k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang kicked off their three-week tour of Australia outside Perth on Saturday. "From the first long, soaring notes of the night she was in spectacular, pitch-perfect voice," says the West Australian. The Australian says: "To watch k.d. lang is to observe someone doing what they were surely born to do. Rarely do you see someone so at ease on stage, standing behind nothing but talent, wits and her sheer joy of performing." lang and the band give the first of six performances in Sydney on Wednesday. Fans in the area: read more for a chance to ask lang a question on TV next week.

k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang kick off their Australian tour ... Laurie Anderson brings Delusion to Mexico ... Carolina Chocolate Drops celebrate vaudeville in Chicago ... Ry Cooder talks LA stories in LA ... Ben Folds joins St. Louis Symphony ... Philip Glass's Satyagraha opens at the Met ... Kronos Quartet is in Vancouver ... Jessica Lea Mayfield headlines in Mississippi ... Audra McDonald takes her show to Florida ... Pat Metheny Trio plays Poland ... Randy Newman performs a benefit show at Wesleyan ... Punch Brothers launch tour with Paul Simon ... Stephen Sondheim receives Chicago Tribune Literary Award ... Sara Watkins tours Midwest with Blind Boys of Alabama ... and more ...

Punch Brothers kick off their fall tour supporting legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon across the US South and Midwest. The nearly three-week tour opens at the UNO Lakefront Arena in New Orleans tonight and runs through November 23 at the EJ Thomas Performing Arts Hall in Akron, Ohio. While on the road with Simon, Punch Brothers will play a solo show at the High Noon Saloon in Madison, Wisconsin, a week from Saturday.

Natalie Merchant's 2010 Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep, will be the basis for a curriculum unit taught to 3,500 New York City public school children in grades K-3 this fall. On the album, Merchant adapts the works of such poets as Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, and Robert Graves into a musically kaleidoscopic set of new songs. She joins the Nashville Symphony in concert on November 13 and joins Levon Helm and others on November 18 in upstate New York for a concert to benefit those hit by Tropical Storm Irene.

Carolina Chocolate Drops give the world premiere of Keep a Song in Your Soul, a special program celebrating the black roots of vaudeville, at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, tonight with additional performances through the weekend. The group will be joined by jazz tap virtuoso Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin and ragtime piano ace Reginald Robinson, all of whom will participate in a Q&A after each show. Watch a preview video and a performance on Chicago's ABC7 here.

Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau, who recently concluded a US duo tour and will be bringing the show to Europe next week, are now slated to perform together for three duo shows in Australia in January. Redman and Mehldau will perform two shows in Sydney—at the Concourse Chatswood Concert Hall and City Recital Hall Angel Place—as part of the 2012 Sydney Festival and one at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The US duo tour resumes in the spring.

Sara Watkins and her brother Sean launch a three-week tour in support of the Blind Boys of Alabama tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The tour will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and, of course, the Blind Boys' home state of Alabama. In mid-December, the Watkins join the Blind Boys out West for the group's Christmas show in California and Nevada. 

Nonesuch Records wishes k.d. lang a very happy 50th birthday today. She and her band the Siss Boom Bang perform in Singapore tonight in advance of their Australia tour featuring music from their new album, Sing it Loud. The two-week tour kicks off in Western Australia this Saturday and includes six nights at Sydney's State Theatre. "It's nice to be able to sing this material because it engages the band," lang tells the West Australian, "and translates to the audience in a really fun way."

New York's Lincoln Center is the place to be to take in two groundbreaking works by composer Philip Glass this week: Koyaanisqatsi, performed by the New York Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble in Avery Fisher Hall, and the return of Satyagraha to the Metropolitan Opera in the first revival of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s 2008 production. The November 8 Satyagraha performance includes a pre-concert talk by Nico Muhly and will stream live online. On November 19, the opera will be transmitted worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series.

Jessica Lea Mayfield launches a three-week headlining US tour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tonight. From there, the tour makes stops throughout the South, with shows in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia. Following her headlining tour, Mayfield will join the Drive-By Truckers for a few shows up North. She'll also play two additional headlining dates in Brooklyn and Annapolis. She supports Ryan Adams on tour in December.

Desdemona, Rokia Traoré's theatrical collaboration with director Peter Sellars and novelist Toni Morrison, receives its NY premiere at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater tonight and tomorrow as part of the White Light Festival. The New York Times describes it as "an interactive narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeare’s doomed heroine, who speaks to the audience from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war—and the transformative power of love." The Los Angeles Times calls it "astonishing ... a great, challenging, haunting and lasting work."

The line-up for the 2012 American Songbook series from Lincoln Center has been announced, and among the artists performing are mandolinist Chris Thile and guitarist Michael Daves. The duo will perform songs from their debut album, Sleep with One Eye Open, at The Allen Room in Frederick P. Rose Hall, overlooking New York's Central Park, on Thursday, January 12. Tickets are go on sale to the general public on November 14. Friends of Lincoln Center will be given early access on November 3.