Isabel Bayrakdarian's Remembrance Tour, celebrating the music of Gomidas Vartabed, whose work is featured on her Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, continues this Friday at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall. Her most recent performance, last week at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, was "a rarity singing a rarity," writes the Vancouver Sun—Bayrakdarian for "her lustrous voice and emotional commitment to the material she finds meaningful." The Nonesuch recording is "wonderful," says the Sun, and the live performance of it "captivated us with the beauty of the songs."

John Adams makes his Met Opera debut tonight with the New York premiere of his opera Doctor Atomic. The New Yorker calls it "a striking example of the new Met’s range." New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert conducts, in his company debut. Gerald Finley reprises his role as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and tells the New York Times: "The strength of Doctor Atomic is the layered subtext. Each character has many agendas to get through. It’s very refreshing to reveal aspects that haven’t been seen." Director Penny Woolcock tells The Financial Times: "John's music grows out of the finest lyrical tradition of operatic composition but it is part of the 20th and 21st centuries ... I can hear bits of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix and the rhythms of today."

Randy Newman took his tour of songs from his latest album, Harps and Angels, and throughout his career, across the Midwest this past weekend. The Waukegan, Illinois, paper The Lake Forester says Randy "was in top form Friday" at the show there, with the performance showing "how well constructed Newman's songs are." The Kansas City Star concludes after Randy's Saturday show in that city: "No one does what he does the way he does it: sing and comment with humor, sadness, anger and regret about everything from world history, politics, religion and socio-economics to love, death, sex and parenthood."

Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile perform Bach at a Barack Obama benefit in NYC ... Adams and Rzewski works are on the program for an Obama benefit in Baltimore, while the Pittsburgh Symphony pairs Adams with Dvořák and the San Francisco Ballet brings Mark Morris's Joyride, with Adams music, to New York ... Laurie Anderson returns to Homeland after a trip to the Arctic ... Andriessen meets Kubrick when the Dresdner Sinfoniker pairs De Stijl with 2001 ... The Black Keys return to Akron ... David Byrne heads West with Eno songs, a white-clad band, and dancers ... Bill Frisell sets up shop at Yoshi's in Oakland with Russell Malone ... Philip Glass plays to the poetry of Leonard Cohen at the Sydney Opera House ... k.d. lang is back on tour in California ... The Magnetic Fields kick off their fall tour in Minneapolis ... Randy Newman plays the Midwest too ... Choreographer de Keersmaeker's Steve Reich Evening plays two nights in Aix-en-Provence ... and more ...

The Independent's Larry Ryan, in his round-up of the best on the web, recommends the Nonesuch site for fans of Philip Glass and prospective purchasers of the Glass Box, the new Nonesuch retrospective of 40 years of the composer's music to wrap their ears around the abundance of music. He suggests sampling the sound clips at the album page—with one available there for each of the collection's 102 tracks. Ryan also recommends tuning into Nonesuch Radio for full-length tracks by the composer and for a sampling of music from the broad array of artists on the label, "from Wilco to Amadou & Miriam to The Wire soundtrack to Glass and everything else in between."

"John Adams is the voice of America," asserts Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed in his review of Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction. "His instrumental music," Swed explains, "and particularly that for the orchestra, conveys the American experience broadly." The review goes on to examine the biography and works Adams addresses in the memoir, including his operas Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, which Swed calls "an essential part of the American discussion." The book, he concludes, "offers the voice of America straight from the horse's mouth, and to read something so intelligent, reasoned and caring sure feels good these days."

Randy Newman continues his world tour in the Midwest this week. The Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot previews tomorrow night's show in nearby Waukegan by assuring his readers that, with the new album, Randy's "standards remain high, his work stellar ... Instead of growing content and nostalgic, Newman remains at his acerbic best on Harps and Angels, his deceptively jaunty, blues-based, luminously orchestrated pop songs brimming with dark humor and pointed commentary that continues in the tradition of '70s classics such as 'Sail Away,' 'Louisiana,' and 'Political Science.'"

The successful of the vinyl release of Wilco's latest album, Sky Blue Sky, is one example the Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot uses to illustrate the recent resurgence of the medium for music fans, young and old alike. The Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall LP, released last week, joins other recent vinyl releases from Nonesuch like The Black Keys' Attack & Release, The Magnetic Fields' Distortion, and Laurie Anderson's 7" vinyl single "Mambo and Bling," the first recorded music from her piece, Homeland. Kot speaks with Sam Phillips, who asserts: "I love my vinyl, and I play it all the time. Nothing sounds like it. Who would've thought?"

Orchestra Baobab were the featured guests on yesterday's episode of NPR's World Café. The show includes band member interviews and live performances from the group. You can listen online now at npr.org, which says the band, in its early days, created "a gorgeous, unique mix of harmonies, guitar, saxophone, bass, and drums which started a musical renaissance." Host David Dye says they were "the band in Dakar in the 1970s" and attests that "now, their latest album, Made in Dakar, shows that they are as inventive as ever."

John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.

David Byrne, who just announced European dates for his current tour, Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno, has been performing in California all week. San Diego City Beat calls the show "classic Byrne ... a great reminder of Byrne’s genius and his continuing relevance as a performance artist." The Orange County Register calls the Los Angeles show "remarkable" with "Byrne as good as he's ever been since his heyday." The Oakland Tribune calls the Byrne/Eno pairing "one of the greatest partnerships to ever occur in the recording studio," writing that "time has served to validate the significance of" their recently reissued collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which has "played a huge role in shaping modern electronic music."

Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, released last week on high-grade vinyl and set for release as a double CD next Tuesday, is featured on the latest edition of NPR's All Songs Considered. The show's host, Bob Boilen, introduces "Silencio," the touching duet between Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, by saying of the entire set: "What I love about this music is how gently it all hangs together. It's both relaxed and precise at the same time."