Christina Courtin's California concert schedule continues this week with performances in San Francisco and LA. Pop Matters describes the singer as "fearless, profound, and musically fascinating" and her "impressive" new album as "unlike anything else I have heard this year ... Lyrically precocious, and musically varied, Courtin presents herself as a chameleon, shifting through varied terrain from jazz to folk to country to pop and back again."

Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, a musical memorial for September 11, will air on WNYC and be performed in concert by the Phoenix Symphony ... Carolina Chocolate Drops celebrate Chapel Hill library's 50th ... Bill Frisell performs music of Disfarmer ... Kronos begins its season at Poland's Wratislava festival ... Low Anthem plays UK's End of the Road fest ... Brad Mehldau solos in São Paolo ... Nicholas Payton plays NY's Iridium  ... Guggenheim presents dances to Reich's Double Sextet ... Allen Toussaint plays Texas, Maryland, NYC ... and more

Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy is featured in Glide's biweekly look at favorite singer-songwriters. Columnist Jason Gonulsen reflects on the impact Tweedy's songwriting has had on him over the years, dating back to an unforgettable first listen to "Misunderstood," from Being There, the 1996 double disc slated for vinyl reissue next month. "I was immediately floored," Gonulson recalls, following a through line to the band's latest release, Wilco (the album).

Kronos Quartet announces the tour dates for its 2009/10 concert season, a season that will bring the group all over the United States and to seven countries around the globe. Highlights include a Carnegie Hall Perspectives; collaborations with artists like Wu Man, Tanya Tagaq, and Alim Qasimov; the John Adams–curated West Coast, Left Coast festival with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and several world and New York premieres.

Richard Goode's Nonesuch recording of Beethoven's Complete Piano Concertos with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra is out now. The New Yorker cites the "supple, measured lyricism" from Goode and his "sterling collaborators" on the album, finding both "the humane and poetic qualities" one has come to expect from the pianist and "truly revelatory playing" as well.

Audra McDonald was recently honored with the 2009 NAACP Theatre Award's Trailblazer Award. Next month, Audra will participate in The Actors Fund's fall 2009 benefit concert titled Chance and Chemistry: A Centennial Celebration of Frank Loesser, to be held on Monday, October 26, at the Minskoff Theater in New York.

Carolina Chocolate Drops keep it close to home in the Carolinas bringing their "palpable energy" to the Boone Hall BBQ & Bluegrass Fest ... Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed play Paris ... Bill Frisell closes out two-week residency at NYC's Village Vanguard with Paul Motian, Joe Lovano ... The Low Anthem's European tour gets under way in Ireland and UK ... Brad Mehldau tours South America solo ... Sara Watkins is out West ...

Wilco (the album) comes at a time when Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy is as content as he's been in years, and, says a Maxim magazine profile, that is a very good thing, resulting in the "most confident album of Wilco’s career ... a focused collection of poetic, emotionally direct songs that explore fear, loss, and love from a midlife perspective." Ultimately, "The triumph of Wilco (the album) ably rebuts the tortured-artist ideal."

Christina Courtin begins a weekly series of gigs in California this month, at The Little Room at Largo in Los Angeles tonight. A second Little Room date follows next week, and then a third Largo event, at the Coronet Theater, on the 17th, with Grant Lee Phillips. In between the latter two events, she'll head up north to play San Francisco's Café du Nord.

For his most recent Nonesuch release, Disfarmer, Bill Frisell created a set of songs inspired by the images of photographer Michael Disfarmer. Frisell first set music to film 15 years ago with scores for three Buster Keaton movies. JamBase looks at these and Disfarmer, "one more remarkable piece of work that adds to the diversity and intrinsic curiosity that resides firmly in all of Frisell's music, a player for whom the whole expanse of sound is open and eagerly explored."

When Joshua Redman's MoodSwing was originally released, back in 1994, it was Redman's first to feature both his own band—pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade—and all original tunes. Now, as those collaborations continue to flourish, MoodSwing returns in a new Nonesuch vinyl reissue. "Redman finds ingenious ways of creating a mode of acoustic jazz that is both entertaining and enlightening," Entertainment Weekly wrote upon the album's initial release. "MoodSwing plays like an artistic journey."

Wilco wrapped up its summer tour in Dublin last week, with the US tour picking up again at the University of Iowa October 1. Just three days later, the band will perform at the annual Farm Aid benefit concert, which, DIRECTV has just announced, will be broadcast live and in HD exclusively on its The 101 Network. DIRECTV will also match donations from its customers up to $50,000 to support Farm Aid in its efforts to support family farms.