"The Blue Hour, a cycle of songs by Caroline Shaw, Angelica Negrón, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Rachel Grimes and Shara Nova, who sings and narrates its 40 sections, is unforgettable," writes NPR Classical’s Tom Huizenga in naming the album to his list of the year’s ten best. The album has also made NPR Music's list of The 50 Best Albums of 2022 and year's best lists from the Boston Globe, New Sounds, Sequenza 21, and I Care If You Listen, which calls it "stunning."

Caroline Shaw is on BBC World Service’s Music Life with fellow musicians Patrick Watson, Weyes Blood (with whom Vagabon is touring North America this spring), and Flume. They discuss the idea of perfection as a route to self-sabotage, the pressure to share more of one’s personal life, and more. You can hear their conversation here.

Singer-songwriter Connie Converse’s song “One By One,” which Julia Bullock performs with Christian Reif on piano on her solo debut album, Walking in the Dark, in an arrangement by Jeremy Siskind, is the subject of the latest episode of Resounding Verse, a podcast about poetry and song hosted by Stephen Rodgers. You can hear it here. "I can’t help but think if [Converse] could only hear this luminous recording, if she only knew that over seventy years after she wrote this song, it would finally find a wide audience, and her songs would finally shine like the sun, she would be pleased," Rodgers says of Bullock's performance.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is the focus of the latest episode of the Suzie Explores podcast. Seven members of the Broadway cast—Bobby Wooten III, Mauro Refosco, Daniel Freedman, Tim Keiper, Stéphane San Juan, Jacquelene Acevedo, and Tendayi Kuumba —joined host Suzie Collier six months after the end of the Broadway run to discuss the show and what’s happened since. You can watch the conversation here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant performs Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg’s "Over the Rainbow" in a new video recorded at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center last spring. The video features Salvant with pianist Sullivan Fortner, percussionist Keita Ogawa, guitarist Marvin Sewell, flutist Alexa Tarantino, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura. You can watch it here. She performs Arlen/Harburg's "Optimistic Voices" along with Gregory Porter's "No Love Dying" in a Grammy-nominated arrangement on her Grammy-nominated Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song.

Rachael & Vilray rang in 2023 with New Year’s Eve television appearances on both sides of the Atlantic: on CBS Saturday Morning and BBC Two’s Jools Holland special Jools’ Annual Hootenanny. You can watch them perform three songs from their upcoming album, I Love a Love Song!, on CBS—the previously released “Is a Good Man Real?” and “Just Me This Year” and the newly released “Just Two”—and their Hootenanny performance of “Is a Good Man Real?” here.

David Byrne rang in 2023 performing two songs with Miley Cyrus as part of NBC’s New Year’s Eve special Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party. Byrne, Cyrus, and a full band performed “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” from his 2018 album American Utopia and its subsequent Broadway production, and David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” You can watch them both here.

The Staves—sisters Emily, Jessica, and Camilla Staveley-Taylor—are the guests on the latest episode of the podcast Griefcast, hosted by Cariad Lloyd. They talk with Lloyd about the loss of their mother, Jean, who died in the summer of 2018, addressing grief, and creativity after death. You can hear their conversation here.

As 2022 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time to take a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year. Many Nonesuch artists and their recent Nonesuch releases have made year's best lists and are up for Grammy Awards. So here, in words and music and in chronological order, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude.

'Tis the season to be jolly with holiday songs! To add our merry to the mix, we've updated Nonesuch for the Holidays, our playlist of holiday tunes both classic and soon-to-be-so from Rachael & Vilray, Joachim Cooder, Mountain Man, The Staves, Rostam, Chris Thile, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Julia Bullock, John Adams, Boston Camerata, and, of course, George Balanchine's The Nutcracker. You can hear it here on Spotify and Apple Music.

Hurray for the Riff Raff has released a new version of "LIFE ON EARTH"—the title track to their latest album and New York Times' Lindsay Zoladz's Song of the Year—featuring friends and fellow New Orleans musicians the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, recorded live in Esplanade Studios. The album was on many year's best lists, including those of NPR, Mojo, Rolling Stone, Uncut, and Brooklyn Vegan. Hurray for the Riff Raff tours North America with First Aid Kit in May.

Punch Brothers recently concluded a US tour with Béla Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart featuring Sierra Hull. You can now watch a holiday medley from their December 15 Indianapolis show—including “The Chipmunk Song,” “Sleigh Ride,” and letters to Santa—here. Punch Brothers' latest album, Hell on Church Street, a reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album Church Street Blues, has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.