Emmylou Harris, Kronos Quartet, and Philip Glass will be among the diverse array of artists performing at the Sydney Festival in Australia this January. Harris will give three shows, including a free set at the Festival First Night, marking her first time performing in Australia in a decade. Kronos gives the Australian premiere of A Chinese Home, with pipa virtuoso Wu Man, and performs Glass's Dracula with the composer. Glass also offers an evening of his chamber music with cellist Wendy Sutter. The Black Keys will be in Australia for the Big Day Out tour plus several newly added side shows.

Harps and Angels, the new musical featuring the music and lyrics of Randy Newman, begins previews today at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The show opens officially on November 21 and runs through December 22. Though it shares its name with Newman's latest Nonesuch release, the new production includes songs from that album and throughout his career. The show is directed by Jerry Zaks, with Katey Sagal and Michael McKean leading an ensemble cast.

The Malian and Cuban musicians behind AfroCubism close out their three-city tour of North America at The Town Hall in New York City tonight. The Times of London calls AfroCubism "an album of extraordinary cross-cultural musicianship." It was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, which sums up AfroCubism as "a summit of giants at play—their egos in check, their hearts open and the tangled history of two worlds flowing through their veins." The Wall Street Journal notes the album's "easy communion and some gorgeous details."

Ben Folds, currently in the midst of his US tour, is now set to tour Europe in February and March 2011 in support of his latest album, Lonely Avenue, a collaboration between him and Nick Hornby. The 14-date tour begins in Dublin on February 18 and includes concerts in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Holland. Tickets go on sale to Ben Folds Fan Club on Wednesday and the general public on Friday. Folds and Hornby spoke with CNN in an interview you can watch here.

John Adams's Slonimsky's Earbox will open the LA Philharmonic's January 9 concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It's the first of three concerts that will be broadcast live to movie theaters across North America as part of LA Phil LIVE. Also on the program are works by Bernstein and Beethoven. In a video posted here, LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel calls it "a program with a lot of spirit and a lot of energy and a lot of joy."

There's just one more day to submit your remix of the third movement of Steve Reich's 2x5. Final submissions are due at Indaba Music by 5 PM ET on Tuesday. Once all the submissions are in, it's time to start voting. From November 9 to 23, fans and a panel of judges, including Reich, will review the submissions. Indaba will announce the jury’s choices of Grand Prize Winner and two Runners-Up on December 7, as well as the public’s choice of 10 Honorable Mentions.

Nonesuch releases its second record from North Carolina-based string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops—a four-song EP—on January 25. The record is a collaboration with the New York City–based Romanian gypsy punk band Luminescent Orchestrii. This self-titled EP is now available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store, where the first 100 copies of the CD and the first 100 copies on vinyl will be signed by the Chocolate Drops. All pre-orders include an instant download of the record’s opening track, “Short Dress Gal.”

The Low Anthem has just added another date to their rapidly growing tour calendar: opening for Iron & Wine at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on January 26. The band joins Emmylou Harris at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh tomorrow to launch a ten-city tour of the US East Coast. The Low Anthem will join the Carolina Chocolate Drops for six dates in December and will play the Allen Room in New York as part of Lincoln Center's 2011 American Songbook series in January.

Punch Brothers play Letterman, open for Dave Matthews ... AfroCubism kicks off three-city North American tour ... Laurie Anderson performs Transitory Life in England ... David Byrne screens tour doc in NYC ... Ben Folds launches Lonely Avenue tour in Chicago ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica continue US tour in Chicago ... Kronos Quartet brings borderless music to Boston ... Brad Mehldau premieres Highway Rider in Minneapolis ... Natalie Merchant talks at TimesCenter ... Stephen Sondheim talks in San Francisco ... Allen Toussaint, Nicholas Payton play music of New Orleans ... Sara Watkins tours UK ... and more ...

Brad Mehldau's Highway Rider receives its world premiere performance tonight and Saturday at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. Mehldau will perform with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Jeff Ballard, Larry Grenadier, Joshua Redman, and Matt Chamberlain. "Mehldau has built a career on mixing musical styles and influences into something celebrated as distinctly original," says the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He has put that aesthetic to particular work in his newest album Highway Rider, a piece that flexes Mehldau's composing muscles as much as it does his jazz piano acumen." The New York Times calls it "this year’s most luxurious jazz release."

The musicians of the new album AfroCubism launch a three-city North American tour tonight in Montreal, then head to Boston and New York. The Boston Globe calls this "the most important world-music tour of the season" and describes the album as "thrilling and impeccably produced." The Wall Street Journal says it displays "the same kind of creative genre-mixing in world forms that we're accustomed to hearing in North American jazz." PRI's The World says "AfroCubism feels like something that's long overdue has finally arrived. Triumphantly." Alarm Press says "the album has an electrifying liveliness that stems not only from 15 years of pent-up collaborative energy but more than 100 years of crisscrossing cultural histories."