Big Ears Festival takes place in Knoxville with Kronos Quartet, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, Laurie Anderson, Tyondai Braxton ... NY Phil performs new John Adams ... Jeremy Denk tours Northeast ... Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell perform at Tennessee benefit ... James Farm tours Brazil ... Audra McDonald sings outside DC ... Natalie Merchant performs in Connecticut ... Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters finish Latin American tour at Lollapalooza Brazil ... Punch Brothers perform in Portland ... and more ...

Rhiannon Giddens kicks off her spring tour, featuring music from her new debut solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn, with two performances at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, this weekend. The tour continues through June, with stops in cities and at festivals along the way, including New York City (April 9 at The Town Hall), Chicago (April 23 at The Vic), Los Angeles (May 9 at El Rey Theatre), and the Bonnaroo and Telluride Bluegrass festivals in June. Giddens’ bandmates from Carolina Chocolate Drops—multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins, cellist Malcolm Parson, and multi-instrumentalist Rowan Corbett—are part of the touring band.

The 2015 Big Ears Festival takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, this weekend including performances from artists-in-residence Kronos Quartet, Laurie Anderson, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, and Tyondai Braxton. Big Ears is held in venues throughout downtown Knoxville. Click here for a schedule of the Nonesuch artists' events at this weekend's festival. 

Punch Brothers kick off the spring leg of their North American tour at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver on Wednesday featuring music from their new album, The Phosphorescent Blues. This leg of the tour includes stops in Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Salt Lake City; four dates in California; three in Texas; and two in Arizona. Gabriel Kahane supports along the way. This summer, the band plays several summer festival dates, like Bonnaroo and Telluride, and shows with Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn.

Conor Oberst has announced a number of US tour dates for this June. The shows start at 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia, on June 3, followed by stops in Wilmington and Boston, all with support from Larkin Poe; a set at The Governors Ball in NYC; concerts in Maquoketa, Iowa, his hometown of Omaha, and Lincoln, Nebraska, all with support from The Felice Brothers; and culminating with a set at Rock the Garden in Minneapolis. See below for the complete list of June shows. Tickets are on sale now for the two festivals and go on sale Friday for the rest.

Due to a serious shoulder injury to Patrick Carney, The Black Keys’ forthcoming concerts in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, part of their Turn Blue World Tour, have been cancelled up until April 23. Regrettably, due to prior scheduled commitments, efforts to reschedule the original dates were unsuccessful; therefore all tickets (outside of Bluesfest Byron Bay) will be refunded at their point of purchase. At this time, it is not expected that any dates after April 23 will be cancelled.

In anticipation of the March 23 release of Buena Vista Social Club’s Lost and Found—a new collection of previously unreleased tracks—comes news that Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, a core band featuring several of the original musicians, will embark on a North American farewell "Adios" tour in August 2015. The "Adios" tour includes extensive dates in the US and Canada, culminating in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 7.

The line-up for the 2015 Cambridge Folk Festival has been expanded, and among the newly announced performers at this year's festival are Punch Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, and Olivia Chaney. The four-day festival takes place at Cherry Hinton Hall in Cambridge, England, and runs from July 30 to August 2. Tickets are on sale now.

Rhiannon Giddens has announced European tour dates for the summer, featuring music from her debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn. The shows begin June 30 at Islington Assembly Hall in London with stops in Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Dublin, culminating at the Cambridge Folk Festival on August 1. Tickets go on sale starting this Friday, March 20. Giddens and the band kick off a US tour at the Big Ears Festival on March 28.

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters announce their 2015 North American tour. Kicking off May 24 at the Sasquatch! Festival in George, WA, the dates include his return to Bonnaroo and finish off in Philadelphia June 17. Tickets go on sale starting this Friday. Each ticket to the non-festival shows will include a CD of the band’s latest album, lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar. The Pixies open five of these shows, and JD McPherson five. Citi cardmembers have access to presale tickets for the Santa Barbara and LA shows starting Wednesday.

This lucky Friday the 13th, Robert Plant kicks off Latin American tour in Mexico and Lollapalooza Chile ... Laurie Anderson performs in Nashville ... Bombino plays New Zealand WOMAD ... Jeremy Denk, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields tour California ... Richard Goode plays Beethoven in Amsterdam ... Kronos Quartet is in Wisconsin ... Audra McDonald performs in Tucson ... Brad Mehldau, Mark Guiliana close out Mehliana tour in Tokyo and Seoul ... Punch Brothers are on CBS and PBS ... and more ...

Natalie Merchant brings the music of her latest album, the self-titled 2014 Nonesuch release, and more on the road as she performs a number of North American concerts in the coming months. She begins this run of shows at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, on Saturday, followed by shows in New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, and culminating in two shows at Koerner Hall in Toronto in May.