This past Friday, John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony received its world premiere at Stanford University, and, writes Los Angeles Times staff writer Mark Swed, the piece is "a chip off the old block." The composer wrote his original Chamber Symphony in 1992 while studying Schoenberg and overhearing the Carl Stalling–penned score coming from the Looney Tunes cartoons his son was watching in the other room, but the new piece, writes Swed, "is pure Adams."

Composer Peter Lieberson has been named a recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Neruda Songs, which he wrote for his late wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, before she passed away last year. Her November 2005 performance of the piece with James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra was recorded and released by Nonesuch Records. On today's episode of the Minnesota Public Radio show Performance Today, host Fred Child plays from the recording and speaks with the composer about the piece and the recognition it has received.

The schedule for the 2008 Gilmore Keyboard Festival has been released, and among the artists on the bill for the biannual event are Richard Goode, Audra McDonald, and the Brad Mehldau Trio. The Festival will be held April 24–May 13, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

In a set of performances at Boston's Schubert Theatre last week, the Paul Taylor Dance Company delivered a "sharp, vibrant program," according to the Boston Globe, of two Taylor classics and two pieces receiving their Boston premieres, including Lines of Loss, set to Kronos Quartet's recording of Early Music (Lachryma Antiqua). Writes Thea Singer in her Globe review of the event, Lines of Loss could be seen as the 77-year-old choreographer's reflection on the passage of time, and so the music, fittingly, "weaves through the movement like a scratchy memory." With such a stirring piece, for Singer, the dance's "ending comes almost too soon."

As he wrote in his recent preview of Youssou N'Dour's performance with the Super Étoile band at LA's Royce Hall, the Los Angeles Times's Don Heckman was clearly looking forward to Saturday's show there. According to Heckman's concert review in today's Times, Youssou did not disappoint, and the crowd responded in kind, dancing in the aisles—"animated Terpsichores, arms and legs moving wildly in all direction"—despite the hall's restrictions against it. "The sheer vitality of N'Dour's music almost demands physical movement," he writes. And the give-and-take continued, with Youssou responding to the crowd's energy "by dialing up the already dynamic intensity of the music."

Last Wednesday, Nonesuch Records' production coordinator, Ronen Givony, was listening to an eclectic set of music—piano pieces by Haydn and Messiaen, some electronic tunes, new music for laptop and strings. Not an unlikely mix off the iPod shuffle here at the office. But for this particular listening, Ronen was at a concert at the Good-Shepherd Faith Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side for the much rarer thrill of attending a concert he had produced himself. It was the latest event in the successful series he created last year called Wordless Music.

We can now bring you the complete track list from the album The Wire: “... and all the pieces matter." The deluxe, 35-track disc includes several versions of the show's opening theme song, Tom Waits’s “Way Down in the Hole,” along with tracks from the Baltimore club- and hip-hop scene that have never before been on a major-label release. Also included is some of the most memorable dialog from the program’s five years. We're also pleased to announce that a separate album, Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore Tracks from The Wire, showcasing only tracks by Baltimore musicians, will be released simultaneously.

You've seen the trailer. You've watched the behind-the-scenes footage in the recording studio. You've read what the critics had to say. Now you can hear for yourself what all the talk has been about: Nonesuch Radio is now playing Johnny's performance of the pivotal song "My Friends" off the Sweeney Todd film soundtrack, which will be available from Nonesuch December 18. To hear the track, click on the Nonesuch Radio icon at the top left of this page.

"You know that a movie wows an audience when nobody stirs during the closing credits. That's what happened at the end of Sweeney Todd tonight at the first critics' screening in Manhattan." So reports Tom O'Neil in his LATimes.com blog, Gold Derby. While he's not yet able to give a full review of the movie this far in advance of its December 21 release, he does have a few words to say about Sweeney, which he calls "the most important movie of 2007."

Argentine composer and pianist Fernando Otero will release his Nonesuch debut, Pagina de Buenos Aires, on January 15, 2008, and Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel staff writer David Cázares says the album "captures the spirit and style of tango, one of the world's most intriguing dances." But more than simply repeating what's already been done, "Otero fuses the genre with classical music and jazz ... His music is demanding and expressive ..."

The Zenon Dance Company, based in Minnesota's Twin Cities, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a series of performances beginning tonight and running through Sunday. The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages previews the shows and lists among the program's highlights classic pieces like Bebe Miller's Sanctuary, set to music by Marianne Faithfull, and two new works, including the Midwestern premiere of Doug Varone's Of the Earth Far Below set to Steve Reich's Triple Quartet.

The 2008 Tanglewood season has been announced, and Kronos Quartet is among the Guest Artists taking the stage at the Lenox, Massachusetts, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Kronos' Thursday, August 14, program will include John Zorn's Dead Man, Flugufrelsarinn by Sigur Rós, and Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, which the composer wrote for the Quartet in 1998. Tickets go on sale to the public February 17.