Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté is currently on tour in the US, and performs in the Bay area on Wednesday, November 5. The San Francisco Bay-Guardian's music blog, Noise, recently posted about his music and his recent album, The Mandé Variations, describing Diabaté's "ability to incorporate disparate sounds from Western pop, Indian classical music, and blues while remaining grounded in his country's tradition."

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, a new feature film by director Chai Vasarhelyi documenting the creation of and worldwide response to N'Dour's Grammy-winning 2004 album, Egypt, won the audience award at the closing ceremonies of the 32nd Annual São Paulo International Film Festival last week. The film debuted at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals earlier this year and was awarded the Black Pearl Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago.

It is with great regret that Randy Newman has had to postpone his forthcoming European tour on doctor's orders, because of physical limitations and severe pain caused by stenosis in the lower back and neck. The 18-date tour had been due to start this Saturday, November 1, in Berlin. "I deeply regret not being able to come," says Randy. "I like it so much in Europe, and I've always been treated so well. I'll get there as soon as I can."

Last weekend, Wilco performed at the 22nd annual Bridge School benefit concert  organized by Neil Young, with whom the band will be heading out on the road a month from now for a tour of North America. But you don't have to wait that long to see the band play live. Tune in to The Colbert Report on Comedy Central tomorrow night, when Wilco will be the show's guest. On Saturday, members of the band will play a free Concert for Change on behalf of the Obama campaign at the Union Theater in Madison, Wisconsin.

Nonesuch Records is happy to announce the signing of singer/songwriter Christina Courtin, a young New York City–based musician with a classical pedigree in violin and a devoted following in New York built over the last several years playing in clubs all over town. Her label debut was recorded this year in New York and Los Angeles with a stellar cast of musicians and will be released in early 2009. "It isn’t hard to decode the allure of this burgeoning local artist," writes Time Out New York. "Her songs are at once old-fashioned, classic pop … and garnished with strange instrumental trimmings. Onstage, she lunges into her music with a spasmodic fearlessness that most vocalists reserve for the shower."

Sam Phillips will be back on the road next week for a short series of dates on the West Coast with songs from her latest Nonesuch release, Don't Do Anything, and from throughout her career. Earlier this week, Acoustic Cafe broadcast a recent live performance, which you can hear online now. Last week, NPR named the title track off the new album its Song of the Day and suggests that when "Phillips sings about the moments that move her heart, [i]t's to her credit that you don't quite know whether it's full to bursting or long since broken."

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, the new film by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, has won the Black Pearl Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Middle East International Film Festival. The film follows N'Dour as he records and tours with his Grammy-winning 2004 album, Egypt. N'Dour himself performed following the film's screening at the festival, held in Abu Dhabi.

Randy Newman will appear on the TODAY show, Tuesday, October 21, during the 10 AM hour. He will perform live as well as chat with hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb.

Sam Phillips and her band perform on the Acoustic Cafe radio show during the week of October 20, 2008. The show was recorded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during Sam’s recent tour stop in September. 

John Adams made his Met debut Monday night with the opening of the new production of his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. "This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music," exclaims the New York Times's Anthony Tomassini. "Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density." The Associated Press calls it an "intense and fascinating" work, in which "Adams has created a score filled with color, syncopation and lush interludes." Newsweek calls the production "stunning," the score "lyrical, romantic, Wagnerian by turns." Also, Bloomberg calls the composer's newest opera, A Flowering Tree, "Adams's most ravishing creation to date," and Slate finds his new memoir "gripping."

John Adams makes his Met Opera debut tonight with the New York premiere of his opera Doctor Atomic. The New Yorker calls it "a striking example of the new Met’s range." New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert conducts, in his company debut. Gerald Finley reprises his role as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and tells the New York Times: "The strength of Doctor Atomic is the layered subtext. Each character has many agendas to get through. It’s very refreshing to reveal aspects that haven’t been seen." Director Penny Woolcock tells The Financial Times: "John's music grows out of the finest lyrical tradition of operatic composition but it is part of the 20th and 21st centuries ... I can hear bits of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix and the rhythms of today."

John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.