It was a remarkable week for Wilco shows, with two stand-outs coming from nearly three-hour sets each at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, and Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool the following night. The Boston Globe says the crowd at Tanglewood witnessed "a pitch-perfect tangle of earthy comforts and perilous adventure, during a stellar set from the planet's most radical roots band ... a phenomenally dynamic machine." The New York Press says the Brooklyn set showed that the band's evolution from alt.country pioneers "has brought us one of the best rock bands alive today."

Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer will preview their forthcoming, self-titled debut duo album tonight in a special concert at the Aspen Music Festival. On the record, due out September 23 and available now for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, are 12 original songs by the two musicians. There's also a deluxe version that includes a 50-minute DVD with performances, rehearsals, and behind-the-scenes footage with Edgar and Chris. The Aspen Times says Chris's first Nonesuch record, Punch, with the Punch Brothers, takes "acoustic music to an appreciably higher level."

Dawn Upshaw begins a three-show run of performances at Lincoln Center of the US premiere of composer Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone, an oratorio written for Upshaw based on the life of French French philosopher Simone Weil. The production, directed by Peter Sellars, is part of the Mostly Mozart Festival and includes Mostly Mozart debuts for the composer, dancer Michael Schumacher, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the London Voices vocal ensemble. The Independent (UK) calls the work a “magical union of words, music, and theater.”

Kronos Quartet returns to Tanglewood this Thursday, coincidentally just two days after label mates Wilco. Highlights of the program include works by Sigur Rós, John Zorn, and Steve Reich. The Boston Globe's David Weininger spoke with Kronos's David Harrington about the Quartet's vital role in the creation of new music and asserts: "They essentially created their own avant-garde." Weininger concludes: "Harrington's musical curiosity remains undimmed after 35 years."

After performing at the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore this weekend, Wilco gears up for its performance at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts tomorrow night. The Daily Gazette out of Schnectady, New York, more than an hour away, says "Wilco is worth the trip." Next to a sold-out show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool. With all the travel, Wilco is also making an effort to reduce its environmental impact with a new ride-sharing initiative. Also, label mate David Byrne has his own ideas for reducing congestion, promoting bike use.

The Black Keys spent the weekend at two of the summer's biggest festivals: the inaugural New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh on Friday and the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore on Sunday, with a stop at The NorVa in Norfolk, Virginia, in between. The Western Pennsylvania press coverage of Friday's event calls attention to the "pulverizing, purifying guitar blast blues riff from the Black Keys." Brooklyn Vegan also has dozens of great pics from the preceding night's show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool.

Earlier this month, Youssou N'Dour performed at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, as part of the Africa Rising festival, along with John Legend and Jay-Z. Rolling Stone called his "a stirring performance," and the Washington Post says he "turned in the festival's most riveting performance, a 25-minute set filled with deeply soulful vocals sung in multiple languages over insistent, syncopated African rhythmic patterns and the night's funkiest drum breaks."

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists ...

The Black Keys are in New York tonight to play McCarren Park Pool, the unique, former and soon-to-be-again public pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tomorrow, they'll be at the New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh, sharing a bill with the likes of Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, and Gnarls Barkley. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette previews that set with a profile of the band that has, with Attack and Release, released its "best record to date" and "garnered the kind of critical praise that rarely comes this positive."

Orchestra Boabab is on the road in Europe, playing a number of the Continent's biggest summer festivals. Pitchfork's Joe Tangari spoke with Barthélemy Attisso, one of the Baobab's founding members, whose distinctive guitar work helped create its unique sound during its heyday as, writes Tangari, "one of the world's greatest bands." Now with new recordings from the group, including this year's Made in Dakar and 2002's Specialist in All Styles, Tangari says, the world has caught on.

The Black Keys played the opening day of Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday in a set that Time Out Chicago reports featured the band's signature "folky-blues, [which] breaks into blown-out acid riffage." Metromix Chicago says that hometown band Wilco's Saturday set showed that the city "has a lot to thank Wilco for." Over the next two weeks, each band will make its way to Brooklyn's popular McCarren Park Pool, which, as the New York Times reports, will transition back to its original use after this summer's shows.

Orchestra Baobab headlined the Womad Festival in England this past weekend, performing songs from their latest release, Made in Dakar, for an audience of 30,000. The Times (UK)'s Stephen Dalton writes: "Sunday peaked with the West African veterans Orchestra Baobab ... whose undulating rhythms and mellifluous harmonies cross easily across national and generational borders. Perfect Womad headliners."