As 2024 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time for a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year—our 60th anniversary year. Here, in words and music, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude.
As 2024 draws to a close, and the Nonesuch Journal takes a bit of a hiatus till the start of what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year, it's time for a look back and remember all of the great and diverse music made by Nonesuch artists over the past year—our 60th anniversary year. Many Nonesuch artists and their recent Nonesuch releases have made year's best lists and are up for Grammy Awards. Several of those artists stopped by to share some of their favorite Nonesuch albums for the Nonesuch Selects video series launched as part of our anniversary celebrations, which also included performances from more than a dozen Nonesuch artists at Big Ears Festival and the release of a very limited-edition box set of prints by photographer Michael Wilson from his Nonesuch archive. Here, in words and music and in chronological order, is a look back at the year in Nonesuch music, in gratitude:
JANUARY
The year began with the January 19 release of Mary Halvorson’s album Cloudward, featuring eight new compositions by the guitarist/composer that she performs with her sextet Amaryllis—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 albums Amaryllis and Belladonna: Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet). Laurie Anderson is featured on the track "Incarnadine." The Guardian says: "Halvorson's fusions of written and spontaneous music reach an entrancing new seamlessness and seductive warmth with this terrific set. Superb." PopMatters calls it "a shimmering, deeply satisfying example of a jazz sextet firing on all cylinders. Prepare to be astonished."
Halvorson won both the JJA Jazz Award and DownBeat Critics Poll for Guitarist of the Year. Cloudward made year’s best lists from The Quietus, All About Jazz, Jazzwise, Treble, PopMatters, and The Guardian, whose John Fordham, naming it the No. 1 Jazz Album of the Year, said: "When the American composer/guitarist Mary Halvorson, a gifted alchemist of musical transmutations, released Cloudward in January, it already sounded bound for the best of the year—as her work had done in 2022 with the albums Amaryllis and Belladonna."
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Yussef Dayes
The Yussef Dayes Experience: Live From Malibu
On January 26, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes released the eight-song The Yussef Dayes Experience: Live From Malibu, which features music from his critically acclaimed debut solo album, Black Classical Music, and more. Dayes is joined by his longtime collaborators Rocco Palladino, Venna, Elijah Fox, and Alexander Bourt on Live From Malibu, which was originally released as a live-performance video filmed in the Malibu mountains.
FEBRUARY
On Ki moun ou ye, released February 16 on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records, Haitian-American singer and composer Nathalie Joachim takes listeners through an intimate collection of music that ponders its title’s question: “Who are you?” Inspired by the remote Caribbean farmland that her family continues to call home after seven generations and performed in both English and Haitian Creole, the work examines the richness of one’s voice—an instrument that brings with it DNA, ancestry, and identity—in a vibrant tapestry of Joachim’s voice, and intricately sampled vocal textures underscored by an acoustic instrumental ensemble.
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Hurray for the Riff Raff
The Past Is Still Alive
Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) created The Past Is Still Alive, a new album released February 23, during a period of personal grief, when they found inspiration in radical poetry, railroad culture, outsider art, the work of writer Eileen Myles, and activist groups like ACT UP and Gran Fury. Segarra uses their lyrics as a way to immortalize and say goodbye to those they have loved and lost, and to honor both the heartbroken and the hopeful parts of themselves. "Segarra has created an epic tale of life on the road, a nearly mythic version of their own life story that stands alongside other great American musical travelogues," exclaims NPR Music. "Career-defining." Rolling Stone says: "Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record ... the best batch of songs Segarra's ever written." Paste calls it "a celebratory measure of love, sanctuary, and defiance ... In their hands, the trauma of the present day is a prelude to the possibilities of a better tomorrow."
The Past Is Still Alive made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Pitchfork, Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Paste, Uncut, Mojo, Brooklyn Vegan, Treble, AllMusic, PopMatters, Entertainment Weekly, Slant, and the New York Times, whose Lindsay Zoladz writes: “Alynda Segarra unlocks a new level of artistry on The Past Is Still Alive, the singer and songwriter’s stunning eighth album as Hurray for the Riff Raff.”
MARCH
Ringdown, the Portland-based cinematic pop duo featuring creator-musicians Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan, released its debut Nonesuch single, “Two-Step,” on March 19. With strings, keys, and synth melodies rippling around a crisp beat and Danni Lee’s vocals, “Two-Step” channels the technicolor rush of falling in love. "'Two-Step' is about letting go of your inner critic and trusting your own intuition,” the duo says. “It’s about forward momentum toward things that feel good and trusting that sometimes what may seem like a wrong turn at the time, ultimately could be the best route you’ve ever taken. Also dancing. It's about dancing.”
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The Staves’ All Now, produced by John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen) and released on March 22, marks the band’s debut album as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, following their sister Emily’s departure. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” Jess says of the period after the February 2021 release of their album Good Woman, as the band—like everyone—was forced to sit with their thoughts. Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.
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Timo Andres & Metropolis Ensemble
The Blind Banister
Also out March 22 was Timo Andres’ The Blind Banister, comprising three works by the composer/pianist: the piano concerto The Blind Banister (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016), with Andres as soloist, and Upstate Obscura for chamber orchestra and cello, with soloist Inbal Segev—both of which feature Metropolis Ensemble and conductor Andrew Cyr—and the solo piano piece Colorful History, also performed by Andres.
The Blind Banister has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical, and was named one of The 10 Best Classical Albums of 2024 by NPR Music.
APRIL
The Black Keys' twelfth studio album, Ohio Players—a title inspired by the legendary Dayton, Ohio, funk band of the same name—was released April 5 and features several collaborations between band mates Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney with various friends and colleagues, like Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, Beck, Noel Gallagher, Greg Kurstin, and others. “We had this epiphany: ‘We can call our friends to help us make music,’" Carney says. Auerbach adds, “No matter who we work with, it never feels like we're sacrificing who we are. It only feels like it adds some special flavor ... But when it came time to finish the album, it was just Pat and me.”
Ohio Players has been nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for the album track "Beautiful People (Stay High)." Rolling Stone named another track, “On the Game,” one of the 100 Best Songs of 2024. The album made year's best lists from Classic Rock and Radio X.
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John Adams
Girls of the Golden West
This first recording of John Adams’ 2017 opera, Girls of the Golden West, released April 26, is his eighth music theater work to be released by Nonesuch. It tells the story of the California Gold Rush not through familiar time-worn myth, but in the words and deeds of real people. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars drew from original sources from the era—letters, journals, newspaper articles, and familiar song lyrics—to create the libretto. The composer leads the LA Phil in this recording made in Disney Hall, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Grant Gershon and a cast featuring Davóne Tines, Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, and Ryan McKinny.
Girls of the Golden West has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording and Best Engineered Album, Classical, for engineers Alexander Lipay and Dmitriy Lipay, who is also up for Producer of the Year, Classical. The album was named a Gramophone Critics' Choice for 2024.
MAY
Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly
MESTIZX
MESTIZX, released May 3 on International Anthem / Nonesuch Records, is Bolivian-born singer and multimedia performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut full-length album as co-composers, arrangers, and musicians. Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based duo dove deep into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create this deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest.
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Brad Mehldau
After Bach II and Après Fauré
Brad Mehldau released two new albums on May 10: After Bach II and Après Fauré. The Bach album comprises four preludes and one fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as the Allemande from the fourth Partita, interspersed with seven compositions or improvisations by Mehldau inspired by the complementary works of Bach—including Mehldau’s Variations on Bach’s Goldberg Theme. On Après Fauré, Mehldau performs four nocturnes, from a thirty-seven-year span of Gabriel Fauré’s career, as well as a reduction of an excerpt from the Adagio movement of his Piano Quartet in G Minor. Here Mehldau’s four compositions that Fauré inspired are presented in a group, bookended by two sections featuring the French composer’s works.
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Original Cast of Illinoise
Illinoise: A New Musical (Original Cast Recording)
The original cast recording of the Tony Award–winning Broadway show Illinoise: A New Musical was released on May 31, with the vinyl out in August. It features music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens based on his album Illinois, a book by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury, and direction and choreography by Peck, with new arrangements by Timo Andres and music supervision and direction by Nathan Koci. The album’s band includes Elijah Lyons, My Brightest Diamond, Tasha, Christina Courtin, Sean Peter Forte, Domenica Fossati, Daniel Freedman, Kathy Halvorson, Nathan Koci, Eleonore Oppenheim, Brett Parnell, Brandon Ridenour, Kyra Sims, and Jessica Tsang. The New York Times exclaims: “The vocalists do not seem to sing so much as pour emotion into our ears.” Variety says: “A thrilling, genre-defying Broadway musical brings the Sufjan Stevens album to lyrical life.
Illinoise made the New York Times and New York magazine’s lists of the Best Theater of 2024. Peck won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Choreography.
JUNE
Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion
Rectangles and Circumstance
Rectangles and Circumstance, released June 14, comprises ten songs co-written and performed by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion. Shaw and Sō's Eric Cha-Beach and Adam Sliwinski "sourced a group of nineteenth-century poems that shaped its expressive mode [and] ended up using verses by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake," says Sliwinski. "The lyrics on this album by members of the band contain wordplay that explores the same profound feelings explored by Blake and Dickinson.” Shaw and Sō co-produced the album with Grammy-winning engineer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift).
Rectangles and Circumstance has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance and made the Guardian's list of the year's 10 Best Contemporary Albums.
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"'Ghost' explores the weariness and anxiety of being a fully feeling human who is forced to live in our modern world and its tech-saturated chaos,” Ringdown said of its second Nonesuch single, released June 27. “This is especially isolating in the world of internet dating, where the spotty texting tempo and normalized behavior of ‘ghosting’ someone can feel crushing. We used the clunky pedal sounds from a vintage piano as a heartbeat throughout the song. To us, this represents the yearning for connection beyond technology.”
AUGUST
The Staves
"Waiting for the Joy"
"The song began in the throes of the first lockdown when the feeling of isolation was so prominent," the Staves' Jessica and Camilla Staveley say of their song "Waiting for the Joy," released August 8. "Everyone seemed so inspired, and we were worried that we weren't inspired by music in general anymore." The band recorded the track during sessions with producer John Congleton for its 2024 album, All Now.
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Gabriel Kahane
"Red Letter Days"
Composer/performer Gabriel Kahane celebrated Playwright’s Horizons' fall 2024 production of intimate solo musical plays drawing from his acclaimed albums Magnificent Bird and Book of Travelers with the August 27 release of "Red Letter Days," a previously unreleased song he wrote in October 2020, during the final month of a year spent off the internet, at the height of the pandemic.
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Laurie Anderson’s Amelia, released August 30, is the 2024 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient's first new album since 2018’s Grammy-winning Landfall. The record comprises twenty-two tracks about renowned female aviator Amelia Earhart’s tragic last flight. Anderson, who Pitchfork says, “sees the future, but she starts by paying attention,” wrote the music and lyrics. On the album, she is joined by Filharmonie Brno, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, and Anohni, Gabriel Cabezas, Rob Moose, Ryan Kelly, Martha Mooke, Marc Ribot, Tony Scherr, Nadia Sirota, and Kenny Wollesen.
Amelia was named one of the Best Albums of 2024 by Uncut and PopMatters.
SEPTEMBER
Michael Wilson
25 Years: A Nonesuch Collection
In celebration of Nonesuch Records' 60th anniversary, the label partnered with photographer Michael Wilson—who has exquisitely captured dozens of Nonesuch artists over the past quarter-century—to produce Michael Wilson / 25 Years: A Nonesuch Collection, an extremely limited quantity of 100 box sets containing newly created prints from his Nonesuch archive, released September 13. Designed by the Grammy-winning team at SMOG Design, each box comprises twenty 12" x 12" prints, numbered and signed by the photographer. Artists featured are Allen Toussaint, Ambrose Akinmusire, Audra McDonald, Bill Frisell, The Black Keys, Brad Mehldau, David Byrne, Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Frederic Rzewski, Jeremy Denk, Kronos Quartet, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Manuel Galbán and Ry Cooder, Philip Glass, Randy Newman, Rhiannon Giddens, Stephin Merritt and Lemony Snicket, Steve Reich, and Timo Andres, who wrote a note for the box.
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DAVÓNE TINES & THE TRUTH
ROBESON
On DAVÓNE TINES & THE TRUTH’s new work ROBESON, Tines’ solo recording debut, released September 13, the musician grapples with the legacy of a hero. Exploding the musical repertoire of Paul Robeson, Tines and his band the Truth—pianist John Bitoy and sound artist Khari Lucas—take listeners on a trip from the stage of Carnegie Hall to the floor of a Moscow hotel room in an attempt to understand an icon not through aspiring to his monumentality, but through connecting to his vulnerability. “Like his predecessor [Paul Robeson], Mr. Tines has always been more than just a performer," says the Wall Street Journal, "using his richly expressive, wide-ranging instrument and theatrical skill to excavate his own stories, dark side and all.”
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Rhiannon Giddens
"How I Long for Peace"
Rhiannon Giddens joins forces with singer-songwriter Crys Matthews and the Resistance Revival Chorus for a reimagining of folk icon Peggy Seeger’s “How I Long for Peace,” released on September 16 for National Voter Registration Day 2024, in partnership with Joy To The Polls and HeadCount. “Rhiannon, Crys, and Company have done an amazing interpretation of my song," Seeger says. "Thank you, Rhiannon, as always—now it’s on its way!” "I have been a longtime Peggy Seeger fan," Giddens says, "and think she has written an incredible song that says some hard but crucial things and most importantly allows space for us all to wish for a better world.”
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"A rolling list of thoughts on one particular day; from the mundane to the existential," the Staves' Jessica and Camilla Staveley say of their song "A Weird One," released September 18. "A to-do list but with the underlying hum of grief and anxiety towards what the year ahead might bring." The band recorded the track during sessions with producer John Congleton for its 2024 album, All Now.
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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
Into the Wild
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway's six-song EP Into the Wild, a follow-up to their Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed 2023 album, City of Gold, was released September 20. It features three new songs—the title track, “Getaway Girl,” and a cover of Kate Wolf’s “Here in California”—as well as previously released covers of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u” and an alternate version of the City of Gold track “Stranger Things.”
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Gabriel Kahane
"Give Us the Ballot"
As composer/performer Gabriel Kahane’s performances in Playwright’s Horizons' fall 2024 production of intimate solo musical plays drawing from his acclaimed albums Magnificent Bird and Book of Travelers continued, he released, on September 30, "Give Us the Ballot," a previously unreleased song he wrote in October 2020, during the final month of a year spent off the internet, at the height of the pandemic.
OCTOBER
Composer/guitarist Yasmin Williams' released her Nonesuch debut album, Acadia, October 4. Her most sonically expansive work to date, the album is nine original, mostly instrumental tracks written and produced by Williams, and features her on various guitars, banjo, calabash drum, tap shoes, and kora. She is joined by an eclectic cast of collaborators—including Immanuel Wilkins, Dom Flemons, Aoife O’Donovan, William Tyler, Darlingside, and others—creating a folk music that reflects the wide range of musical influences that have inspired her throughout her life. "Yasmin Williams treats her guitar like a playground," says NPR Music, naming her its Breakthrough Artist of 2021, noting the “joy and possibility she brings to the guitar.” Songlines calls her “an original, a genuine trailblazer, one of those rare musicians who challenges your preconceptions about the possible.”
Acadia made several year’s best lists, including NPR Music, Paste, Uncut, Bandcamp, AllMusic, PopMatters, and The New Yorker, whose Amanda Petrusich writes: "A masterly collection ... Williams is sunny, benevolent, warm. Acadia is a welcome balm in even the grimmest moments."
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Carminho
Carminho at Electrical Audio
Portuguese fado singer Carminho's EP Carminho at Electrical Audio, released October 11, was recorded in collaboration with the late Steve Albini at his iconic Electrical Audio studio in Chicago in October 2023. “Anyone who worked with Steve Albini knows of his humble authenticity and dedication towards perfecting raw sound," Carminho says. "He made the recordings sound as if we were performing in a fado house in Lisbon.”
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Jeremy Denk's album Ives Denk, released October 18 in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ives' birth, features the composer's four violin sonatas, performed with violinist Stefan Jackiw, as well as remastered versions of his Sonatas No. 1 and 2 for piano, from Denk's 2010 debut recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives. "Mr. Denk's playing exuded affinity for Ives and vivid imagination," the New York Times says of a performance. "Mr. Jackiw, deftly balancing fervor and elegance, beautiful tone and earthy colorings, proved a comparably inspired Ivesian."
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The Staves
"She’s Leaving Home"
"This song is one we’ve known forever and have loved, partly because of its vivid storytelling but also the incredible string arrangement," the Staves' Jessica and Camilla Staveley say of The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home," of which they made an acoustic recording released October 23. "We realized that there are actually no harmonies on this song, only the two voices of Lennon and McCartney singing—it felt like a sign."
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Caroline Shaw
LEONARDO da VINCI (Original Score)
The original score for Ken Burns’s two-part documentary LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, was released October 25, ahead of the November 18 premiere of the film on PBS. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. The film is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, who says: “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern ... The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder."
NOVEMBER
Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens
American Railroad
American Railroad, released November 15 from the Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens, is the culmination of four years of research, collaboration, and music-making, having brought Silkroad artists all across the US to uncover and uplift stories of those who built the transcontinental railroad and connecting railways across North America. "The result is a tapestry of stories, traditions, and music that have shaped our multifaceted cultural identity, and that must be heard and recognized," Giddens says.
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Donnacha Dennehy
Land of Winter
Also released November 15, Donnacha Dennehy’s Land of Winter, performed by the composer's longtime collaborators Alarm Will Sound and conductor Alan Pierson, explores the subtleties of Ireland’s seasons via twelve connected sections representing the months of the year. "It is the varying quality of light that truly demarcates the seasons," Dennehy says, "from the shorter days of grey or piercing light in the winter to the warmer but mercurial light of summer days that at solstice stretch almost to midnight. I like this play between light and time, and it is the major inspiration behind the piece."
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The Black Keys
Ohio Players (Trophy Edition)
The Black Keys' eighteen-track Ohio Players (Trophy Edition)—the two-LP deluxe edition of the band’s twelfth studio album—was also released November 15. It features four previously unreleased tracks in a gatefold jacket, with an alternate cover and new album sequencing. Special guests include DannyLux, Alice Cooper, and Beck, in addition to the many collaborations on the original Ohio Players songs.
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Jeff Parker & ETA IVtet
The Way Out of Easy
The Way Out of Easy, released November 22, is the first album from guitarist Jeff Parker and his long-running ETA IVtet—saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, drummer Jay Bellerose—since their 2022 debut Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, which Pitchfork named one of the Best Albums of the 2020s So Far. Like that album, The Way Out of Easy comprises recordings from LA venue ETA, where Parker and the ensemble held a weekly residency for seven years. During that time, the ETA IVtet evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form journeys into innovative, groove-oriented improvised music. All four tracks on The Way Out of Easy come from a single night in 2023, providing an unfiltered view of the ensemble, fully in their element.
The Way Out of Easy made year’s best lists from Uncut, Raven Sings the Blues, Nate Chinen, and NPR's Lars Gotrich; the track “Freakadelic” made Pitchfork’s list of the Best Songs of 2024.
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The Staves released a four-song EP Happy New Year, November 22, in celebration of their US acoustic tour. The EP includes three acoustic versions of tracks from their 2024 album, All Now—"I Don't Say It, But I Feel It," "After School," and "All Now"—and a cover of The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home."
The Staves
"Sitting By the Fire"
"This was written at a cottage in the English countryside in winter where we had gone on a writing retreat to escape the noise of London," the Staves' Jessica and Camilla Staveley say of their last single of the year, "Sitting By the Fire," released December 4. "On a cigarette break, Jessica went outside in the dark and could see Camilla through the window, sat at the fireplace writing a song. The song is a photograph of sorts, capturing that moment. We recorded this after we had cut the record [All Now] out in LA. We were back in London and revisited this tune and we felt that it would really be perfect to have [our sister] Emily join us on it to lend her voice to this a cappella recording."
AND SO, THE YEAR IN NONESUCH MUSIC
The above playlist can also be found on our Playlists page, along with our holiday playlist and many others we hope you'll enjoy.
There is, of course, more great music to come in 2025. Songs have been released and pre-orders are already available for Ambrose Akinmusire’s honey from a winter stone, out January 31; the 9-LP + 4 CD Deluxe Edition of Wilco's 2004 Grammy-winning album A Ghost Is Born, out February 7; and the 27-disc box set Steve Reich Collected Works, due March 7.
Happy Holidays from everyone at Nonesuch Records!
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