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.

Rokia Traoré's recently released album Tchamantché is lauded as the Malian singer/songwriter's "best and most daring work" in a review for NPR's All Things Considered by Banning Eyre. "Traoré's meld of African and rock aesthetics is understated and as comfortable as it is cool," says Eyre. "The world's less-developed societies have produced many singers who seek to balance musical style and cultural perspective, and to address the larger world. Few manage it with the grace and style of Rokia Traoré."

Fred Hersch will perform two shows in San Francisco this weekend: a free solo concert and conversation at the Community Music Center on Friday and a concert at Herbst Theatre with his new Pocket Orchestra Saturday night. He spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle about his recent triumph over a number of life-threatening illnesses and his return to the stage. "Hersch, who plays jazz with uncommon fluency, feeling and invention," says the Chronicle, "has recovered, regaining his strength through intense physical therapy and getting back to the affirming business of making music."

Philip Glass will lead a diverse line-up of artists for the 19th annual Tibet House Benefit Concert tonight at Carnegie Hall, where the concert has been held since 1993. Scheduled to perform this year, in addition to Glass, the event's artistic director and the vice president of Tibet House, are Antibalas, Steve Earle, Zack Glass (the composer's son), Angelique Kidjo, Keb' Mo', The National, Patti Smith and Jesse Smith (her daughter), Techung & the Lhasa Spirits, Vampire Weekend, and monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India.

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.

Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and Buddy Miller begin a month-long run of their rollicking Three Girls and Their Buddy tour tonight with the first of two consecutive nights at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. The tour concludes at the end of the month in Boston, where the Boston Globe says the show "brings together four shining talents and close collaborators who straddle the country-folk-pop axis ... on the road en masse to perform as a foursome, four venerated song catalogs in tow."

The Punch Brothers' US tour is winding through the South this week, having stopped at the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center in Birmingham on Saturday. The Birmingham News gives the performance four stars, calling Chris Thile "extremely gifted, both as an instrumentalist and a composer," describing the band's music as "a distinctly modern sound that can be dramatic or lighthearted, solemn or joyful, rollicking or dissonant," and praising its "stellar musicianship. Thile and his bandmates can play just about anything and ace it."

Punch Brothers bring their "dizzyingly fresh" (Birmingham News) music to Alabama ... John Adams conducts The Death of Klinghoffer to close Juilliard's FOCUS! festival ... The Black Keys head home to Ohio for two nights in Cleveland ... Kronos Quartet gives West Coast premieres at Berkeley ... Steve Reich continues his central role in Vassar's Modfest festival ... Allen Toussaint begins his Joe's Pub residency ... Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche play separate solo dates ... Dawn Upshaw and David Byrne tour Australia ... and more ...

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.

Dawn Upshaw begins a two-week tour of Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Canberra Friday night. On the tour program are works by Mozart, Strauss, Bartók, and Upshaw's frequent collaborator, Osvaldo Golijov. The Australian lauds her "near-rapturous devotion to art" and her support of new music, in particular. "Upshaw's commitment to music goes beyond her choice of repertoire, however. It's in the texture and expressive shading of her voice, the aural evidence of her intelligent probing of text and music."

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.

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.