Philadelphia magazine is giving away tickets to see Youssou N'Dour in concert next Tuesday, November 20, for his debut appearance at the city's Kimmel Center. 

Dawn Upshaw will perform Berio's Folksongs with the New York Philharmonic, March 5–8, 2008. Audra McDonald was originally slated to perform at the concerts, but has had to withdraw due to a scheduling conflict. 

Responding to the news that Nonesuch will soon release the first-ever soundtrack from HBO's The Wire, Paste magazine points to the album's inclusion of local Baltimore artists as a prime example of the show's making authenticity paramount. Paste calls the upcoming soundtrack a "must-have" for the show's legendary die-hard fans.

On the LA Times film blog Extended Play, Todd Martens reports from a screening earlier this week of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, There Will Be Blood. The director was in attendance and spoke afterwards about the film. Martens hopes that the "fascinating," "startling" score by Jonny Greenwood gets through to Oscar voters "for the original score nomination it deserves."

A new contest for fans of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd gives new meaning to the song "My Friends." MySpace members can enter to win a three-day trip to attend the Tim Burton–directed film's premiere and meet its star, Johnny Depp, in person, simply by adding the Sweeney Todd page as a Friend.

This week, New York magazine's "Vulture" recommends Sérgio and Odair Assad's latest recording, Jardim Abandonado, as "a blissful testament to the richness of their pairing." Throughout the album, "the brothers perform a brilliant act of creative give-and-take." And on a record of astounding performances, the "Vulture" notes as "most appealing ... their subdued and lyrical 'Rhapsody in Blue'—a reminder of what can be accomplished when a guitar is in the right hands."

As part of Pitchfork's Guest List feature, Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore names The Wire as his Favorite TV Show at the Moment. He admits that he didn't own a TV for years and doesn't watch much these days, but he does make time to catch the show: "The writing on The Wire is pretty intense. The dialogue, the storylines—they're really involving."

As part of its new feature, Source-Outing, Spinner.com asked Caetano Veloso to name five artists and albums that would give readers a better understanding of his own music. Writer Steve Hochman, in his introduction, writes: "In nearly 40 years he's covered so much ground but with so distinct an approach at all stages that trying to characterize any particular phase or album as anything different from any other just seems pointless and wrongheaded. Some have termed his most recent release, Cê, a 'rock' album. But, really, it's simply a Caetano Veloso album, just as Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain isn't a classical-fusion album, it's Davis. Or Rubber Soul isn't a folk-rock album, it's a Beatles album."

Last night, at a special event at New York's Lincoln Center, Youssou N'Dour was named among the 2008–09 mentor artists in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The mentors, from five countries and six different fields in the arts, also include director Martin Scorsese and actress Kate Valk from the US, German artist Rebecca Horn, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, and Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian.

Late last month, The New Yorker published an in-depth profile of the HBO series The Wire and its creator David Simon, covering everything from the inception of the show to a preview of its upcoming fifth season. Singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who has appeared on the show and is a friend of its creator, tells Talbot that Simon is "a music freak."

On Sunday, Caetano Veloso made his Toronto concert debut, and the Globe and Mail takes the opportunity to weigh in on the ever-evolving performer it calls, approvingly, "a master of 'all is not what it seems.'" "The music of Cê in itself is prime Veloso in trickster mode. It's rock music that's a poke in the eye of 'rockism,' the elevation of certain rock music to exalted elite status ... But the music, whether audacious and driving or achingly melancholic, and from whatever period of his prolific songbook, was unfailingly stronger for any inherent contradictions." In advance of tomorrow night's show in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Times has published a profile of the performer examining how he has maintained what may be "the most varied career of any '60s icon."

Pianist Philip Bush reports in his blog, Mostly Music in the Midlands, from his weeklong tour through France with the Steve Reich Ensemble and conductor Alan Pierson performing The Cave, Reich's early '90s video-opera collaboration with Beryl Korot.