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."

Steve Reich premieres new piece with LA Phil; Three Tales performed in Long Beach … Devendra Banhart plays Long Beach too … David Byrne brings American Utopia to Manchester, Amsterdam … Jeremy Denk joins Helsinki Philharmonic … Emmylou Harris speaks at Country Music Hall of Fame … Gabriel Kahane takes Book of Travelers to Texas … Kronos Quartet is in Oslo … Lake Street Dive plays Columbus, Ithaca … Mountain Man takes Magic Ship to Omaha, Denver … Conor Oberst helps Get Out the Vote in Omaha … Mandy Patinkin performs Diaries in Honolulu … Rostam joins musical guest Maggie Rogers on Saturday Night Live ...

Punch Brothers bring music from their new album, All Ashore, across the Atlantic for a two-week tour of Europe, starting with a sold-out show at Pumpehuset in Copenhagen on Monday. The tour continues with stops in Prague, Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Ludwigshafen, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, London, Paris, Hamburg, and Dublin.

Lincoln Center has announced its 2019 American Songbook lineup, and among the performers taking the stage at The Appel Room in New York City for the series early next year are Rostam, Gaby Moreno, Lake Street Dive's Rachael Price, and others. Tickets for the series go on sale to members starting November 7 and to the public on November 15. 

Pianist Jeremy Denk's new album, c. 1300–c. 2000, is due February 8, 2019. The album spans seven centuries of music by twenty-four different composers, from Guillaume de Machaut to György Ligeti. "A piano recital covering 700 years of music: by most accepted definitions, that ought to be not just an oxymoron but an impossibility," says the Telegraph. "But the usual barriers fall whenever Jeremy Denk is at the keyboard ... Quite exhilarating." Watch a video of Binchois's Triste Plaisir here and pre-order the album to download the piece now.

Just in time for the 2018 US elections, Peter and Mary Alice Amidon have shared a performance from their 1992 album, I'll Never Forget, in which a nine-year-old Sam Amidon and his brother Stefan sing Faya Rose Touré's song "Vote for Me." The Amidon brothers make the case for the younger set, encouraging those who can vote to do so on behalf of folks too young to. You can hear it here. Sam Amidon's latest album is The Following Mountain; his parents can be heard on the 1978 Nonesuch recording Rivers of Delight with the Word of Mouth Chorus.

Congratulations to Kronos Quartet on receiving the 2018 WOMEX Artist Award. "To become a pioneer in one musical stream requires immense dedication, determination and, of course, prodigious skill and creativity," Jim Hickson writes of "the most important string quartet of their generation" in his introductory note for the WOMEX 2018 delegate guide. "To become such a leader in more than one stream must truly signal that there is some intense genius at work—genius that the Kronos Quartet possess in abundance."