Congratulations to all of the Nonesuch nominees for the 64th Grammy Awards: The Black Keys' Delta Kream for Best Contemporary Blues Album; Rhiannon Giddens' They're Calling Me Home with Francesco Turrisi for Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Song, for the track "Avalon"; Spike Lee's film of David Byrne's American Utopia on Broadway for Best Music Film; Louis Andriessen's The only one and Caroline Shaw's Narrow Sea for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; k.d. lang and Tracy Young's "Constant Craving (Fashionably Late Remix)" for Best Remixed Recording; and Mike Elizondo for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, for work including Lake Street Dive's Obviously. You can hear all the nominated works here.
Congratulations to The Black Keys, Rhiannon Giddens, David Byrne, Caroline Shaw, the late composer Louis Andriessen, k.d. lang and Tracy Young, and Mike Elizondo, all of whom have been nominated for the 64th Grammy Awards. You can hear all of the nominated works below.
The Black Keys' tenth studio album, Delta Kream, has been nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album. The album celebrates the band’s roots, featuring eleven Mississippi hill country blues standards they've loved since they were teenagers, before they were a band, including songs by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, among others. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Delta Kream at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville; they were joined by musicians Kenny Brown and Eric Deaton, long-time members of the bands of blues legends including Burnside and Kimbrough. The album takes its name from William Eggleston’s iconic Mississippi photograph on its cover.
Rhiannon Giddens is up for two Grammy Awards: her album They’re Calling Me Home, recorded with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi during the COVID-19 lockdown in Ireland, is up for Best Folk Album, and the album track "Avalon," written by Giddens, Turrisi, and Justin Robinson, for Best American Roots Song. Giddens and Turrisi, two expats, found themselves drawn to and comforted by the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland, which they recorded at a spare studio on a working farm outside of Dublin. The result is a twelve-song album that speaks to the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical call "home" of death.
Spike Lee's film of David Byrne's American Utopia on Broadway is nominated for Best Music Film. The film captures the critically acclaimed Broadway production, which includes songs from David Byrne's 2018 album, American Utopia, along with music from Talking Heads and Byrne’s solo career, as does the original cast album. Byrne shares the spotlight with a diverse ensemble of eleven musical artists from around the globe for an event that delivers "an experience unlike anything else," says Billboard. "Dazzling, rapturous and jubilant," exclaims the New York Times. "Astonishing," raves Hollywood Reporter. "A knockout celebration of music, dance and song. Pure bliss." Rolling Stone calls it "a tonic for our tumultuous times."
The only one, by the late composer Louis Andriessen, has been nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The album captures the world premiere performance of the piece by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall in May 2019, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with solo vocalist Nora Fischer. Two artistic discoveries influenced Andriessen as he wrote the piece: a collection of poems by the Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte from The animals in me, and the work of Nora Fischer, an Amsterdam–based singer known for developing dynamic creative projects that fuse classical and pop music. “Andriessen used bits of old music, an allusion to the Dies Irae motif and some Minimalism, a jazz riff here and a Mexican brass allusion there, as he often has," says the Los Angeles Times. "But he always remakes it into a complex and powerfully blatant new thing, and here edge-of-your-seat operatically so."
Caroline Shaw has also been nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, for Narrow Sea. The title piece to Shaw's 2021 album performed by Sō Percussion, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish, for whom it was written, Narrow Sea is in five parts, each a new setting of a text from The Sacred Harp, the 19th-century collection of shape-note hymns. Also on the album is Sō Percussion's performance of Shaw's Taxidermy, which she wrote for the ensemble.
k.d. lang and producer Tracy Young have been nominated for Best Remixed Recording for “Constant Craving (Fashionably Late Remix)," the first-ever official remix of lang’s 1993 Grammy-winning hit. It follows the May 2021 release of makeover, a new collection of classic dance remixes from the era. "When ‘Constant Craving’ was the single, my team wanted to do a remix of it, and I was feeling protective and said ‘No, I don’t want to touch it," lang recalls. "When we were putting together makeover, we realized we didn’t have a ‘Constant Craving’ remix! And that was why.” Young says: “The song continues to resonate through generations, and it speaks about the struggles of life and the resiliency of the human spirit—an inspirational message that is so needed right now."
Mike Elizondo has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, for several recordings, including Lake Street Dive's new album, Obviously. "Mike encouraged us to make bolder arrangement choices, take those chances and try those things," says bassist Bridget Kearney. "The record really is a success in what we set out to do: continue to challenge ourselves, continue to grow, and do things we’ve never done before." "You need to make this band part of your life," exclaims the AP. "Lake Street Dive have never sounded better, full and clear with every instrument given a chance to shine in every song."
The 64th Grammy Awards will be broadcast from Los Angeles on CBS and Paramount+ on Monday, January 31, 2022, beginning at 8pm ET. Prior to the telecast The Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony, at which many of the above categories will be announced, will stream live on grammy.com starting at 3:30pm ET. For more information, including a complete list of nominees, visit grammy.com.
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