This week in Slate, New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross and New York Times jazz and pop critic Ben Ratliff engage in a dialogue about music in and outside of the fields they generally cover. In a posting today, Ross tips his hat to jazz clubs for providing an alternative to the more reverent classical concert hall. He's happy to note a new trend in the classical world towards a more improvisatory experience, stemming in part from the predominance of composer-performers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich in post-War music .

TheReporter.com reviews the new documentary The Pixar Story, an "informative, inspiring, and wildly entertaining" film about the animation giant that opens the San Francisco International Film Festival tomorrow night. Featured in the documentary is Randy Newman, whose music laid the foundation for some of the studio's greatest successes: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and the Oscar-winning Monsters, Inc. (Randy won for Best Original Song, "If I Didn't Have You").

In today's New York Daily News, Carolina Gonzalez previews Caetano Veloso's upcoming New York City performances at the Nokia Theater, and has a friendly suggestion for the folks who hand out the Grammys: "If the Latin Recording Academy gave out a Grammy for Best Living Songwriter, Caetano Veloso would walk away handily with the prize." (While that's not yet an option, Caetano has grabbed two nominations for his new record, Cê—Best Singer-Songwriter Album and Best Brazilian Song for "Não Me Arrependo" off the album.)

Seattle radio station KEXP has added to this week's list of featured new releases David Byrne's "In the Future" from the reissue of Knee Plays. The album—on CD for the first time—hit stores yesterday, complete with the original 13 tracks plus seven previously unavailable instrumental tracks. You can hear a clip of "In the Future" on KEXP.org or visit kneeplays.com to hear more from the album and check out site-exclusive bonus materials.

As we reported last week, the phenomenal collaboration between Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet at this year's Bridge School Benefit concerts proved to be the highlight of the weekend's events. Now you can catch a glimpse of the spectacular set on this video released by The Bridge School. In this clip, Waits and Kronos perform the song "God's Away on Business," which they last played together at a benefit concert in 2003.

The Magnetic Fields have announced the dates for their upcoming tour in support of their new record, Distortion, due in January. The tour kicks off in Northampton, MA, on February 11 and runs through March 16.

There's been a lot of great coverage of the upcoming film version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp, and great reviews of the current national tour of the recent Broadway production have been pouring in. Florida's TC Palm newspaper has taken a look at a more under-reported but still important reworking of the play: the very first "School Edition," which premieres this weekend.

The 2007 Dance Chicago festival kicked off its monthlong series of events last Friday at the city's Athenaeum Theatre, and according to Chicago Sun-Times dance critic Hedy Weiss, the opening weekend's festivities did not disappoint. Among the program's special events was the world premiere of choreographer Eddy Ocampo's Thwack, in which dancers from the Black Box Dance company performed to the rhythms of music by Steve Reich.

Today, NPR has launched a new multimedia music site at npr.org/music, incorporating content from its national programs and several partner stations' programming. Among the site's features are artist interviews, concerts, and live broadcast streams from the member stations. One special feature is Project Song, which challenges songwriters to write and record a new song in two days. Participants are asked to choose from a stack of images and words and write a song based on one of each. Kicking off the series is The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, who used the project to create "A Man of a Million Faces."

Today's most e-mailed story from the nytimes.com Movies section is "Demon Barber, Meat Pies and All, Sings on Screen," which was featured in yesterday's New York Times. The article tracks the story behind the film version of Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp—the soundtrack is due out on Nonesuch December 18—from the first time director Tim Burton saw the Stephen Sondheim musical as a college student in 1980. "After stewing in his imagination on and off for some 25 years," writes Sylviane Gold, "that encounter has been channeled into Mr. Burton's new film version."

In this week's Onion, the A.V. Club asks actor Jason Schwartzman to set his iPod to shuffle and comment on what comes up. When he hits Randy Newman's "Living Without You," Schwartzman says: "This might be one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

Caetano Veloso performed at Boston's Orpheum Theatre last Friday, and the Boston Globe reports on what was a full-on rock show by "the gifted and eclectic Brazilian superstar." With the focus of the concert on Caetano's latest album, the rock-influenced Cê, "the setting was stripped-down and austere by the artist's standards, but the ideas were not."