Bay Area native Joshua Redman is back on his home turf this week to play a five-night residency—nine shows—at Yoshi's in Oakland, beginning tonight, with bassist Matt Penman, of the SFJAZZ Collective, and drummer Greg Hutchinson, a featured player on Redman's latest Nonesuch release, the double-trio album Compass. Branford Marsalis tells the San Jose Mercury News of the special affinity between Redman and his drummer, calling Hutchinson "the perfect foil for Josh."

To mark the start of National Poetry Month, Steve Reich will join a diverse array of noteworthy public figures, including musicians, actors, and writers, among others, at Lincoln Center's newly remodeled Avery Fisher Hall tonight to read their favorite poems by some of America's best-loved poets. Among those scheduled to read along with Reich are Joan Baez, Mia Farrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chip Kidd, Wynton Marsalis, and Zadie Smith. Proceeds from the event, titled Poetry & The Creative Mind, benefit the Academy of American Poets and will help provide free classroom materials to more than 200,000 schools across the US this month.

Jeff Tweedy performed two solo sets this past weekend, at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts, Friday night, and at Beacon High School in upstate New York, in a fundraiser for the Clearwater organization co-founded by Pete Seeger, who also performed. Rolling Stone says "Tweedy, like Seeger, engaged the crowd throughout his set ... He also sang with crisp vocals and rich vocal inflection on 'Passenger Side' and played haunting harmonica lines on 'Via Chicago.'” The Republican says Tweedy was equally humble and successful with the sold-out crowd at the Calvin: "Tweedy was magnificent over the course of his 25-song set, recounting the Wilco catalog in acoustic form."

Kronos Quartet premieres new Riley work at Notre Dame ... Graz and Giessen ballets continue to dance to Adams works ... Afro-Cuban All Stars offer NYC a "thrillingly autentico survey of the colorful panorama of Cuban music" (Village Voice) ... Laurie Anderson honors documentary film music ... David Byrne brings My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' "sound collage of spiky funk rhythms" (Daily Telegraph) and other Eno joints to the UK ... Shawn Colvin solos at RootsFest Denver ... Christina Courtin backs Marianne Faithfull on violin ... Toumani Diabaté and Béla Fleck's Africa Project tour the East Coast ... Philip Glass & Friends Pierce Turner, Zack Glass, Suzanne Vega play City Winery ... Richard Goode plays Bach, Chopin outside DC ... Glenn Kotche joins the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Terry Riley for Marathon concert ... k.d. lang presents at the Junos ... Brad Mehldau plays Jazz fests in Europe ... Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone play Newark's NJPAC ... Punch Brothers go Georgian ... Joshua Redman swaps bassists in Europe ... Jeff Tweedy performs solo for Clearwater benefit ... Sara Watkins opens for John Prine ... and more ...

k.d. lang joins fellow Canadians Feist, Diana Krall, and (by marriage) Elvis Costello in presenting at Canada's Juno Awards this Sunday. k.d. has also been nominated as both the Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Also this weekend, k.d.'s North American tour takes her to California and Nevada. Her recent Portland, Oregon, performance led The Oregonian to exclaim: "There are a lot of good singers out there. kd lang is a great one." London's National Portrait Gallery might agree, having named k.d. among the Gay Icons in its exhibit of that name, opening this summer, which also includes David Hockney, Harvey Milk, Walt Whitman, Tchaikovsky, and Nelson Mandela.

Sara Watkins, whose self-titled solo debut album is due out from Nonesuch on April 5, is the subject of a feature article in the Charlotte Observer. She's set to play two shows in North Carolina opening for John Prine this weekend: at Charlotte's Ovens Auditorium tomorrow night and Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville the following night. The Observer says that on the new album, Sara "continues to explore different genres from torchy, playful western swing (Jimmie Rodgers' 'Any Old Time') to pop-rock (Davíd Garza's 'Too Much') to the aching chamber folk (Jon Brion's 'Same Mistake')." Three additional songs from the album are now streaming on Nonesuch Radio.

Joshua Redman and one of two trios featured on his recent Nonesuch release, Compass, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchinson, played a three-night residency at Ronnie Scott's club in London through last weekend. The Guardian gives the sets four stars, describing Redman as "a compelling builder of extended stories, and his pacing is masterly." The Trio gave the audience, which "howled their appreciation," "a demonstration of peerless sax mastery and group empathy." The Financial Times gives four stars as well, asserting: "Redman’s trio deliver an intense and fiery chamber jazz ... The fractured breaks, snatches of improv and twists and turns seemed as spontaneous as the applause they immediately won."

Afro-Cuban All Stars spread their energetic sound through the Midwest ... ENO production of Adams's Doctor Atomic comes to a close; Graz, Giessen, and San Fran ballets dance on to Adams ... Dan Auerbach plays two more "raw and rumbling" sets at SxSW ... Isabel Bayrakdarian performs Gomidas songs at Art Song Festival benefit ... David Byrne brings Eno/Byrne songs to Sweden ... Toumani Diabaté plays Yoshi's with Béla Fleck ... Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz tour North Carolina ... Philip Glass revisits Tibetan refugee project with Foday Musa Suso ... Richard Goode performs Beethoven's "Emperor" with Saint Louis ... k.d. lang plays Pacific Northwest ... Brad Mehldau goes Dutch in solo set ... Joshua Redman Trio takes over Ronnie Scott's London ... Spokane Symphony takes Reich, Marshall music to The Knitting Factory ... Sara Watkins joins brother Sean at Largo ... and more ...

Rokia Traoré, Toumani Diabaté, and Amadou & Mariam have all been nominated for the inaugural Songlines Music Awards, recognizing outstanding talent in world music. Diabaté and Traoré are each nominated for Best Artist, Amadou & Mariam for Best Group. Winners will be chosen by the Songlines editorial team and announced in May. The WOMAD festival, the Awards' co-presenter, will host a live event with a selection of the nominees at WOMAD Charlton Park in July, where Traoré and label mate Oumou Sangare are scheduled to perform.

Dan Auerbach, fresh off his two-week tour with Hacienda and Those Darlins, helped kick off Austin's South by Southwest Music Conference last night with an opening-night set at The Parish. The first reports are in, and the show seems to be the hit of a typically jam-packed SxSW night. MTV includes the "raw and rumbling set" among the night's highlights, and JamBase says, "The top pick for the first night was undoubtedly Dan Auerbach ... [I]t took all of one song to realize this was something special." The Dallas Observer calls Dan's solo debut, Keep It Hid, "an intimate trek down gravel roads and back alleys to the crossroads of American music."

Isabel Bayrakdarian will perform songs from her Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, celebrating the work of composer Gomidas Vardabet, at Ohio's Baldwin-Wallace College, tomorrow night, to benefit the school's Art Song Festival. "The Lebanon-born Canadian soprano of Armenian heritage has proved herself on the international operatic and recital stage, where her lustrous voice and expressive urgency are winning increasing approbation," says the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. "I think these songs are in the psyche of all Armenians," Bayrakdarian says of the Gomidas works. "In many ways, when I sing them ... they come from a part of me that is very different from when I sing any other repertoire."

Emmylou Harris and Kate and Anna McGarrigle will be among the artists celebrating the legendary singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, in honor of his 90th birthday, at a special Madison Square Garden concert event, Sunday, May 3. All proceeds will go to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the organization Seeger co-founded in 1966 to fight pollution on New York's longest river. Also on stage will be the honoree himself, along with a diverse line-up of artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Ben Harper, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and many more.