The Black Keys' latest album, Attack & Release is featured on the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered. "Their previous four records were very heavy on loud guitars and very blues based," says the show's host, Bob Boilen. "Their new CD is produced by Brian Burton, also known as Danger Mouse, and though it's still basically a drums and guitar record, there are more quiet moments and more subtle moments going on here."

All this month, and running through May 12, BBC Radio 2 is airing a six-part documentary called Jac Holzman's Elektra Story, as part of the network's Monday night Music Club. In part three of the documentary, the company founder recounts the Nonesuch Records founder's earliest days and his hopes for the new endeavor. Joshua Rifkin was involved from the start and sums up the label's initial appeal this way: "Inexpensive classical record labels had been there before, but they looked like a budget production. And it was Jac's brilliant idea to think that one could do something that really looked distinctive, did not look low-rent, had a definite identity of its own."

On the latest Nonesuch release from Kronos Quartet, the group offers the premiere recording of longtime collaborator Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic, taking the listener on a "fantastic journey," says the San Francsico Classical Voice, through the 2004 piece, which Kronos commissioned in honor of the composer's 70th birthday.

Steve Reich's Double Sextet was given its New York premiere last Thursday at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall by eighth blackbird. The New York Times says that the "vigorous" new piece "begins with Mr. Reich's signature chugging rhythms but quickly moves a fair distance, as intricate rhythmic counterpoint and thickening harmonies displace the repetitive opening figure." Following its West Coast premiere last Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times said it creates "the kind of explosion of fractured rhythms that never ceases to amaze the ear."

New York's Other Music presented Toumani Diabate in a rare in-store solo lecture-demonstration earlier this year for the Live at Other Music series, to celebrate the release of his new album, The Mande Variations, and now offers up two videos from the event. "When we’re lucky enough to host a musician with the singular vision and dedication of Malian griot and kora prodigy Toumani Diabate," says Other Music's Josh Madell, "it makes us all take pause."

This past weekend, Chicago Opera Theater began India Blooms in Chicago, its monthlong festival of Indian culture in preparation for the May 14 Midwest premiere of John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree. The work features a libretto by Adams and his longtime collaborator Peter Sellars, adapted from an ancient southern Indian folktale and poetry translated by the late A. K. Ramanujan, a scholar at the University of Chicago. The composer will conduct the May 14 Chicago premiere and the succeeding performance, on May 17; three more performances will follow; all will take place at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.

The Brad Mehldau Trio's two-disc Live album receives three and a half stars from the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It is way cool to follow the flights of pianist Brad Mehldau and his trio on this live two-disc recording," says the Inquirer. "Mehldau proves he can weave a groove as well as anyone. It's satisfying to hear him pick intense lines in some remote corner of a long tune or pile on one note repeatedly, because his rhythmic drive is so strong."