Laurie Anderson brought her Homeland tour to The Egg in Albany, New York, this past Sunday and resumes the extensive tour at the Cullen Theater in Houston on October 10. The Albany Times-Union says the new piece "could well be seen as the provocative, pointedly political epilogue" to her monumental 1983 work United States, as well as "a full-fledged musical concert," with songs of "considerable political bite or incisive, poetic observations," and, in the case of "Mambo & Bling," also "laced with welcome humor."

Dawn Upshaw joins the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas tonight in an all-Bernstein program for Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala. After the program's premiere last week in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle hailed Dawn's performance as "the high point," citing her "fizzy, funny and wonderfully evocative rendition" of the aria "What a Movie" from the opera Trouble in Tahiti. Tonight's performance, also featuring baritone Thomas Hampson, vocalist Christine Ebersole, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, launches Bernstein: The Best of all Possible Worlds, the Hall's joint celebration, with the New York Philharmonic, of the 90th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Wilco is encouraging everyone who is eligible to vote in this November's all-important US Presidential election to register now and head out to the polls on Tuesday, November 4. For anyone who pledge to do so, the band is offering a free download of a beautiful, live rendition of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," recorded in concert with Fleet Foxes this summer. Wilco has also signed on to perform this October at the 22nd annual Bridge School benefit concert organized by Neil Young, with whom Wilco will tour this winter.

Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile's self-titled debut duo album is due out tomorrow, and their month-long tour of the States in support of the record kicks off Thursday in Boulder, Colorado. New York Times critic Nate Chinen writes that, though "the mandolin ace" and "the accomplished bassist" first came together almost a decade ago as "prodigy with his mentor," the new collection "wisely presents them as equals," featuring "a busy dialogue between bluegrass and classical music, with blinding displays of dexterity as well as stretches of poplike lyricism."

Randy Newman's world tour got under way last week with stops at Carnegie Hall on Friday, Toronto's Convocation Hall on Saturday, and Boston's Symphony Hall on Sunday. Reviewing the Carnegie Hall show, New York magazine says that
Randy "sang about micro and macro American hypocrisy with more sharpness and poignancy than the combined works of Thomas Frank and Maureen Dowd." The Star-Ledger says "the droll raconteur provided more food for thought than a year's worth of media punditry, and he did it with soul." The Toronto Star calls Randy "a graduate cum laude of the master class of mid-1970s American musical poets" and says his latest album, Harps and Angels, "matches the caustic intelligence and musical virtuosity of his classic 1970s albums Sail Away and Good Old Boys." The Boston Globe calls Randy "pop's most incisive, sharp-witted satirist."

David Byrne showcases his collaborations with Brian Eno in Atlanta and Asheville ... Alarm Will Sound and San Francisco Ballet give two takes on Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony ... Laurie Anderson's Homeland heads to Princeton and Albany ... The Black Keys pay tribute to Woody Guthrie ... Bill Frisell plays a trio set on the East Coast and a solo set with Nels Cline out West ... Philip Glass plays to the poetry of Leonard Cohen in Milan ... Emmylou Harris sings to Scandinavia ... Randy Newman comes to Carnegie Hall ... Joshua Redman returns to Monterey Jazz ... Dawn Upshaw sings Bernstein in San Francisco ... and more ...

Randy Newman's Harps and Angels tour began earlier this week in Peekskill, New York, and continues downstate with two performances in New York City: a free in-store set at the Apple Store in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood tonight at 7 PM and a concert at Carnegie Hall tomorrow. USA Today describes a track off the new album as "sublime even by Newman standards." The Richmond Times Dispatch gives the album four stars, declaring: "He’s still in a class of his own, and Harps and Angels is the kind of album that longtime fans really get to celebrate every few years ... He’s in great voice, and his songwriting strikes the right Newman mix of sweet/sour/scathing that makes Harps a record that could have landed just behind 1974’s classic Good Old Boys and seemed like a natural progression."

Sam Phillips continues her tour of the States with two stops in New York City this week: this evening, a free in-store performance and signing at Sound Fix in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and tomorrow night a concert at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. The Washington Post says her recent concert, broadcast from Annapolis, Maryland, for NPR's All Songs Considered, was "attuned to the key of imagination ... filled with soulful musings, dreamy love songs, and dispatches from 'the edge of the world.'"

Dawn Upshaw joins the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas tonight for the premiere of an all-Bernstein program that will make its way to Carnegie Hall's Opening Night Gala next week. On the program tonight at Davies Symphony Hall and continuing there Thursday and Friday nights are Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Scenes from A Quiet Place, Meditation No. 1 from Mass, Danzón from Fancy Free, and songs from West Side Story, On the Town, Songfest, and Trouble in Tahiti, some of which were featured on the 1996 Nonesuch release Leonard Bernstein's New York.

Sam Phillips is on the road with songs from her latest release, Don't Do Anything, as well as past favorites. The BBC says Sam makes "smokey, sassy, sultry, smart-as-a-whip" music, and the new album is "an album to get deliriously lost within." All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen introduced last night's live NPR.org concert broadcast from the tour by calling her songs "miniature pop jewels." The Albany Times Union, reviewing the previous show, says Sam's vocals make "her probing, intelligent lyrics and her vibrant melodies all the more powerful." Previewing tonight's show, the Philadelphia Inquirer describes Sam's sound as "a sophisticated confluence of Kurt Weill, Tom Waits and late-period Marianne Faithfull, without any florid excesses."

Laurie Anderson's Homeland returned to the States with a performance at the Lied Center on the Kansas University, Lawrence. The Lawrence Journal-World & News says it was "an extraordinary concert ... of hard-hitting cultural and political commentaries." Anderson offered these insights "with wit as well as with a broad and penetrating sense of wisdom," providing "an open-ended common ground upon which to construct a perhaps more thoughtful political discourse ..."

Emmylou Harris closed out the UK leg of her European tour this past weekend with stops in Manchester and London. Saturday's performance at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall led the Manchester Evening News to write: "Legend is a term hastily applied in these latter days of talent show revivalism. Emmylou Harris has quietly earned the right to bear the title ... Her clear voice has lost none of its beguiling power—varying from whisper to country power yodel." Following her London show at the Hammersmith Apollo, The Times (UK) described her as "a regal presence" who "sang like an angel."