To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s birth, Nonesuch released Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, on which Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to lyrics by Guthrie for which he had not written music or made recordings. Bragg has launched a tour in celebration of the centenary and has just added four specially curated acoustic shows in the UK and Ireland this September, with guests Joe Henry, KT Tunstall, and more. Here, in his own words, Bragg shares his thoughts on Guthrie, the Mermaid Avenue project, and the concerts.

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, formerly UCLA Live, has announced its inaugural season, marking the curatorial debut of its Executive and Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds, and featured among the artists performing as part of its 2012–13 season of events at Royce Hall are several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Emmylou Harris, Laurie Anderson, Allen Toussaint, the Brad Mehldau Trio, and Joshua Redman. The new season also includes events celebrating Kate McGarrigle and Ali Farka Touré.

On this long Memorial Day weekend in the US, Shawn Colvin and Sara Watkins join Garrison Keillor and the cast of A Prairie Home Companion for live shows ... Laurie Anderson brings Dirtday! to Portugal ... Billy Bragg brings Mermaid Avenue to Belgium and Germany ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour with Dave Matthews Band ... James Farm has three nights in Oakland ... Kronos Quartet joins Philip Glass for Dracula in the UK ... Richard Goode performs in Spain ... k.d. lang is in New Orleans and Orlando ... Brad Mehldau Trio plays Cancun ... and more ...

The Sara Watkins–penned tune "You and Me," off her new album, Sun Midnight Sun, has been chosen as Today's Top Tune by KCRW in LA. The song, which Watkins recently performed on The Tonight Show, features harmony vocals by Jackson Browne, with whom she tours later this summer. Watkins, one of the most frequent guest artists on A Prairie Home Companion, will join host Garrison Keillor and fellow guest Shawn Colvin for a live broadcast of the show from Wolf Trap's Filene Center outside DC this weekend.

James Farm—Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland—launch a tour of the Bay Area at the Napa Valley Opera House tonight, followed by sets at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz and a weekend of shows at Yoshi's Oakland. The group heads next to Japan for four nights at the Blue Note Tokyo. "We complement each other very well and have a type of intuitiveness with the way we play with each other," Harland tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "That's something that takes years to develop, so it's amazing that we kind of have that already, even though we don't tour that often."

Amadou & Mariam perform in A Room for London, a one-bedroom riverboat installation lodged atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, tonight, as part of the Sounds from a Room series. It will be projected live via large screen at Queen Elizabeth Hall and stream live online at aroomforlondon.co.uk. Earlier events at A Room for London include new sound works from Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. Other performers in the series include Andrew Bird, Imogen Heap, Baaba Mal, and tUnE-yArDs.

British singer/songwriter/guitarist Lianne La Havas, whose debut album, Is Your Love Big Enough?, will be released in the US on August 7 via Nonesuch Records, performs a headline show at Bootleg Bar in Los Angeles tonight. It's a return to Los Angeles for La Havas, who recorded Is Your Love Big Enough? there and in Brooklyn last summer; she also recorded her 2011 free EP Live in LA in the city. Pre-order information for the album and additional US tour dates will be announced shortly.

Jeremy Denk marks the release of his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, with a performance at NYC's (Le) Poisson Rouge tonight. It's a Critics' Pick in Time Out New York and in New York, which calls him "splendid." The New Yorker calls the program "irresistible." WNYC has made it today's Gig Alert. The Washington Post says of Saturday's performance of the program in DC: "Denk has a way of explicating complicated music by playing it so that it seems self-evident and absolutely graspable—a considerable gift." In a new essay for Newsweek, Denk writes of having chosen a career in music over chemistry: "I knew I wouldn’t cure cancer or anything, but I might discover some beautiful way of playing something that no one else had found."

Jeremy Denk performs in DC on Saturday and celebrates the recent release of his Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven, in NYC on Monday ... The Black Keys close out their North American tour in Atlantic City ... Billy Bragg launches European tour in Germany ... Carolina Chocolate Drops are in Virginia ... Shawn Colvin plays the Cherokee Creek Music Festival ... Michael Daves, Noam Pikelny do the Brooklyn Folk Fest ... Kronos Quartet kicks off European tour in the Netherlands ... k.d. lang continues US tour in Kansas ... Jessica Lea Mayfield plays Nelsonville Music Festival ... Brad Mehldau Trio has a trio of SFJAZZ shows ... Randy Newman plays a set at the Hang Out Music Festival ... and more ...

Punch Brothers pick up their US tour again at Appalachian Uprising in Ohio on June 2, one of a number of festival dates ahead in the US and Europe, in addition to their own headline shows. In duo news, Noam Pikenly performs at the Brooklyn Folk Fest tonight with guitarist Michael Daves, who joins Chris Thile at the Ryman next month. During a recent stop in Nashville, Punch Brothers performed two songs off their new album, Who's Feeling Young Now? at Lightning 100: "Patchwork Girlfriend" and "Movement and Location." Watch both here.

The Brad Mehldau Trio has landed in California, kicking off a string of Bay Area shows in Santa Cruz last night, followed by a set in Napa tonight and three shows in San Francisco this weekend for SFJAZZ. The San Jose Mercury News calls last night's show "transfixing ... total exquisiteness." All About Jazz says the Trio's new album, Ode, is "rich, lyrical and full of energy ... a non-stop stream of invention." The Montreal Gazette says: "This may well be [Mehldau's] most interesting, absorbing album to date." The Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "transformative." Blurt says it's "some of the trio's most fiery interplay to date. A most welcome return."

Timothy Andres's I Found It by the Sea was featured in the closing-night concert of the Look and Listen Festival in NYC this week, performed with ACME. The piece "draws on a huge range of styles," says the New York Times. "Mr. Andres is a fine pianist, and he wrote himself a dazzling solo line. His quartet writing is equally rich." Andres performs a solo recital at NYC's (Le) Poisson Rouge later this month and makes his London debut at Wigmore Hall June 8. Earlier this year, he spoke with the new-music blog I Care If You Listen about his debut album, Shy and Mighty, and performed his piece At the River. Watch both here.