As part of its new feature, Source-Outing, Spinner.com asked Caetano Veloso to name five artists and albums that would give readers a better understanding of his own music. Writer Steve Hochman, in his introduction, writes: "In nearly 40 years he's covered so much ground but with so distinct an approach at all stages that trying to characterize any particular phase or album as anything different from any other just seems pointless and wrongheaded. Some have termed his most recent release, Cê, a 'rock' album. But, really, it's simply a Caetano Veloso album, just as Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain isn't a classical-fusion album, it's Davis. Or Rubber Soul isn't a folk-rock album, it's a Beatles album."

Last night, at a special event at New York's Lincoln Center, Youssou N'Dour was named among the 2008–09 mentor artists in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The mentors, from five countries and six different fields in the arts, also include director Martin Scorsese and actress Kate Valk from the US, German artist Rebecca Horn, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, and Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian.

Late last month, The New Yorker published an in-depth profile of the HBO series The Wire and its creator David Simon, covering everything from the inception of the show to a preview of its upcoming fifth season. Singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who has appeared on the show and is a friend of its creator, tells Talbot that Simon is "a music freak."

On Sunday, Caetano Veloso made his Toronto concert debut, and the Globe and Mail takes the opportunity to weigh in on the ever-evolving performer it calls, approvingly, "a master of 'all is not what it seems.'" "The music of Cê in itself is prime Veloso in trickster mode. It's rock music that's a poke in the eye of 'rockism,' the elevation of certain rock music to exalted elite status ... But the music, whether audacious and driving or achingly melancholic, and from whatever period of his prolific songbook, was unfailingly stronger for any inherent contradictions." In advance of tomorrow night's show in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Times has published a profile of the performer examining how he has maintained what may be "the most varied career of any '60s icon."

Pianist Philip Bush reports in his blog, Mostly Music in the Midlands, from his weeklong tour through France with the Steve Reich Ensemble and conductor Alan Pierson performing The Cave, Reich's early '90s video-opera collaboration with Beryl Korot.

On October 25 and 26, Glenn Kotche and Kronos Quartet premiered Glenn's new piece for quartet and percussion, Anomaly, at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Last month, we brought you the notes Glenn wrote for the program, in which he describes the very personal inspiration for the new work. Here, in a note he's written exclusively for the Nonesuch Journal, Glenn shares some insights into the process of composing, rehearsing, and performing a brand new piece during what was already a year of non-stop touring for Wilco, and for Kronos as well.

Nonesuch is pleased to announce the January 8, 2008, release of the first soundtrack from the critically acclaimed, Peabody Award–winning HBO series The Wire. That's two days after the series kicks off its fifth season. It also marks the first time music from the David Simon–created show has ever been collected and released as an album.

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently spent some time with photographer Michael Wilson, a frequent Nonesuch Records collaborator whose photographs have graced some of the label's most iconic album covers of the past decade. Michael recently contributed photos to a new book about international adoption titled Now We Are One. He also held a party last week to celebrate the opening of his new portrait studio in Cincinnati. The opening-night festivities included an auction of prints of a long list of Nonesuch artists. Proceeds went to Cincinnati Children's Hospital's International Adoption Center.

"Had Caetano Veloso just aged gracefully, it would have been enough," says The New Yorker ahead of Veloso's NYC Cê tour stops. "Had he merely written thirty or so perfect songs, it would have been enough. Had he only recorded Cê, one of the most striking and least indulgent rock records of 2007, it would have been enough. But on top of all that there’s the fact that when he comes to New York, he gets to play to his crowd."

Gilberto Gil will resign as Brazil's minister of culture next year to seek treatment for a polyp on his vocal cords. The polyp first caused the legendary performer trouble at a concert performance last year. When Gil took on the official political office in 2003, it was an unexpected turn of events for the longtime activist; he was jailed in 1968 along with Caetano Veloso for what the military dictatorship then in power took to be the subversive nature of the Tropicália movement the musicians had founded.

"Clearly one of the most original and most proficient guitarists now playing, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential and exciting jazz guitarists to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century," says All About Jazz in a feature profile of Bill Frisell. "Noted for his unparalleled sensibilities, over the years Frisell has pursued emotional honesty over technical perfection to achieve a specific sound that is both powerful and beautiful. As a solo artist, he has explored various music venues and taken his listeners to a lot of places ... Simply put, you never know what to expect from Frisell."

The Times (London) gives four stars to Richard Goode's November 7 performance with Dawn Upshaw at London's Southbank Centre. The concert was the pianist's first in a series there as artist-in-residence for the 2007–08 season. The pianist's solo work, which included an "always movingly lyrical performance" of Berg's Piano Sonata was "quite some feast." And for Upshaw, there was "a new depth and focus" in the singer's work.