Composer and vocalist Shara Nova joins members of the Oregon Symphony, conducted by Deanna Tham, in a performance of The Blue Hour—a song cycle composed by Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider—at The Reser in Beaverton, Oregon, on Saturday. Set to excerpts from Carolyn Forché’s epic poem On Earth, the music follows one woman’s journey through the liminal space between life and death via thousands of hallucinatory and non-linear images.

Nova performs on the premiere recording of the piece with the commissioning chamber orchestra A Far Cry, released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records last fall. “Unforgettable,” writes NPR Classical’s Tom Huizenga, naming the album to his list of the year’s ten best. “Nova has rarely sounded so all-encompassing—from intimate communications to full-throated operatic splendor, backed by the agile string orchestra A Far Cry.”

This Saturday’s concert follows Nova’s performance of The Blue Hour with the Knoxville Symphony at the Big Ears Festival last weekend.

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Performances by the Opéra National de Paris of John Adams' groundbreaking opera Nixon in China opened at Opéra Bastille, which began last week, continue tonight, and through next weekend. Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Orchestre et Chœurs de l’Opéra national de Paris with Thomas Hampson as Richard Nixon and Renée Fleming as Pat Nixon. The original cast recording of Nixon in China was released on Nonesuch in 1988 and went on to win the Grammy Award. It is included in the forty-disc John Adams box set Collected Works, along with a Blu-ray of the Metropolitan Opera's production.

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Emmylou Harris joins Joan Baez in conversation at a sold-out event at OZ Arts in Nashville, presented with Parnassus Books, on Saturday, to discuss Baez’s new book, Am I Pretty When I Fly? An Album of Upside Down Drawings.

Harris’s second Nonesuch album, Stumble Into Grace, celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year and will be released on vinyl for the first time, in a limited cream-colored edition, on May 12.

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Makaya McCraven joins harpist Brandee Younger as her special guest at a sold-out show at Public Records in Brooklyn tonight. Younger can be heard on McCraven’s album In These Times, released last year on International Anthem / Nonesuch / XL Recordings. The album made several year's best album lists, including those of Pitchfork ("a high-water mark for [his] technique"), NPR Music's Nate Chinen ("the culmination of a years-long experiment in groove ... just might be Makaya McCraven's manifesto"), and Treble ("McCraven's masterwork"). You can see watch their performance of the album track "Dream Another" from the Public Records In These Times release show here.

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Cécile McLorin Salvant performs at the Lucas Theatre for the Arts in Georgia on Saturday for the closing night of the Savannah Music Festival. Also on the bill is San Salvador, a six-voice and percussion collective. Salvant’s new album, Mélusine, released in March on Nonesuch, features a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the twelfth century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl. "Anyone who thinks they already know the full extent of Cécile McLorin Salvant's artistry should listen to Mélusine without further delay," exclaims Jazzwise. "It's a remarkable recording in several respects. Beautifully recorded, Salvant continues to confound and delight at every turn."

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Wilco continues its three-day Reykjavik residency and Icelandic debut with sold-out shows at Eldborg Hall at Harpa Concert Hall tonight and tomorrow. Following the group’s Grammy-winning twentieth-anniversary edition of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot comes an alternate version of its landmark 2002 album later this month for Record Store Day, featuring unique performances by Jeff Tweedy and the band of all eleven songs. The collection, Crosseyed Strangers: An Alternate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was originally released as a bonus CD with the September 2022 issue of Uncut magazine, which calls Wilco “America's greatest band” and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot “a cast-iron rock classic.”