Even with all the critical acclaim and analysis John Adams and his work have received over the years, writes LA Weekly in recommending the composer's new memoir, "if you know Adams’ music—really know it—it may not surprise you to discover that everything written up to now is puny, indeed, besides the guy, and what he has to say about himself." In the book, Adams shows "what it takes to compose great music, serious music that can reach out and touch people importantly" while transcending other memoirs with "this intense, immensely charming and revealing work."

Ry Cooder recently took New York Times writer Lawrence Downes on a tour of El Mirage Dry Lake in California's Mojave Desert, the inspiration and setting for I, Flathead, the third and final album in Ry's California trilogy, and its companion novella. Downes describes their destination as "a land of spy planes, space aliens, off-road vehicles, sturdy reptiles and people with freaky desert habits, like racing vintage hot rods on dry lakebeds ... in other words, a critical stop on Ry’s California trail." The day's adventure in the desert with Ry, he writes, "was as though I’d been roaming the Delta with Robert Johnson, or gypsy France with Django Reinhardt."

Nonesuch Records has signed singer/songwriter/fiddle player Sara Watkins, best known as a founding member of the Grammy Award–winning, critically acclaimed, and platinum-selling band Nickel Creek. With Nickel Creek on indefinite hiatus, she has made her self-titled debut solo album, recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville and produced by former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Nonesuch will release Sara Watkins on April 7, 2009.

Punch Brothers' US tour took them to the Walton Arts Center in Arkansas on Saturday, leading the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to state: "No matter what music they touched, the Punch Brothers were quite amazing." The review calls The Blind Leaving the Blind, from the band's Nonesuch debut, Punch, "the most impressive piece of the night." An examination of that piece in The Gospel & Culture Project concludes: "[Chris] Thile has made music that shakes fans out of genre-bound identities, challenges attention spans, and undermines pre-conceptions of where great music is to be found. TBLTB can teach listeners new ways to experience music."

With the election of Chicago favorite son Barack Obama to the Presidency, a considerable amount of outside attention has been paid of late to the city. The New York Times recently talked to another of the city's favorite sons, Jeff Tweedy, a longtime supporter of the President-elect, about changing perceptions of Chicago. Wilco tops the list of nominees for the 28th annual Chicago Music Awards: Songwriter of the Year for Jeff, plus Pop Entertainer of the Year, Best Rock Entertainer, and Most Outstanding Band or Group for Wilco.

Randy Newman, The Black Keys, The Magnetic Fields, and Punch Brothers. It's quite an eclectic list of artists, but they all share one thing, in addition to being Nonesuch label mates: they've all made the list of the Top 100 of the Year's Best CDs from NPR's All Songs Considered. The show is now looking for your input to narrow down the list to the Top 10. And speaking of year-end bests, Blender's annual Top 33 lists Randy's Harps and Angels at No. 8.

Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, the recent release capturing that famous 1998 concert, receives five stars from the New Zealand Herald, which calls it "just as powerful as the 1997 studio album that made the Cuban players world-wide stars." The passing, since that show, of a number of the key band members "makes the beautifully packaged double album even more special," states the review, and "it's the closest you're going to get" to 1940s Havana. "Transport yourself."

Christina Courtin plays New York's new 92YTribeca ... Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performs a staged version of Adams's Doctor Atomic; Alarm Will Sound takes Adams works to Russia ... The Black Keys tour Northern Europe ... Glass's Symphony No. 3 makes for Moving Glass at Sweden's Royal Ballet ... Fred Hersch and Christopher O'Riley give a double recital and lecture-demonstration at Duke ... Robin Holcomb plays two shows in New York City ... k.d. lang performs a special benefit concert for Tibetan cultural organization ... Punch Brothers takes US tour to Arkansas ... Joshua Redman joins the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra in Norway ... eighth blackbird gives Reich's Double Sextet its European premiere; Doug Varone and Dancers dance to Daniel Variations ... Dawn Upshaw performs sold-out Kurtág's Kafka Fragments in Berkeley ... and more ...

Isabel Bayrakdarian's Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, featuring the music of Armenia's national composer, Gomidas Vardabet, has been named a CD Pick of the Week by WNYC's Soundcheck. Gramophone magazine describes the album's repertoire as "exquisitely haunting miniatures [that] sound as if they belong somewhere between Bartók and Canteloube ... Above all, the limpid, melismatic vocal lines allow us to savour the bright lyric soprano of Bayrakdarian at her most relaxed."

"Glenn Kotche is not your average rock-and-roll percussionist," says the Chicago Sun-Times in its review of Glenn's joint concert on Tuesday with new-music ensemble eighth blackbird at Chicago's Harris Theater. The paper calls the performers "kindred musical souls," mild in temperament, perhaps, but "as fierce as any garage band or chamber players hurtling through a late Beethoven string quartet." Chicagoist's editors faced a conundrum in deciding how to spend their Tuesday night but "realized just how foolish we would be to pass up" what was "a stellar performance" with "a jaw dropping solo rendition of 'Monkey Chant' by Kotche" and, ultimately, "a truly remarkable evening."

Fresh off yesterday's five-star review in The Guardian, Bill Frisell's tour-closing concert at the Barbican earns another five stars, from the Financial Times. For the show, the Frisell Trio performed Bill's "spot-on score" that gave "a zesty sheen" to the films of Buster Keaton, Jim Woodring, and Bill Morrison, with the Trio's musical efforts "equal partner in the audiovisual experience." The paper sums up Bill's works as "a soundscape pregnant with humour, menace and the struggle to survive."

Bill Frisell concluded his Trio tour—playing music to the films of Buster Keaton, Bill Morrison, and Jim Woodring—at the Barbican in London on Saturday as part of the London Jazz Festival. The Guardian gives a perfect five stars to the performance, in which the Trio gave "all the light and shade needed to underpin three very different film-makers' visions ... Best of all were the Buster Keaton movies The High Sign and One Week, integrating music and vision so brilliantly it was impossible to think of the event as pure film or just jazz."