New York City is fending off the winter gray with vibrant jazz performances throughout Manhattan this weekend.

Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire joins drummer Justin Brown and artist/producer/DJ chiquitamagic for a set at The Racket in New York City tonight, as part of NYC Winter Jazzfest’s Future X Sounds showcase. Akinmusire's Nonesuch debut album, Owl Song, featuring guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley, has received critical acclaim since its release in December, including being named among the year's best by the New York Times, Jazzwise, Tidal, Tom Moon, Peter Margasak, ArtsFuse, and the Irish Times. “A quiet rush of gorgeous sound where space, tone and beauty come together in one of the most impactful albums of 2023,” says DownBeat in its five-star review. “This is one of the most interesting recordings to come along in a very long time by one of the most interesting artists of our time.”

Also for NYC Winter Jazzfest and further downtown, Mary Halvorson plays a duo set with fellow guitarist Marc Ribot at Bowery Ballroom tonight. Her new album, Cloudward, featuring eight new compositions she performs with her sextet Amaryllis—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—will be released next week and is among the Most Anticipated Albums of 2024, per Pitchfork. “[Halvorson] outdoes herself again,” says the All About Jazz album review. “Cloudward is just too good.” “While only January, it is already evident that Cloudward will be an album floating toward the top of many critics’ year-end lists,” writes PostGenre’s Rob Shepherd in the introduction to his interview with Halvorson; you can read their conversation here and listen to the album’s opening track, “The Gate,” here.

There’s even more jazz in Manhattan this weekend, as composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble return to the Jazz Gallery, with music from their Nonesuch debut album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, for early and late sets tonight and Saturday. Dynamic Maximum Tension, which is up for the Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Slate, PopMatters, and Stereogum, which calls it “simply some of the most exciting music being made right now … Argue’s music shifts and whirls like an entire galaxy in orbit around itself, and it’s breathtaking to listen to.”

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The Black Keys perform their new single,” Beautiful People (Stay High),” as part of their set at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, on Saturday, for ALTer EGO. The song, just released today, is the first music from the band’s twelfth studio album, Ohio Players, due April 5 on Nonesuch Records.

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Soprano Julia Bullock, accompanied by pianist Bretton Brown, brings to Baltimore a recital of works by Samuel Barber, Connie Converse, Francis Poulenc, Kurt Weill, Richard Strauss, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Bob Dylan, and more, performing at Shriver Hall on Sunday, preceded by a pre-concert talk. Bullock performs works by Barber, Converse, and more on her 2022 debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, which is nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Bullock is “one of the singular artists of her generation,” says the New York Times, “a singer of enveloping tone, startlingly mature presence and unusually sophisticated insight into culture, society and history.”

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Pianist Jeremy Denk is in the Canary Islands in Spain this weekend, joining violinists Joshua Bell and Irene Duval, cellist Steven Isserlis, and viola player Blythe Engstroem for Festival Internacional de música de Canarias’ Tribute to Gabriel Fauré, performing works by the French composer at Loyal Theater in Tenerife on Sunday and Perez Galdos Theater in Las Palmas on Monday, January 15, as the US celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

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Emmylou Harris is at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville this weekend for Opry at the Ryman: she and longtime friend and collaborator Rodney Crowell join Brothers Osborne, Maggie Rose, Riders in the Sky, Don Schlitz, and Lucinda Williams for early and late sets tonight, before Harris returns on Saturday to share the stage with Mandy Barnett, John Conlee, Jamey Johnson, Jeannie Seely, Mark Wills, and Charlie Worsham. Harris and Crowell have released two albums on Nonesuch Records: the Grammy Award–winning Old Yellow Moon (2013) and The Traveling Kind (2015).

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Cécile McLorin Salvant is also in Nashville, as she and pianist Sullivan Fortner bring music from her critically acclaimed new album, Mélusine, and more to Vanderbilt University’s Ingram Hall tonight. Mélusine, which DownBeat includes in its list of the Top 10 Jazz Albums of the Year and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” is nominated for the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album; the track “Fenestra” is up for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals for Godwin Louis’ arrangement. Salvant’s 2022 Nonesuch debut, Ghost Song, which won the Deutscher Jazzpreis for International Vocal Album earlier this year, was nominated in the same two Grammy categories last year.

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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to Cité de la musique in Paris tonight, to perform music from George Crumb’s Black Angels, Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet, and works by Aleksandra Vrebalov, Jlin Patton, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, Trey Spruance, and Gabriella Smith. The group returns on Saturday, joined by singer and harmonium player Mariana Sadovska, to perform the first movement of Terry Riley’s This Assortment of Atoms – One Time Only!, as well as works by Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Angélique Kidjo, Krzysztof Penderecki, Michael Gordon, Nicole Lizée, Sun Ra, and more.

As part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch will release the group’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels, the title piece of which inspired David Harrington to found the group in 1973, on vinyl next month. The Evening Standard included it among its “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Last year, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass. The Washington Post called it “an ideal combination of composer and performers.”

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Molly Tuttle joins Tommy Emmanuel as his special guest on a monthlong tour of the UK, which kicked off earlier this week and continues with shows at Cadogan Hall in London tonight, De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Saturday, and Palace Theatre in Southend on Sunday. Tuttle and her band Golden Highway’s second album, City of Gold, is nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and has made year’s best lists from PopMatters, Folk Alley, No Depression, AllMusic, WFUV, and Holler, which calls it her “most captivating record yet … A heady 48 minutes of joy, Tuttle is single handedly making bluegrass her own.”