Iron and Wine makes its Nonesuch Records debut with the release of its new album, Ghost on Ghost, tomorrow. In advance of the release comes the video for the album track "Joy." The video, made by projecting hand-painted water color animations into stop-motion landscapes by director Hayley Morris, premiered on NPR Music on Friday. Morris has "created a sense of fragile and otherworldly beauty," says Stereogum. Watch the video here.

To celebrate Jackie Robinson Day—marking the day when, in 1947, Jackie Robinson made his major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke the color barrier in professional baseball—the Nonesuch Journal revisits Natalie Cole's performance of "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?," off the original soundtrack recording to Ken Burns's landmark 1994 documentary Baseball. Listen to the track here.

Bombino continues a four-night stretch in Netherlands through the weekend on his just-launch European tour ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour New England ... Jeremy Denk plays Beethoven, Bartók and Bach in Southern California ... Fatoumata Diawara heads from Minnesota to New Mexico ... Lianne La Havas concludes her US tour in DC, Atlanta and Nashville ... Iron and Wine plays a free set at Oklahoma University ... Natalie Merchant joins the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra for three nights ... Steve Reich joins So Percussion at Cincinnati’s MusicNOW Festival ... Chris Thile, Brad Mehldau tour East Coast ... Rokia Traoré celebrates Beautiful Africa in Europe ... Dawn Upshaw performs in Austin ... and more ...

Nataly Dawn, who has been touring the United States in support of her critically acclaimed new album, How I Knew Her, will tour Europe for the first time this spring, including two UK headline shows in London and Nottingham and seven shows in the UK supporting Lord Huron. The European tour, which follows additional tour dates on the US West Coast later this month, also includes dates in France, Netherlands, and Germany. Tickets are on sale now.

Bombino, who made his Nonesuch Records debut with the release of his new album, Nomad, last week, has unveiled the official video for the album track “Azamane Tiliade.” The video, directed by Reid Long, premiered via Rolling Stone yesterday and is now on YouTube; watch it here. Rolling Stone says Bombino and producer Dan Auerbach "recorded raw, dialed-up jams rooted in the electric-blues tradition of Bombino’s nomadic, desert-dwelling Tuareg people." Bombino has kicked off a month-long European tour and launches a four-night run in the Netherlands tonight.

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau kicked off a nine-city US duo tour with a sold-out performance at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom last night. "Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau come from different worlds but the same species, and whatever feels unlikely about their pairing is eclipsed by what feels perfectly natural," writes the New York Times' Nate Chinen. "At every turn, whatever the song, both musicians played with alert intelligence and deep sensitivity, only rarely entering competitive airspace," which then brought "an exhilarating rush." The tour continues with stops in Durham, College Park, Great Barrington, Boston, Knoxville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Austin. 

Nonesuch releases Audra McDonald’s first solo album in seven years—Go Back Home—on May 21, 2013, featuring songs by composers with whom she has long been associated (Guettel, LaChiusa, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Sondheim) and some, like the Kander & Ebb title track, relatively new to her repertoire; in addition, McDonald continues to champion works by an emerging generation of composers. Nonesuch Store pre-orders include an instant download of the title track (which you can preview here) and a limited-edition autographed print. On May 24, McDonald headlines and hosts "Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home," a national PBS telecast presented by Live From Lincoln Center, featuring songs from the album as well as other personal favorites.

Sara Watkins will join Garrison Keillor and the cast of A Prairie Home Companion on tour this summer for the Radio Romance Tour. In July and August, Watkins will join for the Northeast leg of their tour plus three shows in Michigan. Watkins joined Keillor and crew on their inaugural Summer Love tours in 2010 and 2011 and has been one of the most frequent guest artists on the Prairie Home Companion radio show. She recently performed "You and Me," off her album Sun Midnight Sun, for CMT Edge; watch it here.

Nonesuch Records labelmates mandolinist/singer Chris Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau embark on a nine-city duo tour, beginning at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom tonight and includes stops in Durham, College Park, Great Barrington, Boston, Knoxville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Austin. Their repertoire includes classical transcriptions, pop covers, and original songs. 

Iron and Wine makes its Nonesuch Records debut with the release of Ghost on Ghost next week. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it. The album is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. "Beam now presides over arrangements springy and three-dimensional enough to accommodate a horn section—and yet he still finds a way to wrap his agreeably soft voice around thematically weighty material," writes NPR's Stephen Thompson. "Beam still lets his songs and sound morph and evolve; more than ever, he's a songwriter versatile enough to pack huge ideas into simple arrangements and vice versa."

Rokia Traoré’s new album, Beautiful Africa, following last week's release in France, is out this week in the UK, the rest of Europe, and Canada, with the US release to follow at a later date. The album has been met with great critical acclaim, earning perfect five-star reviews from the Guardian, which calls her "Africa's most inventive singer-songwriter," Observer, Daily Telegraph, and Financial Times. Uncut calls it "a career highpoint." Traoré recorded an intimate version of the album track "Ka Moun Kè" in the halls of le Trianon in Paris; watch it here, where you can also watch her recent appearance on Radio France's Vinyl Radio.

Kronos Quartet performs works by Steve Reich, Donnacha Dennehy, and Laurie Anderson in France ... Alarm Will Sound premieres Dennehy piece at Carnegie Hall ... Timothy Andres joins Gabriel Kahane at Library of Congress in DC ... The Black Keys close out Lollapalooza Chile and South American tour ... David Byrne's Here Lies Love continues in NYC ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour Northeast ... Nataly Dawn heads to Texas ... Jeremy Denk is in New Mexico ... Fatoumata Diawara spans from Chicago to Austin ... Richard Goode plays Beethoven in San Francisco ... Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell close out US tour in Knoxville ... Lianne La Havas hits the Northeast ... Audra McDonald performs in Connecticut ... and more ...