Carnegie Hall has just announced its 2011–2012 season, which will feature performances by a number of artists familiar to Nonesuch Journal readers, including Audra McDonald, Kronos Quartet, Richard Goode, Dawn Upshaw, Alarm Will Sound, and, making his Carnegie Hall debut, Cheikh Lô. The Carnegie Hall season will also see the New York premiere of a new work by John Adams.

Audra McDonald returns to Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium on October 22 of this year accompanied by her longtime Musical Director Ted Sperling on piano. She will have performed at Carnegie Hall during the current season, on May 5, in a gala concert celebrating the Hall's 120th anniversary. For that event, McDonald will join the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of Music Director Alan Gilbert, to perform songs by Duke Ellington. The performance will be recorded by New York public television station Thirteen for national broadcast on PBS's Great Performances on May 31. It will also be simulcast on Classical 105.9 FM WQXR and streamed on wqxr.org.

Kronos Quartet will give the New York premiere of a new work by Vladimir Martynov titled Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished) in Zankel Hall on Februrary 28, 2012.

Richard Goode will offer a piano recital in Stern Auditorium on April 25, 2012. On the program are Schumann's Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana, as well as works by Chopin.

Dawn Upshaw joins the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the New York premiere of a new work by composer Maria Schneider in Zankel Hall on April 30, 2012. Also on the program are the Shostakovich Polka and Elegy and Grieg's String Quartet in G Minor.

Senegalese singer/songwriter/guitarist Cheikh Lô performs in Zankel Hall for the first time on April 20, 2012, in a co-presentation with World Music Institute. The Guardian says Lô's recent World Circuit release, Jamm, "reconfirms his position as one of the finest, most soulful singers in West Africa."

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In March 2012, Carnegie Hall in partnership with the San Francisco Symphony presents American Mavericks, a citywide celebration of American Mavericks: the iconoclasts, mold-breakers, voyagers, and pioneers of the American sound. Central to the project are four Carnegie Hall performances by the San Francisco Symphony, led by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. For the March 27 concert in Stern Auditorium, the SFS will be joined by guest ensemble the St. Lawrence String Quartet for the New York premiere of John Adams's Absolute Jest, a co-commission of Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Symphony. On March 30 in Zankel Hall, members of the orchestra pair Steve Reich's Six Marimbas with the New York premiere of a new work by Meredith Monk.

American Mavericks will also include a free concert by Alarm Will Sound at the Abrons Arts Center in lower Manhattan on March 18, 2012, as part of the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert program.

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The American Composers Orchestra will celebrate the 75th birthday of Philip Glass on that special day, January 31, 2012, with a concert in Stern Auditorium featuring the US premiere of Glass's Symphony No. 9. Also receiving its New York premiere this coming season is Louis Andriessen’s Life, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars on November 5, 2011.

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For more information on these and other performances in Carnegie Hall's 2011–2012 season, visit carnegiehall.org. For additional concerts from Nonesuch artists, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.