Legendary AfroBeat drummer Tony Allen will be the guest on WNYC's Soundcheck today. He will talk with the show's host, John Schaefer, and perform songs from his album Secret Agent. "The great Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti had a not-so-secret weapon when he was creating the funk-infused style known as Afrobeat in the 1970s," says WNYC. "That weapon was drummer Tony Allen. A legend among drummers of all styles, Allen is still going strong." Allen launches a North American tour this week with special guest Amp Fiddler.

Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, John Zorn perform in NY's Concert for Japan ... Carolina Chocolate Drops are on Minnesota Public Television ... Ben Folds plays his home state of North Carolina ... Emmylou Harris plays a benefit for Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music ... Kronos Quartet performs Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 in Maryland ... The Low Anthem plays UK, Ireland ... Jessica Lea Mayfield has an all-Kentucky weekend ... Brad Mehldau Trio tours Midwest ... Dawn Upshaw joins National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center ... and more ...

The Brad Mehldau Trio is on tour in the Midwest this week and heads to the West Coast for shows in Seattle and Los Angeles next week. "It's a rare musician who shines in a solo performance," says Minnesota Public Radio of Mehldau's new 2CD/DVD solo album, Live in Marciac. But he "does so remarkably on a diverse collection of tunes that include his original compositions, jazz standards and rock tunes ... In a virtuoso performance, Mehldau builds on architecture and melody, delivering intimate, complex and intense interpretations of each song."

Emmylou Harris and Ben Folds will be among the performers at the Chicago stop on the Dave Matthew Band Caravan, a series of three-day, multi-artist festivals taking place in four US cities this summer. The event will take place July 8–10 at Lakeside, on Chicago's south shore of Lake Michigan. Today's announcement follows last month's unveiling of the first stop on the Dave Matthews Band Caravan, June 24–26, in Atlantic City, which, will feature performances from the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers.

Pat Metheny will tour the US this fall with bassist Larry Grenadier, starting in Portland, Oregon, and set to run through a week's residency at the Blue Note in New York in October. The concerts, taking place in intimate venues across the country, precede a previously announced European tour of the Pat Metheny Trio, featuring Grenadier and Bill Stewart, and follow the five-day workshop Metheny will lead in August. He will be a featured presenter at the EG Conference tomorrow in Monterey, California, where he will discuss his Orchestrion project.

The musical influence of Steve Reich and his compositions are the focus of a marathon weekend at the Barbican in London on May 7 and 8. Following the previous announcement of the Reverberations weekend, further details of the program have now been confirmed. The weekend celebrates Reich as a special guest in honor of his 75th birthday year during a packed weekend that explores his influence on generations of musicians, as well as his own work.

Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 recently received its world premiere in a performance by Kronos Quartet, which will give the West Coast premiere this week in Irvine, California. The Los Angeles Times spoke with the composer about this "signature Reich piece" and with Kronos, "the pied pipers of innovative music," about the collaboration. Kronos will give the NY premiere later this month in an all-Reich program at Carnegie Hall. Kronos and other performers on the concert talk about performing Reich's music in new short videos you can watch here.

After wrapping up its current European run with sold-out shows across the continent, The Low Anthem will return to the United States for spring and summer dates in support of their latest Nonesuch release, Smart Flesh, including headline shows and dates with Iron & Wine and Mumford & Sons. The Low Anthem is featured on the bonus track of label mate Emmylou Harris' forthcoming album Hard Bargain; her collaboration with the band on their song “To Ohio” will be available digitally via iTunes and Amazon.

Pat Metheny and his Orchestrion were featured on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend. The guitarist-composer explained the inner workings of the cutting-edge instruments and performance methods he used on his latest Nonesuch album and subsequent world tour. Watch it here. Metheny will lead a five-day workshop this summer in Connecticut with his trio, featuring Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez, that also includes nightly concerts.

John Adams leads the New World Symphony in City Noir ... Shawn Colvin plays Austin ... Philip Glass joins Lucinda Childs in Vermont ... Wanda Jackson performs three shows in Colorado ... Kronos Quartet performs Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 in Arizona ... The Low Anthem tours Benelux ... Jessica Lea Mayfield plays NYC and Boston ... Brad Mehldau joins Anne Sofie von Otter in Germany ... Pokrovsky Ensemble performs Les noces with LA Phil ... Punch Brothers head South ... Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas make music in Mobile ... and more ...

The Belleayre Music Festival in Highmount, New York, has announced its 2011 concert season, and a number of Nonesuch artists set to take the stage there this season: k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang, Punch Brothers, and Jessica Lea Mayfield. The festival, situated high atop the Catskills mountains, kicks off on July 3 with a performance from lang and her band. Punch Brothers take the stage on August 27, with Mayfield opening.

Jessica Lea Mayfield has kicked off a headlining tour US tour featuring music from her new album, Tell Me. The tour makes its way up the East Coast this week. Time Out, in recommending Friday's show in New York, describes Tell Me as "a fab showcase for her voice, which somehow seems both lived-in and fresh, youthful and cynical." Mayfield has been named Vogue's Artist of the Week. While Tell Me "is loaded with perfectly forlorn country melodies and melancholy lines," says Vogue, "there is also a hint of mid-nineties alt-rock underpinning all the wistful contemplation, as well as the influence of more modern singer-songwriters, like the late Elliott Smith."