Jessica Lea Mayfield is among the artists featured on the new mix streaming from NPR Music and Folk Alley celebrating the recipients and nominees of the Americana Music Association's 10th Annual Honors and Awards. Mayfield has been nominated for the 2011 Americana Music Award for New/Emerging Artist of the Year. NPR Music will webcast live from the awards ceremony at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium next Thursday, and Austin City Limits will air an edited version of the show on PBS in November.

Björk's forthcoming album, Biophilia, is due out in just under a week, on October 11, and is now streaming at NPR Music as an exclusive NPR First Listen. "Biophilia's songs are astounding," raves NPR. "These songs have room to breathe, employing space and silence as much as melody and harmony. The sparse instrumentation and arrangements become gorgeously intricate meditations on which to build ... Vocal melodies unfurl more like transcendent devotionals than typical verses, and become even more stirring when accompanied by a chorus of voices that could fill a cathedral."

Nonesuch Records will release an album of works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and composer/Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood in 2012. The artists’ work was presented side-by-side in two mid-September concerts in Wrocław, which included Penderecki's Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings); the latter inspired the Greenwood piece on the program, 48 Responses to Polymorphia. The works were then recorded for the Nonesuch album in Kraków, along with Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which was inspired by Penderecki’s Threnody.

Brad Mehldau will be today's guest on the Jamie Cullum show on BBC Radio 2. Mehldau stopped by the BBC Maida Vale Studios in London to perform songs both from Modern Music, his recently released collaboration with pianist Kevin Hays and composer Patrick Zimmerli, and Live in Marciac, his solo CD/DVD released earlier this year. Brad Mehldau will join label mate Joshua Redman for a US duo tour starting next week.

Laurie Anderson's North American fall tour continues as she brings her performance piece Delusion to Montreal for three nights of shows at Usine C, tonight through Thursday. "In Anderson we have a throwback to theatrical storytelling that's at least as old as the troubadours and Beowulf," says the Boston Phoenix in a review of last week's six-night Boston run. "The graceful way she moves about the stage and reacts to the screen images or even presides over a music stand, manipulating sounds, delivering text—all show a complete, and completely satisfying, sense of stage craft ... Anderson really delivers."

Nonesuch Records wishes Steve Reich a very happy 75th birthday today and has added a new station to Nonesuch Radio featuring works from the composer's quarter-century of Nonesuch albums. Nonesuch has also teamed up with Reich's publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, for a prize package giveaway. NPR Music, noting that "such a birthday calls for major celebration," features a tribute to Reich from a number of NPR contributors and musicians who have worked with the composer. Q2 Music airs an updated presentation of its week-long festival Maximum Reich. The next two weeks bring all-Reich concerts from Kronos Quartet in Berkeley, Ensemble Modern in Paris, and the LSO in London.

Ry Cooder's first-ever stand-alone written work, Los Angeles Stories, is out now from City Lights Books and available in the Nonesuch Store. "Cooder fans will enjoy the upbeat mix of music and murder," says the San Francisco Chronicle. "Aficionados of noir fiction will love the characters, all of whom have something to hide and all of whom are engaged in illegal activity." Cooder will discuss the book at San Francsico's Herbst Theatre on Wednesday. Blurt, reviewing his new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, says it "ranks not only among his very best releases, but among the best socio-political albums ever made."

Chris Thile and Michael Daves are featured on the latest episode of the weekly radio show Acoustic Café. On the show, Thile and Daves talks with host Rob Reinhart about their album, Sleep with One Eye Open, and play songs from the album live in studio. Thile and his fellow Punch Brothers performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park this past weekend; the band will support Paul Simon on tour this November.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass takes over San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with sets from Punch Brothers, Jessica Lea Mayfield, The Low Anthem, Emmylou Harris ... Laurie Anderson performs Delusion in Boston ... Jon Brion launches three-night NYC run ... Wanda Jackson stops by Grimey's in Nashville ... James Farm close out US tour in California ... k.d. lang tours the mid-Atlantic ... Audra McDonald launches her fall tour ... Pat Metheny sells out in Chicago and Pittsburgh ... Sara Watkins joins the Blind Boys of Alabama in California ... and more ...

Björk's Biophilia is out in just over a week. In an early review, the BBC calls it "an amazing, inventive and wholly unique eighth album from an artist without peer." Stereogum says: "She brought it, once again." Crave exclaims: "Biophilia is simply a phenomenal album ... Björk represents the best idea of what a pop star truly is." Clash Music says: "An absolutely remarkable artist, for whom the terms ‘genius’ and ‘unique’ are not journalistic hyperbole but simple fact, Björk is taking music to a place where we should all gladly follow."

Pat Metheny's US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier continues this weekend with sold-out shows in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor. The Kansas City Star, reviewing last night's show, raves: "The idyllic concept of angels plucking on harps in heaven is overdue for an overhaul. One possible update is the image of Pat Metheny bent over a guitar ... Metheny creates extraordinarily celestial sounds, with last night's show "exceptionally rapturous even by his standards." Metheny discusses his new album, What's It All About, on today's episode of PRI's Here & Now.

With the Carolina Chocolate Drops taking a couple weeks away from the road, what better time to revisit the group's performance at the Newport Folk Festival this summer? While at Newport's Fort Adams State Park for the festival, proving to be among the "Newport favorites" of NPR's Ann Powers, the band took some time to perform three songs for Paste magazine. All three are now available in the latest issue of Paste's multimedia online mPlayer.