The Magnetic Fields brought their fall tour to a close yesterday after a full weekend of performances that brought them from Columbus, Ohio, to Philadelphia to Washington, DC. Getting a head start to the weekend's gigs, the band played in Jersey City, New Jersey, on Thursday night, leading The Star-Ledger to write: "As offbeat as he is, Merritt is also a pop purist. His songs were full of graceful melodic twists and clever turns of phrase. There is, simply, a poetry to his words that you rarely hear at a rock show."

Wilco plays Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit Concert ... Kronos Quartet gives John Adams piece its Swedish premiere ... Laurie Anderson speaks at UC Berkeley colloquium ... Sérgio and Odair Assad continue college tour with the Turtle Island Quartet ... David Byrne brings his "mind-blowing, booty-shaking music" to the Midwest ... Shawn Colvin performs there as well ... Bill Frisell's Trio is in Brazil ... k.d. lang plays the Ryman ... The Magnetic Fields close out their fall tour of "dizzyingly catchy songs" ... Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman play Europe together and with their trios ... Randy Newman finishes his North American tour ... Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Steve Reich Evening comes to Brooklyn ... Dawn Upshaw repeats "transfixing" performance in St. Paul ... and more ...

Before Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile take the stage at the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall tonight, the pair can be heard live on WFDU-FM's Lonesome Pine RFD this morning. The Washington Post says the duo's self-titled Nonesuch debut "represents the most substantial music Thile has recorded, for the give-and-take between the high-pitched mandolin and the deeply resounding bass is full of dark drama and rigorous musical architecture." The Kansas City Star says "the duo's world-class musicianship" along with "the highly intuitive communication that exists in the music itself ... provide the album's 12 compositions with heart, humor, precision and warmth."

Brad Mehldau takes a night away from his Trio tour to play a special duo set with label mate Joshua Redman tomorrow night at the Christuskirche in Mannheim, Germany. The Financial Times, in its review of the Trio's recent show at London's Barbican, says of Brad: "Mehldau creates gently undulating soundscapes of gradually gathering intensity. Starting with the simplest of motifs, he develops an intricate tapestry of melodic details, chordal voicings and dense cross-rhythms." The Guardian calls the Trio's concert take on Sufjan Stevens' "Holland" "a lambent, implausibly lovely improvisation."

Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer bring their tour of the States to a close next Wednesday at Carnegie Hall. Nonesuch released their eponymous debut duo disc last month, along with a special deluxe edition that also includes a DVD full of concert performances and behind-the-scene footage. Audiophile Audition gives it five stars, concluding: "When you combine these two musicians, you get magic. Of course, it’s magic that explodes out of any boundaries that you might want to impose on them ... In a word, it’s wonderful."

Brad Mehldau has kicked off the European leg of his fall tour with his Trio, whose performance earlier this week at London's Barbican earned four stars from both The Times (UK) and The Guardian. "From the opening left-hand phrases of Brad Mehldau's 'Dream Sketch,' there wasn't a finger out of place in two hours of music-making," reports The Times. "This was a trio whose members were in perfect accord with one another ... [and] demonstrated a level of telepathic co-operation rare not only in jazz, but music of any sort." Metro concurs, adding: "The Brad Mehldau Trio is the quintessential modern piano outfit."

The closing concert of Isabel Bayrakdarian's North American tour celebrating the music of Armenian composer Gomidas Vartabed was held in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Monday. It featured songs from the soprano's Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, which the New York Times calls "irresistible." In the recital, says the Times, she "playfully gamboled through childlike melodies, her voice warm and sunny; in the laments her plaintive tone cut to the heart. She made sinuously winding melismatic passages seem effortless."

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian concluded her North American tour featuring works from her Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, last night in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. The New York Times previewed the show with a feature on Gomidas, Armenia's national composer, and calls the new CD "what may be the best shot Gomidas has had to shine for the Western classical music world" in 100 years. On Sunday, Bayrakdarian performed in Boston's Jordan Hall, leading the Boston Globe to note that "even those unfamiliar with Gomidas's work found plenty to savor in Bayrakdarian's ravishing performance." The evening's "most emotional moments ... achieved a riveting purity."

Audra McDonald joins Barbara Cook, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, and The Black Keys join Devo for election-year benefits ... John Adams's Doctor Atomic continues at the Met; the Pittsburgh Symphony recognizes Adams as its Composer of the Year ... Laurie Anderson brings Homeland to Canada ... Sérgio and Odair Assad join the Turtle Island Quartet for a college tour ... Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Celebrating Gomidas Vartabed heads to her home country of Canada ... David Byrne disproves "this groove is out of fashion" at two tour stops in Missouri ... Shawn Colvin plays two shows in Mississippi ... Philip Glass shows “Glass overflows with the beauty of Cohen's poems" at Melbourne Festival ... Richard Goode performs in Kansas City ... k.d. lang tours the Midwest ... The Magnetic Fields’ fall tour heads south ... Randy Newman plays the Golden State and offers BBC his "desert island discs" ... Nicholas Payton continues residency at Jazz at Lincoln Center ... Joshua Redman plays 25th annual Festival Miami ... Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer return to the road ... and more ...

Randy Newman brings his tour to his home state of California this weekend. After last night's concert in Tennessee, the Knoxville News calls Randy "one of the great songwriters of the rock era—and a guy who never takes the easy way with a lyric." Leading to this weekend's concerts, the Monterey Herald says Randy's "musical arrangements are brilliant and each song's personality is matched by the tone of the composition; he's the master at placing notes and rhythm in line with the character and its predicament"; and the Santa Barbara Independent says Harps and Angels "finds the native Californian at his satirical best."

The Magnetic Fields began their fall tour this past Friday at the State Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beforehand, Stephin Merritt stopped by The Current studio to talk and perform a few solo acoustic songs. The next night brought a show in Madison, Wisconsin, where, reports The Isthmus, Merritt's "astonishing and sweeping body of work" was "yielded up wit, emotional nuance, memorable hooks and crisp, careful rhymes." Then came a Dallas show the Star-Telegram termed a "victory lap for one of the most idiosyncratic and interesting bands in indie pop" and the Dallas Morning News lauded as "meticulous chamber-pop."

The Black Keys' US tour made its way back home to Akron, Ohio, last Saturday night to play E. J. Thomas Hall. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says the band turned the venue into "one big juke joint" for the nearly 3,000 fans. Pat and Dan, whose "music brilliantly reinvents the wheel," were treated "like conquering heroes" in this "unforgettable evening." They created "primal rock 'n' roll" that "all but demanded a visceral reaction." The band plays Akron again this Friday, at the Civic Theatre, with another group of hometown favorites, Devo, to raise funds for the Obama Presidential campaign's efforts in the all-important swing state.