Mac Rebennack, a.k.a Dr. John, whose new album, Locked Down, is due out next week, was the guest on today's episode of WNYC's Soundcheck. He performs a live solo piano version of "Big Shot," a song off the new album, and talks about working with producer Dan Auerbach on the album. He also gives preview of his three-week residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), which launches this week with a tribute to Louis Armstrong, followed by the premiere of new music from Locked Down with Auerbach (April 5–7), and a celebration of New Orleans music (April 12–15). Listen to the show here.

Nonesuch releases the label debut from acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk, Ligeti/Beethoven, on May 15, 2012. The solo recording features Ligeti’s Piano Études, Books One and Two, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor. "One curious connection between the works on this album is the way both Ligeti and Beethoven relate themselves to jazz (and to syncopation, rhythmic dislocation generally)," says Denk. "But the most significant connection for me is between Beethoven’s vast timeless canvas and Ligeti’s bite-sized bits of infinity." Pre-order now. Tune in to Q2 Music all this week to hear Denk guest host Hammered!, and again tonight for a live videocast performance/conversation with Denk, John Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

In 2004, Caetano Veloso curated a week of special concerts at Carnegie Hall and invited his longtime friend and collaborator David Byrne to join him for the show captured on the new album Caetano Veloso & David Byrne: Live at Carnegie Hall. "Respected songwriters who for the last four decades have in similar ways chronicled their respective cultures, the pair trade stripped-down renditions of some of their classics on this live document and in doing so offer borderless bliss," says the Los Angeles Times. Citing Veloso's take on Byrne's "(Nothing but) Flowers," the Times concludes: "Such joy is evident throughout Live at Carnegie Hall.” MOJO gives the album four stars.

Amadou & Mariam's new album, Folila, is due out in the US on April 10. The album's opening track, "Dougou Badia," featuring Santigold, premiered on Pitchfork earlier this year. Today, Pitchfork has premiered the video for another album track, "Wily Kataso," featuring another stellar collaboration, this time with TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe. Watch the video, directed by Jennifer DeLia, here.

Following yesterday's video featuring the title track to Dr. John's forthcoming album, Locked Down, comes a second teaser video with a clip from the track "Revolution" and more footage from inside producer Dan Auerbach's Nashville studio. Watch it here. A third album track, "Big Shot," has been named NPR's Song of the Day. "Auerbach makes 71-year-old Mac Rebennack sound fresh and intimate by connecting him to his vital musical past," says NPR. Dr. John "proves that now, as always, he's the ruler of American roots music."

Laurie Anderson will unveil a new sound piece at a unique venue this weekend. The performance is part of the Sounds from a Room series, which will take place in A Room for London, a one-bedroom riverboat situated on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Anderson's performance will be screened live at the St. Paul's Pavilion in London's Royal Festival Hall Sunday evening at 5 PM GMT and webcast live at aroomforlondon.co.uk. Amadou & Mariam will participate in the series in May, and David Byrne has released a new soundwork he recorded while in residence at A Room for London.

Release day for Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, is less than two weeks away, April 3. Now you can catch a look inside the studio as Dr. John and producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys laid down the album's title track in a new video here. Then head to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's website, bam.org, where the track is streaming in full. Dr. John and Auerbach will premiere music from the album at BAM as part of a three-weekend residency there titled Dr. John: Insides Out, which starts next week.

The new album featuring works by Krzysztof Penderecki and those they inspired by Jonny Greenwood itself stemmed from a concert in Poland last fall that paired the composers' works. Tonight, the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, which performed in the original concert and on the album, will perform the album's music at London's Barbican Hall. "Penderecki's Threnody still has the power to shock," says The Observer, "while Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver is already a modern classic." Consequence of Sound gives the new album four stars, calling it "one of the most ambitious albums of the year so far"; Greenwood's pieces "fit exquisitely next to the old master’s."

David Byrne, whose album with Caetano Veloso Live at Carnegie Hall was released last week, has unveiled Get It Away, a new soundwork he created while living in A Room for London, a one-bedroom riverboat installation atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, last month. "I brought along some field recording gear to use while I was staying in the lovely pod/room/boat," Byrne explains. "I went out during the day and recorded sounds that I thought might be useful and evocative." Watch Get It Away here.

Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose new album, Leaving Eden, was release on vinyl yesterday, are featured in a new piece on PBS Newshour's Art Beat that examines the roots of their music. Watch the piece here along with a recent performance at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Carolina Chocolate Drops "push an appreciation of home grown songs into brand new territory," explains The Morton Report. "It's not unlike jazz musicians who take popular music into the stratosphere. Carolina Chocolate Drops have essentially erased the rulebook and allowed freedom to become their watchword."

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opened at London's Adelphi Theatre last night, a West End transfer of the acclaimed Chichester Festival production, directed by Jonathan Kent. The production, starring Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball, opened to rave reviews, earning five stars from the Guardian, which calls it "a superb achievement," and the Times of London, which calls it "an absolute bleedin' triumph." The Daily Telegraph says Sweeney Todd is "Stephen Sondheim’s best show and one of the greatest musicals of all time." Earlier this month in London, Sondheim was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts.

The Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Ode, with 11 previously unreleased songs composed by Mehldau, is out now. The album is "full of seductive melody, and in its blues and bop references and surging swing, it's explicitly jazzy, too," says the Guardian in a four-star review. "It bears a lot of replaying." The Observer calls the new songs "absorbing," noting that "Mehldau is so brilliant at 'recomposing' standards that his remarkable talent as a composer is often overlooked." The Ottawa Citizen says: "A potent combination of deep lyricism, questing creativity and bar-raising virtuosity, Ode consistently provides the frissons that Mehldau fans have come to expect and that lesser pianists wish they could evoke."