Grammy week is under way, which means not only the culminating awards ceremony, which will be held this Sunday night, but also various special events tied in to the Recording Academy's most celebratory time of the year. Allen Toussaint, one of three recipients this year, along with composer Elliott Carter and producer George Avakian, of the Academy's Trustees Award, will participate in a number of these events, beginning this evening.

Tonight, Toussaint will join the executive director of the Grammy Museum, Robert Santelli, at the Museum's Grammy Sound Stage in downtown Los Angeles for an intimate interview titled Legends: Allen Toussaint. Toussaint will talk with Santelli about his long and varied career before taking questions from the audience and giving a brief musical performance. The program begins at 8 PM PT.

On Friday night, Randy Newman, Toussaint's label mate and fellow participant on the Nonesuch Our New Orleans record) will join an all-star tribute concert honoring Neil Diamond, the recipient of this year's MusiCares Person of the Year for his extensive charity work over the years. Proceeds from the event will support the MusiCares Foundation, which works to ensures that music people have a place to turn in times of financial, medical, and personal need.

Trustees Award recipients Toussaint and Carter, as well as recipients of the Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award, like The Blind Boys of Alabama and The Four Tops, will be honored in an invitation-only ceremony in Los Angeles Saturday night. Like the Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors lifelong artistic contributions to the recording medium, the Trustees Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the industry, in a non-performing capacity—Carter, in his centenary year, for his decades-deep compositions; Toussaint for his work as a producer, songwriter, arranger, session pianist, and solo artist.

A four-CD retrospective of Carter's Nonesuch recordings is due out later this month, on February 24. Toussaint's Nonesuch solo debut, The Bright Mississippi, is set for release in April.

And finally, tune in to the live CBS broadcast of the main awards ceremony on Sunday, beginning at 8 PM, to catch what will no doubt be an unforgettable live performance by Toussaint and an eclectic group of fellow New Orleans artists: Terance Blanchard, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and a very different Carter, Lil Wayne.

In addition to the two Trustees Awards, Nonesuch artists and albums have been nominated for a total of 13 Grammys this year. For more information on those nominations, read the article in the Nonesuch Journal. To listen to their Grammy-nominated work, tune in to the Nonesuch Radio channel 2008 Grammy Nominees. For further information on the awards, visit grammy.com.