Punch Brothers make their third appearance on NPR's Mountain Stage with a set recorded on the campus of West Virginia University and airing on NPR stations across the US this week. The band performs five songs off their new album, Who's Feeling Young Now?. Also on NPR, the band can be heard on John Wesley Harding's Cabinet of Wonders. Watch Punch Brothers' performance of "Movement and Location" from last weekend's Bonnaroo and a "Backstage at Mountain Stage" interview with Chris Thile here.

John Adams's music has featured prominently in California concert calendars of late, with the recent world premiere of his new oratorio, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, by the LA Philharmonic, and last weekend's Bay Area premiere of his first opera, Nixon in China, by the San Francisco Opera. The Gospel "contains some of the strongest, most impassioned music of Adams’s career," raves The New Yorker. It is "an immensely potent work, one that may prove pivotal in the composer's output." The San Francisco Chronicle says the piece "finds Adams at his most evocative and inventive." Of Nixon in China, the Chronicle says it "has taken its rightful place as one of the great operas of the latter part of the 20th century. And Friday's performance came as a welcome reminder of how audacious and yet assured this work is."

Shawn Colvin's video for the title track to her new album, All Fall Down, has premiered on YouTube; watch it here. Colvin performs from the album and reads from her new memoir, Diamond in the Rough, at Barnes & Noble at The Grove in LA tonight and performs at the El Rey with Buddy Miller and Viktor Krauss on Tuesday. They performed on CBS This Morning on Saturday. Colvin is featured in the New York Times' Texas Report and in the Austin American-Statesman, which calls All Fall Down "superb."

"Jonny Greenwood shows a deft classical touch," says the Los Angeles Times. Greenwood "has something original to say," writes Times music critic Mark Swed. The performance of his Popcorn Superhet Receiver on the recent Nonesuch album is "dramatically gripping," says Swed, and on the film score to Norwegian Wood, "Greenwood's dreamy, haunting score has the brilliant ephemerality not heard on film since the great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu died two decades ago." The New York Times, reviewing a recent Spoleto Festival concert with Greenwood's 48 Responses to Polymorphia, says the piece "moves from Vaughan Williams-like luxuriousness to a gently dissonant shimmer and, in its final section, an inventively rhythmic workout."

Congratulations to Audra McDonald, winner of the 2012 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for her performance as Bess in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. This marks her fifth Tony Award—tying the record held by Angela Lansbury and Julie Harris—and her first for Leading Actress, following four earlier Tony Awards for Featured roles. Watch her acceptance speech from last night here.

It's Bonnaroo weekend! AfroCubism, Punch Brothers, Sara Watkins will be there to perform; Punch Brothers' set will be webcast live on YouTube ... John Adams's Nixon in China makes San Francisco Opera debut ... Timothy Andres makes London debut ... Carolina Chocolate Drops play free Pittsburgh festival ... Dr. John joins Gov't Mule in Charlotte, Iron & Wine at Ravinia ... Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach is at Toronto's Luminato Festival ... The Low Anthem heads to the UK ... Audra McDonald performs at the Tonys ... Natalie Merchant joins Cincinnati Pops ... Allen Toussaint celebrates New Orleans at Wolf Trap's Louisiana Swap Romp ... and more ...

Shawn Colvin was the guest on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, discussing her new album, All Fall Down, and her memoir, Diamond in the Rough, and performing a few songs. "I kept working on the songwriting and then I finally figured it out," Colvin says of her early career. "I figured out my voice, my talent, things I wanted to say and, you know, I figured it out." She gives a free concert at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, broadcast live on WXPN, today at noon.

John Adams's first opera, Nixon in China, makes its San Francisco Opera debut tonight at the War Memorial Opera House, the opening night of the Opera's Summer Season and the first of seven performances of Adams's piece. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark work and the 40th anniversary of Nixon's visit to China. Watch a preview video here. Also this weekend, Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, will be performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with the three principals who originated their roles.

Timothy Andres makes his London debut at Wigmore Hall tonight with a concert that marks the opening of the venue’s latest summer Late Night Series. The solo recital—a Time Out London Critics' Choice—includes Andres’s own music and works by Ted Hearne, Ingram Marshall, Brahms, and Schumann. He will discuss the concert and perform live on BBC Radio 3's In Tune this afternoon and was the subject of a Daily Telegraph "New Faces" piece.

Ry Cooder’s Election Special, due out August 21, is a wake-up call as the US heads into the 2012 fall election season. "'Wasting Away in Margaritaville' was a good song in its day," says Cooder, "but we need a different kind of a song now if we’re going to make headway against the likes of Charlie and Dave." On Election Special, which he produced, Cooder plays mandolin, guitar, and bass and wrote all of the songs, co-writing one with Joachim Cooder, who plays drums on the record. Stay tuned for an exclusive Nonesuch Store pre-order offer to come.

AfroCubism—the group behind the long-awaited collaboration between Cuban and Malian musicians originally meant to take place when the Buena Vista Social Club was born—launches a whirlwind, four-stop North American tour at Bonnaroo tomorrow, followed by a free show in New York City for Celebrate Brooklyn! on Saturday, a Sunday night show at Raleigh's North Carolina Museum of Art, and free set at Toronto's Luminato Festival with Fatoumata Diawara on Tuesday.

Shawn Colvin marked the release of her new album, All Fall Down, and memoir, Diamond in the Rough, with her first-ever book reading / performance at Barnes & Noble in NYC; she'll do the same in LA on Monday, before Tuesday's concert at the El Rey. Colvin appears on NPR's Diane Rehm Show tomorrow. The New York Daily News says the music on All Fall Down is "delivered with agile vocals and finely woven folk-rock melodies." The Boston Globe says the new book is full of "humor, remorse, and gratitude ... Colvin illuminates the magical blend of craft and happenstance that leads to powerful music."