Happy birthday to composer Donnacha Dennehy!

It was 30 years ago: pianist and composer Fred Hersch's second Nonesuch album, a solo piano recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein music—was released. It includes twelve of the legendary songwriting duo’s most inspired songs, with selections from Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I, State Fair, Me and Juliet, and Cinderella, including “No Other Love,” “It Might As Well Be Spring,” “I Have Dreamed,” “People Say We’re In Love,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and others. You can hear it here.

It was 40 years ago today: Kronos Quartet's best-selling Nonesuch debut album was released. It features music by Sculthorpe, Sallinen, Philip Glass, and Conlon Nancarrow, and Kronos's now legendary interpretation of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” The Washington Post praised the group’s “breadth of vision” and a collection “devoted to some of the most imaginative music of our time.” You can hear it here.

It was 20 years ago today: The Black Keys' Your Touch EP was released. It features the album cuts "Your Touch" and "Strange Desire" off the band's Nonesuch debut, Magic Potion, which would be released the following month, plus a live recording of the song "Thickfreakness" from a concert in Darwin, Australia. You can hear it here.

Rhiannon Giddens has shared “Freight Train,” a spare interpretation of the song by North Carolina music legend Elizabeth Cotten, from her upcoming album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. The track features only Giddens’s lead vocal and Dirk Powell on acoustic guitar, revealing the economy and emotional depth that have allowed “Freight Train” to travel across generations.

Feliz aniversário, Caetano Veloso!

Congrats to Jonny Greenwood, who's been nominated as Film Composer of the Year at the World Soundtrack Awards for his score to Paul Thomas Anderson's Academy Award–winning film One Battle After Another. World Soundtrack Awards winners will be announced at the WSA Ceremony & Concert during Film Fest Gent October 10.

Laurie Anderson joined Bella Freud at Tribeca Festival to talk about courage, Lou Reed, Sigmund Freud, and more. You can hear their conversation on this latest episode of Fashion Neurosis.

Singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist Molly Tuttle releases So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Acoustic), a companion EP to her acclaimed Grammy-nominated album So Long Little Miss Sunshine, September 4. It was recorded with touring bandmates Vanessa McGowan and Mary Meyer and produced by Steve Berns. The EP strips back five standout tracks from the album and places Tuttle's voice, intricate guitar playing, and songwriting front and center. The intimate recordings offer a fresh perspective on some of the album's most personal songs. You can hear "Rosalee" now here.

Natalie Merchant stopped by for the Nonesuch Selects video series, in which artists visit the Nonesuch office, pick some of their favorite albums from the music library, and share a few words on their choices. She chose recordings by the Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic, Sam Amidon, David Byrne, Sam Phillips, Bob Telson, Rokia Traoré, and Flea. Merchant's collaboration with Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Children’s Theatre, Cabinet of Wonder, is out later this month.

Natalie Merchant spoke with BBC World Service about Cabinet of Wonder, highlighting her collaboration with Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Children's Theater, from its start in a Head Start classroom to the upcoming digital album and the launch of the free early childhood enrichment program in classrooms this fall. You can hear it at 27 minutes in here.

It was 35 years ago today: soprano Dawn Upshaw's sophomore album, The Girl with Orange Lips, was released on Nonesuch. It would go on to earn her a second GRAMMY for Best Classical Soloist Performance. The New York Times noted, “Upshaw sings (exquisitely, of course) intriguing, mostly unfamiliar songs by Falla, Ravel, Stravinsky, Earl Kim, and Maurice Delage.”

Happy birthday, Caroline Shaw!

It was 25 years ago today: Sam Phillips’s Nonesuch debut album, Fan Dance, was released. On the haunting, T Bone Burnett–produced album, the singer-songwriter peels away pop ornamentation to reveal, as the Boston Globe says, “a stunning work of intimacy and emotional range ... Phillips digs deeply within to chart romantic yearning and spiritual fulfillment.” The 2020 vinyl edition was remastered and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, and comes in an old-school tip-on style jacket with booklet, limited and individually numbered. You can get it and hear it here.

“He has summoned into being a region of musical experience that’s all his own,” Matthew Aucoin writes in his essay on fellow composer Dylan Mattingly in The New York Review of Books, “a welcoming, abundant, sun-drenched landscape that teems with tinkling, deliriously retuned pianos and raucous grooves that last long enough to offer a taste of infinity. A new album called The Wild Heart offers a slice ... of this Whitmanic artist’s fertile, dazzling world within the world.” You can read the article here.

Ambrose Akinmusire and Mary Halvorson have released a video for “Prelude in the Ash,” the opening track to their new duo album, Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings. The video was made by Julia Schimautz from photography by Nicholas Albrecht.

Natalie Merchant has shared two new tracks from the upcoming album Cabinet of Wonder—”The Queen of Hearts” and “Humpty Dumpty”—and videos for them. Cabinet of Wonder is a digital collection of songs and accompanying videos from the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Children’s Theatre. The songs reimagine Mother Goose and her rhymes for a new generation of young children. You can pre-order the album and hear two previous tracks here.