Punch Brothers have announced a tour of the United States in March 2019 with label mate Gabriel Kahane as special guest. The two-week tour begins at the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York, on March 14, and includes shows all along the East Coast and into the Midwest.

Congratulations to Olivia Chaney, whose new album, Shelter, has been nominated as Album of the Year in the 2018 fRoots Critics Poll! Winners will be announced on BBC Radio 3's Music Planet on Friday, December 7.

Fleet Foxes' special limited-edition collection marking the tenth anniversary of their debut album, First Collection 2006–2009, is out now. The package features content spanning the early days of Fleet Foxes' career, including the self-titled full-length debut album on 12" vinyl, as well as the Sun Giant EP on 10" vinyl and the first vinyl releases of both the very limited-edition, previously only self-released The Fleet Foxes EP on 10" and B-Sides & Rarities on 10". The Sunday Times calls it a Must-Have Reissue, and Mojo names it Vinyl Package of the Month. Take a look inside in an unboxing video here.

Gabriel Kahane was on PBS NewsHour last night to discuss his Nonesuch debut album, Book of Travelers. The album is a musical travelogue about the looping railway journey across the US he embarked upon the day after the 2016 US election and the people he met along the way. For the show's "Brief But Spectacular" segment, he offers his own take on "why trains in America are the road to radical empathy." You can see what he has to say in the piece here.

Rhiannon Giddens is at Cucalorus Festival in North Carolina … Devendra Banhart curates, performs at Le Guess Who? in Netherlands … Tyondai Braxton plays in Ithaca … David Byrne brings American Utopia to Hong Kong … Gabriel Kahane curates Lincoln Center concert with Timo Andres … Kronos Quartet live-scores documentary in Houston … Lake Street Dive tours US East Coast … Brad Mehldau is in Barcelona … Natalie Merchant gives benefit concert in upstate NY ... Mountain Man plays Los Angeles … Mandy Patinkin performs in Australia … Punch Brothers tour Europe … Joshua Redman launches Still Dreaming tour …

Joshua Redman, Brian Blade, Scott Colley, and Ron Miles tour select North American cities with songs from their new album, Still Dreaming, starting at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Saturday. The brief tour then heads west for concerts in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. The group will be in the UK and Europe in February.

Congratulations to Robert Plant, who has been nominated as UK Artist of the Year in the 2019 UK Americana Awards. The awards will be presented at a ceremony held at Hackney Empire in East London on January 31, 2019. Plant was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 UK Americana Awards ceremony.

Rhiannon Giddens has announced a duo tour of Ireland with Italian percussionist / accordionist Francesco Turrisi for March 2019. The duo discovered a shared creative ground after their paths crossed a few years back, spanning gospel, jazz, blues, country and folk, and this is their first nationwide tour of Ireland. The eleven-city tour begins at The Sugar Club in Dublin on March 5 and runs through March 16.

To mark last week's return of Steve Reich's Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years, we asked Reich to share a few of his favorite songs and compositions in a new playlist. The eclectic set includes works from across the centuries and genres, by John Coltrane, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Miles Davis, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Pérotin, Radiohead, Bob Dylan, and Bach. You can hear it here.

Sam Amidon will tour the UK as special guest of singer-songwriter Laura Veirs in February 2019. The tour begins in Milton Keynes on February 3 and includes stops in Norwich, Nottingham, York, Liverpool, Birmingham, Winchester, and Oxford. Amidon will perform at the EFG London Jazz Festival later this month and at Celtic Connections in Glasgow in January.

Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition is out today, the 30th anniversary of Kronos Quartet's world premiere performance of Different Trains at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Pitchfork recently called Different Trains a "late-career masterpiece," including the album among the 200 Best Albums of the 1980s. Watch a new mini-documentary about it here.

NPR has named Rhiannon Giddens one of the 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century, as part of its ongoing Turning the Tables project, which had previously included her song "At The Purchaser's Option" among the 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+. "Throughout her career Giddens has been reaching towards something more imperative than the honors and praise she's received," writes Kaia Kater on NPR Music. "With every performance, she gently enters the listener's mind, whittling away at our fallacy of perception as reality ... Most importantly, Giddens is continuing to make it possible for women of color to claim the space they deserve, and to create whatever kind of art they want within it. This, to me, is a gift."