David Byrne will perform a very special free concert at Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Bark Bandhsell tonight as part of the Opening Night events of the  Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series. Byrne will offer music from his ongoing Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno tour, featuring material from his collaborations with Eno, including 1981’s groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. "One of the city's coolest summer concert series," says the Village Voice, "opens its 2009 season with a free show by one of the city's coolest art-rock deities, David Byrne."

Amadou & Mariam have made their way to NYC after playing a sold-out set at Boston's Paradise Rock Club on Saturday. While in New York to perform at Webster Hall tonight, the Malian couple will stop by the set of NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where they'll be joined by members of The Roots in performing a song off Welcome to Mali. The show airs tonight starting at 12:35 AM ET. The tour heads next to Philly, and then outside DC. The Washington Post Express calls the new album "the type of record that is so joyous and positive that it feels like it could bring together warring factions ... but it's really more of a sonic Evite to explore the diverse country in Northwest Africa."

Steve Reich is set to join famed German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk as the special guest in a sold-out show marking the Opening Night of the 2009 Manchester International Festival on July 2. The concert will feature the world premiere of Reich’s 2x5, led by the composer and performed by Bang on a Can. The Festival has teamed up with Boosey & Hawkes, Steve Reich's publisher, for a unique opportunity to win a pair of tickets to the sold-out event and accommodations through a contest on Twitter @SteveReich.

Youssou N'Dour performances, film at BAM ... Amadou & Mariam make music in Montreal, Boston ... Laurie Anderson comes to Colorado Imagination Fair ... The Black Keys play Pittsburgh, Philly, San Diego festivals ... David Byrne's in Philly too and Vienna, VA ... Bill Frisell is guest of honor at Telluride Festival ... Richard Goode performs Chopin, Bach in Bristol ... Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin open Luminato Festival ... k.d. lang joins Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion ... Low Anthem plays two states in one day ... Kronos gives Australian premieres of Floodplain pieces ... Sara Watkins takes the Mountain Stage with Steve Earle ... and more ...

Amadou & Mariam play the second of two dates in Canada tonight at Montreal's Metropolis, then head to Boston on Saturday and NYC, Philly, and DC next week. The Philadelphia Inquirer describes their sound as "a gutsy brand of African highlife with cool, languid guitar solos and deeply hypnotic rhythms." The Philadelphia Daily News calls it an "unlikely yet alluring mix" of "snaky electric guitar lines, exotic Afro-blues melodies, hip-shaking (and occasionally even hip-hop) polyrhtymic beats and haunting, dipped in melancholy vocals." The Washington Post says it's "some of the world's most irresistibly funky music," as heard on their "marvelous" new album, Welcome to Mali.

k.d. lang will be among the special guests on this week's episode of A Prairie Home Companion, airing a live broadcast performance, recorded tonight from LA's Greek Theatre, on hundreds of public radio stations across the US this weekend. Joining k.d. and the show's host, Garrison Keillor, as special guests are Sheryl Crow and Martin Sheen. The episode will also feature the Royal Academy of Radio Actors; Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and sound effects man Fred Newman; singer Heather Masse; the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band; and The News from Lake Wobegon. 

It is with great regret that Flaco Jiménez has had to pull out of Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe’s forthcoming European tour on doctor's orders. Due to physical limitations and severe pain caused by herniated discs in his lower back, the Grammy-winning accordionist is unable to travel or perform for the foreseeable future. He is currently undergoing treatment in San Antonio, Texas. The 19-date tour begins on June 11 in Dublin.

Amadou & Mariam, having turned up the heat during their Welcome to Mali tour opener in Chicago on Tuesday, are set to do the same in Toronto tonight and Montreal tomorrow. Toronto's Globe and Mail spoke with Amadou about his life with Mariam and their love of Canada. The National Post describes the duo's live show: "Amadou unleashes sparkling licks on his gold electric guitar, and Mariam wails joyously and busts out infectious seated dance moves. The audience is rapt." Special offer for fans in NYC: enter to win seats surrounding the stage for the couple's Monday night appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Björk’s Voltaic: The Volta Tour, a concert film featuring stops on her visually dazzling Volta tour in Paris and Reykjavik, will be screened across the US this June and July. There are more than 15 screenings already scheduled, all to coincide with the release of the very special DVD/CD/LP recording Voltaic, due out in the US on Nonesuch on June 30. Register to win a pair of tickets from Nonesuch for the June 23 screening at NYC's School of Visual Arts Theater.

Youssou N'Dour kicks off the Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas festival in a sold-out concert with his Super Étoile band at BAM on Friday night. The following night, Youssou and the band return to BAM for the NY premiere of the documentary Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love and a post-screening performance. The Village Voice describes Youssou's band as "astonishing" and Egypt, the album at the center of the film, as "a masterful expression of personal faith embellished with Cairean strings and, of course, the slippery Wolof beats that underlie N'Dour's complexly ecstatic mbalax sound."

Amadou & Mariam kicked off their North American tour last night at Chicago's Park West, creating music that the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot describes as "a steaming cauldron of Mali funk ‘n’ roll that the couple stirred, adding ingredients from countless cultures as needed. They knew when to bring it to a boil and when to let it simmer." The crowd was moving from the start, and its fervor only increased, with Amadou & Mariam's "elastic songs stretching further into a zone where the line between dance and trance blurred." The duo's music, Kot concludes, bridges "cultures, sounds and language with a grace rarely seen on a North American stage."

Amadou & Mariam are set to take Chicago's Park West by storm tonight as they begin the first leg of their summer tour. The Chicago Sun-Times says the couple "front a fiery band that provides a kaleidoscope of music filtering rock, blues, reggae and hip-hop through a Malian sensibility. Her vocals are innocent and welcoming; his blues/rock guitar style is commanding and nimble." The Chicago Tribune declares, "If the duo's vocals are a life-affirming sound that transcends language barriers, [Amadou's] guitar is an instrument of mind-altering eloquence." Time Out Chicago says their new album, Welcome to Mali, "sounds as if it was made, variously, in 1970s flare-wearing New York, in a timeless stretch of desert, and at the kind of party you’d most like to be asked to." Catch the duo on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Monday.