Stanford Live has announced its 2014–15 season, and featured among the performers taking the stage at Bing Concert Hall in Stanford, California, are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal, including Chris Thile & Edgar Meyer, Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté, Emmylou Harris, Kronos Quartet, and Brad Mehldau Trio, as well as the world premiere of a new piece by John Adams and a celebration of the work of Stephen Sondheim.

Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile and double-bassist Edgar Meyer open the Stanford Live season with a night of duets on Sunday, September 21, 2014. In 2008, the Grammy Award–winning virtuosos released an album together on Nonesuch Records in 2008, incorporating bluegrass, folk, country, and classical elements, and played with Yo-Yo Ma and fiddler Stuart Duncan on the 2011 The Goat Rodeo Sessions. Meyer produced Thile's 2013 Nonesuch recording Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1.

The following Sunday, September 28, a duo of a different sort, father-and-son kora players Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté, perform together at Bing Concert Hall. Toumani Diabaté, widely recognized as the greatest living kora player, and his eldest son Sidiki, release the recording Toumani & Sidiki on World Circuit on May 19 in the US. The Guardian has called it "the finest Toumani collaboration since his classic work with Ali Farka Touré." The album is a set of unaccompanied kora duets, featuring both obscure, almost forgotten kora pieces and a new look at some Mandé classics from Mali. Toumani aims "to show the positive side of Mali," to reassert the legacy of a country with access to untold musical riches.

Later that same week, on Thursday, October 2, singer-songwriter and Country Music Hall of Fame member Emmylou Harris performs songs from throughout her storied career. Harris, who won a Grammy Award with Rodney Crowell earlier this year for their 2013 Nonesuch album Old Yellow Moon, recently concluded the North American tour of her Wrecking Ball tour, celebrating the reissue of her groundbreaking album on Nonesuch Records; the tour heads to Europe in May.

The ever-adventurous Kronos Quartet returns to Bing Concert Hall on Sunday, October 5, with the sort of far-ranging program for which it is known. Nonesuch Records marked Kronos Quartet's 40th anniversary season this year with two releases that celebrate that sense of adventure this month: the Kronos Explorer Series five-CD box set and a new album, A Thousand Thoughts, which look at the group's geographically wide-ranging sources.

This winter, Brad Mehldau Trio—drummer Jeff Ballard and Stanford-educated bassist Larry Grenadier—perform for Stanford Live on Friday, December 5. The Trio released two albums on Nonesuch Records in 2012: Ode, featuring 11 previously unreleased songs composed by Mehldau, which the Financial Times calls it "benchmark piano-trio jazz"; and the companion disc Where Do You Start, on which the Trio interprets ten tunes by other composers, along with one Mehldau original. The BBC said it "points to Mehldau entering a new prime phase in his career."

The 2014–15 season also marks the 25th anniversary of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, which, as part of a series of three anniversary concerts for Stanford Live, gives the world premiere of a new string quartet by John Adams on Sunday, January 18, 2015. Adams also wrote his 2009 String Quartet for the SLSQ, which performed on the first recording of the piece on Nonesuch Records in 2011; the Philadelphia Inquirer called it "a knockout."

Also part of the 2014–15 season, Stanford Live presents a celebration of the work of composer Stephen Sondheim on Wednesday, May 20. The evening will feature a trio of Broadway veterans led by music director Ted Sperling, who has worked closely with the composer for more than 20 years.

For more information on these and other performances in the 2014-15 Stanford Live, visit live.stanford.edu. Subscriptions for the 2014-15 Stanford Live season go on sale to renewing subscribers on June 1 and to the general public on June 23.