Composer John Adams leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which he is currently Creative Chair, in three concerts of contemporary works—titled Gordon, Riley & Adams—at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight, on Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. This weekend’s program, a continuation of the Minimalist Jukebox festival that began on March 16 and runs through May 4, features Adams’s orchestral work Naive and Sentimental Music; the LA Philharmonic premiered and recorded the piece for Nonesuch Records in 1999. The concert also includes the US premiere of Michael Gordon’s Sunshine of Your Love and the world premiere of Terry Riley’s At the Royal Majestic, featuring organist Cameron Carpenter.

“Eight years ago, the L.A. Phil first plugged in a Minimalist Jukebox at Walt Disney Concert Hall at a time when it was still thought radical for a symphony orchestra to do so, despite the popularity of such key composers as Philip Glass and Steve Reich and their influence on the next generation, and particularly John Adams,” writes Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed. “Now the festival is back, headed as was the first by Adams, and bigger than ever … No one wants to miss a beat.”

As noted earlier this week in the Nonesuch Journal, Nonesuch Records releases City Noir—comprising the title piece by Adams and the debut recording of his Saxophone Concerto—on May 6, performed by the St. Louis Symphony led by Music Director David Robertson with saxophonist Timothy McAllister. It is now available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

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Sam Amidon rounds out a run of European tour dates at the C-Mine Cultuurcentrum in Genk, Belgium, on Saturday, as part of the 2014 Little Waves festival. Amidon, whose Nonesuch Records debut album, Bright Sunny South, was released last year, returns to the US later this month for a collaborative concert at Carnegie Hall curated by composer David Lang.

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Bombino performs at the Musical Instrument Museum Music Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday, followed by the first of two consecutive-weekend sets at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, on Sunday.

Rolling Stone placed Bombino at No. 2 on its list of 20 Must-See Acts at Coachella this year, and the Los Angeles Times included him on its list own list of 10 “not to miss at this year’s festival.”

“The Tuareg guitarist understands the desert,” writes Los Angeles Times pop music critic Randall Roberst. “He and his band harness the clean, natural power of the electric guitar and team it with expert rhythm players executing tunings and time signatures that may take a few listens for Western ears to grasp.”

The “Tuareg guitar wizard,” as the New York Times recently described him, returns to Coachella for an encore set next weekend.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops, who performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York City last night, continue the Northeastern leg of their US tour at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton, Massachusetts, tonight. They go on to play two shows in Maine: a sold-out set at the Strand Theatre in Rockland on Saturday and the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield on Sunday.

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Shawn Colvin performs at the Suffolk Theater in Riverhead, New York, tonight and the Opera House in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, on Saturday. On May 17, Colvin rejoins fellow singer-songwriter Steve Earle for a new round of “Song and Stories, Together Onstage” out West, with dates in Washington, Oregon, and California. “Steve stomps his feet and spits when he sings and attacks the guitar. He’s raw, and it’s awesome, and it brings out the tomboy in me,” says Colvin to the Boston Globe about performing with Earle. “So I tend to play a little harder, pick material that’s a little edgier, I suppose.”

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Jeremy Denk returns home to New York City to perform at the Washington Irving High School on Saturday, as part of the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts. The program includes the second book of Ligeti’s Piano Études—as heard on Denk’s 2012 Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven—as well as Mozart’s Sonata in F Major, K. 533/494, Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6, and works by Byrd.

“Denk is an artist who needs a whole new set of adjectives to describe his performance. He is terrifically talented with unparalleled technical skills,” writes the Arizona Daily Star, reviewing his recent debut of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in Tucson. “The music he creates springs forth not just from notes on a page but from an intuition that goes much deeper.”

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Fatoumata Diawara brings the music of her Nonesuch debut album, Fatou, and more to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall tonight and to the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on Saturday, exactly one year to the day since her last performance there. Diawara rounds out her tour of North American in Seattle and San Francisco in the week ahead, before kicking off the European leg of her tour in Estonia later this month.

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Dr. John offers two free festival sets in his home state of Louisiana this weekend: on the French Quarter Festival’s Abita Beer Stage in New Orleans this afternoon and the Baton Rouge Blues Festival’s Repentance Park and Galvez Plaza in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

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Pianist Richard Goode closes out a brief Canadian run with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto tonight and on Saturday. The program, led by TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian, features Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17, K. 453, a recording of which Goode released on Nonesuch over 30 years ago. The concert also includes the Canadian premiere of Vivian Fung’s Aqua as well as Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

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Emmylou Harris rounds out the US leg of her Wrecking Ball tour in three major Northeastern cities this weekend: the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC, tonight; Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Howard Gilman Opera House on Saturday; and the House of Blues in Boston on Sunday. The tour—with Daniel Lanois, Jim Wilson on guitar, and Steven Nistor on drums—celebrates the reissue of Harris’s groundbreaking, Lanois-produced album on Nonesuch Records this past Tuesday.

”A mesh of vulnerability and steely spine, Harris is a deeply moving singer” writes Chicago Tribune reviewer Chrissie Dickinson of the recent performance at The Vic. “Her voice broke like a seagull's cry above waves of reverb-drenched chords.” Dickinson goes on to describe the concert as a “master class in close, intuitive harmony.” Read the full review at chicagotribune.com.

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Kronos Quartet performs the headline set at the Brava Theater in its hometown of San Francisco on Saturday, closing out the eight-hour Switchboard Music Festival. Kronos gives the world premieres of Bay Area-composer Sahba Aminikia’s Tar o Pood (Warp and Weft) and Switchboard co-director Ryan Brown’s new work, as well as the San Francisco premiere of Nicole Lizée’s Hymnals; all three were written for Kronos. Additionally, the Quartet gives the US premiere of Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa and performs Michael Gordon’s Clouded Yellow, also written for Kronos.

Nonesuch celebrates the group’s 40th anniversary year with two projects released earlier this week: Kronos Explorer Series, a set of five classic albums from five different parts of the world, and A Thousand Thoughts, a new album that looks at Kronos’s geographically wide-ranging sources, featuring music from 14 different countries. Kronos also performs Clint Mansell’s score to Darren Aronofsky’s new film Noah, the soundtrack of which was released on Nonesuch last month.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio continues its North American tour in three Southern states this weekend: at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, Georgia, tonight; Nova Southeastern University’s Miniaci Performing Arts Center in Davie, Florida, on Saturday; and the Sumter Opera House in Sumter, South Carolina, on Sunday. The Trio returns to the Midwest for dates in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri in the week ahead.

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Natalie Merchant offers a headline set at the Portsmouth Singer Songwriter Festival at the Historic Theater in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Saturday. She performs original songs from her forthcoming self-titled album, due on May 6 on Nonesuch Records, as well as favorites from throughout her storied career.

The video for the song “Giving Up Everything,” directed by Dan Winters and featuring the first music to be heard from the new album, premiered on NPR's First Watch earlier this week. “Rarely is an artist as honest and revealing as Natalie Merchant in her new video and song, ‘Giving Up Everything,’” says NPR Music's Bob Boilen. You can watch the video on YouTube.

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Joshua Redman joins the University of Texas Jazz Orchestra at the University’s Bates Recital Hall in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, as part of the Butler School of Music’s annual Longhorn Jazz Festival. Following a brief stop in London as curator of the Wigmore Jazz Series and a US tour with David Byrne, Redman rejoins his Quartet in Japan for a residency at the Cotton Club in Toyko.

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Rokia Traoré continues a brief tour of France at the Théâtre Simone Signoret in Conflans Sainte Honorine tonight and Le Carré Sévigné in Rennes on Saturday.