Lianne La Havas launches her month-long North American tour in Dallas after SXSW ... Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, Nataly Dawn, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell continue the SXSW music-making ... John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary receives European premiere at the Barbican ... Alarm Will Sound gives US premiere of Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite ... Jeremy Denk plays in Georgia ... Dr. John, Allen Toussaint bring New Orleans to New York's Town Hall ... Audra McDonald is in Florida ... Brad Mehldau tours Europe with Mehliana ... Sara Watkins tours the Midwest ... and more ...

Rokia Traoré has announced a series of new tour dates in the UK for May. She celebrates the April release of her new album, Beautiful Africa, with a tour of France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg and will perform at a number of European summer festivals, including Roskilde and a return to the UK for Glastonbury and WOMAD. Traoré is on the cover of Songlines, which gives Beautiful Africa a perfect five stars. The Chicago Reader says the new album "marks a major transformation and a huge step forward artistically." The LA Times says "Beautiful Africa ... confirms the album title's truth."

The 27th South by Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Conference gets under way in Austin, Texas, as thousands of bands and music lovers from all over the world descend on the live-music capital for several days of non-stop music making. Nonesuch artists will be well represented among them, with several performances throughout the week from Devendra Banhart, Nataly Dawn, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell, Lianne La Havas, and Iron and Wine.

The stage production of John Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary, directed by Peter Sellars, premieres with LA Philharmonic; new Adams documentary premieres on BBC4 TV ... Laurie Anderson Domain privé concludes in Paris ... Timothy Andres plays Crumb and Reich in Chicago ... Björk concludes her Parisian Biophilia residency ... Jeremy Denk performs in Santa Barbara ... Lianne La Havas tours the UK ... Kronos Quartet, Wu Man perform at the Auckland Arts Festival ... Brad Mehldau tours Europe with Mehliana ... Audra McDonald performs in the Midwest, guests on CBS's The Good Wife ... Joshua Redman helps inaugurate the SFJAZZ Center ... Steve Reich is in residence at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ... Sara Watkins tours the South ... and more ...

Sara Watkins launches a three-week headlining tour of the US at the Red Clay Theatre in Duluth, Georgia, tonight. The 18-city tour includes stops in Louisville, Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, Madison, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and more. Watkins will also make a two-week spring tour of the West Coast in May, performing newly announced shows in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. This summer, she will join Jackson Browne as special guest on his Acoustic Tour, picking up where they left off on their fall 2012 tour together.

Brad Mehldau launches a month-long European tour with Mehliana, his duo project with drummer Mark Guiliana, in Atwerp, Belgium, tonight. Mehliana, for which the composer/pianist switches to Fender Rhodes and a battery of synths, then heads to Brussels and continues the tour to the end of March, making stops in Hungary, the Czech Republic, the UK, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and France. The new tour comes on the heels of Mehldau's recent run with fellow pianist Kevin Hays and precedes his US tour with Chris Thile in April.

Devendra Banhart's Nonesuch Records debut album, Mala, is due out next week. But you don’t need to wait till then to hear it. The album is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen; it is still available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with a limited-edition, autographed print. Banhart, who is featured in a new Pitchfork interview, will tour Europe this summer, including three UK dates: in Brighton, Manchester, and London. He will perform at the Open'er Festival in Poland and at Le Trianon in Paris. Additional dates are still to be announced in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Holland.  

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell celebrate the release of their album Old Yellow Moon on A Prairie Home Companion ... Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet perform at the Adelaide Festival ... Björk continues her Paris Biophilia residency ... Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter close out Southern duo tour ... Jeremy Denk plays Beethoven in Boston ... Lianne La Havas tours the UK ... Audra McDonald is in Ohio ... Joshua Redman tours Europe with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra ... Rokia Traore performs at DC climate event, streaming live ... and more ...

Kronos Quartet launches a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand at the Perth Festival, joined by Laurie Anderson for the Australian premiere of Landfall, a new work by Anderson. They perform the piece at the Adelaide Festival this Saturday. The Kronos tour includes additional performances at the Perth and Adelaide festivals and a show in Melbourne, as well as a four-city New Zealand tour. Laurie Anderson performs her piece Dirtday! at the Adelaide Festival before heading to Paris, where she will be the focus of a Domaine Privé at Cité de la Musique next week.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have announced a series of European tour dates in May in support of their forthcoming duets album Old Yellow Moon. These special "An Evening With Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell" shows will feature the acclaimed artists (and longtime friends) performing material spanning their vast catalogues, backed by a distinguished group of musicians including Steve Fishell, Jedd Hughes, Byron House, Gerry Roe, and Chris Tuttle. The tour begins in Manchester, UK, on May 8 and concludes in Hamburg, Germany, on May 31.  

Adam Guettel concludes his five-night residency at 54 Below in NYC ... Timothy Andres gives a "coffee concert" at Lincoln Center ... Björk continues her Biophilia Paris residency ... Carolina Chocolate Drops are in North Carolina ... Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter tour the South ... Kronos Quartet celebrates San Francisco's hometown composers ... Lianne La Havas concludes French tour ... Brad Mehldau, Kevin Hays closes out European tour of Modern Music ... and more ...

Nataly Dawn has announced a number of headlining US tour dates this spring featuring music from her just-released Nonesuch debut album, How I Knew Her. The three-week, 14-city tour kicks off with a performance at The Walnut Room in Denver, Colorado, on March 18, and includes two nights each in New York City and Chicago and stops in Minneapolis, Madison, Toronto, Philadelphia, Arlington, Charlottesville, Durham, Atlanta, Nashville, Fort Worth, and Austin. Dawn will be in Austin before the tour launch to perform at SXSW.