Sara Watkins's late-summer plans are already in order, with the month-long Summer Love Tour with Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion starting in August. There's more music to come in the first half of the summer too, as Watkins starts the season at Joe's Pub in New York City on June 21, then heads on tour for two weeks with Dar Williams.

Now that Natalie Merchant's brief spring tour of select US cities introducing music from her new album, Leave Your Sleep, has come to a close, Merchant has announced that, following her upcoming European tour, she will return to the States for a wide-scale, nationwide summer tour. Beginning July 12, the seven-week tour will be her first major outing in seven years. Merchant and her band will perform new material as well as favorites from throughout her career.

Congratulations to A Little Night Music, the recipient of four Tony Award nominations. The Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim / Hugh Wheeler musical has been nominated for Best Revival of a Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Catherine Zeta-Jones, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Angela Lansbury, and Best Sound Design of a Musical. It has also been nominated for three Drama Desk Awards and three Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Celebrate Brooklyn!—one of New York City's longest-running free, outdoor performing arts festivals—has announced the complete line-up for this summer's concert series in in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Among the featured performers this year are Allen Toussaint, The Low Anthem, and the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, featuring Omara Portuondo.

Last week came word that The Black Keys would be touring with Kings of Leon for a dozen dates this September. The band has now added several additional dates, following the release of its new album, Brothers, including headlining shows with The Morning Benders, The Whigs, and Nicole Atkins. Patrick Carney talks with Billboard about the upcoming record and recent projects he and Dan Auerbach have taken on.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops kicked off their North American tour with what the New York Times called an "end-to-end display of excellence," during a free concert in Harlem presented by Carnegie Hall on Saturday. "They make short work of their instructive mission and spend their energy on things that require it: flatfoot dancing, jug playing, shouting." The trio next takes that infectious exuberance up north for two shows in Ontario.

The recently released album Secret Agent is the latest from Tony Allen, "the man who helped create Afrobeat with Fela Kuti," says NPR. Now, Nonesuch Records has partnered with the producers of FELA!, the hit Broadway musical on the life of Kuti, to offer customers who order the Secret Agent CD in the Nonesuch Store up to almost 40% off tickets to the musical the New York Times called "impossible to resist."

Bill Frisell is in New York City this week to begin a two-week residency at the Village Vanguard. This week's line-up features the Bill Frisell Trio, with Eyvind Kang on violin and Rudy Royston on drums. Next week, Frisell leads his 858 Quartet, with Kang returning on violin, Jenny Scheinman on violin as well, and Hank Roberts joining on cello. Tonight, Portrait of a Man, a new documentary film featuring Frisell's music, receives its international premiere at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto.

Randy Newman tours Scandinavia and blogs about it ... John Adams hosts SF film screening ... Björk DJs in Brooklyn ... Carolina Chocolate Drops offer free shows in NYC ... Richard Goode solos in NYC ... Kronos plays for SF families ... The Low Anthem winds down tour ... Natalie Merchant plays PEN Festival Cabaret ... Pat Metheny plays Pacific Northwest ... Punch Brothers are in Baton Rouge ... Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau duo ... Allen Toussaint does double sets at Jazz Fest ... Rokia Traoré tours UK ... Dawn Upshaw performs Knoxville in St. Paul ... Wilco awes Australia ... and more ...

It was just two weeks ago we announced the search for collaborators to remix Laurie Anderson's new song “Only an Expert,” off her upcoming Nonesuch release, Homeland, and the response has been great. The competition is set to increase as the May 13 cut-off date nears, and the public and the jury, including Anderson and Lou Reed, begin to review the submissions. Enter today at Indaba Music, and pre-order Homeland, along with a signed copy of the "Only an Expert" vinyl single, in the Nonesuch Store.

Timothy Andres, whose debut recording, Shy and Mighty, is due out on Nonesuch May 18, is featured in a Wall Street Journal article examining how the young composer, raised on the classical canon, was later introduced to a new world of music that included everything from iconic classic rock to contemporary classical icons like Steve Reich and John Adams, and how this has influenced his own work.

John Adams will host a special screening of the Italian film I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, followed by a Q&A, at The Castro Theatre this Sunday afternoon. Several of Adams's works surge with new life as the score to film, which was directed and produced with Adams's music in mind. Following the film's recent UK theatrical release, the Times of London gave it five stars, noting its "sublime score."