Ry Cooder kicked off his three-week European tour with Nick Lowe last night at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. The two legendary performers are joined for the tour by Ry's son Joachim on drums and special guest Juliette Commagere on vocals. The group gives an encore performance at the Olympia tonight before heading north to play Belfast's Waterfront Hall. Exclusive to the tour, Ry is releasing his latest literary venture, Los Angeles Stories, in venues along the way. The new collection comprises what he describes as "LA stories about common people, underclass, oddball folks who live downtown in 1940 or 1950 and work jobs you don’t know or care about, but funny things happen to them.”

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Amadou & Mariam's North American headlining tour concludes at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee, this evening, where they play the culminating concert of a day-long celebration of African music on the Other Tent stage. After a month's time, the Mali's favorite musical couple returns to the States to support Coldplay for several dates on its tour. Condé Nast Traveler's John Oseid has this to report from the couple's New York show earlier this week: "Hundreds of indie rock fans poured out of Lower Manhattan's old vaudeville theater Webster Hall a few nights ago, buzzing all the way into the subway after watching Malian duo Amadou and Mariam tear down the house."

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David Byrne brings his Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno tour to Bonnaroo tonight to close out the day's performances on the Which Stage. As the head of the festival's first-ever artist-curated stage, he also hosts Santigold, the Dirty Projectors, Ani DiFranco, St. Vincent, and Katzenjammer in their performances there this weekend. On Sunday, the tour continues west with a show at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Texas.

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Toumani Diabaté has re-joined banjo master Béla Fleck for a number of tour dates across the US. After last night's show at the Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina, the pair made its way to Manchester, Tennessee, for the second day of the Bonnaroo festival, performing both at The Other Tent's all-day celebration of African music and, later in the evening, at the Sonic Stage. On Saturday, it's off to another festival, the Thirsty Ear festival, at the Eaves Movie Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Bill Frisell is in Rochester, New York, tonight to perform two sets with his Trio, featuring Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen, at Kilbourn Hall for the eighth-annual Rochester International Jazz Festival. The Trio then heads south to Louisville, Kentucky, to perform at The 930 on Saturday, and then back up to Philadelphia to play the World Café Live on Sunday.

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The Low Anthem helped kick off the four-day Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee, with an opening-night performance in the That Tent last night. The groups plays again this afternoon in the more intimate space of the Sonic Stage.

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The documentary film Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love opens in three New York theaters this weekend: the Paris Theatre and IFC Center in Manhattan, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) this weekend. N'Dour and the film's director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi will make personal appearances at each of the three New York–area theaters on opening day and the following day, Saturday, taking questions from the audience about the film. Today, they will appear following the 7 PM show at the Paris and following the 8:10 PM show at the IFC; tomorrow, they'll appear following the 2 PM show at BAM's Rose Cinemas.

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The new-music ensemble eighth blackbird is music director of the 63rd Ojai Music Festival, under way this weekend. On Sunday morning, the group "and friends" perform Steve Reich's seminal piece Music for 18 Musicians. Later that afternoon and evening, as part of a marathon finale to the festival's events, eighth blackbird will perform Reich's Double Sextet, the piece for which the composer won this year's Pulitzer Prize in Music.

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Allen Toussaint performs two sets at the Bonnaroo festival on Saturday: first in That Tent and, shortly thereafter, in the more intimate space of the Sonic Stage. Just yesterday, Toussaint was in Brooklyn, New York, for a free outdoor performance at the MetroTech Center as part of BAM's Rhythm and Blues Festival. As the Village Voice succinctly describes the set: "Allen saunters out, slides into his piano seat, commands his 80 percent smooth/20 percent funky backing band, and plays it."

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Sara Watkins joins her brother and fellow Nickel Creek member Sean and his new bandmate Jon Foreman of Switchfoot in the Fiction Family's show at the Melting Point in Athens, Georgia, tonight. The group heads up to Tennessee for a set in the Troo Music Lounge at, yes, Bonnaroo, on Saturday.

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Wilco begins its extensive US tour tonight in a sold-out set at the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Drummer Glenn Kotche spoke with Cincinnati.com's Bill Thompson about the band and about his own fond memories of the city from his college days at the University of Kentucky in nearby Lexington. Says Thompson: "Kotche's energetic drumming is the propulsive force for one of the most entertaining live bands playing today."

For the tour's second stop, on Saturday, Wilco joins the throngs at Bonnaroo for a two-hour set on the What Stage. SPIN magazine picks Wilco as a Bonnaroo "must-hear act," explaining: "With their June release, Wilco (The Album), these Midwesterners have crafted their best record yet by balancing the studio wizardry of their 2002 classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with the stripped down sound of 2007's Sky Blue Sky. That, and guitarist Nels Cline's playing is entertaining in itself."