Pat Metheny will be the guest on this week's episode of BBC Radio 2's Jamie Cullum show tonight. In this hour-long special, Metheny talks with Cullum about his career and its impact on the role of guitar in jazz. Metheny's new album, What's It All About, earns a perfect five stars in BBC Music magazine, which says: "Laymen and players alike will love this personal solo album from their personable hero."

As announced last month, Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli, will be released by Nonesuch on September 20. Now comes the album's cover, which features American Modernist painter Charles Sheeler's Classic Landscape. The album is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with an instant download of the title track included at checkout. All About Jazz, reviewing Mehldau's latest solo album, Live in Marciac, raves: "It's a stunning document that somehow manages to satisfy the most basic melodic appetites while still confounding conventional understanding of human capability."

Randy Newman, who performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra over the weekend, concludes his Australian tour with two shows with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House this week. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald laud Newman as "one of the greatest songwriters of the past 50 years," whose "work proves yet again that on the big questions, all too often the artists can illuminate the truth better than the essayists, the journalists and, perhaps less surprisingly, the politicians." His recent appearances on ABC Radio National's The Music Show and 702 ABC Sydney Afternoons are now online.

This past weekend, the Newport Folk Festival offered the sold-out crowd two beautiful summer days of music from performers including the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Emmylou Harris, Wanda Jackson, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves. You can now listen to all of those sets online at NPR Music, from the ever "vital and contemporary" Harris to the "blazingly intense music" of Thile & Daves. The Boston Globe says that all the music proved "compelling and indebted to what preceded it."

Malian singer Oumou Sangare concluded her North American tour this weekend with shows in Brooklyn and Maine. "Regal, righteous and funky," exclaims New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, "the Malian singer and songwriter Oumou Sangare commanded the stage of Celebrate Brooklyn! on Friday night at the Prospect Park Bandshell." Through her music and lyrics, this longtime champion of women's rights took on "the traditional West African singer’s role as community conscience while delivering her messages with a modern kick."

Randy Newman kicked off his two-week tour of Australia Friday night in a one-night-only performance with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane. "Everyone is swept along by Newman's charm," reports The Australian. "This was live performance at its best, spontaneous and heartfelt, with one of America's greatest songwriters at the helm." The Brisbane Times gives this "night of perfect tone" five stars. The Age says: "For more than 40 years, his hallowed name has comprised a two-word rebuttal to the clueless cliche that 'Americans don't get irony."

Emmylou Harris is the subject of a feature interview in Relix magazine, in which she discusses her new record, Hard Bargain, and the many unforgettable artistic collaborations Harris has made over the years, not least with Gram Parsons, about whom she wrote the album's opening track, "The Road." She is currently touring North America. Of her set at the Dave Matthews Band Caravan, the Chicago Tribune writes: "Achy, sympathetic and warm, Harris' quivering whippoorwill voice was the most effortlessly beautiful sound heard at the festival."

Chris Thile and Michael Daves have a number of live performances in the coming weeks, starting with a set at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival this Thursday. Audiophile Audition gives their album Sleep with One Eye Open a perfect five stars, saying: "If the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack raised the mainstream awareness of bluegrass, then Sleep with One Eye Open delivers on its promise." Sequenza21 calls it "beautifully simple ... an object lesson in how to do it right."

The Black Keys will be among the headliners at the Virgin Mobile Freefest, taking place September 10 in Maryland. The line-up also includes TV on the Radio, Cee Lo Green, Patti Smith, and more. Free tickets will be given out this Friday. Despite heavy rain at the Ottawa Bluesfest last Friday, The Black Keys' audience was given "a night for the Bluesfest history books," says the Ottawa Citizen. The National Post, reviewing Thursday's show at Toronto's Molson Amphitheatre says: "The set is bigger. The lights are bigger. But it’s their sound and their showmanship, which used to rattle the walls of little clubs, that is now shaking stadiums."

Stephen Sondheim's Road Show continues its run at the Menier Chocolate Factory, following last week's opening and the musical's European premiere. The production garners four stars from the Financial Times, which praises director John Doyle's "nimble, sassy staging" of Road Show, "a musical with a twinkle in its eye. Sondheim deploys the same vaudevillian flair he brought to Assassins." The Independent on Sunday calls Road Show "a polished new sparkler in the Sondheim treasury."

Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman, longtime friends and frequent collaborators, head out for a three-week duo tour of Europe, heading to Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, and France. Following a solo tour for Mehldau and shows with James Farm for Redman, the two reunite for additional duo dates in the US and Europe this fall. Reviewing the duo's set at the Ottawa Jazz Festival, the Ottawa Citizen says they make "music of uncommon depth and simpatico." All About Jazz says they "delivered a performance that will be remembered by those lucky enough to be there, for a long time to come."

Stephen Sondheim's Road Show received its European premiere at London's Menier Chocolate Factory last night, earning four stars across the board from The Guardian, The Independent, and the Evening Standard. The Guardian says it is "lyrically witty, musically rich and has the sardonic satirical appeal of the Sondheim-Weidman Assassins ... full of vintage Sondheim." The Independent says it "has terrific drive, bite and buoyancy." The Evening Standard says it's "performed with sparkle." The Stage finds that its "rich, varied and tuneful score is as audacious and complex as any Sondheim has ever written."