Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has announced two one-night-only April concert events featuring Nonesuch recording artists Carolina Chocolate Drops with Twyla Tharp (April 10) and Emmylou Harris on her Wrecking Ball Tour with Daniel Lanois, Steven Nistor, and Jim Wilson (April 12). These two shows celebrate the record label’s broad musical mission and serve as precursors to BAM’s larger celebration of Nonesuch’s 50th anniversary this fall (the full slate of fall shows will be announced shortly). BAM has fostered a longtime artistic connection with Nonesuch and its dedication to cultivating outstanding talent in a wide variety of musical genres including classical, contemporary, jazz, Americana, world music, pop, alternative, and musical theater, as well as dance.

On April 10, Carolina Chocolate Drops perform music from their two Nonesuch releases: Genuine Negro Jig (2010) and Leaving Eden (2012), among other songs. Fronted by vocalist and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens, Carolina Chocolate Drops "dip into styles of Southern black music from the 1920s and ’30s—string-band music, jug-band music, fife and drum, early jazz—and beam their curiosity outward" (New York Times). The current quartet features multi-instrumentalists Hubby Jenkins and Malcom Parson and cellist Rowan Corbett.

The evening will also feature the world premiere of "Cornbread Duet," a dance work by the iconic choreographer Twyla Tharp, set to a suite of songs by Carolina Chocolate Drops and featuring New York City Ballet principals Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild.

Coinciding with Nonesuch’s April 8 reissue of Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking Wrecking Ball produced by Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Neil Young Willie Nelson), BAM presents a live celebration on April 12. (The album is now available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with an exclusive print autographed by Harris. Updated March 19, 2014: The pre-order prints have sold out and are no longer available with pre-orders.) Harris and Lanois will be joined by Jim Wilson (guitar) and Steven Nistor (drums) to vibrantly resurrect a body of work that earned the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The engagement is part of a seven-city national tour.

Originally released in 1995 to widespread critical praise, Wrecking Ball was called "the most daring, inventive album of Harris’s career" by Uncut, while Rolling Stone said, "The album features unvarnished, otherworldly renditions of songs written by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, and other lesser-known artists." The album marked a departure for Harris artistically, turning more towards rock and honing a harder edge musically than her earlier more traditional country albums. The reissue follows a very successful year for Harris, whose new collaborative album with longtime friend and colleague Rodney Crowell, Old Yellow Moon, recently won the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.