It is with great regret that Flaco Jiménez has had to pull out of Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe’s forthcoming European tour on doctor's orders. Due to physical limitations and severe pain caused by herniated discs in his lower back, the Grammy-winning accordionist is unable to travel or perform for the foreseeable future. He is currently undergoing treatment in San Antonio, Texas. The 19-date tour begins on June 11 in Dublin.

Amadou & Mariam are set to take Chicago's Park West by storm tonight as they begin the first leg of their summer tour. The Chicago Sun-Times says the couple "front a fiery band that provides a kaleidoscope of music filtering rock, blues, reggae and hip-hop through a Malian sensibility. Her vocals are innocent and welcoming; his blues/rock guitar style is commanding and nimble." The Chicago Tribune declares, "If the duo's vocals are a life-affirming sound that transcends language barriers, [Amadou's] guitar is an instrument of mind-altering eloquence." Time Out Chicago says their new album, Welcome to Mali, "sounds as if it was made, variously, in 1970s flare-wearing New York, in a timeless stretch of desert, and at the kind of party you’d most like to be asked to." Catch the duo on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Monday.

Rokia Traoré, whose most recent album, Tchamantché, was released on Nonesuch earlier this year, is the subject of a feature profile in the Sunday Times (UK), in anticipation of her sold-out concert at London’s celebrated Barbican this Friday. The article highlights both her “flourishing reputation” and the launch of her Fondation Passarelle, an organization she founded to help young people develop the skills needed to enter the music business. In August, she performs two free shows in New York that Time Out includes in its preview of the summer's best outdoor concerts. "With her latest disc," says the magazine, "Traoré wraps her beautiful, velvety voice around moody blues and joyous Afrobeats alike. Be prepared to gape at her lovely vocals, and also to get up and shimmy."

Congratulations to Jonny Greenwood, whose score for Paul Thomas Anderson's film There Will Be Blood has won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score. The Ivors are awarded for outstanding achievement to British songwriters and composers. The awards, now in their 54th year, are presented annually by BASCA, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, at Grosvenor House in London.

Wilco (the album) is set for a June 30 release from Nonesuch Records, on CD and a vinyl LP, and is now available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store. The LP is pressed on audiophile-quality, 180-gram vinyl and includes the full album on CD as well. For a sneak peek, visit the band's site, wilcoworld.net, where the complete album is now streaming. American Songwriter says it's well worth checking out: "[W]e’ve heard the record, and we can tell you it’s worth listening to over a pay phone submerged underwater. It’s that good."

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love premieres at BAM's Muslim Voices festival in June. "He lives so successfully by his convictions, and shows us a very different Islam than what we see in the media," the film's director tells New York. "And his voice is extraordinary. If you watch his band Super Etoile perform, you’ll follow them to the edge of the earth." Robert Cole, who is retiring from Cal Performances after 20-plus years at its helm, says: "Of the artists we've had relationships with, certainly Youssou N'Dour is one of the greatest." At a recent UN-led World Malaria Day event, N'Dour and Malaria No More launched a campaign to encourage the use of mosquito nets in Senegal and help prevent the spread of the disease.

Stephen Sondheim is the subject of a profile in Time magazine, which suggests that there won't be another like him any time soon, "not because high-brow musical theater is dead, but because the old Sondheim keeps on being new." The article looks at new productions of the composer's works as well as new works from Sondheim, like Road Show, to explain his enduring power. Director Trevor Nunn compares Sondheim to Shakespeare. "As with Shakespeare," he tells Time, "there's heightened poetic expression in Sondheim, but when you dig into it, you find it's in touch with something real." Time concludes: "He occupies a place in the pantheon not of musical theater, but of theater itself."

Coraline, the new musical featuring music by Stephin Merritt and based on the Neil Gaiman horror/children's book, opens in previews tonight at New York's MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel. Merritt spoke with the Village Voice for an extensive article about the play. "Since the earliest Magnetic Fields albums," says the Voice, "critics have drawn comparisons between Merritt's songwriting and that of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin ... So it seemed only a matter of time before he would imitate those idols and write for the stage."

Dawn Upshaw was in Boston yesterday for a performance with pianist Gilbert Kalish at Jordan Hall of works by a wide variety of composers, from Ravel to Golijov. Upshaw, with her ability to transform whatever she chooses to perform "into a soul-rattling artistic experience," is the subject of an extensive feature profile in the Boston Globe that describes her as "one of the most significant and dramatically moving singers before the public today ... Upshaw's rare gift as a performer is an ability to inhabit a work on the most profound levels, to live the music on stage rather than sing it at you."

In a week that brought big news from Wilco about their forthcoming studio album's Nonesuch release, there's now more good news from the band: They're offering fans a new recording of Woody Guthrie's Depression Era song "Jolly Banker," on their site, with 100% of the suggested donation going to support the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives. Jeff Tweedy tells American Public Media's Marketplace how Guthrie's words, even seven decades later, still resonate, and how the band got to see an all-too-rare side of America while on the tour documented in their new concert film, Ashes of American Flags.

Rokia Traoré and Amadou & Mariam have been announced the winners of the inaugural Songlines Music Awards, created by Songlines magazine to recognize outstanding talent in world music. Rokia has won the Best Artist award, and Amadou & Mariam have been named Best Group. "This Songlines Award means a lot to me," says Rokia, "not just because it comes from a magazine I respect and one that has always been supportive of my music, but also because at this stage in my career it is an honor to still be recognized for my continued efforts to make my music better."

Voltaic, a very special CD/LP/DVD project from Björk, is set to be released in the US by Nonesuch Records on June 30, 2009. Available in five different physical configurations, it is a lovingly packaged celebration of the past two years of Björk’s Volta activities—her critically praised sixth studio album, which came out in 2007, and the subsequent two-year world tour. Voltaic serves as a coda to Volta, an album about which NME said “Volta is a thunderous return as enchanting as Debut,’’ while Q described it as “the best album that Björk has done in a decade—a reminder of what a vital force she is.”