The Black Keys’ eleventh studio album, Dropout Boogie, is out now. “Some of the stickiest alt-boogie of their career,” says Rolling Stone. “Still raw, fast and loose,” adds the Associated Press. Classic Rock magazine exclaims: “Rock'n'roll in 2022 doesn't get any better than this.” The band was on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform the tracks “It Ain’t Over” and “Wild Child"; you can watch both here. The Black Keys will tour North America for the first time in three years starting in July. The band will take part in an iHeart Radio album release party tonight.

Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson makes her Nonesuch debut with two albums, Amaryllis and Belladonna, out now. The two suites come in a two-LP vinyl set or as two separate CDs and digital albums, produced and mixed by John Dieterich. "These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography," exclaims the Guardian in a five-star, Jazz Album of the Month review. Amaryllis is a six-song suite performed by a newly formed sextet of master improvisers; the Mivos string quartet joins for three of the songs, making this the largest ensemble for which Halvorson has written to date; you can watch a new video for the title track here. Belladonna is a set of five compositions written for Halvorson on guitar plus the Mivos Quartet, whose parts are through-composed and augmented by Halvorson’s guitar improvisations. They celebrate the albums’ release with performances of the two suites in Brooklyn, New Hampshire, and Quebec next week.

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s new album, Crooked Tree, is now on vinyl, following its recent release on CD and digital. The album, recorded live in Nashville, 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 tracks, all written or co-written by Tuttle, explore her lifelong love of bluegrass. "Molly Tuttle's fingers move so quickly, she could pick your pocket without breaking stride," says the New York Times. NPR calls it "dashingly virtuosic." It "feels like the album Molly Tuttle was destined to make," says Uncut. You can watch the new video for the album track "Flatland Girl," featuring Margo Price, and get tickets for Tuttle and the band's tour here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant has released a video of her performing Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, and Herbert Stothart's "Optimistic Voices" and Gregory Porter's "No Love Dying," from her Nonesuch debut album, Ghost Song, with Sullivan Fortner on piano, Marvin Sewell on guitar, Alexa Tarantino on flute, and Keita Ogawa on percussion. You can watch it below. Salvant and the band will give the New York premiere performance of Ghost Song in two shows at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater tonight and on Friday. Tonight's performance will also stream live and will be available on demand through May 18. 

A three-LP/CD box set of albums from the great Argentine composer, bandleader, and bandoneón player Astor Piazzolla originally released by American Clavé Records in the 1980s later reissued by Nonesuch is out now. Astor Piazzolla: The American Clavé Recordings marks the first time this landmark trio of albums—Tango: Zero Hour, La Camorra, and The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado)—is available as a set, now remastered, and the first time the albums have been available on vinyl since their initial American Clavé release. The set features original and new notes by the albums' producer and American Clavé founder Kip Hanrahan and an essay from journalist Fernando González. Uncut exclaims: "On its own, each album makes a fine introduction to Piazzolla's music, but together, they comprise a monumental contribution to world music."

Brad Mehldau has recorded a podcast episode about his new album, Jacob’s Ladder. He talks about some of his personal experiences over the last two years while working on the music he's made during these turbulent times. You can hear it here. Additional episodes are expected to come.

The Black Keys have announced two high-profile events to celebrate their new album, Dropout Boogie, out next week. On May 11, the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney will perform at Los Angeles’ famed Troubadour and offer a global livestream of the intimate show in this 500-capacity venue exclusively via Flymachine. Livestream tickets are on sale now; in-person tickets go on sale on May 9. The band will also participate in an album release party with iHeart stations across the country at 7pm PT on May 13.

Congratulations to Cécile McLorin Salvant and Mary Halvorson, who have won the Jazz Journalists Association's 2022 JJA Jazz Awards: Salvant as Female Vocalist of the Year and Halvorson as Guitarist of the Year. Kudos also to Christian McBride, who has been named Bassist of the Year.

Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan marked the release of his new album, StandArt—his first album of American standards—last Friday and International Jazz Day on the following day with a solo piano performance of Charlie Parker’s “Big Foot,” which you can watch here. He performs the tune on the new album with saxophonist and label mate Joshua Redman. 

Laurie Anderson, a longtime student of Buddhism and meditation, is on the podcast A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to discuss her personal path with Buddhism and approaching art with a beginner’s mind. “It’s what music does,” she says. “It helps you free yourself from meaning into a much more tangible world or state, in which you feel things and understand them, rather than put them into words.” You can hear the conversation here.

Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan’s StandArt—his first album of American standards—is out now. StandArt includes songs from the 1920s through the 1950s, by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern, David Raksin, 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. Hamasyan tours Europe in May and the US in June.

"It would be difficult to make an account of all the ways John Adams’s music has influenced me and my work," Nico Muhly writes in his note in the upcoming 40-disc box set John Adams Collected Works, "but in the spirit of writing something personal, I’d like to offer a few perhaps impersonal observations about his work in a more circular, even crabwise, fashion. There are specific places in John’s music where there is a rhyme hidden across decades, relating to an elusive sense of 'meaning' in his music which radiates across his body of work." You can read his complete note from the box set here.