Tonight marks the start of New York City–based singer/songwriter Christina Courtin's December residency at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. She'll perform tonight and each of the following two Tuesdays at the Williamsburg venue. The sets are free and begin at 9 PM. Christina was recently signed to Nonesuch Records, and her label debut is set for release some time next year.
 

The singer Mariam Doumbia and her husband, the guitarist/vocalist Amadou Bagayoko, have been making music together since they first met and fell in love at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali’s capital, three decades ago. They now perform to crowds of thousands (often tens of thousands) in cities worldwide. Three years in the making, Amadou & Mariam’s new album, Welcome to Mali, has been released in the UK and is being embraced as enthusiastically as its predecessor, the Grammy-nominated Dimanche à Bamako. Because Music / Nonesuch Records releases Welcome to Mali in the US on March 24, 2009.

John Adams's A Flowering Tree and Kronos Quartet's The Cusp of Magic have been named among NPR's Top 10 classical CDs of 2008, the latter a seamless blend of Eastern and Western influences, the former demonstrating the power of Adams's "imaginative musical language." Audiophile Audition gives A Flowering Tree five stars and exclaims: "John Adams has produced a masterwork." With this "shimmering soundscape," Adams has written "some of the most purely gorgeous music of recent years," all captured on this "beautifully recorded" album. "Most strongly recommended!"

The 1997 Buena Vista Social Club recording was, according to All About Jazz, "brimming with magic and full of songs from the vast trove of musical treasures with which Cuba is plentiful." The group's unforgettable performance at Carnegie Hall the following year "remains the pinnacle of the Buena Vista project," and now, with the newly released recording, it is available "for everyone who was there to remember, and everyone else to enjoy ... The music throughout Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall is a deep pleasure: melodic and full of warmth."

With Black Friday thankfully behind us and so-called Cyber Monday now upon us, the Schenectady Daily Gazette offers a number of "gift-worthy recordings" out this year, including six Nonesuch recordings: Isabel Bayrakdarian's "sublime" Gomidas Songs, Ry Cooder's I, Flathead, Emmylou Harris's All I Intended to Be, Randy Newman's Harps and Angels, Orchestra Baobab's Made in Dakar, and Rokia Traoré's "haunting and heart-lifting" Tchamantché.

"Exuberance and wisdom find equal expression in the music of Youssou N'Dour, the Senegalese singer, songwriter and ambassador," writes the New York Times in its recommendation of the Great African Ball, Youssou's all-night musical celebration in New York City. It runs tonight and tomorrow night and, says the Times, "is likely to be one of the year’s great musical events." The Village Voice also recommends this "mbalax marathon" for the ecstatic live set from "the continent's most inventive and internationally renowned musician."

Even with all the critical acclaim and analysis John Adams and his work have received over the years, writes LA Weekly in recommending the composer's new memoir, "if you know Adams’ music—really know it—it may not surprise you to discover that everything written up to now is puny, indeed, besides the guy, and what he has to say about himself." In the book, Adams shows "what it takes to compose great music, serious music that can reach out and touch people importantly" while transcending other memoirs with "this intense, immensely charming and revealing work."

Ry Cooder recently took New York Times writer Lawrence Downes on a tour of El Mirage Dry Lake in California's Mojave Desert, the inspiration and setting for I, Flathead, the third and final album in Ry's California trilogy, and its companion novella. Downes describes their destination as "a land of spy planes, space aliens, off-road vehicles, sturdy reptiles and people with freaky desert habits, like racing vintage hot rods on dry lakebeds ... in other words, a critical stop on Ry’s California trail." The day's adventure in the desert with Ry, he writes, "was as though I’d been roaming the Delta with Robert Johnson, or gypsy France with Django Reinhardt."

Nonesuch Records has signed singer/songwriter/fiddle player Sara Watkins, best known as a founding member of the Grammy Award–winning, critically acclaimed, and platinum-selling band Nickel Creek. With Nickel Creek on indefinite hiatus, she has made her self-titled debut solo album, recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville and produced by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Nonesuch will release Sara Watkins on April 7, 2009.

Punch Brothers' US tour took them to the Walton Arts Center in Arkansas on Saturday, leading the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to state: "No matter what music they touched, the Punch Brothers were quite amazing." The review calls The Blind Leaving the Blind, from the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch, "the most impressive piece of the night." An examination of that piece in The Gospel & Culture Project concludes: "[Chris] Thile has made music that shakes fans out of genre-bound identities, challenges attention spans, and undermines pre-conceptions of where great music is to be found. TBLTB can teach listeners new ways to experience music."

With the election of Chicago favorite son Barack Obama to the Presidency, a considerable amount of outside attention has been paid of late to the city. The New York Times recently talked to another of the city's favorite sons, Jeff Tweedy, a longtime supporter of the President-elect, about changing perceptions of Chicago. Wilco tops the list of nominees for the 28th annual Chicago Music Awards: Songwriter of the Year for Jeff, plus Pop Entertainer of the Year, Best Rock Entertainer, and Most Outstanding Band or Group for Wilco.

Randy Newman, The Black Keys, The Magnetic Fields, and Punch Brothers. It's quite an eclectic list of artists, but they all share one thing, in addition to being Nonesuch label mates: they've all made the list of the Top 100 of the Year's Best CDs from NPR's All Songs Considered. The show is now looking for your input to narrow down the list to the Top 10. And speaking of year-end bests, Blender's annual Top 33 lists Randy's Harps and Angels at No. 8.