Today, NPR has launched a new multimedia music site at npr.org/music, incorporating content from its national programs and several partner stations' programming. Among the site's features are artist interviews, concerts, and live broadcast streams from the member stations. One special feature is Project Song, which challenges songwriters to write and record a new song in two days. Participants are asked to choose from a stack of images and words and write a song based on one of each. Kicking off the series is The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, who used the project to create "A Man of a Million Faces."

In this week's Onion, the A.V. Club asks actor Jason Schwartzman to set his iPod to shuffle and comment on what comes up. When he hits Randy Newman's "Living Without You," Schwartzman says: "This might be one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

Richard Goode will be Petroc Trelawny's guest on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters, the station's flagship classical music program, on Saturday, November 3. The two discuss Goode's 45-year career and the joy he finds in collaborating with Dawn Upshaw, with whom he'll perform next week at London's Southbank Centre. Music Matters begins at 12:15 GMT on Radio 3. 

InisdeBayArea.com examines the many ways in which Kronos Quartet has gone well beyond the confines of the traditional string quartet. "We haven't called ourselves a string quartet, I think, in the last 34 years," Kronos violinist David Harrington says. "I remember as a kid looking at the map—and at that point I had only played Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—and thinking, 'God, what does the rest of the world sound like? I'm going to find out.'"

The Washington Post's Going Out Gurus recommend the best spots in DC for taking in some art after the Smithsonian museums close for the night. The best bet for tomorrow night, November 3, is the opening of Furnishing the Self: Upholstering the Soul, featuring works by David Byrne in homage to the common chair. The multimedia exhibit includes "Macaroni," an embroidered piece on upholstery fabric, pictured at right, and runs through December 22 at the Hemphill Fine Arts gallery, 1515 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. The opening reception will be held Saturday, November 3, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

All Songs Considered has announced the next show in NPR's Live Concert Series: bluegrass masters Nickel Creek—Sean Watkins, Sara Watkins, and Chris Thile—live from their farewell tour, November 2, at the 9:30 Club in Washington. Boilen calls Thile, whose band Punch Brothers recently signed to Nonesuch, "one of the most amazing mandolin players I've ever heard."

While reports continue to pour in about the show-stealing set by Kronos Quartet and Tom Waits at last weekend's Bridge School Benefit, the group sent in a special backstage photo from the event. Here they are with Tyler, the Bridge School student whose artwork lined the walls of their dressing room to provide some inspiration before the show.

Richard Goode begins his artist residency as Associate Artist at London's Southbank Centre for the 2007-08 season in a November 7 concert with Dawn Upshaw. On the program is Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens; Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1; and songs by Debussy and Wolf. Goode describes working with Dawn as "one of the purest pleasures of my musical life." The two collaborated, notably, on a Nonesuch recording of Goethe Lieder in 1994.

With the song "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," Randy Newman puts the current state of the union into context, as only he can do. He published the lyrics from the song in a New York Times op-ed piece earlier this year in response to the George Bush's own State of the Union address. Watch Randy perform "A Few Words" here.

A new list of the world's 100 greatest living geniuses features an eclectic group, with Philip Glass, in the top ten, joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, and, yes, Simpsons creator Matt Groening. According to The Guardian, an international consulting firm compiled the list after polling 4,000 Brits, and ranked the winners based on how much their work "turned conventional thinking on its head, the popular acclaim they received, their intellectual power, their achievements, and their cultural importance."

Nonesuch Records is happy to announce that the new album by The Magnetic Fields, Distortion, will be released on January 15, 2008. The band will perform a small
number of US tour dates in February and March. Specific details regarding venues and ticket pre-sales will be announced shortly.

Stephin Merritt has joined Rufus Wainwright, Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, and others in contributing tracks to Plague Songs, a UK compilation that pays homage, in song, to the Biblical plagues. He's written a little ditty about lice, or more precisely, "The Meaning of Lice," and Pitchfork says: "Only one man could successfully write and record a wistful, feel-good, disco-danceable, three-minute ode to parasites and pestilence—with a chorus that includes the word 'subcutaneous'—and that man is Stephin Merritt."