Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, kicks off a European tour, in support of their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, at Button Factory in Dublin tonight, followed by a sold-out show at Deaf Institute in Manchester on Saturday and SWG3 Warehouse in Glasgow on Sunday. Pitchfork includes The Past Is Still Alive in its list of “The Best Music of 2024 So Far,” while New York magazine’s Vulture includes the album track “Ogallala” in its list of “The Best Songs of 2024 (So Far).”

Earlier this week, Hurray for the Riff Raff was nominated for the 2024 Americana Honors & Awards' Album of the Year for The Past Is Still Alive. The ceremony will be held at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on September 18.

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The Black Keys, following three nights at O2 Academy Brixton in London this week, take their International Players tour to France, bringing music from their new album, Ohio Players, to Zenith Paris on Sunday and again on Monday. The London show, at which Noel Gallagher joined for the encore, was an "electrifying testament to the power of rock ’n’ roll," exclaims Mojo. "A thrilling clash of the indie rock titans," says the Daily Telegraph in its four-star review. The Evening Standard's four-star review says: "The rock duo prove they're full of fresh ideas."

Ohio Players is “the sound of a band rejuvenated," says Mojo. “Whether they set their retro-rock wayback machine to Memphis in the Sixties, the Midwest in the Seventies, or Manchester, England, and L.A. in the Nineties, it all flows together like a beautifully paced DJ set,” says Rolling Stone, calling it “arguably the sharpest collection of songs the Keys have come up with.”

Band mates Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney were on NPR’s World Cafe this week to talk about the new album; you can hear that here.

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The Metropolitan Opera premiere performances of composer John Adams’ 1999–2000 Nativity opera-oratorio El Niño, conducted by Marin Alsop and starring soprano Julia Bullock and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, continue in New York City on Saturday night, with additional performances running through next Friday, 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.

Davóne Tines and his band THE TRUTH released “LET IT SHINE,” the first song from their new work ROBESOИ, earlier this week on Nonesuch. In ROBESOИ, which premieres June 27 (preview June 26) at New York City’s Little Island, Tines grapples with the legacy of a hero, exploding the musical repertoire of Paul Robeson. Details of the forthcoming ROBESOИ album, Tines’ solo recording debut, will be announced soon.

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Timo Andres gives a solo recital at a sold-out house concert in Maplewood, New Jersey, on Saturday, as part of Drift Afield’s “Seedless Variety” series. His new album, The Blind Banister, comprises three works by the composer/pianist: the titular piano concerto (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. “Original and arresting,” says the Guardian’s four-star album review. “It’s a highly accomplished disc all round.”

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Jeremy Denk joins the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Urbański, in Belgium this weekend, performing Schubert’s Fantasy in C major, D 760, Wanderer Fantasy, at De Bijloke in Ghent tonight and Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp on Saturday. The program also includes Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa. On Sunday afternoon, they bring a program of works by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms to Antwerp’s AMUZ. You can hear Denk perform Schumann, Brahms, Stravinsky, and many other composers on his 2019 album, c. 1300–c. 2000, which the Telegraph called “quite exhilarating” and BBC Radio 3 called “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital.”

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Council—the duo of Gabriel Kahane and Pekka Kuusisto—makes its New York debut at 92NY’s Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center in Manhattan on Saturday. Centered around a collaboratively written song cycle exploring the joys and griefs of life in the 21st century, the duo presents an eclectic program, co-commissioned by 92NY, ranging from Bach and Nico Muhly to Scandinavian folk music and songs from Kahane’s catalog. His latest album Magnificent Bird, which the San Francisco Chronicle calls “a gorgeous, intimate collection ... glistening and magical,” was released on Nonesuch in 2022. Kahane was on last week’s episode of the Speaking Soundly podcast; you can hear it here.

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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to Ireland, performing at National Concert Hall in Dublin on Sunday. The program includes Steve Reich’s Different Trains, as well as works by Sun Ra, Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, Sigur Rós, Nicole Lizée, and more. Nonesuch Records’ 1989 recording of Different Trains, performed by Kronos Quartet, won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition. The New York Times declared it “a work of such originality that ‘breakthrough’ seems the only possible description.”

As part of 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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Pianist and composer Brad Mehldau and his trio—bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer Jorge Rossy—continue their two-week European tour in Germany, playing a sold-out Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on Saturday, as part of Hamburg International Music Festival, followed by a concert at Alte Oper in Frankfurt Am Main on Sunday.

Mehldau’s new solo albums, After Bach II and Après Fauré, are out now on Nonesuch Records. The Associated Press’ Steven Wine says: “Mehldau’s variations are bracing and daring, breathtaking and beautiful, spiritual and psychedelic. Blue notes emerge from the contrapuntal complexity as he tests the limits of Bach’s music, showing there are none.”

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Cécile McLorin Salvant is joined by pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist David Wong, drummer Kush Abadey, and Orchestre national de Lyon, conducted by Dirk Brossé, for the final night in her French tour at Auditorium-Orchestre National de Lyon tonight. The tour, which began after the Paris premiere last month, features new orchestral arrangements by Darcy James Argue of some of Salvant’s favorite songs.

Salvant has been nominated for three Jazz Journalists Association's 2024 JJA Jazz Awards: Jazz Musician of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Record of the Year for her second Nonesuch album, Mélusine. Argue is up for four JJA Jazz Awards: Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year, Large Ensemble of the Year for Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, and Record of the Year for their 2023 Nonesuch debut, Dynamic Maximum Tension, on which Salvant sings a tune.

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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway continue their “Down the Rabbit Hole” tour, in support of their critically acclaimed and Grammy-winning new album, City of Gold, at The Vogue Theatre in Indianapolis tonight and Majestic Theatre in Detroit on Saturday. 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.”