The Magnetic Fields begins its two-month tour with music from Realism at DC's Lisner Auditorium Thursday. The album opener opens the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered. The Christian Science Monitor recommends the album, citing Stephin Merritt's "delicately crafted pop songs with wit and deft musicality"; the Cleveland Plain Dealer gives it an A-, calling it "a fun exercise in faux-folk." Merritt speaks with the CBC about his music and his thoughts on the singing skills of label mate k.d. lang.

Ali and Toumani, the last album pairing guitar virtuoso Ali Farka Touré and kora master Toumani Diabaté, is out now. On NPR's All Things Considered yesterday, host Guy Raz calls the track "Sabu Yerkoy" "such a beautiful piece of music and so easy to listen to." Betto Arcos, host of Global Village, concurs, calling it "beautiful music." All About Jazz says it "certainly joins the ranks of recordings that are 'beyond criticism.'"

The Celtic Connections festival is underway in Glasgow with no shortage of Nonesuch artists participating. Ry Cooder joined the Chieftains in the Royal Concert Hall's Main Auditorium last night, while the Carolina Chocolate Drops played the Hall's Strathclyde Suite. The Low Anthem plays Thursday night, as does Natalie Merchant, who performed live on BBC Radio Scotland’s Global Gathering last night. Sara Watkins joins the festival's multi-artist Transatlantic Sessions this weekend.

Realism, The Magnetic Fields' latest album, is aptly titled, says NPR's Fresh Air, given that singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt—that "master of the cutting understatement, as well as the elegant overstatement"—has created in these songs "a realism that is vivid, hard-headed and never half-hearted. He does something true," perhaps even creating "a statement bigger than their creator may have intended." SPIN gives the album four stars.

Sara Watkins returns to the set of NPR's A Prairie Home Companion, joining host Garrison Keillor and crew for a live broadcast from San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House Saturday afternoon. Sara, whom the show describes as "a bright shining star of modern bluegrass," will be this week's special guest, along with Metropolitan Opera tenor Raúl Melo.

While The Low Anthem has been busy prepping its next album, documenting it all on video, Magnet magazine named its Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, the 2009 Album of the Year, "a thrilling, romantic journey through Americana at its absolute finest." This month, the band begins its WOXY radio show and a European tour; its later US tour with the Avett Brothers has already begun to sell out.

Pat Metheny Radio offered fans an exclusive first listen to a track from Orchestrion, Pat Metheny's forthcoming Nonesuch release, late last week. Starting today, you can catch another tune off the album, "Spirit of the Air," on the station at patmetheny.com. The album is due out on CD January 26; the vinyl release is now slated for early March. You can pre-order the album with a limited-edition 9" x 12" print signed by Pat only at nonesuch.com.

The revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music opened last night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury; Nonesuch Records / PS Classics will record the cast album in January. New York calls the revival a "stunning, twilit, devastatingly good new production ... beautiful." Sondheim and Lansbury talk to the magazine about this and their previous work together. NPR's Weekend Edition looks at a different sort of relationship with ties to the play. USA Today praises both Lansbury and Sondheim's score for their "blend of wit and poignancy."

Q2, the new 24/7 music stream from New York public radio's WQXR dedicated to contemporary classical music, kicks off its first full festival, Maximum Reich: A Celebration of Steve Reich, today. This weeklong immersion into Reich's work will include a presentation of his recorded works, explorations of the influences both on and of Reich, recent videos and exclusive downloads, and interviews and music recordings from the archives of WNYC, the new owner of WQXR.

After its Black Thursday release in the US, BlakRoc is now out in the UK. The Times, Independent, Financial Times, and Guardian all give it four stars; the Independent, quoting a lyric, says: "The Black Keys got so much soul." Back in the US, the New York Times describes its sound as "hard but loose, rooted in sinewy beats by Patrick Carney ... and spooky riffs by Dan Auerbach"; the Washington Post calls it "inspired." It gets an A from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Consequence of Sound says it's "simply incredible."

Punch Brothers will perform twice at New York City's Town Hall this weekend in live performances of MPR's A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. They'll play both tonight and Saturday afternoon, with the latter show to be broadcast live to NPR stations across the country. Coming up, you can catch Punch Brothers' recent CMJ performance at The Living Room on Sirius/XM's The Loft.

Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica's Nonesuch recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos has received the Silver Award at the Record Academy Awards published by Japan's The Record Geijutsu. Australia's ABC Radio National's Breakfast has chosen the recording as Album of the Week, saying, "played true to the style of when they were written, the music sounds fresh and appealing."