Pat Metheny has composed and performed new music for The New Group's revival of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, directed by Scott Elliott and starring Lili Taylor and Jena Malone. Previews begin tomorrow night, with the official opening night on February 19. The play will run at New York's New Group @ Theatre Row on 42nd Street through April 18. Pat recorded his solo guitar score on an 1860s instrument contemporary to the play's Civil War-era setting.

Philip Glass and Kronos Quartet give the Calgary premiere of Glass's Dracula  ... Miami City Ballet performs Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room, set to music by Glass, at New York's City Center ... Atlanta Opera gives that city's premiere of Glass's Akhnaten ... Juilliard's FOCUS! festival begins with Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony ... Richard Goode performs Chopin and Bach in Ann Arbor ... Youssou N'Dour and the Super Étoile band perform at Glasgow's Celtic Connections ... Joshua Redman concludes his run with the full Compass Double Trio in Albany ... New York City Ballet performs a new work set to Reich's Triple Quartet ... and more ...

Tonight marks the opening of The Juilliard School's annual FOCUS! festival, with a concert by the New Juilliard Ensemble featuring John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony. Adams's inclusion in this concert and throughout the festival proceedings reflects its theme this year of California: A Century of New Music. Two major highlights of FOCUS! 2009 are the world premiere of Adams’s String Quartet, performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and the festival's culminating event: a semi-staged production of Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer, with the Juilliard Opera Center led by the composer.

Youssou N'Dour and the Super Étoile band join the festivities at Glasgow's annual Celtic Connections when they headline a concert at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Auditorium tonight. Scotland's Sunday Herald recently profiled Youssou, calling him "one of the world's most soulful singers," possessing "a fluttering, virtuoso voice of extraordinary power," and standing out as "one of world music's few genuine superstars." Scotland's STV asserts that, of all the scores of artists performing at the two-week festival, "Youssou N'Dour will without doubt prove to be one of the main draws."

Rokia Traoré's Tchamantché has been nominated for the Victoires de la Musique award as Best World Music Album of the Year. The award, similar to the Grammys in the United States, recognizes the best in music from France. Rokia, the daughter of a Malian diplomat, has lived everywhere from North Africa to the Middle East to Europe, as well as in the Malian capital, Bamako, and now calls Paris home.

The Christian Science Monitor has dubbed Rokia Traoré "Africa's answer to Joni Mitchell." In its staff picks for the week's best arts offerings, the Monitor declares that with Tchamantché, "her exquisite new album," Rokia has created "something timeless. But it's Traoré's voice that pulls one into the musical vortex. Though she sings in Bambara and French, you won't need a translator to discern the joy and ache in her voice."

After performing the second of two consecutive nights at New York's Highline last night, Joshua Redman and his Double Trio head up to Boston to play the Berklee Performance Center tonight, then out to Albany for their last show with all five musicians featured on Redman's new album, Compass. Previewing Friday's show at Albany's The Egg, the Schenectady Daily Gazette writes of Redman's successful venture with the double-trio format: "The idea worked so well on record that now Redman is experimenting with the double-trio format live." Metro Canada gives Compass three-and-a-half stars.

Joshua Redman and his Double Trio—bassists Larry Grenadier and Reuben Rogers and drummers Brian Blade and Gregory Hutchinson—all of whom play together on the recently released Compass, play their second consecutive night at New York's Highline Ballroom tonight. The New York Times calls the new album "superb" and finds Redman "making some of the best music of his career." In last night's set, "Mr. Redman worked fast and fluid, never exhausting his options," says the Times. "At almost every turn he seemed intensely focused but unpressured and completely in command."

Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed wonders what the inclusion of composer John Williams's new Copland-inspired piece in yesterday's official inauguration proceedings might promise for the place of classical music in the new Obama administration. He suggests a number of artists whom the President might invite to the White House to signal his commitment to the arts. On the list of these "rich, wise, inclusive original voices" are many Nonesuch artists and others who have collaborated with them. "Mr. President," Swed asserts, "I guarantee your life will be richer and the tone of America will rise if you listen to them."

Laurie Anderson will lead a special concert tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, New York, to launch BAM's Next Stage Campaign. Curated by Laurie and titled Laurie & Friends, the show features a diverse group of artists—from the experimental rock of Dirty Projectors to the Latin sounds of jazz master Arturo O'Farrill—who share the common goal of making new and original art. BAM is looking to break ground this fall on an intimate black-box performance space behind the main Opera House.

Allen Toussaint, who celebrated his 71st birthday last week, celebrated once more at the 2009 Celtic Connections festival Monday at Glasgow's finely refurbished Old Fruitmarket. Scotland's Herald gives the performance five stars, exclaiming: "Toussaint produced the kind of gig for which this venue was saved. Funky, celebratory and above all downright real, Toussaint's music has the spirit of a Mardi Gras street party running through it and the Fruitmarket is, after all, only one generation of slight gentrification up from being a street itself."

John Adams led the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, of which he is the Composer of the Year, in two concerts this past weekend at Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall. Featured on the programs were Doctor Atomic Symphony, On the Transmigration of Souls, and selections from Nixon in China. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says the composer "has penned some of the best music of the last quarter century" and "gave us a reason to be proud again of the splendor that can emerge from 100 orchestral musicians. He is a composer of our time." The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review calls Transmigration "awesome and haunting to experience" and Doctor Atomic Symphony "a masterly new piece."