Björk’s Voltaic: The Volta Tour, a concert film featuring stops on her visually dazzling Volta tour in Paris and Reykjavik, will be screened across the US this June and July. There are more than 15 screenings already scheduled, all to coincide with the release of the very special DVD/CD/LP recording Voltaic, due out in the US on Nonesuch on June 30. Register to win a pair of tickets from Nonesuch for the June 23 screening at NYC's School of Visual Arts Theater.

Youssou N'Dour kicks off the Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas festival in a sold-out concert with his Super Étoile band at BAM on Friday night. The following night, Youssou and the band return to BAM for the NY premiere of the documentary Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love and a post-screening performance. The Village Voice describes Youssou's band as "astonishing" and Egypt, the album at the center of the film, as "a masterful expression of personal faith embellished with Cairean strings and, of course, the slippery Wolof beats that underlie N'Dour's complexly ecstatic mbalax sound."

Nonesuch Records and PS Classics are proud to announce the release of the original cast recording of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Road Show—from 2008's Public Theater production featuring Alexander Gemignani and Michael Cerveris—on June 30, 2009. New York magazine described the musical as "a boisterous picaresque about two brothers flimflamming their way from the Yukon to Boca Raton at the turn of the 20th century." Road Show was directed by John Doyle, the score conducted by Mary-Mitchell Campbell and orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, and was produced by Tommy Krasker.

Amadou & Mariam kicked off their North American tour last night at Chicago's Park West, creating music that the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot describes as "a steaming cauldron of Mali funk ‘n’ roll that the couple stirred, adding ingredients from countless cultures as needed. They knew when to bring it to a boil and when to let it simmer." The crowd was moving from the start, and its fervor only increased, with Amadou & Mariam's "elastic songs stretching further into a zone where the line between dance and trance blurred." The duo's music, Kot concludes, bridges "cultures, sounds and language with a grace rarely seen on a North American stage."

Christina Courtin, whose self-titled Nonesuch debut is due out on June 23, is featured on this week's episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. The show's host, Bob Boilen, tracks Christina's career, from her earliest days playing violin at the age of three through her time at Juilliard and to the forthcoming release, from which he plays the song "Bundah." "She always knew she could sing," Boilen says, "and that became her desire." You can also hear "Bundah" and watch a video for the song on the new multimedia page nonesuch.com/christinacourtin, which also features the album tracks "Foreign Country" and "February" plus a photo slideshow of Christina.

Amadou & Mariam are set to take Chicago's Park West by storm tonight as they begin the first leg of their summer tour. The Chicago Sun-Times says the couple "front a fiery band that provides a kaleidoscope of music filtering rock, blues, reggae and hip-hop through a Malian sensibility. Her vocals are innocent and welcoming; his blues/rock guitar style is commanding and nimble." The Chicago Tribune declares, "If the duo's vocals are a life-affirming sound that transcends language barriers, [Amadou's] guitar is an instrument of mind-altering eloquence." Time Out Chicago says their new album, Welcome to Mali, "sounds as if it was made, variously, in 1970s flare-wearing New York, in a timeless stretch of desert, and at the kind of party you’d most like to be asked to." Catch the duo on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Monday.

Floodplain, Kronos Quartet's most recent Nonesuch release features music inspired by the idea that floodplains—which are prone to devastating flooding—will experience new life after a catastrophe, just as cultures that undergo great difficulty will experience creative fertility. The New York Times finds this to be an apt metaphor and in keeping with Kronos's core beliefs, rooted in its earliest performances, which "turned the introverted quartet idiom outward through its extramusical effects and social concerns. Mr. Harrington and company have been extending that path ever since."

Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin join Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller for Three Girls and Their Buddy ... Bill Frisell unveils new piece at Bang on a Can Marathon, NYC ... Youssou N'Dour closes the Africa Vive festival in the Canary Islands ... Punch Brothers follows Spoleto appearance with Virginia gig ... Joshua Redman Trio plays Tacoma ... Rokia Traoré plays a sold-out show at the Barbican ... Allen Toussaint concludes a week in Japan ... Wilco plays Portugal and Spain ... and more ...

Wilco's new album, Wilco (the album), is due out on Nonesuch in another month, and the critical response has already begun, including, this week, from the band's two hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times gives the album 3.5 stars, asserting that "the band has cemented a reputation as one of the most creative forces in rock today" and concluding that its new songs "stand beside the best that the band has given us." The Tribune calls the band's current members "the most technically accomplished of Wilco’s many lineups ... and Wilco (the album) is a compendium of its best moves."

Allen Toussaint's The Bright Mississippi was released to great critical acclaim, followed by an equally lauded residency at New York's Village Vanguard, and a string of performances in Japan. The Wall Street Journal writes that, with the album, Toussaint keeps alive "the tradition of distinctive New Orleans pianists, within which he clearly belongs; and of jazz, which was never far from the surface of his music ...  He simply possesses each tune fully, courtesy of rolling chords, well-placed tremolos, notable restraint and the defining force of his musical presence." Blurt talks to Toussaint about the project and trusting producer Joe Henry's choice of what he calls "these wonderful songs."

Rokia Traoré, whose most recent album, Tchamantché, was released on Nonesuch earlier this year, is the subject of a feature profile in the Sunday Times (UK), in anticipation of her sold-out concert at London’s celebrated Barbican this Friday. The article highlights both her “flourishing reputation” and the launch of her Fondation Passarelle, an organization she founded to help young people develop the skills needed to enter the music business. In August, she performs two free shows in New York that Time Out includes in its preview of the summer's best outdoor concerts. "With her latest disc," says the magazine, "Traoré wraps her beautiful, velvety voice around moody blues and joyous Afrobeats alike. Be prepared to gape at her lovely vocals, and also to get up and shimmy."

Fernando Otero will perform songs from his 2008 Nonesuch release, Pagina de Buenos Aires, live on Soundcheck, a program of WNYC, New York Public Radio, 93.9 FM, today at 2 PM ET. He'll talk with the show's host, John Schaefer, and will perform at the piano along with Nick Danielson on violin and Hector del Curto on bandoneon, both of whom performed on the album.