Judging by reaction to The Black Keys' recent gig at the Fillmore Miami Beach, the students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, are in for a killer show this Saturday. The Keys play Brown's Spring Weekend, as does Snoop Dogg.

Following the Fillmore set, the Miami New Times says of the band's sound that "it just may be the last best hope to hear how rock should be heard that we'll ever have." Reviewer John Hood describes bandmates Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney as "the twin pillars that hold up what's undoubtedly the heaviest hard rock ringing ears today," calling their Nonesuch recordings as "some of the best ever made." Read the concert review at miaminewtimes.com.

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Shawn Colvin performs at Jazz Fest, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, on Sunday. She'll play the Fais Do Do Stage at the Fair Grounds Race Course that afternoon.

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Christina Courtin returns to New York's (Le) Poisson Rouge—the site of the CD release event for her self-titled Nonesuch debut last year—on Saturday. She'll open for former Soul Coughing front man Mike Doughty, with whom she recently toured the US Southwest.

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Bill Frisell plays a special hometown fundraiser for the Seattle Theatre Group at the Paramount Theatre on Saturday. Titled Doors: Opening Doors to the Arts, the event also includes performances by Presidents of the United States of America, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Zakir Hussain. Frisell's August 2008 set with the Ron Miles Quartet at New York's The Jazz Standard is featured on Highlights from The Jazz Standard from NPR's JazzSet, now on npr.org.

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Richard Goode performs solo piano works by Bach, Janáček, Beethoven, Chopin, and Debussy at Chicago's Symphony Center on Sunday.

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Kronos Quartet revisits the piece that inspired its creation more than 35 years ago when it performs George Crumb's musical response to the Vietnam War, Black Angels, at the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, tonight. Also on the program is Aleksandra Vrebalov's …hold me, neighbor, in this storm… from Kronos's latest Nonesuch release, Floodplain.

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The Low Anthem's hometown gig at Lupo's in Providence, Rhode Island, earlier this week helped raise more than $3,000 for United Way of Rhode Island's flood relief efforts in the state. The quartet's first-ever headlining North American tour comes to a close next week at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, but not before tonight's show with frequent tour partners Timber Timbre at the SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, tonight. There's plenty more live music to come from The Low Anthem this summer as the band hits festivals near and far, including a return to the Newport Folk Festival back in Rhode Island.

Looking forward to tonight's concert, the Portland Press Herald's Aimsel L. Ponti says that the last time she saw the band perform live, she "found them to be spellbinding, just as I do now listening to their songs" off recordings like Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. "The group's live performance," she insists, "is an experience not to be missed."

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Natalie Merchant continues to bring the music of her recent Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep, to intimate venues across the United States, with stops at the Rubloff Auditorium at the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday, and the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday. The latter concert is a taping of the NPR music program eTown, on the show's 19th anniversary, for future broadcast, with The Horse Flies performing as well. The Denver Post includes it among the best shows this week.

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Pat Metheny's Orchestrion tour continues out west, hitting the Grand Sierra Resort Theatre in Reno, Nevada, tonight, before two stops in northern California, at Zellerbach Hall in San Francisco on Saturday and the Napa Valley Opera House in Napa on Sunday.

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Fernando Otero will be joined by Juan Pablo Jofre Romarion on bandoneon with special guest pianist Tito Oliva, to perform his works at the Auditorio Juan Victoria in San Juan, Argentina, on Saturday.

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Punch Brothers play their last in a string of West Coast tour dates at The Triple Door in Seattle tonight. The band's spring tour heads south to Baton Rouge next week for two nights at the Manship Theatre.

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Joshua Redman's new quartet, James Farm, featuring Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland, performs at Chicago's Symphony Center tonight and the Krannert Center's Colwell Playhouse in Urbana, Illinois, Saturday. Tonight's show is a double bill with clarinetist Anat Cohen and her Quartet. Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ says: "Expect plenty of rhythmic interplay and outbursts of creative brilliance, as captured on his most recent album, Compass."

Redman and label mate Brad Mehldau recently played a number of duo dates together, a set-up they'll visit again for several weeks starting this Wednesday. The program included works from Mehldau's latest Nonesuch release, Highway Rider, to which Redman contributes as well.
At last Friday's duo show at the Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, "the twosome played with an unerring touch," says Albany Times Union reviewer Greg Haymes. "Mehldau is an acknowledged master of the piano, every bit Redman's equal."

All About Jazz reports from the Skidmore event as well, saying, "Duets are not an uncommon format in jazz, but what might be less common is the supreme level of synergy and empathy that saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau have for one another." Reviewer R.J. DeLuke insists that "those that have the opportunity to see these two jazz masters should not pass it up ... They are so in-tune with one another that whatever jump they make, they land on their feet. They are both exquisite improvisers and yet they are hand-in-glove as they move along." Read more at allaboutjazz.com.

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Allen Toussaint is back in his hometown of New Orleans, performing at Touro Synagogue's JazzFest Shabbat tonight. It's the first of Toussaint's many upcoming performances in the city, including two sets at Snug Harbor on Tuesday and two performances at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage next weekend. He has also been featured on Treme, the new HBO show set in the city and created by David Simon, the man behind The Wire.

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Sara Watkins, a frequent guest on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, joins the cast again for this Saturday's broadcast from The Town Hall in New York City. As we recently announced in the Nonesuch Journal, Watkins, Keillor, and crew will go on the road starting in August for the Summer Love Tour from A Prairie Home Companion.

Following Saturday's live broadcast, Watkins will head west to perform at the free outdoor Roots Fest on Adams in San Diego.

After a recent tour outside DC, the Washington Post reports: "Watkins delighted an adoring Jammin' Java crowd with a set largely composed of well-chosen covers that ranged from Tom Waits' mournful hobo song 'Pony' to a barn-burning version of bluegrass king Jimmy Martin's 'Hold Whatcha Got.'" Read more at washingtonpost.com.

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Today marks the eighth anniversary of the release of Wilco's groundbreaking Nonesuch debut album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as MTV Kyle Anderson notes in an appreciation on mtv.com. He calls the album "one of the finest albums of the new century." On this anniversary, Wilco plays the second of two concerts in Japan with its Friday night set at Zepp Tokyo. As we reported yesterday in the Nonesuch Journal, it's the start of a two-week tour that heads next to New Zealand and Australia.