Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Shawn Colvin, and Billy Bragg are among the artists who will perform at the 15th annual Americana Honors & Awards ceremony, taking place at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Wednesday, September 21, 2016. NPR.org will present a live video stream from the ceremony. A live audio simulcast of the Honors & Awards show will also be available via SiriusXM's Outlaw Country. The PBS series Austin City Limits will broadcast a special featuring performance highlights from the event on November 19. Shawn Colvin and Billy Bragg will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards; Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell are up for Duo/Group of the Year, as are Lake Street Dive.

Brazilian samba singer Teresa Cristina's album and DVD Canta Cartola is out now. Recorded live in concert at Theatro Net in Rio de Janeiro with guitarist Carlinhos Sete Cordas, it captures their acoustic performance of songs by Brazil's beloved samba-ist Angenor de Oliveira ("Cartola"). "Canta Cartola feels fully embodied," says the New York Times, "as if Ms. Cristina had written the songs herself." Today also marks the start of her eight-city world tour with Caetano Veloso, who exclaims: "Teresa develops every melody, every word, every second. It's magical."

John Adams leads Swiss premiere of Scheherazade.2 in Geneva with violinist Leila Josefowicz … Devendra Banhart plays two European festival sets … Emmylou Harris plays free set in Nashville ... Lake Street Dive join Dave Matthews Band in Washington State … Brad Mehldau, Mark Guiliana, John Scofield play Detroit Jazz Festival … Pat Metheny, Christian McBride lead Tokyo residency … Steve Reich is focus of BBC Proms … Caetano Veloso, Teresa Cristina launch tour in Paris … and more …

Sam Amidon will return to Australia in February 2017 for an eleven-concert tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) and Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. On the program, titled Murder & Redemption, the ACO will perform Janáček's Kreutzer Sonata and John Adams's Shaker Loops. Interweaved throughout will be arrangements of traditional folk songs—murder ballads and songs of salvation—that Amidon has re-written and will sing; Pekka and the ACO will perform arrangements Nico Muhly has written to accompany the songs. The concerts follow Amidon's October US tour with Richard Thompson.

Congratulations to Shawn Colvin, who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Trailblazer Award at the 2016 Americana Honors & Awards ceremony at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on September 21. Also among the six Lifetime Achievement Award honorees are Billy Bragg, this year's recipient of the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award, and Woody Guthrie, the posthumous recipient of this year's President's Award. It was announced earlier this year that the Duo/Group of the Year nominees include both Lake Stree Dive and Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell.

Conor Oberst, whose new album, Ruminations, is due October 14, will perform songs from the album on tour in Europe in early 2017. The intimate solo tour begins with a performance at Postpalast in Munich on January 17, followed by stops in Stuttgart, Vienna, Zurich, Cologne, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Utrecht, Brussels, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Dublin. The shows follow Oberst's US tour this autumn.

The Staves performed an intimate live show of songs from their album If I Was and EP Sleeping In A Car at NYC's Rockwood Music Hall for a lucky few WFUV members earlier this month. The full set, including a conversation with WFUV host Russ Boris, is available now at wfuv.org. "The beauty of three-part harmony has a long and rich history: the Beatles' John, Paul and George; David, Graham and Stephen of CSN; and Emmylou, Linda and Dolly," says Boris. "But there’s something incredibly special about the voices of The Staves."

Devendra Banhart, whose new album, Ape in Pink Marble, is due out September 23, has unveiled a second track off the album: "Saturday Night," which can be heard here. The track is also available to download now with pre-orders of the new album—which Uncut calls "excellent"—on iTunes and in the Nonesuch Store, along with the previously released album opener, "Middle Names." Nonesuch Store CD and vinyl pre-orders also include an exclusive, limited-edition autographed print of a drawing by Banhart.

Chris Thile, who will take over for Garrison Keillor as the new host of the beloved public radio program A Prairie Home Companion this fall, has announced a few of the musicians who will join him as the show's house band, along with pianist Rich Dworsky. Among them are two of Thile's fellow Punch Brothers: Chris Eldridge on guitar and Paul Kowert on bass. You can watch Thile give a snapshot of the house band in the video from the show here. Thile will host the new season of A Prairie Home Companion beginning on October 15.

Nonesuch Records releases Confessions, a collaboration between the acclaimed American composer Nico Muhly and the Faroese singer/songwriter Teitur, on October 21, 2016; the vinyl is due November 4. The two musicians began work on the project when Muhly was composer-in-residence at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The songs' lyrics were inspired by or culled from video and commentary the pair found on YouTube. Confessions was recorded with Holland Baroque and is available to preorder with an instant download of the track "Describe You," which you can hear here. Muhly and Teitur will perform songs from the album with New York Baroque Incorporated at (le) Poisson Rouge in NYC on October 21.

BBC Culture has just released its list of the 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century so far, and among them are three films by Paul Thomas Anderson—There Will Be Blood, The Master, and Inherent Vice, all of which feature scores by Jonny Greenwood—along with Richard Linklater's Boyhood, Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis, and Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, for all six of which Nonesuch Records released the film soundtracks. BBC Culture says: "Film-making today, whether massively expensive or made with tiny budgets, shot on celluloid or video is thriving artistically as much as it ever has."

Laurie Anderson released her Nonesuch Records debut album 15 years ago today, August 21, 2001. It's "sparse, haunted, intimate," said Rolling Stone of the album. "Laurie Anderson is a singer-songwriter of crushing poignance." With Life on a String, she turned her view inward, creating one of the most personal recordings of her career; she played violin on a record for the first time since her debut album, Big Science. Guest musicians include Bill Frisell, Lou Reed, and Van Dyke Parks. You can hear the album's title track here.