Randy Newman began a tour of Europe earlier this week with performances in Helsinki and Oslo. The tour continues this weekend with a show at the Peer Gynt's Grieg Hall in Bergen, Norway, tonight as part of the Bergen Music Festival. On Sunday, he plays The Old Stage at Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen.

You can follow along with Newman and his tour mates as they make their way through Europe by reading his tour journal at the newly relaunched randynewman.com. Given that these reports are coming straight from Newman, expect more than a straightforward rundown of the day's events. "I seem to be a big favorite among the Eskimo population in these countries," Newman writes of his Scandinavian audiences. "I’m playing Santa’s workshop in the fall opening for Joni Mitchell, one of my all time favorite singer-songwriter philosophers."

Read more at randynewman.com.

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As reported earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, John Adams will host a special screening of the Italian film I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, followed by a Q&A, at The Castro Theatre this Sunday afternoon. Several of Adams's works surge with new life as the score to film, which was directed and produced with Adams's music in mind. Following the film's recent UK theatrical release, the Times of London gave it five stars, noting its "sublime score."

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Björk will be at the DJ booth in Brooklyn, New York, Sunday afternoon for Rites of Spring, a benefit event for Haiti. Also spinning at the event, which will take place above an auto parts store at 600 Bushwick Avenue, will be New Yorker music critic Alex Ross and Dirty Projectors front man David Longstreth, among others.

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The Carolina Chocolate Drops begin a months-long spring and summer North American tour this weekend with two special, free shows in New York City. First up this afternoon is an event exclusively for residents of a Bronx family shelter, through Carnegie Hall's Musical Connections program. On Saturday afternoon, at 2 PM, the trio will give a free concert at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center in Harlem, as part of the Neighborhood Concert Series from The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. The New York Times, in recommending Saturday's show, cites the group's "playful bent" and notes that "its more traditional cuts
are just as spirited."

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Richard Goode performs works by Bach, Haydn, and Schumann at Washington Irving High School in New York City Saturday night as part of the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts series. The New York Times describes Goode as a "refined and powerfully expressive pianist."

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Kronos Quartet performs for a hometown crowd, young and young-at-heart, at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre Sunday afternoon. San Francisco Performances presents a family concert titled Around the World with Kronos!.This will be the third year in a row Kronos will offer families a program inspired by its ongoing travels around the world. Nickelodeon's ParentsConnect is offering its readers 10% off the performance. Visit parentsconnect.com to learn more.

Last night, Kronos artistic director and violinist David Harrington presented music from around the world for a young audience of a different sort in a rather different setting, when he gave a DJ listening party at the Stanford Coffee House. The San Jose Mercury News says Harrington "spins magic" at the event. Mercury News music writer Richard Scheinin reports from the event and talks with Harrington about his not unexpectedly eclectic music collection, at mercurynews.com.

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k.d. lang performs at the 2010 TV Week Logie Awards, the Australian television award. The awards ceremony will take place at Melbourne's Crown Casino on Sunday and will be broadcast on Australia's Nine Network. "I'm honoured to be included in the TV Week Logie Awards because Australia feels like my second home," says lang. Her latest Nonesuch release, Recollection, hit the top of the Australian pop charts.

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The Low Anthem closes out its first headlining tour with one last show tonight at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, with White Rabbits opening. The band will be hard at work on the forthcoming follow-up to its Nonesuch debut album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, before returning to the road this summer.

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Natalie Merchant closes out the US leg of her spring tour, celebrating the release of her Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep, with two sold-out performances this weekend: tonight, in a presentation of the Folger Shakespeare Library, at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, DC, and Saturday at New York's (Le) Poisson Rouge, for the PEN World Voices Festival's PEN Cabaret.

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Pat Metheny's Orchestrion tour continues its Pacific Northwest run with shows at the Meany Theatre in Seattle tonight, the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts in Vancouver on Saturday, and the Silva Concert Hall in Eugene, Oregon, Sunday night. The Vancouver Sun previews Saturday's show with an interview with Metheny, available at vancouversun.com.

The Napa Valley Register says of the recent performance at the Napa Opera House: "It was simply amazing. Orchestrion is definitely a trip into the unknown for both artist and audience, and unarguably Metheny’s most ambitious project yet."

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Fernando Otero performs with Juan Pablo Jofre Romarion on bandoneon and special guests Waldo Madera on percussion and Patricio Villarejo on cello at the Museo Fernandez Blanco in Buenos Aires tonight.

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Punch Brothers play the second of two consecutive shows at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, tonight. It's the last scheduled tour date till May 21, when the quintet plays the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, opening for Josh Ritter.

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Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau continue their duo tour at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick, Maryland, tonight, and the Jefferson Center's Shaftman Performance Hall in Roanoake, Virginia, on Saturday.

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Allen Toussaint is in his hometown of Louisiana this weekend for two sets at the Fair Grounds Race Course for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest. He plays the Acura Stage today and the WWOZ Jazz Tent on Saturday. The Times-Picayune includes Toussaint's sets in its pick of the best of the Fest, "music not to miss."

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Rokia Traoré continues her tour of the UK at Colston Hall in Bristol tonight at at The Sage in Gateshead on Sunday. Sweet Billy Pilgrim opens on these and all the UK tour dates.

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Dawn Upshaw joins the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for the second and third concerts of a three-concert series at the Ordway Center in Saint Paul this Friday and Saturday.

Dennis Russell Davies, who was due to conduct, was forced to cancel due to continued air travel delays following the volcano eruption in Iceland. Alexander Mickelthwate, Music Director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, will step in to replace him. Dawn Upshaw will perform Ravel’s Chansons madécasses as planned; Louis Andriessen's Dances for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra will be replaced by Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Upshaw performed the latter piece in her first appearance with the SPCO in 1986 and recorded it for her first Nonesuch release in 1989.

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Sara Watkins performs at Lestat's Coffee House in San Diego with Molly Jenson tonight.

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Wilco continues its tour of the Pacific Rim with three show in Australia this weekend: Tivoli in Brisbane tonight, the State Theatre in Sydney on Saturday, and the Factory Theatre in Marrickville, outside of Sydney, on Sunday. Liam Finn opens on these and all of the Australian tour dates.

The New Zealand Herald calls this week's show in Auckland as "an epic wonder of a show" that "breathed new fire into older songs and demonstrated the band's particular live magic. It's one that mixes music complexity with approachability, avant-garde meanderings with tuneful harmony, and the melancholy melody of frontman Jeff Tweedy with powerpop joy."