Punch Brothers and Emmylou Harris return to Telluride Bluegrass Festival … Tyondai Braxton headlines Switchboard Music Festival in San Francisco … Olivia Chaney tours England with Ben Folds … Lake Street Dive heads South … Pat Metheny tours Italy … Joshua Redman Quartet plays Seattle … The Staves play Brooklyn, Firefly Festival … Rokia Traoré peforms in France … and more …

Allen Toussaint's final recording, American Tunes, was released last week to critical acclaim, with three new and noteworthy reviews just in. American Tunes adds "an elegant new perspective on Toussaint's legacy," says NPR's All Things Considered. "He sings the same way he plays piano: gracefully, using understatement to devastating effect, says reviewer Tom Moon. "That kind of poise is easy to overlook, but it's crucial to just about everything on this delightful survey of American tunes. And it's one of the qualities that made Allen Toussaint an American treasure." Listen to the review here. The album is "an elegant and fitting adieu from the New Orleans master," says the AP. "Toussaint makes a fine final impression on American Tunes, a repertoire as rich as his own contributions to music over a nearly 60-year career."Stereophile names American Tunes its Recording of the Month, calling it "a fantastic and esoteric tour through the Great American Songbook, as selected by the old master himself."

Olivia Chaney plays six shows as special guest of Ben Folds on his UK tour with the yMusic ensemble, starting this Friday. She performs songs from her debut album, The Longest River, in shows at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Sage Gateshead, Brighton Dome, and Cambridge Corn Exchange, as well as two nights at the London Palladium. You can hear Chaney perform songs from the album on WXPN's Folkadelphia here.

Composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellars are joining forces once again to create Girls of the Golden West, a new opera set during the 1850s California Gold Rush to be presented by San Francisco Opera at the War Memorial Opera House in seven performances in November 2017. The opera is being co-commissioned and co-produced by San Francisco Opera, The Dallas Opera, Amsterdam's Dutch National Opera, and Teatro La Fenice, Venice. This premiere will be a part of the John Adams at 70 celebrations, featuring performances of his work around the world throughout 2017.

The SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco has announced its 2016–17 concert season and featured among the performers taking the Miner Auditorium stage in the venue's fifth anniversary season are Pat Metheny with his new quartet; Brad Mehldau, revisiting his acclaimed 2010 album Highway Rider with his Trio, Joshua Redman, Mark Guiliana, and a chamber orchestra; and Emmylou Harris, who joins Rosanne Cash and Lucinda Williams in concert. Tickets go on sale to members on Saturday, June 25, and to the general public on Wednesday, July 13.

Lake Street Dive—which took some time from its ongoing US tour to perform at a special event at The White House yesterday!—has announced a North American tour for this September and October. In addition to previously announced shows at Wang Theatre in Boston and Radio City Music Hall in NYC, the tour includes stops in Nashville, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Knoxville, Madison, Providence, and more, culminating in two nights at Union Transfer in Philadelphia.

Joshua Redman kicks off a tour with his Quartet—pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Gregory Hutchinson—at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz tonight, followed by multiple-set stops in Portland, Seattle, and Denver. The tour moves east for sets at the Elkhart Jazz Festival in Indiana and in the Berkshires. Larry Grenadier swaps in for Rogers as the Quartet holds a six-night residency at the Blue Note in NYC for the Blue Note Jazz Festival. Redman and a different Quartet—pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Jorge Rossy—tour Europe in July, stopping in Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, and Spain.

American Tunes, the final recording by legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint, is out now. Produced by Joe Henry, it features both solo piano recordings and others made with a band plus special guests Rhiannon Giddens and Van Dyke Parks. There are works by Toussaint, Professor Longhair, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Paul Simon, and others. It's "a rich pianistic tour de force of American music," says the Los Angeles Times, "a gorgeous, grace-filled journey through the history of American popular music by one of its most artful proponents." The Times of London calls it "gorgeous," exclaiming: "Swan songs don't get any better." Uncut calls it "the perfect eulogy for one of America's true musical greats." Watch Toussaint's performance of Paul Simon's "American Tune" on Austin City Limits in 2009 here.

Louis Andriessen's Theatre of the World receives European premiere in Amsterdam … The Bad Plus Joshua Redman plays Hollywood Bowl … Olivia Chaney, Joe Boyd perform in Wales … Michael Daves plays three trio sets in Massachusetts … Lake Street Dive tours the Southeast … Conor Oberst performs in New Haven and Brooklyn … Punch Brothers headline Huck Finn Jubilee ... The Staves are in Montreal … and more …

Audra McDonald, currently on Broadway in Shuffle Along, joined The Late Late Show host James Corden for a very special, all-Broadway Carpool Karaoke last night, along with Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda; Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, now on Broadway in Fully Committed; and 30 Rock's Jane Krakowski, now in She Loves Me. Corden, who hosts the Tony Awards this Sunday, and crew rode through NYC singing out show tunes from Hamilton, Rent, Jersey Boys, and, Les Misérables. Watch it here.

Michael Daves tours three Northeast cities this week in support of his new album, Orchids and Violence. Joining him are Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny and fiddler Brittany Haas. The tour stops at World Café Live in Philadelphia on Thursday, The Red Room @ Café 939 in Boston on Friday, and The Parlor Room in Northampton on Saturday. "Noam and Brittany are both incredible improvisers and great listeners," says Daves. "These shows are going to be full of surprises." You can watch the trio perform the album track "June Apple" here.

Today marks the release of Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Blues and Ballads, which comprises interpretations of songs by other composers, this time with the focus on blues and ballads implied by the album’s title. "Stellar jazz pianist Mehldau again proves that three is the magic number," says MOJO in a four-star review, "resurrecting the trio that has consistently advanced the jazz lexicon in the course of the past 20 years. A spellbinding set whose salient features are subtlety and understatement. Sublime stuff." The Times of London, in its five-star review, says: "Yet another rhapsodic rollercoaster from this master of romantic complexity."