With Orchestra Baobab's new album, Made in Dakar, due out on Tuesday, the group's co-founder Barthélemy Attisso spoke with Time Out New York about the new album, the forthcoming tour, and the joys of bringing their music to the rest of the world. Time Out's K. Leander Williams writes that Attisso has "been singled out as one of the most distinctive guitarist-arrangers the African continent has produced." In 2002, that singular sound met with another iconic musical ambassador when Youssou N'Dour produced what Williams calls the group's "triumphant reunion album," Specialist in All Styles. N'Dour's guest vocals on the new album leads to the "gorgeous update" of the band's classic song "Nijaay" and proves another example of the band's effort to showcase as many of their musical interests as possible.

When faced with the conundrum of deciding between two shows by The Black Keys over consecutive nights at Washington, DC's 9:30 Club, DCist's Valerie Paschall looked to Dan Auerbach's promise in Monday's first-night set: "We'll play better tonight and we'll play more songs tomorrow night."

Yesterday marked the release of T Bone Burnett's Nonesuch debut, Tooth of Crime, featuring songs based on work he began more than a decade ago for Sam Shepard's play of the same name, about the pitfalls of a fame-obsessed culture. The Dallas News calls it "a fittingly eclectic musical opus" from the multi-talented musician, and the nearby Fort Worth Star-Telegram, T Bone's hometown paper, gives the album four stars and sees in it a decidedly Texan influence, "pulling from the bewitching tangle of influences that indelibly mark the songs crafted by Texas artists---a little rock, a little country, a little psychedelia and a dose of anguish, just for good measure."

John Adams's opera A Flowering Tree receives its Midwest premiere tonight in the Chicago Opera Theater performance at the Harris Theater in Millenium Park. The composer will conduct the opening night performance as well as the second performance, this Saturday. Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein says the piece offers "the light of hope and renewal" and concludes: "Nobody who loves contemporary opera and music theater can afford to miss it ... Adams' music is luminously beautiful, the entire opera a glorious multicultural paean to the ecology of the soul."

Bill Frisell's latest Nonesuch release, the two-disc History, Mystery, is out today. The Financial Times gives it four stars, as does The Times, which finds it "hard to think of an electric guitarist who has explored so much musical territory and always claimed it as his own." The Independent names it Jazz Album of the Week, calling it "full of musical contrasts, rich textures, lengthening shadows, and unexpected turns" and "consistently engaging" with a closing guitar solo that's "just wonderful."

Tooth of Crime, T Bone Burnett's first album on Nonesuch and only his second solo record in over 15 years, is due out tomorrow. The music stems from a 1997 collaboration with Sam Shepard, when the playwright asked the songwriter to contribute to a new production of his 1972 play Tooth of Crime. It was a coming together that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles calls "inspired." T Bone spoke with his hometown paper, the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram: "I'm still on this quest---this sonic quest to find the grail."

Steve Reich's latest album, Daniel Variations, comprises both the title piece, written in 2006 in memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, and Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings. The New York Times says the title piece "avoids both sentimentality and vituperation," despite its subject matter. It is, instead "a work of contemplative commemoration, which merits and rewards repeated explorations."

Last Wednesday, Nicholas Payton performed in what the Associate Press calls one of "the most exciting sets" at the seventh and final Jammy Awards, honoring the best in improvised music. Payton recently spoke with All About Jazz contributor R. J. DeLuke about his career and the making of his newly released Nonesuch debut, Into the Blue, which the site says shows the trumpeter "as a thoughtful composer and a player who pays as much attention to his sound as his plentiful technique."

Bill Frisell's latest Nonesuch release, History, Mystery is due out this Tuesday. The BBC exclaims: "[T]he whole album stands as yet another testament to the man's place at the very epicentre of modern American music. Yes, he's done it again ... refining and expanding his palette with every release." The Guardian, in a four-star review of the album says it is "studded with gems."

T Bone Burnett's Nonesuch debut album, Tooth of Crime, is out this Tuesday. The album features "ghostly echoes of tambourine and twang, and the subdued lowing of mournful horns," says the Independent, in arrangements possessing "great depth and diverse character." The paper praises Tooth of Crime as a modern-day "update of the jazz 'n' poetry format," through which lens the album's "abundant pleasures become apparent."