Dawn Upshaw gives the second of two concerts at the 40th anniversary Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland tonight. Following herrecital with pianist Gilbert Kalish at Kilkenny’s St Canice’s Cathedral Wednesday night, Upshaw returns to the hall to join the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, led by conductor Alan Pierson, in a performance of Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s song cycle That the Night Come.

This song cycle—written for Upshaw and the Crash Ensemble (which Dennehy co-founded)—is based on six settings of poems by fellow Irishman W.B. Yeats and is featured on the composer’s 2011 debut album, Grá agus Bás. Dennehy explains: “Yeats’ repeating obsessions with unattainable love, his longing for the fullness of experience, his anger at fleeting happiness, and the certainty of time’s ravage and death are obsessions that I share.” NPR calls the piece “a revelation.”

Upshaw and Crash, who perform That the Night Come on the recording, gave the piece its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall in May. The Irish Times’ Keith Duggan, in a new feature on Upshaw, writes that “this dark dream of a composition seemed in keeping with the soul and mood of many of the pieces that Upshaw has not so much sung as brought to life over her years as one of the US’s most original and recognisable sopranos.” He goes on to say: “Upshaw moves from spoken word to song and from low, velvety tones to the gorgeous sonic flight that can shrink even the loftiest auditorium.” Read the full article at irishtimes.com.

Also on tonight’s program, the Crash Ensemble gives the world premiere of Michael Gordon’s Dry, followed by a piece by Nico Muhly.

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Sam Amidon continues his European summer tour with two festival sets this weekend: at the Green Man Festival up in the Black Mountains of Glanusk, Wales, tonight, and the Lowlands Festival at Walibi Holland in Biddinghuizen, Netherlands, on Sunday. He kicks off his North American tour, featuring the music of his recently released Nonesuch debut album, Bright Sunny South, in September. The vinyl edition of the album, due September 24, is now available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

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Laurie Anderson performs at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, for An Evening with Laurie Anderson on Saturday.

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Continuing the European leg of his Nomad tour, Bombino covers a good deal of ground this weekend with three performances in three different countries: at Walibi Holland in Biddinghuizen, Netherlands, as part of the Lowlands Festival tonight; Västerby Hembygdsgård in Rengsjö, Sweden, on Saturday, for the Hem Till Byn Festival; and Theaterspektakel in Zurich, Switzerland, on Sunday.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops continue their ongoing North American tour with two shows in Pennsylvania this weekend: at the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg tonight and at the Old Poole Farm in Schwenksville on Sunday for the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

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Dr. John performs in his hometown of New Orleans at Tipitina’s tonight, before making his way up to Mississippi to close out the Jackson Rhythm & Blues Festival with a headline set at the Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum Saturday night.

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Jeremy Denk begins his four-night residency at City Recital Hall’s Angel Place in Sydney on Saturday, as part of his two-week tour of Australia with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The program includes works by Bach, Ives, a solo recital of Ligeti’s Piano Études—as heard on his 2012 Nonesuch debut album, Ligeti/Beethoven—and Brahms’ Piano Quintet, Op. 34. Following the Sydney residency, the Australian tour rounds out with dates in Wollongong and Melbourne.

"Australian audiences have never seen Jeremy Denk before, and one can only wonder why," writes the Australian's Graham Strahle in a review of the Adelaide Town Hall concert earlier this week. "He is a formidably strong pianist who knows his way inside a piece of music with a penetration of vision that is extremely rare these days." Of the Ligeti etudes, Strahle writes: "one could only thirst for more: breathtaking in his boldness, Denk really understands this music."

Nonesuch Records will release Denk's next album, a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, on September 24; it is available to pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store.

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Fatoumata Diawara concludes her North American tour at the Salmon Arm Roots & Blues Festival in British Columbia tonight. She plays a set on the main stage tonight, then stays on for two workshops at the festival on Saturday: a musical storytelling course at the CBC Blues Stage at 12:15 and a panel titled She’s Got the Power on women in the music industry at the SASCU Shade Stage at 3 PM.

The Edmonton Journal, reviewing her set at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival last weekend, describes Diawara’s “lilting guitar, empowering lyrics and rich ululations,” reporting that the Malian musician “devastated us through the supper hour with the beauty of her vocals and her radiant smile.” Another reporter from the Journal wrote: “Fatoumata Diawara makes music as beautiful as she is, which is to say entirely.”

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Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra close out their weeklong residency at the Festival de Musica Credomatic in Costa Rica with three back-to-back performances at hotel resorts on Saturday: at the Villa Blanca’s Chapel in San Ramon at 3 PM, at Hotel Villa Caletas’ Zephyr Palace in Herradura at 5:30 PM, and at Borinquen Hotel in Liberia Canton at 7 PM. They offer a different program for each set, including works by Piazzolla, Bartók, Gershwin, Mozart, and Philip Glass.

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Lianne La Havas performs two sets at the V Festival in the UK this weekend: in Weston Park in Stafford on Saturday, and Highlands Park in Chelmsford on Sunday. Her sets feature songs from her Nonesuch debut album, Is Your Love Big Enough?.

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Due to a bout with pneumonia, Randy Newman unfortunately must cancel his performance at Jazz Middelheim in Antwerp on Saturday and at Vicar Street in Dublin on Monday. He is very sorry not to be able to be there and hopes to be back soon. Refunds for the Dublin show are available at point of purchase.

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Joshua Redman and his quartet—pianist Aaron Goldberg, drummer Gregory Hutchinson, and bassist Reuben Rogers—close out the latest European leg of their tour with a performance at Harpa in Reykjavik on Saturday, as part of the Reykjavik Jazz Festival. The group offers selections from Redman’s latest Nonesuch release, Walking Shadows, and more.

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After kicking off their ten-day US tour with a set at Tanglewood last night, Chris Thile and fellow musicians of the Goat Rodeo Sessions album—Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, and special guest Aoife O’Donovan—perform at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, New York, tonight, and Ravinia Pavilion in Highland Park, Illinois, on Sunday. Their tour continues through the end of the month with dates in Ohio, Michigan, and California.

Thile’s just-released Nonesuch solo album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1, was featured NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday last weekend. “There's the mandolin and then there's the mandolin when Chris Thile puts it to work,” says the show’s host, Rachel Martin. The Chicagoist’s Chuck Sudo calls the album “amazing” and asserts: “It's only been out a week but, in my opinion, it's arguably the best album of the year.”