and France; and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky is in Baltimore. Jeremy Denk joins Phoenix Symphony for Brahms. Jeff Parker is at Public Records in Brooklyn. Cécile McLorin Salvant is in Ann Arbor and Miami.

Rhiannon Giddens will host a new series on PBS, My Music with Rhiannon Giddens, produced by the team behind the long-running PBS series David Holt’s State of Music. In seven half-hour weekly episodes, beginning the week of May 1, Giddens hosts musical performances and conversations with guest artists filmed on location around the South, including Allison Russell, Rissi Palmer, Charly Lowry, Adia Victoria, Joy Clark, Francesco Turrisi, Justin Robinson, Lalenja Harrington, and Laurelyn Dossett.