Congratulations to Punch Brothers: the band's take on "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" has been selected as one of three finalists in ESPN's Battle of the Bands, part of Baseball's Tonight's celebration of the 100th anniversary of that classic baseball tune. Chris Thile be stopping by the show Tuesday afternoon at 12:30 PM ET to answer fans' questions about the tune, the contest, the band, and anything else that might cross fans' minds. You can submit your own question now ...

Randy's Friday appearance on the French TV show Esprits Libres is now available online. After being introduced as "un grand monsieur de la musique Américaine," Randy performs "Losing You" from his forthcoming release, Harps and Angels, and, at the request of the show's host, an impromptu version of "In Germany Before the War," as well as "Sail Away," from the seminal 1972 album of the same name.

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on
across the globe this long, holiday weekend featuring Nonesuch artists ...

Orchestra Baobab's Made in Dakar tour of the States culminated last night with a concert at the intimate Dakota Cafe in Minneapolis that lead Minneapolis City Pages reviewer Peter S. Scholtes to exclaim: "Orchestra Baobab is the kind of band that makes critics (at least this one) resort to hyperbole and sociology: They sound like God ..."

Ry Cooder's latest Nonesuch release, I, Flathead, receives four stars from The Independent (UK). The Philadelphia Daily News gives the album an A, with reviewer Jonathan Takiff finding Ry "really in his element," and the Hartford Courant's rock critic Eric R. Danton says Ry's "outdone himself." Pasadena Weekly sums up the new album and the accompanying novella as "a juicy celebration of hot rods, desert rats, sci-fi, and So Cal culture."

"I don't think enough people have heard the music of Sam Phillips," says Bob Boilen, host of NPR's All Songs Considered, "and now seems like a good time to change that." Boilen invited Sam to perform songs from the new record at the NPR offices as part of the new All Songs Considered "Tiny Desk Concert" series ...

Randy Newman's forthcoming release, Harps and Angels, is featured in the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered: the Summer Music Preview. The show's host, Bob Boilen, says Randy's new record reminds him of the Newman records he first new and loved, like Good Ol' Boys and Sail Away. Harps and Angels, he says, "just made me smile," bringing to mind, as it does, a "languid Southern summer." He praises Newman for his use of the blues form "to tell a tale in such a great way."

Orchestra Boabab continues its US tour, bringing music from its latest release, Made in Dakar, to New York City for two free shows, today and tomorrow. This evening at 7 PM ET, the seminal Senegalese band will perform at Rockefeller Park on the Hudson River in downtown Manhattan as part of the summer's River to River Festival of free outdoor performances. Tomorrow, the group will head to Brooklyn's MetroTech center for a noon event as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Rhythm & Blues Festival.

Ry Cooder's new album, I, Flathead, releases today and follows Chavez Ravine (2005) and My Name Is Buddy (2007) as the third and final album in Cooder's California trilogy. Two versions of the new record are available: the standard CD as well as a deluxe package with both the CD and the accompanying 95-page novella that Ry wrote in conjunction with the album songs, told from the perspective of the fictitious musician Kash Buk and featuring an oddball cast of characters and car obsessives from California's drag-racing salt flats in the 1960s.

Harps and Angels, Randy Newman's first album of new music in nearly a decade, is due out on Nonesuch August 5, and already, CBS Sunday Morning's Bill Flanagan is calling it one of the summer's best.

Congratulations to Emmylou Harris, who, the same week she entered the Top 40 on the UK pop charts, with her latest release, All I Intended to Be, debuted at No. 22 on the US pop charts, a career high. The new album simultaneously reached No. 4 on this week's country charts.

Tune in to npr.org tonight at 7:30 PM ET to hear Orchestra Boabab, live in concert. After nearly 40 years of making music, Orchestra Baobab, says NPR, "remains one of the world's foremost purveyors of Afro-Cuban pop.