The Sydney Festival kicked off last weekend with performances from Emmylou Harris and her band, the Red Dirt Boys, who put on "a masterful, contemplative show," says the Australian.

In mid-week, Kronos Quartet were joined at the State Theatre by pipa virtuoso Wu Man for the Australian premiere of a program featuring Ghost Opera, the Tan Dun piece recorded on the 1997 Nonesuch album, and A Chinese Home, which was conceived by Kronos Artistic Director David Harrington, Wu Man, and director Chen Shi-Zheng.

Kronos returns to the State Theatre for two performances of Philip Glass's score to the classic Bela Lugosi film Dracula. The Quartet will be joined by the composer at both the 7:30 PM and midnight performances of the score Glass wrote for the film and was released on a 1999 Nonesuch album.

Glass heads to Hobart on Sunday for a solo performance at Federation Concert Hall.

---
   
Laurie Anderson gives two performances of her latest theater work, Delusion, at the Power Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, tonight and tomorrow night. She spoke about the piece at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theatre last night as part of the Penny Stamps Lecture Series.

"The performance artist Laurie Anderson works at a unique multimedia intersection of lots of idioms," writes Detroit Free Press columnist Mark Stryker in a preview of the weekend's shows. "A storyteller's mentality connects the dots with mesmerizing if enigmatic results."

Anderson was in her hometown of Chicago earlier this week to perform Delusion at the Harris Theater. “What I’m interested in suggesting is the part of the mind that tells you stories that are obviously not true, though they might work for you for a while and get you through," she told the Chicago Sun-Times: "Delusion is about those stories, and language, and mental drift, and about how the mind processes things and always turns away things." Read more at suntimes.com.

---

The violin-piano concert from Timothy Andres and his brother Wells at The Taft School's Walker Hall in Watertown, Connecticut, scheduled for last Friday has been rescheduled to tonight, due to threatening snow last week. Included on the program are Ravel’s Violin Sonata and Pärt’s Fratres.

Timothy Andres will help launch the Ecastatic Music Festival in New York City with a kick-off Marathon at Merkin Hall on Monday afternoon. Andres will play Charles Ives's The Alcotts and his own “Everything is an Onion" from It takes a long time to become a good composer.

Time Out New York recommends the Marathon as a critics' pick. "Rarely can we promise in advance that a concert will be among the most talked-about events of a given year, but this seven-hour introduction to a border-crashing three-month series at Merkin is pretty much a lock," says Time Out, including Andres among "the cool kids of the postclassical generation" performing.

---

The 16th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards will air live from the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on VH1 tonight at 9PM ET/PT. True Grit, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, has been nominated for 11 Critics' Choice awards, including Best Score for Carter Burwell. In addition to Burwell's nomination for Best Score, the fiml's nominations include Best Picture, Best Actor for Jeff Bridges, Best Supporting Actress and Best Young Actress for Hailee Steinfeld, Best Director for Joel and Ethan Coen, Best Adapted Screenplay for the Coen brothers, Best Cinematography for Roger Deakins, Best Art Direction for Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh, Best Costume Design for Mary Zophres, and Best Makeup.

---

Wanda Jackson and the Third Man House Band, featuring Jack White on guitar, perform a short set at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, Saturday night for the Grand Ole Opry. Also on the show are Del McCoury and Vince Gill, among others. Listen in online Saturday at 7 PM CST via WSM at wsmonline.com.

---

Strange Powers, the documentary on the lives and music of Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, directed by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara, opens at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago on Saturday. Fix will participate in a Q&A after the 8 PM screening; you can read her interview with Chicagoist at chicagoist.com. The Chicago Sun-Times gives the film three-and-a-half stars and calls it "essential viewing for songwriters and people interested in the muse of a prolific artist."

---

Fernando Otero gathers his Electric Quintet—JP Jofre Romarion, bandoneon; Pablo Aslan, double bass; Martin Moretto, guitar; and David Silliman, drums; with Otero on piano—to perform at Nublu in New York City Saturday night.

---

Punch Brothers kicked off their 2011 tour schedule with a sold-out show at the Somerville Theater outside Boston last night with the The Secret Sisters opening. The same bill is on hand at the Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont, tonight and at New York's Bowery Ballroom for a sold-out p-Bingo night. Time Out New York calls the band "jaw-dropping" and lists Saturday's show as a critics' pick. The Huffington Post also lists the Bowery show among the Best NYC Concerts This Week.

---

Nonesuch wishes Allen Toussaint a very happy 73rd birthday today. He celebrates the special day and the music of his hometown, New Orleans, in concert at Chicago's Symphony Center tonight. Joining Toussaint on stage are clarinetist Don Byron and trumpeter Nicholas Payton, two of the participants on his Nonesuch Records debut, The Bright Mississippi, to help him bring that album to life.

---

As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Sara Watkins embarks on a historic first on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion as its first-ever guest host. She has appeared as a guest on the show several times and joined Garrison Keillor and cast on tour last summer, but Watkins calls the hosting gig "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." The show will be broadcast live from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on NPR stations across the US Saturday starting at 5 PM CST and will be webcast live at prairiehome.org.