Brad Mehldau’s new album, Jacob’s Ladder, is out now on CD and digital; the vinyl is due June 17. The album features new music that reflects on scripture and the search for God through music inspired by the prog rock he loved as a young adolescent—his gateway to the fusion that eventually led to his discovery of jazz. Featured musicians on the album include label mates Chris Thile and Cécile McLorin Salvant, as well as Mark Guiliana, Becca Stevens, Joel Frahm, and others. Mojo calls it "a kaleidoscopic affair, where baroque prog-rock edifices are juxtaposed with clouds of ethereal choirs, dreamy piano interludes, and squalls of free jazz-style clarinet. Skillfully weaving these elements into storytelling sound collages, Mehldau takes the listener on a memorable musical journey."

The Staves have released their take on Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting," from her landmark 1985 album, Hounds of Love, and a digital EP featuring that and the five tracks in their Be Kind series of stripped down, alternative versions of songs from their 2021 album, Good Woman. The Be Kind EP includes "Cloudbusting," "Devotion," "Careful, Kid," "Failure," "Best Friend," and "Good Woman." 

Molly Tuttle’s new song, “Big Backyard,” featuring special guests Old Crow Medicine Show alongside her new bluegrass collective, Golden Highway, is out now. It's the fourth track from her upcoming Nonesuch debut album, Crooked Tree. "I wish that Woody Guthrie were still around," Tuttle says. "I’d love to hear the songs he would write about the crazy world we’re living in today. But since he’s not, Ketch Secor and I wrote the best Woody Guthrie song we could think of. Old Crow Medicine Show joined in on the chorus and made it shine. We’re all one family in the big backyard, it ain’t mine it ain’t yours it’s all of ours!"

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) begins a headline tour of the US and Canada featuring songs from their Nonesuch debut album, LIFE ON EARTH, this weekend. The month-long, 20-city tour starts in Atlanta on Saturday, with shows in Austin, Los Angeles, Pioneertown, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Columbus, Toronto, Boston, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Durham, and Nashville. After performing at New Orleans Jazz Fest and We Are One Festival, Hurray for the Riff Raff heads to Europe and the UK to tour this summer.

Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Mary Halvorson makes her Nonesuch debut with two albums, Amaryllis and Belladonna, due May 13. The two suites, which Halvorson describes as “modular and interlocking,” come in a two-LP vinyl set or as two separate CDs and digital albums, produced and mixed by John Dieterich. 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. 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. You can watch a video for the Amaryllis track "Night Shift" here.

David Byrne is on the Talk Easy podcast hosted by Sam Fragoso. They discuss his show American Utopia, which marks its last few weeks on Broadway and which Fragoso calls “dazzling … remarkable,” the celebratory nature of performing the show for audiences as people have begun to congregate again, and much more. You can hear it here.

Nonesuch Records will release a three-LP/three-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 and reissued by Nonesuch more than two decades ago—on May 6, 2022. Astor Piazzolla: The American Clavé Recordings marks the first time this landmark trio of albums—Tango: Zero Hour, La Camorra: The Solitude of Passionate Provocation, and The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado)—is being issued as a set, now remastered, and is the first time the albums have been available on vinyl since their initial release on American Clavé. The set’s liner notes include original and new notes by the albums’ producer and American Clavé founder Kip Hanrahan and an essay from journalist Fernando González, who translated and annotated Piazzolla’s memoirs and wrote liner notes for four of his albums.

The Black Keys' eleventh studio album, Dropout Boogie, is due May 13 on Nonesuch Records. As they've done their entire career, The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney wrote all of the material for Dropout Boogie in the studio, and the album captures a number of first takes that hark back to the stripped-down blues rock of their early days making music together in Akron, Ohio, basements. After hashing out initial ideas at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, the duo welcomed new collaborators Billy F Gibbons, Greg Cartwright, and Angelo Petraglia to the sessions, marking the first time they've invited multiple new contributors to work simultaneously on one of their own albums. You can watch the video for the first single, "Wild Child," here.

Cornetist, composer, and educator Ron Miles died at his home in Denver, Colorado, on Tuesday, March 8, due to complications from polycythemia vera, a rare blood disorder, at the age 58. He can be heard on several Nonesuch recordings, performing with Joshua Redman on the 2018 Grammy-nominated album Still Dreaming and with Bill Frisell on History, Mystery (2008), Blues Dream (2001), and Quartet (1996).

Gabriel Kahane has released "To Be American," from his upcoming album, Magnificent Bird. Kahane both mines and interrogates nostalgia in the song, which he wrote during the roiling, national tumult of October 2020. "It's fitting,” he says, “that a song preoccupied with the past would feature musicians who are some of my oldest friends. This song, as much as any on the album, is a showcase of my musical community." The elegiac anthem features an all-star band of Andrew Bird, Caroline Shaw, Chris Thile, Punch Brothers bassist Paul Kowert, and percussionist Ted Poor. You can watch the video for the song, directed by Robert Edridge-Waks, here.

David Byrne was on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to talk with Fallon about his famed suit from Stop Making Sense, writing music from a rental car, performing American Utopia on Broadway, and his new book of drawings, A History of the World (in Dingbats). He was joined by his cast mates to perform "Like Humans Do." Byrne joined Tariq from The Roots to face off against fellow guest Renée Zellweger and Fallon in a game of The Jinx. You can watch all of the above here.

David Byrne was on CBS Saturday Morning to talk with Anthony Mason about bringing American Utopia to Broadway and took Mason on a walk through his new art exhibition at Pace Gallery in NYC. He was also joined by his Broadway cast mates to perform "Burning Down the House," "Everybody's Coming to My House," and "Marching Through the Wilderness" in a Saturday Sessions set from the St. James Theatre, where the show is running through April 3. You can watch the conversation and three performances here.