Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell celebrate the release of their new duo album, The Traveling Kind, out next Tuesday, by hosting a "takeover" of SiriusXM Outlaw Country—channel 60—during the week of its release, including their own daily one-hour show, an interview and performance on The Buddy & Jim Show with Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, and an intimate performance with a live audience at the SiriusXM studios in New York City for a very special broadcast event hosted by Elvis Costello.

Lianne La Havas, whose new album, Blood, is due out later this year, will perform three shows in the US in July: a set at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on July 5, and headline shows at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on July 7 and Bowery Ballroom in New York City on July 9. Essence Festival tickets are on sale now; tickets for the LA and NYC shows go on sale this Friday, May 8.

The Staves are featured on the latest episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, titled "Nine Creative Musicians You Should Know." The episode centers on songs that suggest "a means of making magic out of circumstance," starting with The Staves' "No Me, No You, No More," off their new Justin Vernon-produced album, If I Was. It's "a rich, compelling folk song heavy with longing but buoyed by the trio's sweet, high harmonies," says the show. "The song is a testament to letting go of expectation in the midst of creation, to finding the way forward on a road no one expected to travel." The Staves perform at Rough Trade in Brooklyn next Monday, May 11, and at Vernon's Eaux Claires festival in July.

Tyondai Braxton's Nonesuch debut album, HIVE1, is due out next week. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen at npr.org. "New sounds continually spark like fireworks inside HIVE1's shifting, stereo-spanning mix, which is especially intoxicating through headphones," says NPR Music's Marc Masters. "[W]hat sets this album apart is its playfulness—the feeling that experimenting with sound is a joyful game rather than an academic exercise."

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell's new duo album, The Traveling Kind, is due out next week. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. "To generations of folk, country and roots listeners, these two are, indeed, archetypes of trend-outlasting creative restlessness," says NPR Music's Jewly Hight. "Here, they consciously embrace the full breadth of their expression ... This is what it sounds like when true equals, both deep into their journeys, draw out the best in each other."

St Germain (aka Ludovic Navarre), whose albums Boulevard and Tourist originated a genre of French electronic music that later included artists like Air, has returned to the studio to create his first album in 15 years. The self-titled record, due October 9 on Nonesuch Records in the US, marries percussive grooves, which have always been central to St Germain’s sound, with a new element: traditional Malian music. Pre-orders of the album include an instant download of the opening track, "Real Blues," which you can hear here.

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA has announced its 2015–16 season, and featured among the artists performing this season are several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Randy Newman, Sam Amidon, Richard Goode, and Rokia Traoré. The season also includes works by Steve Reich, as part of a celebration of choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker, and the West Coast premiere of a new work by Timo Andres.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, whose new duets album, The Traveling Kind, is due out May 12, stopped by the Late Show with David Letterman as musical guests on the show last night. They sang a special rendition of the gospel tune "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" in tribute to Letterman, whose final episode as host will air later this month, joined by Steve Martin on banjo, Amos Lee on guitar and vocals, and Mark O'Connor on fiddle. You can watch their performance here.

Sam Amidon kicks off European solo tour with three shows in the Netherlands ... Laurie Anderson performs at Princeton ... Devendra Banhart plays solo in Taos ... Jeremy Denk performs Ligeti/Beethoven with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in NYC ... Rhiannon Giddens heads from Colorado to Alaska ... Richard Goode performs in Virginia ... Audra McDonald is in Virginia too ... Natalie Merchant has two shows in Toronto ... Joshua Redman performs with Cornell University's Wind Ensemble ... Steve Reich takes part in Glasgow festival ... and more ...

Joshua Redman traveled to Myanmar with the International Rescue Committee in February to visit IRC-run maternal health and community engagement programs. He spoke with villagers who were building roads and water systems based on community consensus gained through an election organized by the IRC—giving some villagers the chance to vote for the very first time. Redman became an IRC Voice in 2013 and says of his trip, "I have played music all over the world, but I have never before experienced something like this." Watch a video from the visit here.

Celebrate Brooklyn!—one of New York City's longest running, free, outdoor performing arts festivals—has announced the complete line-up for this summer's concert series in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Among the featured performers this year are Nonesuch artists Punch Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, and Sam Amidon with Bill Frisell. You can see the complete line-up in the highly-recommended announcement video posted here.

Punch Brothers, as part of the North American tour celebrating the release of their new album, The Phosphorescent Blues, performed for a sold-out crowd at Boston's House of Blues in March. The WGBH program Front Row Boston was there to capture the event. You can now watch the band perform several tracks from the new album and earlier favorites, interspersed with backstage interviews with the band, in the 90-minute video here. Up next on the tour: Bonnaroo and Telluride Bluegrass festivals in June.