Punch Brothers had a packed schedule over the long weekend: they performed at the first annual Delfest in Cumberland, Maryland, on Sunday; The Mauch Opera House in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday; and The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday. The Washington Post says The Blind Leaving the Blind, the centerpiece of the group's Nonesuch debut, Punch, was the "most adventurous number" of a live set "that packed a powerful ... well, punch." The AV Club calls it "a tour-de-force." 

k.d. lang has returned to Canada for several dates on her Watershed tour, including tonight's performance at Centennial Hall in London, Ontario. Across the Atlantic, in the elder London, k.d. was the subject of a feature profile in the Mail on Sunday this past weekend. She talks at length with the Mail's Liz Jones about life, love, religion, and her career. Jones prefaces the discussion by admitting: "I love the new album, Watershed, which is turning out to be her best performing album in the UK in a decade and, in fact, one of the best performers of her 25-year career."

"Can't Come Down," a track from Sam Phillips's upcoming album, Don't Do Anything, is featured today on NPR's All Songs Considered. Listen at npr.org.

Starting at 6pm on Friday, May 23, Harvard's radio station, WHRB, will be broadcasting 16 1/2 hours of Kronos Quartet's music during their "Spring Orgy Season." The program will feature albums from Kronos's Nonesuch discography, beginning with the 1986 release "Kronos Qaurtet," through 2002's "Nuevo." Tune in online at whrb.org.

Steve Reich is the featured composer for Tokyo Opera City's Composium 2008, part of the Contemporary Music Festival beginning today and running through Sunday. Ensemble Modern and Synergy Vocals perform in two sold-out, all-Reich concerts at the Opera's Concert Hall, with Brad Lubman conducting, including the Japanese premiere of Daniel Variations as well as a performance of the seminal work Music for 18 Musicians featuring the composer as guest performer. The event also includes a discussion with the composer and the selection of the 2008 Toru Takemitsu Composition Award.

Before hitting the road again in Ottawa, Ontario, this weekend for the next leg of the Watershed tour, k.d. lang will stop by the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson tonight on CBS. Also scheduled to appear on tonight's show: actress Laura Dern. The show starts at 12:35 AM ET/PT. 

Last Friday, Kronos Quartet performed composer Terry Riley's Sun Rings at two events in Germany. The Quartet's latest Nonesuch release also features a work by the composer, The Cusp of Magic. The piece, says JamBase, "delivers subtlety and tenderness in exchange for open ears and hearts. Far from the gravity and self-importance of classical/art-music, the album ... deals in a light playfulness that won't fail to rub off."

The Black Keys are in the UK on the European leg of their Attack & Release tour. To coincide with their performance tonight at ABC in Glasgow, Scotland, BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe will broadcast an in-studio performance and interview with the band tonight on his show, sometime between 7 and 9 PM GMT. The show will also feature an extra track tomorrow night at the same time. 

Sam Phillips's Don't Do Anything hits stores in two weeks, and today, the album track "Little Plastic Life" was named Today's Top Tune by KCRW, 89.9 FM, out of Santa Monica, and kcrw.com online.

Emmylou Harris's new album, All I Intended to Be, is due out on June 10, but you can pre-order your copy now. You'll be able to download the album MP3s on release date, at no additional cost, and receive the CD on or around the same day. This is Emmylou's third solo release on Nonesuch and her first solo effort since 2003's Stumble Into Grace. Of the material she selected for the album, Harris explains, "I've always seen myself as a relentless song-finder, a singer of other people's work whom I admire greatly, and an occasional songwriter." Recorded over a four-year span primarily at producer Brian Ahern's Easter Island Surround in Nashville, for the first time in 25 years, this album returns Harris to the producer she worked with for her first 11 albums.

Today marks the release of Pat Metheny's new Tokyo Day Trip Live EP. The collection contains five tracks originally made available online as bonus tracks for Pat's recently released trio album Day Trip, with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez. "There was such an outpouring of demand from listeners," Pat explains, "that we decided to compile the recordings all in one place and release them together as a set."

Made in Dakar, Orchestra Baobab's first album of new recordings since 2002's Grammy-nominated Specialist in All Styles, hits stores in the United States today. Rolling Stone gives Made in Dakar four stars, with reviewer Will Hermes writing that "with this collection of burbling grooves, these Senegalese legends recapture the Afro-Cuban bliss of their 1982 classic, Pirates Choice---imagine the Buena Vista Social Club weaned on motherland polyrhythms." Hermes points to guitarist Barthélemy Attisso as the band's "secret weapon," calling him "a guitar giant with a touch as delicate and melodically sublime as Jerry Garcia's" and describing his performances on two particular tracks as "so chill they'll buckle your knees."