Trio Da Kali is a group of musicians from the Mande culture of southern Mali who come from a long line of distinguished griots. Formed of voice, ngoni, and balafon, the Trio aims to bring a contemporary twist to ancient and neglected repertoires. Its debut EP is now available digitally from World Circuit, distributed in North America by Nonesuch Records.

Punch Brothers stopped by NPR to give a Tiny Desk Concert. The concert opens with a special surprise for Thile, who happened to be celebrating a birthday that day, followed by a performance of four songs from their new album, The Phosphorescent Blues. Thile, "along with this versatile and talented group, rocked our world," says host Bob Boilen. "Punch Brothers mixes bluegrass, pop and classical music. It's a tough combination to imagine, and an even harder one to make work, but this band ... makes the unimaginable contagious and fun. They push boundaries and make music like no one else." Watch the Tiny Desk Concert here.

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters announce their 2015 North American tour. Kicking off May 24 at the Sasquatch! Festival in George, WA, the dates include his return to Bonnaroo and finish off in Philadelphia June 17. Tickets go on sale starting this Friday. Each ticket to the non-festival shows will include a CD of the band’s latest album, lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar. The Pixies open five of these shows, and JD McPherson five. Citi cardmembers have access to presale tickets for the Santa Barbara and LA shows starting Wednesday.

Buena Vista Social Club's Lost and Found, a collection of previously unreleased tracks, is due out next week. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen at npr.org. "It was nearly 20 years ago, back in 1997, that the Buena Vista Social Club became an improbable worldwide sensation: a group of mainly elderly (and some younger) Cuban musicians, performing traditional son music for an album produced by Ry Cooder," writes NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas. "If it turns out that this is the year we do say a final goodbye to the Buena Vista collective, Lost and Found provides a gorgeous reminder of what made it so famous to begin with — and what we'll all be missing."

This lucky Friday the 13th, Robert Plant kicks off Latin American tour in Mexico and Lollapalooza Chile ... Laurie Anderson performs in Nashville ... Bombino plays New Zealand WOMAD ... Jeremy Denk, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields tour California ... Richard Goode plays Beethoven in Amsterdam ... Kronos Quartet is in Wisconsin ... Audra McDonald performs in Tucson ... Brad Mehldau, Mark Guiliana close out Mehliana tour in Tokyo and Seoul ... Punch Brothers are on CBS and PBS ... and more ...

The Nonesuch Records CD/DVD release of Louis Andriessen's opera La Commedia has won the Caecilia Prize by the association of Belgium's classical music press. The film opera, a collaboration with director Hal Hartley, is based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, with additional texts from the 16th-century German theologian Sebastian Brant, the 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, and the Old Testament’s "Song of Songs." The recording is a finalist in the 2015 International Opera Awards; the winners will be announced on April 26.

Composer Nico Muhly was the guest on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook. His in-depth conversation with Ashbrook touches on a number of aspects of his work, not least his first large-scale opera, Two Boys. Nonesuch released the recording of Two Boys—recorded live during the Met's 2013 production with conductor David Robertson and director Bartlett Sher—in September. You can listen to the On Point interview here.

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney makes her album debut with The Longest River, available April 28 on Nonesuch Records. On the album, Chaney balances her original compositions with a selection of covers she has newly arranged that illustrate the broad sweep of her taste, from jazz to Purcell to folk. "Her voice holds the purity, tension, dignity and sorrow of a heritage full of songs about lost love and cruel fate," says the New York Times. "Ms. Chaney is thoroughly grounded in the past, from medieval music to [Joni] Mitchell. But in her quiet way, she’s radical." The Longest River is available to pre-order with an instant download of the album tracks "Imperfections" and "The King's Horses."

Record Store Day, the annual celebration of independent record stores, is set to take place on Saturday, April 18, and included among the special limited-edition releases on that day are vinyl recordings from Robert Plant, Steve Reich, and Buena Vista Social Club.

Emmylou Harris will receive the 2015 Polar Music Prize in a gala ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall on June 9. She will be presented the prize by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, along with her fellow laureate, percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The event will be broadcast live on Sweden's TV4, viewable throughout Europe via TV4 Play. "The music of Emmylou Harris contains the history and topography of the entire American continent," reads the prize citation. "Emmylou Harris makes the world bigger and smaller, more valuable and more beautiful." Previous laureates include Kronos Quartet, Steve Reich, Youssou N'Dour, Björk, Joni Mitchell, and more.

Congratulations to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's musical Here Lies Love, which has been nominated for three Olivier Awards: Best New Musical, Outstanding Achievement in Music, and Best Theatre Choreographer for Annie-B Parson. The awards ceremony will be held at the Royal Opera House in London on April 12. The National Theatre production of Here Lies Love was met with great critical acclaim and won the 2014 London Evening Standard Theatre Awards' Beyond Theatre award for "pushing the boundaries of musicals."

Singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara, who was born of Malian parents in the Ivory Coast, spoke with PBS NewsHour about the struggle to preserve Mali's rich musical heritage under the shadow of ongoing violence there. "If we want the best for Africa, the only—the first thing to do is to know how to bring peace," says Diawara. "Without peace, nothing, we cannot start any kind of government. Nothing, nothing’s possible." You can watch the piece here.