Nickel Creek is featured on today's episode of On Point, from NPR member station 90.9 WBUR in Boston. The group performs songs from its recent Nonesuch Records debut album, A Dotted Line and talks with host Tom Ashbrook about the new album, the group's evolution, and the various projects the band members have been working on in the years since the last Nickel Creek album. This year marks 25 years since the formation of the trio, dormant since 2007, and, says Ashbrook: "Now they’re back together, with a great sound." Hear the episode here.

Joshua Redman's new album, Trios Live, earns four stars from BBC Music Magazine, which lauds Redman's "athletic, exuberant and all-consuming extemporization" on the album, calling it "a thrill-a-minute set," and All About Jazz, which says "Redman's definitely got the fire and burns hot as coals in Trios Live which captures the essence of his unbridled abilities as musician and performer ... Redman is in his element."

John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto receives West Coast premiere with saxophonist Timothy McAllister at Cabrillo Festival ... Bombino tours Europe ... Carolina Chocolate Drops play home state of North Carolina ... Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin play benefit in Aspen ... Iron and Wine is at Hollywood Bowl ... Kronos Quartet launches concert season in northern California ... Pat Metheny Unity Group closes out US summer tour ... Nickel Creek tours out West ... Conor Oberst plays European festivals ... Robert Plant headlines at Glastonbury Abbey ... Joshua Redman tours East Coast with The Bad Plus ... and more ...

Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters today announced their 2014 fall tour in support of the new album, lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar, due September 9. Kicking off in Port Chester, NY, at the Capitol Theater on September 25, the dates finish in Los Angeles on October 7 at the Hollywood Palladium. All Citi card members can purchase their tickets to the tour beginning August 12. Each presale will include a copy of Robert Plant’s new record. The general public presale begins August 15. Plant will also be performing two shows at Brooklyn’s BAM as part of Nonesuch 50th anniversary concerts. A live version of the album track "Rainbow" has premiered via Rolling Stone.

Lily-O, a new album of reimagined folk songs by Vermont-born singer / fiddler / banjoist / guitarist Sam Amidon will be released September 30 by Nonesuch Records (with vinyl to come October 28).The album was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Feist) and features the innovative jazz guitarist and composer Bill Frisell, along with Amidon’s other frequent collaborators, bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Chris Vatalaro. Amidon tours in Europe this summer and performs as part of BAM's celebration of Nonesuch’s 50th anniversary. Pre-orders of Lily-O are available now in the Nonesuch Store with an instant download of the album track "Walkin’ Boss,” which premiered on Stereogum.

Nonesuch releases the second recording collaboration by bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile—Bass & Mandolin—September 9, 2014. The album features ten original compositions by the two artists, who have been performing together sporadically for more than a decade and made their recording debut as a duo with 2008’s Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile, which the Washington Post praised, saying “Thile and Meyer are most enthralling when they pass a melody back and forth, fingers flying.” The duo embarks on a month-long North American tour on September 16. Bass & Mandolin is available to pre-order with an instant download of the album track “Tarnation.”

Nickel Creek—Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins—will tape a performance for Austin City Limits on Monday, August 25, at ACL Live at The Moody Theater, in Austin. The trio returns with its first new music in nine years and for its third appearance on the PBS series Austin City Limits. Chris Thile also visited the show with Punch Brothers; Sara Watkins recently appeared on the show with the Decemberists. For free passes to the show, starting about a week before the taping, visit acltv.com. 

John Adams's new recording of City Noir and his Saxophone Concerto features "superb" performances by the St. Louis Symphony led by David Robertson and "first-class soloist" saxophonist Timothy McAllister, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. McAllister's "performance, well-supported by Robertson, is amazing." The Post-Dispatch concludes that "both pieces get terrific performances; the recording itself got top-notch engineering." McAllister and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra give the West Coast Premiere of the Saxophone Concerto at the Cabrillo Music Festival on Saturday, August 9. 

Steve Reich is special guest at and focus of Bang on a Can's MASS MoCA Summer Music Festival ... Sam Amidon is in Belgium ... Bombino plays festivals in Sweden and Italy ... Shawn Colvin performs in the Bay Area ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica revisit Eight Seasons of Vivaldi plus Piazzolla in France ... Pat Metheny Unity Group, Conor Oberst are in upstate New York ... Nickel Creek kicks off West Coast tour ... and more ...

Kronos Quartet has announced its 2014–15 concert season, including a month-long tour of European summer festivals that culminates in a residency at Kraków's Sacrum Profanum. Kronos returns to the US in late September for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)'s celebration of Nonesuch Records' 50th anniversary, Nonesuch Records at BAM, featuring a concert of folk music with Natalie Merchant, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Amidon, and Olivia Chaney, and five nights with Laurie Anderson performing her Landfall. Another season highlight is the multimedia program Beyond Zero: 1914–1918, which Kronos will perform throughout the US.

Pat Metheny Unity Group has announced a tour of Asia and Australia for this October, featuring music from its debut album, Kin (←→). The tour begins in Seoul, South Korea, on October 5, then heads to Japan for stops in Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and three nights in Tokyo; followed by Australia, with stops in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, and the Sydney Opera House; and comes to a close in Singapore on October 27. Metheny talks about the tour on ABC Jazz's Talking Jazz this Friday. The Unity Group is currently in the midst of a US tour with special guest Bruce Hornsby.

Conor Oberst, who, backed by LA band Dawes, performs at SummerStage in NYC's Central Park under a beautiful mid-summer sky tonight, played in the similarly picturesque outdoor surroundings of the Newport Folk Festival over the weekend. NPR Music recorded the set, which is now streaming in full. "Conor Oberst has settled into his 30s as a wise and wizened elder statesman," says NPR. "He's come to channel his youthful intensity into real showmanship, especially onstage, while continuing to mine powerful emotions and a sort of fearless poignancy in his songwriting." His new album, "the very fine Upside Down Mountain ... finds him pairing inward-looking observations with outward-facing arrangements that project genuine soul and panache."