Earbox.com has long been the go-to source for information on the works of composer John Adams and has now received a makeover, including the addition of a blog from the composer. The first few posts have already caught the attention of The New Yorker's Alex Ross, who writes, "Few artists are as engagingly forthright in their interviews and writings. Adams has now started up a blog on his home site, with the promising name Hell Mouth."

Wilco and The Low Anthem have made the shortlist of nominees for the Uncut Music Award and are now two of just eight artists up for what Uncut has dubbed the year's "most inspiring and rewarding musical experience." The music video for The Low Anthem's "Charlie Darwin" can now be seen here at Nonesuch.com. Stereogum described it as an "affecting visual counterpart to Ben Knox Miller's fragile falsetto."

Foundation Passerelle, the organization founded by Rokia Traoré to help her fellow Malians prepare for careers in music, has been awarded the first-ever Roskilde Festival World Music Award. Rokia will accept the 30,000 euro award, on the foundation's behalf, from the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen at the Womex world music conference on November 1. She had already been scheduled to attend this year's Womex to speak about the foundation.

When John Adams's City Noir received its world premiere early this month in the gala Opening Night concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under its new music director Gustavo Dudamel, it was met with rave reviews and an adulatory audience response. The performance, which was paired with Mahler's First Symphony, airs tonight on PBS's Great Performances. On his new blog, Adams praises Dudamel as "the genuine article."

I Am Love, the film to which John Adams has contributed his first-ever score, has been nominated for a Hollywood World Award for best international film; the Los Angeles Times says the score "adds a staggering emotional punch" to the film. The Times review of Sunday's LA Master Chorale performance of Klinghoffer Choruses calls Adams "an American icon" and the opera's music as "some of the most haunting Adams has written." The composer delivers the Tanner Lectures on Human Values next week at Yale.

Youssou N'Dour is in New York City tonight as an honoree, along with President Bill Clinton and Sir Richard Branson, of The Black Ball, a benefit event for Keep a Child Alive to support children and families with HIV/AIDS in Africa and India; he is set to perform as well. Youssou was in the city last night for a Q&A at a screening of the film I Bring What I Love. He is due to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at London's Africa Music Awards on Saturday.

Allen Toussaint and Amadou & Mariam are featured guests on the American broadcast of the famed UK performance show Later ... with Jools Holland. The episode, which previously aired in the UK, is being shown for the first time in the US tonight on the cable arts channel Ovation TV, at 9 PM. And tune in next month to catch The Carolina Chocolate Drops on the show November 5.

 

Punch Brothers returns to Carnegie Hall for its first performance in Stern Auditorium this Friday, following the 2007 premiere of The Blind Leaving the Blind in Carnegie's Zankel Hall, the work later featured on the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch. To celebrate, Nonesuch is offering two free tickets to the show, plus a copy of the album Punch. Winners will also receive free entry into the concert's after party, courtesy of the makers of the forthcoming film about the Punch Brothers, How to Grow a Band.

Following a two-night set "stomping through songs from his fine solo debut, Keep It Hid" (New York Times) in Austin at Austin City Limits and an official ACL Aftershow, Dan Auerbach is set to begin a three-week North American tour with his band The Fast Five, beginning November 5 in Columbus, Ohio. Joining for the length of the tour are Justin Townes Earle and Jessica Lea Mayfield.

John Adams's City Noir receives its world premiere tonight in the Opening Night Concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Inaugural Gala for its new music director, Gustavo Dudamel, at Walt Disney Concert Hall. "I want to make my music an opportunity to extend myself, and my language," Adams tells the Los Angeles Times. The piece will be performed again this fall for the Philharmonic's Adams-curated West Coast, Left Coast festival.

Wilco is still in the midst of its fall tour through the United States, with a breach of the 49th Parallel for two shows in Toronto next week. Come February 2010, the tables will turn for a TransCanada tour, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, with a half dozen stops planned for south of the border. The Canadian leg beings with a free concert for the "Live City" Vancouver celebration of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Nonesuch Records will release its first album from Natalie Merchant in early 2010. The record is her first release since 2003's The House Carpenter's Daughter. Throughout her career, Merchant has had tremendous popular and critical success. Vogue has called her "one of the most successful and enduring alternative artists to emerge from the eighties—intact and uncompromised."