Boston Now joins the critical mass in praising this week's kick-off of the Sweeney Todd national tour at Boston's Colonial Theatre, saying "It works gloriously." Entertainment Editor John Black offers high praise indeed when he writes: "On a night when it seemed that the entire city was staying at home to watch the Red Sox in the World Series, a few lucky thousand were seated at the Colonial Theatre watching a thrilling tale of revenge, romance, murder, and meat pies." Citing the recent Tony-winning Broadway production, Black writes, "The play obviously has a pedigree. Thirty minutes into the show at the Colonial, you will know why."

The first national tour of John Doyle's Tony Award–winning Sweeney Todd reinvention kicked off at Boston's Colonial Theatre on Tuesday night, to rave reviews. The Boston Globe says the production "reveals Stephen Sondheim's dark brilliance in all its cold-blooded glory. It is marvelous and terrible to behold." Sweeney Todd will play in Boston through November 4, when it will travel to Toronto, then on to more than a dozen cities across the US

The New Yorker says that Sérgio and Odair Assad's new album, Jardim Abandonado, includes works by Antônio Carlos Jobim ("exquisite miniatures of ardent desire and ineffable regret"), Milhaud, Debussy, Sérgio Assad, his daughter Clarice, and Adam Guettel, and the album's "pièce de résistance ... a transcription of 'Rhapsody in Blue.'" The Assads' arrangements "give all the pieces, whether popular or classical, an intimate sense of tonal richness and a new range of scintillating colors."

In the October 18 episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, host Bob Boilen opens the show by recalling the first time he heard David Byrne's Knee Plays on cassette, back in 1985. He remembers driving around in his car listening to it—"I played it constantly"—until giving it away as a thank-you gift. He's been waiting 20-plus years for the CD release to replace the missing cassette, and, he says, "It's such a thrill to hear it again." Hear the episode here.

Laurie Anderson's 1982 album Big Science has been reissued in a remastered version available from Nonesuch Records, with new liner notes, bonus track, and video content. Pitchfork gives the album an 8.7.

Mi Sueño, the final album from the Buena Vista Social Club's Ibrahim Ferrer, was reviewed on NPR's Fresh Air.

"The man was Frederic Rzewski," writes Mark Swed in a review of Rzewski's recent concert in California, "the greatest pianist-composer of our time and something of a legend in modern music."