Composer John Adams’ 1999–2000 Nativity opera-oratorio El Niño was given its Metropolitan Opera premiere in New York City earlier this week, conducted by Marin Alsop and starring soprano Julia Bullock and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, all making their Met debut, with another performance this Saturday and additional performances until May 17. "It was almost as inspiring to see as it was to hear Adams’s marvelous work on the Met’s stage," says the New York Times in its Critic's Pick review of the production. The premiere recording of El Niño, featuring Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Dawn Upshaw, and Willard White, was released on Nonesuch in 2001. Bullock performs Memorial De Tlatelolco, from the piece, on her 2022 debut solo album, Walking in the Dark, which won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album; she will star in the Met's production of Adams's 2022 opera, Antony and Cleopatra, next year.

The first recording of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with the composer conducting, was released today. The recording was made at Disney Hall, also starring Julia Bullock, Davóne Tines, and others, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Grant Gershon. You can get it on CD and hear it here.

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Sam Amidon joins singer Robyn Stapleton, Aurora Orchestra, and conductor/arranger Nico Muhly for Outlanders—a coming together of Scottish and American cultures through traditional songs arranged especially for the project by Muhly—at Kings Place in London on Saturday.

Amidon’s episode of the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices, was released earlier this month. He chose music by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express; Astor Piazzolla; Kronos Quartet; Sam Gendel; Word of Mouth Chorus; and Bill Frisell. You can watch it here.

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Joachim Cooder and fiddler Rayna Gellert kick off a weeklong tour of Ireland at Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart tonight, Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny tomorrow, and Dolans Upstairs in Limerick on Sunday.

Cooder’s album Over That Road I’m Bound was released on Nonesuch in 2020 and is one of The Staves’ choices for their Nonesuch Selects video released this week. “I love this album so, so much,” Jessica Staveley-Taylor says. “It’s very magical,” her sister Camilla concurs. You can watch their video here.

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Rhiannon Giddens continues her North American tour in Arizona, featuring music from her new album, You’re the One, at The Rialto Theatre in Tucson tomorrow, and at Ikeda Theatre in Mesa on Sunday. On You’re the One, “Giddens melds the past and present, writing a bold new future for herself in the process,” says Rolling Stone. Uncut calls the album an “accomplished tour d’horizon by [a] prolific polymath.”

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Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, returns to their hometown of New Orleans this weekend to play songs from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, and more, at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, taking the Shell Gentilly Stage at the Fair Grounds Race Course at 4pm on Saturday. Following the festival set, Segarra joins Dylan LeBlanc for a show at Chickie Wah Wah on Sunday evening. Segarra and their band were on CBS Saturday Morning earlier this month to perform a Saturday Sessions set of three songs from The Past Is Still Alive: "Alibi," "Hawkmoon," and "Buffalo." You can watch all three performances here.

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway are at Jazz Fest as well as part of a busy weekend that starts with their playing as special guests of Old Crow Medicine Show at Sand Mountain Park and Amphitheater in Albertville, Alabama, tonight. They then head to New Orleans, where Tuttle has an on-stage conversation with Mollie Farr on Jazz Fest’s Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage on Saturday just after noon, followed by a performance with Golden Highway on the Festival stage at 3:25pm. They continue their “Down the Rabbit Hole” tour, in support of their critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, at Growlers in Memphis on Sunday. City of Gold won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album and the International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year; it made last year’s best lists from PopMatters, Folk Alley, No Depression, AllMusic, WFUV, and Holler, which calls it Tuttle’s “most captivating record yet … A heady 48 minutes of joy, Tuttle is single handedly making bluegrass her own.”

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Singer and composer Nathalie Joachim joins the Silkroad Ensemble, of which Rhiannon Giddens is artistic director, for their Uplifted Voices program at Finney Chapel in Oberlin, Ohio, tonight. (Giddens will give the Oberlin College and Conservatory Commencement Address next month.) The program features music from underrecognized voices, aiming to change perspectives on the history and migration of music. Joachim’s album Ki moun ou ye, released earlier this year on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records, is “vividly sculpted,” says SPIN, and “dazzling,” per Bandcamp Daily.

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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to two University of California campuses this weekend: UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall on Saturday and UCLA’s Royce Hall on Sunday. As a part of Kronos’ 50 For The Future, there is also a masterclass for UC Santa Barbara students at UCSB’s Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall tomorrow morning and a demonstration performance for grades 3-5 at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Monday.

Continuing the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch released the group’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels on vinyl earlier this year; the Evening Standard included it among the “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Late last year, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass, which the Washington Post called “an ideal combination of composer and performers.”

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The Magnetic Fields continue their 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary tour in San Francisco, performing at the sold-out Curran Theatre each night this weekend, with a final performance on Monday. These concerts feature the full album, all 69 songs, over two nights at each tour stop.

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Mandy Patinkin brings his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more—to the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia on Sunday, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. "The New Yorker hails Patinkin as a master of the showstopper, and in this unforgettable evening, he lives up to that reputation with gusto,” says Broadway World’s Jared Fessler in a review of last weekend’s show in St. Paul. "Patinkin takes the audience on a mesmerizing musical odyssey that lingers long after the final notes fade away.”

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Cécile McLorin Salvant is joined by pianist Sullivan Fortner and Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, directed by Bastien Stil, for her French tour stop at La Grange, Ferme du Manet in Montigny-Le-Bretonneux tonight, Salle André-Malraux in Sarcelles tomorrow, and Beffroi de Montrouge on Sunday. The tour, which began after the Paris premiere last week, features new orchestral arrangements by Darcy James Argue of some of Salvant’s favorite songs and continues throughout France over the next two weeks. To celebrate the recent one-year anniversary of her critically acclaimed album Mélusine, which DownBeat included among the year’s best and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” Salvant recently shared live performances of four songs from the album made at Oberlin College and Conservatory; you can watch those here.

Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble's 2023 album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, 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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Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is performed by the Conspirare Artist Citizen Choral Collective alongside other Texas instrumentalists at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Austin tomorrow as a part of their celebratory Earth Month program Sing the World Awake. Mass for the Endangered is a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world—animals, plants, insects, the planet itself—an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. The first recording, released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records in 2020, features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch. CandyStations created the music videos for all of the tracks on the album, which you can watch here.