Shortly after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed offered a list of "rich, wise, inclusive original voices" he might invite to the White House to signal his commitment to the arts. Others have even suggested the appointment of an arts czar. Given all the demands currently weighing on the President, though, Adams explains, in a Newsweek interview, that music appreciation has to start on a much more basic level. "[T]he one and only way to interest people in classical music is to get them to play it as children," Adams asserts. "I think people should just be exposed all the time to great art. That sounds like a really simple, grandiose statement, but I think it's really true."

Grammy week is under way, which means not only the culminating awards ceremony, which will be held this Sunday night, but also various special events, including a conversation with and performance by Allen Toussaint tonight at the Grammy Museum, and an invitation-only ceremony honoring Toussaint and Elliott Carter with the Trustees Award Saturday night. Toussaint will also perform on the live broadcast of Sunday's awards ceremony with an eclectic group of fellow New Orleans artists. Nonesuch artists and albums have been nominated for a total of 13 Grammys this year.

Laurie Anderson performs Burning Leaves, a selection of songs and stories from her various solo shows, in Cleveland, Ohio, this Saturday. She is also a featured artist in the new Guggenheim Museum exhibit The Third Mind, on the influence of Asian among American artists. In the House. In the Fire. Stories 1972–2008, a collection of spoken stories and sounds associated with Laurie's performance work, is included in the exhibit, which runs through April 19. In conjunction with the exhibit, Laurie performs two live solo shows, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the museum next month.

k.d. lang has been nominated as both Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year in the 2009 JUNO Awards for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Over the years, she has won a total of eight JUNOs, dating all the way back to her 1985 win for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year. This year's Producer of the Year nomination is particularly noteworthy, given that Watershed is k.d.'s first self-produced project.

Polish composer Henryk Górecki has been awarded the St. Gregory the Great Medal by Pope Benedict XVI, reports the Polish Radio news service. It states that Cardinal Dziwisz, the Archbishop of Kraków, declared the medal, in his words, "an expression of the gratitude of the universal Church for the composer’s hard work and sacrifice, for his testimony of faith and unbroken spirit, for his wonderful compositions which have a lasting place in the treasure house of sacred music, and also an expression of the church’s anticipation of more pieces that will uplift our hearts to God."

David Byrne, Wilco, Allen Toussaint, and Toumani Diabaté (sharing the stage with Béla Fleck) will be among the scores of incredible performers at the 2009 Bonnaroo festival. This year's incarnation of the event will be held June 11–14 in Manchester, Tennessee. In other festival news, Coachella, in Indio, California, has also announced its lineup for 2009. The Black Keys are among the headliners for the festival's opening night, April 17, as are such legendary performer/songwriters as Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney.

The Magnetic Fields and k.d. lang have both been nominated as Outstanding Music Artist in the 20th annual GLAAD Media Awards for their 2008 Nonesuch releases, Distortion and Watershed, respectively. The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and the issues that affect their lives.

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer George Perle died on Friday, January 23, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. He was 93. Perle, often considered one of the most lyrical of a new generation of atonal composers, wrote prolifically, including symphonic, chamber, vocal, and piano works. Perle often referred to his style of writing as "12-tone tonality." Richard Goode, in his liner notes to a Nonesuch recording of Perle works, wrote of the composer's music: "In its sobriety and playfulness, its rhythmic unpredictability, its delicate balance of harmonic and contrapuntal energies, it often brings Haydn to mind ... Whatever the emotional intensities expressed, one feels a language has been found that is exactly suited to its expressive requirements."

John Adams's String Quartet will receive its world premiere tonight in a performance by the St. Lawrence String Quartet at The Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. The concert is part of Juilliard's annual FOCUS! festival. The new piece is Adams’s second full-length work for string quartet, after 1994's John’s Book of Alleged Dances. The composer will participate in a pre-concert talk beginning at 6 PM. He leads the Juilliard Opera Center in a semi-staged production of The Death of Klinghoffer this Saturday night.

Steve Reich is a featured composer at this year's Modfest, an annual festival at Vassar College celebrating the music, art, poetry, and film of the 20th and 21st centuries. Modfest 2009 began late last week and runs through February 13, with a total of 18 events, including two all-Reich concerts, a conversation with the composer, a dance performance of works set to his music, a film screening and discussion, and a lecture about Reich's music.

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce the release of The Bright Mississippi, Allen Toussaint’s first solo album in more than a decade, on April 21, 2009. Produced by friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, the record includes songs by jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton, Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn. Toussaint and Henry created a band of highly regarded musicians for the sessions: clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, and percussionist Jay Bellerose; Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman each join Toussaint for a track as well.

John Adams has been named the first-ever Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, beginning next season, the orchestra's first with Music Director Designate Gustavo Dudamel. "John’s work, vision and big knowledge of all music, especially new music, is so deep," says Dudamel. The 2009/10 season gets under way with an Opening Night Gala concert, pairing Mahler's First Symphony with the world premiere of Adams's City Noir. As Creative Chair, the composer curates the West Coast: Left Coast festival, beginning late November, with a residency by Kronos Quartet; a new work by Thomas Newman; a jazz trio with Joshua Redman; and concerts led by Adams.