Richard Goode is currently ensconced in the beauty of Marlboro, Vermont, where he and fellow pianist Mitsuko Uchida are artistic directors of Marlboro Music, the unique seven-week intensive summer music program for talented young professional musicians. In a recent issue of the New Yorker, the magazine's classical music columnist Alex Ross visited the campus to explore just what makes the Marlboro experience unlike any other. Read the article at newyorker.com. Marlboro's monthlong season of culminating concerts begins this Saturday. For information, visit marlboromusic.org.

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Amadou & Mariam's tour with Coldplay comes to the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, tomorrow night. LA Weekly calls their album Welcome to Mali "a wonderfully engaging blur of unexpected influences." The San Diego Union Tribune says that "few who listen will be able to resist." The tour heads to Dallas next week, where the Dallas Observer sees their music "capable of transforming unsuspecting English-speaking audiences into dancing throngs of joy."

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Laurie Anderson joins her husband Lou Reed at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, England, for the Manchester International Festival and a performance of their show The Yellow Pony and Other Songs and Stories. The festival famously opened earlier this month with the premiere of Steve Reich's 2x5 in a sold-out concert with Kraftwerk.

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The Black Keys performed a free concert for the Twilight Concert Series at Salt Lake City's Gallivan Center last night. "The Black Keys have earned a national reputation as one of the heaviest, grooviest bands circulating these days," writes the Salt Lake Tribune's Scott Murphy. "They proved that and a whole lot more Thursday to a beyond-crowded Gallivan Center crowd." Tonight, it's on to a sold-out set at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, Colorado, and then a slot at the Mile High Music Festival in Commerce City, Colorado, on Saturday.

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David Byrne continues the European summer leg of his Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno show with an eight-city tour of Italy, starting tonight at Grado's Diga Nazario Sauro and Saturday at the Teatro Romano in Fiesole. Then it's on to Rome next week.

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Shawn Colvin performed the first of two shows opening for Jackson Browne last night. She'll do so again at the Bank of America Pavillion in Boston on Sunday. Before then, she plays two solo shows, at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine, tonight, and the Woodstock Inn in Woodstock, Vermont, Saturday. Also performing at the latter venue is Lori McKenna.

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Christina Courtin keeps things close to home at the new downtown space of New York's 92nd Street Y, the 92YTribeca, tonight. Opening is fellow Brooklynite, Aerial East. Time Out New York lauds her "great self-titled debut" recently released on Nonesuch. LA Weekly previews next week's show at the Largo at the Coronet with praise for the "subtly sublime touches" her band contribues to the new album and says of Christina that "she revels in her breathy, expressive vocal style, which ranges from the pop charm of the globe-trotting fantasy 'Foreign Country' ... to the delicate jazz phrasing of the lovely piano ballad 'Mulberries.'"

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Bill Frisell, whose forthcoming release, Disfarmer, is due out on Nonesuch next week, is in Europe with the McCoy Tyner Quintet through July. He joins the group at the Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia, Italy, on Saturday.

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The Low Anthem plays the Ottawa Blues Festival on Saturday. "Music Box," a track off the band's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, was recently featured on Jazz.com, earning a perfect score of 100. Reviewer Mark Saleski says it comes from his favorite album of the year: "The sonics here are so intimate and glowing that I almost felt compelled to write a short story about a working music box being discovered at bottom of a trunk full of civil war items. Timeless is the proper word."

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The Brad Mehldau Trio is playing a string of festival dates in Europe in the coming week. On Saturday, it'll take to the Matisse Stage at the Nice Jazz Festival in Southern France, directly preceding label mate Joshua Redman and his Trio, who follow.

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The Joshua Redman Trio, featuring Reuben Rogers and Greg Hutchinson, makes its way through Europe through the end of the weekend. They Trio plays the Tollhaus in Karlsruhe, Germany, tonight; then directly follows the Mehldau Trio on the Matisse Stage at the Nice Jazz Festival on Saturday; and helps close out the Bohemia Jazz Festival in Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic, on Sunday. Redman returns to the States next week.

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Oumou Sangare concludes her US tour this weekend. She participates in the seventh annual Sol Harvest "Festivus for the Restivus" in Cabot, Vermont, tonight, and joins up again with Béla Fleck's Africa Project for the GrassRoots Festival in Trumansburg, New York. Blurt describes Sangare's voice as "one of the marvels of West Africa, which has produced more than a few great singers. And her music's chiming timbres, jumpy polyrhythms and complex arrangements are jubilant and all-encompassing."

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Chris Thile performs a very special set at the Interlochen Center for the Arts's Kresge Auditorium in Interlochen, Michigan, on Sunday. He'll join Interlochen's World Youth Symphony Orchestra in an exclusive preview performance of his first-ever mandolin concerto, co-commissioned by Interlochen.

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Allen Toussaint brings his trip to Europe to a close with a performance at the Polideportivo de Mendizorrotza for the Vitoria-Gasteiz Festival in Spain on Saturday, followed by a gig at the Jazz Cafe in London on Sunday.

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Rokia Traoré is in the UK to play the 19th running of the Larmer Tree Festival in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Saturday. The Independent has a feature profile of the Mali-born singer-songwriter that examines her unique place among Malian musicians. "If African music is reaching out to a broader—and younger—music-loving audience," writes Elisa Bray, "the Malian star Rokia Traoré can only broaden the appeal. With her latest album, Tchamantché, adventurously blending the musical traditions of Mali with Western rock and blues music, she is anything but a typical Malian star." Read the article at independent.co.uk.

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Dawn Upshaw joins frequent collaborator Gilbert Kalish in recital at the Gambrel Barn in Elora, Ontario, Canada, tonight for the Elora Festival. On the program are works by Ives, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Schumann, Wolf, Berg, Brahms, and Bolcom.

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Laura Veirs concludes a short tour of the West Coast, which took her to San Francisco and Los Angeles earlier this week, with two stops in familiar territory. She and the band play Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon, tonight and The Crocodile in Seattle on Saturday.

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Wilco follows up its unforgettable set at KeySpan Park in Brooklyn, New York, earlier this week with a show at the Maine State Pier in Portland, Maine, tonight, with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band opening. The bands head back to New York state for two more shows there, Saturday at Dutchess Stadium in Wappingers Falls and Sunday at Art Park in Lewiston.