Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer will preview their forthcoming, self-titled debut duo album tonight in a special concert at the Aspen Music Festival. On the record, due out September 23 and available now for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, are 12 original songs by the two musicians. There's also a deluxe version that includes a 50-minute DVD with performances, rehearsals, and behind-the-scenes footage with Edgar and Chris. The Aspen Times says Chris's first Nonesuch record, Punch, with the Punch Brothers, takes "acoustic music to an appreciably higher level."

Dawn Upshaw begins a three-show run of performances at Lincoln Center of the US premiere of composer Kaija Saariaho's La Passion de Simone, an oratorio written for Upshaw based on the life of French French philosopher Simone Weil. The production, directed by Peter Sellars, is part of the Mostly Mozart Festival and includes Mostly Mozart debuts for the composer, dancer Michael Schumacher, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the London Voices vocal ensemble. The Independent (UK) calls the work a “magical union of words, music, and theater.”

Works by Laurie Anderson and Steve Reich will share space at New York's Museum of Modern Art with the perhaps not surprising company of John Cage, Andy Warhol, and Sonic Youth and some slightly less likely pairings with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Devo, and The Cars. It's all a part of MoMA's multimedia exhibition Looking at Music, which begins today and runs through January 5, 2009, and explores the connections between art and music during the 1960s and '70s.

The fifth and final season of HBO's The Wire is out on DVD today. The New York City's Museum of the Moving Image recently held a panel with the show's creator, David Simon, and several cast members, which you can now hear online. MOMI's Chief Curator David Schwartz, begins the proceedings by saying, "It's hard to figure out how to introduce this program with the proper amount of hyperbole, because the argument among critics seems to be whether this is one of the greatest shows in television history or the greatest show." The New York Post calls it "unmissable TV"; The Scotsman says it's "magnificent" and "seriously addictive."

It's been a week since the release of Randy Newman's Harps and Angels, and the Toronto Star, in its four-star review, calls the new album "prime Newman, a work of astonishing bravery, anger, humility and humanity ... with complex arrangements and orchestrations that elevate simple instrumentation, music-hall melodies, and vintage folk forms ... to proportions Weill and Brecht might have imagined." The Detroit Free Press deems it "a masterpiece, with brilliantly written songs that run from the satirical to the achingly sincere."

Kronos Quartet returns to Tanglewood this Thursday, coincidentally just two days after label mates Wilco. Highlights of the program include works by Sigur Rós, John Zorn, and Steve Reich. The Boston Globe's David Weininger spoke with Kronos's David Harrington about the Quartet's vital role in the creation of new music and asserts: "They essentially created their own avant-garde." Weininger concludes: "Harrington's musical curiosity remains undimmed after 35 years."

After performing at the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore this weekend, Wilco gears up for its performance at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts tomorrow night. The Daily Gazette out of Schnectady, New York, more than an hour away, says "Wilco is worth the trip." Next to a sold-out show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool. With all the travel, Wilco is also making an effort to reduce its environmental impact with a new ride-sharing initiative. Also, label mate David Byrne has his own ideas for reducing congestion, promoting bike use.

The Black Keys spent the weekend at two of the summer's biggest festivals: the inaugural New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh on Friday and the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore on Sunday, with a stop at The NorVa in Norfolk, Virginia, in between. The Western Pennsylvania press coverage of Friday's event calls attention to the "pulverizing, purifying guitar blast blues riff from the Black Keys." Brooklyn Vegan also has dozens of great pics from the preceding night's show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool.

Earlier this month, Youssou N'Dour performed at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, as part of the Africa Rising festival, along with John Legend and Jay-Z. Rolling Stone called his "a stirring performance," and the Washington Post says he "turned in the festival's most riveting performance, a 25-minute set filled with deeply soulful vocals sung in multiple languages over insistent, syncopated African rhythmic patterns and the night's funkiest drum breaks."

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists ...

Nonesuch.com has launched the remaining segments of the video interview and performance of Randy discussing and playing songs from his latest release, Harps and Angels. On today's videos, Randy talks about writing the title track, how Jackson Brown's name makes its way onto "A Piece of the Pie," and making the record with producers Lenny Waronker and Mitchell Froom; he also performs the newly updated version of "Laugh and Be Happy" that appears on the new record. You can watch all of the videos now at nonesuch.com/media.

The Black Keys are in New York tonight to play McCarren Park Pool, the unique, former and soon-to-be-again public pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tomorrow, they'll be at the New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh, sharing a bill with the likes of Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, and Gnarls Barkley. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette previews that set with a profile of the band that has, with Attack and Release, released its "best record to date" and "garnered the kind of critical praise that rarely comes this positive."