Punch Brothers continue their US tour with stops outside DC, and in Charleston, West Virginia, for a live Mountain Stage performance. The Washington Post calls their music "dazzling." Last week, Steve Martin awarded banjoist Noam Pikelny the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass and performed with the band on The Late Show with David Letterman. Punch Brothers also performed at WFUV in New York. Watch videos of it all here.

Tune in to NPR's World Cafe today to hear Folds and Hornby discuss their new album, Lonely Avenue, and to hear Folds perform a few of its songs. Folds's US tour takes him to Buffalo tonight, where Artvoice says the unexpected collaboration behind Lonely Avenue is a success: "Folds flourishes on this album, and his curious choice to collaborate with an author, when Folds himself is recognized by fans for his words, is a trick that pays off." The duo is the subject of a new piece on the BBC News.

Brad Mehldau gave the New York premiere of his Highway Rider in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall Tuesday night, performing with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the musicians featured on the album. The New York Times says of all Mehldau's classically inspired works, Highway Rider "is his grandest effort yet," with its "ear-catching modal motif" and influences in Beethoven. At the same time, it remains "couched in jazz’s bluesy chromaticism and fluid rhythms." Highway Rider's European premiere is this Saturday at the Barbican in London.

Steve Reich's 2x5 receives its US premiere at Strathmore Hall outside of Washington, DC, tonight. The piece will be performed as part of an all-Reich program by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Bang on a Can gave 2x5 its world premiere in Manchester, England, last summer and can be heard on the first recording of the piece, released this past September with Reich's Double Sextet, which is also on tonight's program. Voting has begun at Indaba Music to pick the Top ten 2x5 remixes.

Jessica Lea Mayfield’s Nonesuch Records debut, Tell Me, will be released February 8. Produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, the album follows Mayfield’s acclaimed 2008 release, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, which Pitchfork gave an 8.2, calling it "fascinating and endlessly listenable." Tell Me is now available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, where the first 250 CD or vinyl copies include a signed 7” of the album’s first single, “Our Hearts Are Wrong.” Mayfield will tour throughout the fall, including dates with Jay Farrar and Justin Townes Earle.

Emmylou Harris, Kronos Quartet, and Philip Glass will be among the diverse array of artists performing at the Sydney Festival in Australia this January. Harris will give three shows, including a free set at the Festival First Night, marking her first time performing in Australia in a decade. Kronos gives the Australian premiere of A Chinese Home, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and performs Glass's Dracula with the composer. Glass also offers an evening of his chamber music with cellist Wendy Sutter. The Black Keys will be in Australia for the Big Day Out tour plus several newly added side shows.

The Malian and Cuban musicians behind AfroCubism close out their three-city tour of North America at The Town Hall in New York City tonight. The Times of London calls AfroCubism "an album of extraordinary cross-cultural musicianship." It was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, which sums up AfroCubism as "a summit of giants at play—their egos in check, their hearts open and the tangled history of two worlds flowing through their veins." The Wall Street Journal notes the album's "easy communion and some gorgeous details."

Ben Folds, currently in the midst of his US tour, is now set to tour Europe in February and March 2011 in support of his latest album, Lonely Avenue, a collaboration between him and Nick Hornby. The 14-date tour begins in Dublin on February 18 and includes concerts in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Holland. Tickets go on sale to Ben Folds Fan Club on Wednesday and the general public on Friday. Folds and Hornby spoke with CNN in an interview you can watch here.

The Low Anthem has just added another date to their rapidly growing tour calendar: opening for Iron & Wine at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on January 26. The band joins Emmylou Harris at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh tomorrow to launch a ten-city tour of the US East Coast. The Low Anthem will join the Carolina Chocolate Drops for six dates in December and will play the Allen Room in New York as part of Lincoln Center's 2011 American Songbook series in January.

Punch Brothers play Letterman, open for Dave Matthews ... AfroCubism kicks off three-city North American tour ... Laurie Anderson performs Transitory Life in England ... David Byrne screens tour doc in NYC ... Ben Folds launches Lonely Avenue tour in Chicago ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica continue US tour in Chicago ... Kronos Quartet brings borderless music to Boston ... Brad Mehldau premieres Highway Rider in Minneapolis ... Natalie Merchant talks at TimesCenter ... Stephen Sondheim talks in San Francisco ... Allen Toussaint, Nicholas Payton play music of New Orleans ... Sara Watkins tours UK ... and more ...

Brad Mehldau's Highway Rider receives its world premiere performance tonight and Saturday at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. Mehldau will perform with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Jeff Ballard, Larry Grenadier, Joshua Redman, and Matt Chamberlain. "Mehldau has built a career on mixing musical styles and influences into something celebrated as distinctly original," says the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He has put that aesthetic to particular work in his newest album Highway Rider, a piece that flexes Mehldau's composing muscles as much as it does his jazz piano acumen." The New York Times calls it "this year’s most luxurious jazz release."

The musicians of the new album AfroCubism launch a three-city North American tour tonight in Montreal, then head to Boston and New York. The Boston Globe calls this "the most important world-music tour of the season" and describes the album as "thrilling and impeccably produced." The Wall Street Journal says it displays "the same kind of creative genre-mixing in world forms that we're accustomed to hearing in North American jazz." PRI's The World says "AfroCubism feels like something that's long overdue has finally arrived. Triumphantly." Alarm Press says "the album has an electrifying liveliness that stems not only from 15 years of pent-up collaborative energy but more than 100 years of crisscrossing cultural histories."