Guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson joins pianist Sylvie Courvoisier for a duo set at BRIC Ballroom in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon, as part of Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival. Halvorson has just been nominated for the Jazz Journalists Association's 2024 JJA Jazz Award for Guitarist of the Year. Her new album, Cloudward, released earlier this year on Nonesuch Records, features eight new compositions she performs with her sextet—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—and “reveals a newfound sense of beauty and clarity,” per the Guardian. “[Halvorson] outdoes herself again,” says All About Jazz. “Cloudward is just too good.”

The Long Play Festival features works by composer Steve Reich in performances throughout Brooklyn this weekend. Bassoonist Rebekah Heller gives the US premiere of Reich’s Grand Street Counterpoint at BRIC Stoop on Saturday, ahead of Mivos Quartet’s performance of Different Trains, Triple Quartet, and WTC 9/11 at BRIC Ballroom later that evening. On Sunday afternoon, percussionist Kuniko Kato plays Reich’s Drumming at BRIC Ballroom, followed by Bang on a Can All-Stars’ premiere performance of their new interpretation of Reich's landmark piece Music for 18 Musicians at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House later that night.

Nonesuch Records’ 1989 recording of Different Trains, performed by Kronos Quartet, won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition. The 1998 Nonesuch recording of Music for 18 Musicians, performed by Steve Reich and Musicians, won the GRAMMY Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Both are available on vinyl. The latter recording is one of The Staves’ choices for their Nonesuch Selects video released last week. “It kind of hypnotizes you and makes you really lean in,” Camilla Staveley-Taylor says, with her sister Jessica noting it as a reference point for their new album, All Now. You can watch their video 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 afternoon, with 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.

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The Black Keys kicked off their International Players tour this week in support of their new album, Ohio Players, and shows continue at 3Arena in Dublin tonight and Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on Sunday. Mojo says Ohio Players is “the sound of a band rejuvenated.” “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.”

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Joachim Cooder and fiddler Rayna Gellert conclude a weeklong tour of Ireland with concerts at Connolly's of Leap tonight and Set Theatre in Kilkenney on Saturday, for Kilkenney Roots Festival. Cooder’s album Over That Road I’m Bound was released on Nonesuch in 2020 and is also one of The Staves’ choices for their recent Nonesuch Selects video. “I love this album so, so much,” Jessica says. “It’s very magical,” Camilla concurs.

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Rhiannon Giddens brings music from her new album, You’re the One, to the Blues Tent at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans on Saturday afternoon, as part of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Prior to her set, Giddens joins journalist Gwen Thompkins for an interview on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage. 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.”

Giddens and her band were on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week to perform from You’re the One. You can watch it here.

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Council—the duo of Gabriel Kahane and Pekka Kuusisto—tour the West Coast this weekend, playing at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco tonight and Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, 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 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 is on the latest episode of the Speaking Soundly podcast; you can hear it here.

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The Magnetic Fields continue their 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary tour in Massachusetts, performing two sold-out shows at MASS MoCA in North Adams tonight and tomorrow. These concerts feature the full album, all 69 songs, over two nights at each tour stop.

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Pianist and composer Brad Mehldau and his Trio kick off two-week European tour with a sold-out set at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in the UK on Saturday and a concert at Milan Conservatory in Italy on Sunday, followed by shows in Italy, France, and Germany. Mehldau’s new solo albums, After Bach II and Après Fauré, are due next week on Nonesuch Records. The album tracks Between Bach by Mehldau and Fugue No. 20 in A Minor by Bach are available now, as is Mehldau’s Après Fauré Prelude, with a scrolling piano score you can watch here.

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Cécile McLorin Salvant is joined by pianist Sullivan Fortner, bassist David Wong, drummer Kush Abadey, and Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, conducted by Bastien Stil, in her French tour stop at Centre des bords de Marne in Le Perreux-sur-Marne tonight. Following that, the band joins join Orchestre national Avignon at Confluence Spectacles in Avignon on Saturday and Théâtre des Salins in Martigues on Sunday. 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 and continues throughout France over the next week.

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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Yasmin Williams performs at the University of Vermont's Recital Hall in Burlington tonight as part of the Lane Series. Last fall, Williams released her first song on Nonesuch, “Dawning.” The track—featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing—provides an early peek at her Nonesuch debut album, due later this year. You can hear the song and watch the video for it here.