Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his Owl Song trio—guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley—mark the announcement of their forthcoming album Owl Song, Akinmusire’s Nonesuch debut, due December 15, with a performance at The Theater at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday. The album was announced earlier this week with the release of the first of two “title tracks,” “Owl Song 1,” which you can listen to here. The New York Times says: "Akinmusire has been making some of the most intimate, spellbinding music of his career." Pitchfork has called his work "music that seeks peace not just despite a world of unrest, but within it."

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Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble perform music from their Nonesuch Records debut album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, at Keystone Korner in Baltimore tonight. The album, released last month, is “superb,” exclaims All About Jazz in its four-star review. “Darcy James Argue's Secret Society's Dynamic Maximum Tension is a delight.” The New York City Jazz Record adds: “Remarkable in its ambition, scope, and sheer length, this is Argue’s crowning achievement to date.”

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Michelle Branch brings music from her 2022 album The Trouble With Fever and more to California this weekend, playing the UC Theatre in Berkeley on Saturday and The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park on Sunday. “The Trouble With Fever is Branch’s most lush album to date,” says American Songwriter, “with buoyant, string-laden instrumentation and candid lyrics.”

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Portuguese fado signer Carminho, currently touring North American with music from her new album Portuguesa, is also in California with shows in Miner Auditorium at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco tonight and Luckman Fine Arts Complex in Los Angeles on Saturday, before heading up to Canada for a concert at Centennial Theatre in Vancouver on Sunday.

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Pianist Jeremy Denk joins the Rhode Island Philharmonic, conducted by Nicholas McGegan, for a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence tonight and tomorrow. Tonight’s program also includes Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 while Saturday’s includes Bach’s Orchestra Suite No. 3. Denk released an album of Mozart piano concertos, recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, on Nonesuch in 2021. "Denk approaches everything with questing intelligence and energy," says the Observer. “His ornaments and cadenzas are full of wit and imagination, his ear for detail incisive and bracing.”

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Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, pianist Richard Goode joins the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Eva Ollikainen, for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat major at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on Saturday. That program also includes the overture to Haydn’s L’isola disabitata, Debussy’s La mer, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA. The San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle describes Goode’s recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra—including No. 18—as “marked by grace, beauty and formidable intelligence.”

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Tigran Hamasyan, joined by bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Jeremy Dato, brings music from his latest album, StandArt to Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo tonight. StandArt, released last year on Nonesuch, is Hamasyan’s first album of American standards and places him as “one of today’s most revered and distinctive voices in jazz and creative music,” says Jazziz. “StandArt finds him applying different techniques and ideas that he has developed over the years to a revered repertoire, breathing new life into well-worn songs and lesser-known gems.”

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Kronos Quartet brings its Five Decades: A 50th Anniversary Celebration concert tour to the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall in Katowice on Sunday, to perform Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet, which Kronos commissioned, premiered, and recorded, and works by Severiano Briseño, Gabriella Smith, Peni Candra Rini, Nicole Lizée, and Aleksandra Vrebalov, and others. Last week, Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington released the first of five decade-spanning playlists, as part of the year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary. You can hear the playlist, featuring music Kronos performed in its first decade, 1973–1982, including works the quartet would later record on Nonesuch by George Crumb, Ken Benshoof, Terry Riley, Anton Webern, Peter Sculthorpe, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jimi Hendrix, Aulis Sallinen, Alban Berg, Witold Lutosławski, and Samuel Barber, here.

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Makaya McCraven performs with the Urban Art Orchestra at Orchestra Hall in Detroit tonight, followed by a show at TD Music Hall in Toronto on Saturday. McCraven, who recently won the Deutscher Jazzpreis for International Drums/Percussion, released his new album, In These Times, last year, making several year's best album lists, including those of Pitchfork (“a high-water mark”) and NPR Music's Nate Chinen (“the culmination of a years-long experiment in groove ... just might be Makaya McCraven's manifesto”). Makaya McCraven has just shared a video of the track “This Place That Place,” performed live at Public Records in Brooklyn with an ensemble including a string quartet ahead of the album’s release; you can watch it here.

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Brad Mehldau joins the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra for performances of his piano concerto at Rudolfinum Dvořák in Prague on Sunday morning and evening. Mehldau’s new live solo album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, was released on Nonesuch earlier this year. Mojo gives it four stars, calling it “an inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics.” The first-ever vinyl edition of his 2002 Jon Brion–produced album, Largo, was released in June. “Gorgeous and brilliant,” raved the Boston Globe. “Mehldau has crafted a new-jazz soundscape that bursts with pop smarts.”

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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 Belushi Performance Hall at the McAninch Arts Center in Glen Ellyn, Illinois on Saturday, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.

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Cécile McLorin Salvant plays music from her new album, Melusine, and more at Texas A&M University’s Rudder Theatre in College Station tonight, accompanied by pianist Sullivan Fortner. Salvant, who has just won the Edison Jazz Award in the Netherlands for International Vocalist and was named Female Vocalist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, “has already far transcended her early status as her generation's most imaginative and thrilling jazz interpreter,” says SPIN, naming Mélusine, one of The Best Albums of 2023 (So Far).

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Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway continue the Western leg of their US tour, in support of their critically acclaimed new album, City of Gold, to Washington state this weekend, playing the Knitting Factory in Spokane tonight, followed by a sold-out show at Wild Buffalo House in Bellingham on Saturday, and a concert at The Crocodile in Seattle on Sunday. The band, who won three IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards this month, released a new video for “Alice in Bluegrass,” last week, filmed in the Nashville studio where they recorded City of Gold. You can watch it here.