Toumani Diabaté joins forces once more with banjo master Béla Fleck for a free outdoor event at New York's Central Park SummerStage tonight. The two will perform in concert, followed by a screening of the film Throw Down Your Heart, which documents Fleck's trip through Africa in search of the source of his instrument. It begins a two week tour of the US and Canada. The New York Times says "it makes musical sense" to pair Diabaté, "renowned for his mastery of the kora ... with the virtuosic banjoist Béla Fleck."

The Black Keys play as the sun sets on All Points West ... Laurie Anderson talks gardens in the Hamptons ... David Byrne brings his Songs to Benelux; preps Playing the Building in London ... Richard Goode continues on at "close to perfection" Marlboro Music ... The Low Anthem celebrates Newport Folk Festival's 50th ... Youssou documentary opens in six more US cities ... Wilco's on NPR's World Cafe; Nels Cline joins M. Ward, Mike Watt at NYC's SummerStage ... and more ...

The Low Anthem stays close to home in Rhode Island this weekend to play the state's most famous musical gathering, the Newport Folk Festival, in its 50th year. NPR has series of features on the festival and will be broadcasting from Newport all weekend long. Ben Knox Miller tells the band's hometown paper, the Providence Journal, that of all the summer festivals the band finds itself playing, Newport is "the one I’m probably most looking forward to."

Steve Reich was born in New York, raised there and California, and has spent much of his life in the City. He has also been spending time in Vermont for more than three decades. Vermont Public Radio spoke with the composer about his career and how the quiet of Vermont has influenced his writing. He was in Massachusetts this weekend for MASS MoCA's Bang on a Can Festival, which culminated in a performance of Music for 18 Musicians. Says the Boston Globe: "Reich’s towering 1976 epic rang out like a renewed statement of purpose: a postmodern hoedown of joyfully interlocking parts."

Wilco has made the NPR listeners' list, both for Best Album, Wilco (the album), and twice again for Best Song with "Wilco (the song)" and "One Wing." "One thing was clear," says Bob Boilen, host of NPR's All Songs Considered, "that 2009 has been one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory." Fresh on the heels of their successful summer tour of the US, the band has announced a number of new dates in the country for this October.

Rokia Traoré was "one of the biggest draws" at this past weekend's WOMAD festival in Wiltshire, England, says the BBC. From backstage, BBC spoke with the Malian-born singer-songwriter, described as "one of Africa's most innovative and acclaimed musicians." The Independent gives four star's to the festival's first night, at which "the day's star-making performance comes from Mali's Rokia Traoré ... It is when she dances, hips swinging half-way to Somerset, and straps on an electric guitar to lead her band in hard, dramatic rock, that she becomes potent with pride."

Wilco brought its US tour to a close last night, headlining the 10,000 Lakes Festival's Thursday run, and begins its European tour at Oslo's Oya Festival on August 13. NPR's Fresh Air reviews the band's recent Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album), describing it as an album about an acceptance that allows one to feel "at once humbled and emboldened ... Acceptance, but not complacency. Jeff Tweedy is suggesting how you can make stability sound like a tough artistic challenge and a grand adventure."
 

Amadou & Mariam bring their US tour with Coldplay to a close tonight in St. Louis. Welcome to Mali, the couple's latest release, comes in at number six on SPIN's list of The 20 Best Albums of 2009 ... So Far. After tonight's final tour performance, the music keeps playing, as CNN's African Voices, airing Saturday, takes a closer look at the husband-and-wife musical team. With their "positive and mesmeric vocals and [Amadou] Bagayoko's guitar playing," says CNN, "the duo have been feted by musicians across the world." Learn why by watching this weekend.

Christina Courtin plays the second of two shows in California this week in a set at San Francisco's Café du Nord tonight. She performed at Largo at the Coronet in LA on Tuesday, a set the Los Angeles Times dubbed "refreshingly un-ethereal." The paper's music blog explains, saying Christina "offered one of the best correctives to the ever more ubiquitous images of wispy, inscrutable hipstresses with a set of completely endearing yet really sturdy and inventive folk-pop."

Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble are teaming up with the LA Phil and the LA Master Chorale to present an all-Glass program tonight at the Hollywood Bowl, including "Spaceship," from Einstein on the Beach, described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most important and groundbreaking American operas in history," and a screening of the film Koyaanisqatsi, set to a new arrangement of Glass's score for the ensemble and orchestra. The Times says: "Glass's film music has helped make him perhaps the best-known classical composer of the last half-century." LA Weekly writes: "His progressions tend to be brilliantly subtle, forming, like gradated layers of color on canvas, some amazing aural paintings."

Kronos Quartet's performance in Brooklyn's Prospect Park last Thursday offered the sort of program for which the group earned once more the label "groundbreaking" in the New York Times review. The program featured works from Kronos's latest album, Floodplain, to which the Toronto Star gives a perfect four stars. "The Kronos Quartet never disappoints," exclaims the Star, "but on their latest disc they are even better than ever ... There isn't a single musical moment left wanting." The Arkansas Democrat-Gazzette gives it an A-, recommending in particular "the remarkable" album closer by Serbian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalov.

Wilco's US tour behind their latest Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album), is due to wrap up this week, with a European tour slated to begin next month, after a set outside Detroit tonight and the 10,000 Lakes Festival in Minnesota on Thursday. Prior to the concerts, the Detroit Free Press talks to Nels Cline about his "head-spinning guitar pyrotechnics" and the Star Tribune talks to Jeff Tweedy about the new record and what's to come. GQ says of last Saturday's show in upstate New York that "the band has never sounded better." Buffalo News says Sunday's set in nearby Lewiston "was simply awesome ... Wilco is certainly the most interesting US band of its generation."