The line-up for the 2008 Virginia Arts Festival has been announced, and Audra McDonald is among the featured artists. She'll be at the Sandler Center in Virginia Beach on May 11 as part of the multi-venue festival, which runs April 18–May 26 and includes performers from across the arts, from classical music to theater to dance.

Tomorrow night, Friday, November 9, Laurie Anderson, ever the consummate storyteller, will present a lecture/reading called "Stories About Stories" at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. The Albany Times Union recently spoke with her about the reading and her new project, Homeland, which she's been touring across the globe and is now in the studio recording for release on Nonesuch next year. In "Stories About Stories," she tells the Times Union, "I'll be giving away all of my trade secrets. No more mystique. That's it."

Leading up to tonight's performance of the Pat Metheny Trio at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ, the Asbury Park Press spoke with the three musicians—Pat, drummer Antonio Sanchez, and bassist Christian McBride—about touring together and recording their upcoming album, Day Trip, out on Nonesuch in January. "I've always tried to make it fun for myself and the musicians I play with," says Metheny. "If I do that, it's fun for the fans, too."

Following Caetano Veloso's sold-out show at the University of North Carolina, the school's Daily Tar Heel offered a glowing review and a uniquely student-centric perspective on his latest, most rock-influenced work, Cê, and his current tour of the US. "It makes me happier," the paper quotes him as saying, "because I think that a university town has a lot of young people and young people are very curious. They're interested in things."

Inside the 40th Anniversary edition of Rolling Stone and in the first-ever digital edition of the entire magazine is a snazzy four-page foldout devoted to the best in the "indie rock universe," riffing off the interplanetary theme with subheadings like "Intergalactic Ear Killers" and "Lost in Bass." Positioned at the very center of the spread and, therefore, the sonic solar system, is Wilco, among the Masters of the Universe—everybody else just rocks in it.").

Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of the holiday season’s best films continues with an in-depth interview between There Will Be Blood creators Paul Thomas Anderson, the director, and Jonny Greenwood, whose score for the film will be released on Nonesuch December 18. Greenwood reveals that Punch-Drunk Love is his favorite Anderson film ("such great music. I’m a sucker for pump organ."), and Anderson explains how much impact the score's composer has on his films.

With the Pat Metheny Trio headed to Richmond, VA, to play at the Modlin Center this Friday, the city's Style Weekly offers a preview of what's to come: "Pat Metheny is the opposite of a chameleon. He doesn’t blend into the settings of his numerous projects as much as he reshapes the musical landscape around him." And with all the projects the tireless guitarist has immersed himself in over the years, "today the purest way to experience Metheny’s playing is in his trio."

The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt is "an incredibly prolific, creative, and nimble songwriter with the perfect dose of temperamentality needed to attain the moniker of artistic genius," says NPR's Talk of the Nation assistant producer Sarah Handel in an appreciation. "I've seen him live a handful of times, sometimes petulant due to rowdy drunks playing pool, but more often poetic and generous, taking requests from the audience and playing like he's got all night.

In this week's sparkling new Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary edition, the magazine calls attention to the international nonprofit network LinkTV 's site for on-demand streaming music videos, interviews, and documentaries on music and musicians from around the world, including concert footage of Malian singers Amadou & Mariam performing songs from their smash CD Dimanche à Bamako in Paris and a documentary that "looks at Brazil and its music through the eyes and voice of it greatest songwriter and poet, Caetano Veloso."

This week in Slate, New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross and New York Times jazz and pop critic Ben Ratliff engage in a dialogue about music in and outside of the fields they generally cover. In a posting today, Ross tips his hat to jazz clubs for providing an alternative to the more reverent classical concert hall. He's happy to note a new trend in the classical world towards a more improvisatory experience, stemming in part from the predominance of composer-performers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich in post-War music .

TheReporter.com reviews the new documentary The Pixar Story, an "informative, inspiring, and wildly entertaining" film about the animation giant that opens the San Francisco International Film Festival tomorrow night. Featured in the documentary is Randy Newman, whose music laid the foundation for some of the studio's greatest successes: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and the Oscar-winning Monsters, Inc. (Randy won for Best Original Song, "If I Didn't Have You").

In today's New York Daily News, Carolina Gonzalez previews Caetano Veloso's upcoming New York City performances at the Nokia Theater, and has a friendly suggestion for the folks who hand out the Grammys: "If the Latin Recording Academy gave out a Grammy for Best Living Songwriter, Caetano Veloso would walk away handily with the prize." (While that's not yet an option, Caetano has grabbed two nominations for his new record, Cê—Best Singer-Songwriter Album and Best Brazilian Song for "Não Me Arrependo" off the album.)