Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman, longtime friends and frequent collaborators, head out for a brief duo tour of the United States, starting in Easton, Pennsylvania, tonight, followed by stops in Philadelphia, New York City, Ithaca, and San Francisco, where the duo makes its West Coast debut at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. As the San Francisco Chronicle writes: "Two of jazz's most gifted improvisers converse in the moment." They head to Europe next month for a tour of Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg.

Björk, whose new album, Biophilia, was released this week, is in her hometown of Reykjavik, Iceland, to celebrate with the launch of a nine-show Biophilia residency at the brand-new Harpa Concert Hall, beginning with two nights as part of the Iceland Airwaves Festival. The residency is fully sold-out. But not to worry: Nonesuch has teamed up with Icelandair to offer a lucky US fan tickets to the November 7 closing-night performance, plus airfare and hotel accommodations. Enter to win!

Björk’s new album, Biophilia, is out now. Additionally, the complete Biophilia App is now available in the iTunes App Store. Biophilia is featured on this week's Science Times podcast from the New York Times. Björk spoke about the project with NPR's All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen, who says: "Björk is a visionary." CNN says the project "really takes technology, music, and even education to a new place." 

Pat Metheny brings his 20-city US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier to a close with a special week-long engagement at the Blue Note in New York City. Metheny and Grenadier launch a European tour with drummer Bill Stewart next week and reunite as a duo for a week's run at the Blue Note in Tokyo in January. All About Jazz calls Metheny's latest solo album, What's It All About, "an essential record ... [H]e has made a record that can lure the listener into emotional spaces that enchant, seduce and delight."

The celebrations of Steve Reich's 75th birthday head to Paris for Steve Reich: Pulsations, a week-long series of concerts, dance performances, and other events at Cité de la Musique. Pulsations begins with a concert by Ensemble Modern, Synergy Vocals, and the composer himself. The all-Reich program includes the French premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Double Sextet paired with Drumming (Part 1) and Music for 18 Musicians. The concert will be broadcast on France Musique next month.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will bring their unmissable live show back to the UK next year with a date at London’s Cecil Sharp House on January 23. Pre-sales are now open to all who bought tickets for the band’s last UK show and to Nonesuch Journal readers. Tickets go on general sale on October 12. The band is currently working on the follow up to their Grammy-winning Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig. Following its 2010 release, the Chocolate Drops played to sell-out audiences and festival crowds across the UK. As the Times of London remarked in one live review, "In the end, a standing ovation was the only possible response. Anything, you sense, is possible now."

Kronos Quartet celebrates Steve Reich's 75th birthday with an all-Reich program and the Bay Area premiere of WTC 9/11 ... Laurie Anderson takes Transitory Life to Kansas City ... Timothy Andres joins the ACME Ensemble in Charleston ... Shawn Colvin helps inaugurate Georgia's Harvest Moon Festival ... Gidon Kremer joins NSO at The Kennedy Center ... k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang play three shows in Florida ... Natalie Merchant performs a sold-out show in NYC ... Pat Metheny, Larry Grenadier take US tour Northeast ... Allen Toussaint concludes Australia tour with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band ... and more ...

Laurie Anderson's North American fall tour continues as she brings her performance piece Delusion to Montreal for three nights of shows at Usine C, tonight through Thursday. "In Anderson we have a throwback to theatrical storytelling that's at least as old as the troubadours and Beowulf," says the Boston Phoenix in a review of last week's six-night Boston run. "The graceful way she moves about the stage and reacts to the screen images or even presides over a music stand, manipulating sounds, delivering text—all show a complete, and completely satisfying, sense of stage craft ... Anderson really delivers."

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass takes over San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with sets from Punch Brothers, Jessica Lea Mayfield, The Low Anthem, Emmylou Harris ... Laurie Anderson performs Delusion in Boston ... Jon Brion launches three-night NYC run ... Wanda Jackson stops by Grimey's in Nashville ... James Farm close out US tour in California ... k.d. lang tours the mid-Atlantic ... Audra McDonald launches her fall tour ... Pat Metheny sells out in Chicago and Pittsburgh ... Sara Watkins joins the Blind Boys of Alabama in California ... and more ...

Pat Metheny's US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier continues this weekend with sold-out shows in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor. The Kansas City Star, reviewing last night's show, raves: "The idyllic concept of angels plucking on harps in heaven is overdue for an overhaul. One possible update is the image of Pat Metheny bent over a guitar ... Metheny creates extraordinarily celestial sounds, with last night's show "exceptionally rapturous even by his standards." Metheny discusses his new album, What's It All About, on today's episode of PRI's Here & Now.

Audra McDonald, who has wowed Boston-area audiences and critics alike as Bess in the A.R.T. production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess this month, launches her own North American fall concert tour this weekend. The two-month tour includes stops at Boston's Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, and The Kennedy Center, among others. Update: Tomorrow's Kimmel Center performance has been rescheduled to November 30. McDonald and Porgy and Bess head to Broadway in December. She discussed the play and the tour on NPR's Tell Me More.

Laurie Anderson's new exhibition Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo has opened at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. The exhibition uses the structure of a diary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead—also known as The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo—to explore the themes of love and death, the many levels of dreaming, and illusion. This two-floor exhibition include texts as well as drawings, sculptures, projections, and sound and are made from materials including mud, foil, iron, chalk, and ashes. Anderson will perform at the museum on October 13.