The South by Southwest Music & Media Conference (SXSW) continues through the weekend with more performances from The Low Anthem and the Carolina Chocolate Drops to come.

The Low Anthem began its SXSW 2010 run yesterday with the Paste party and the official Rolling Stone showcase. The fun continues with three sets today: a 2:30 PM slot at Beauty Bar Outside for the HearYA Day party; a 6 PM set at the Barton Creek Apple Store; and an after-midnight show closer at St. David's Sanctuary. The poster from the band's show at the Granada Theater in Dallas on Wednesday (pictured at left), by designer Andrew Shepherd, was cited as Poster of the Week by the Dallas Observer.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops perform at two Austin venues today. First up is a 2 PM event at the Austin Convention Center's Day Stage Cafe, presented by radio station KPFT. Tonight, it's off to the Victorian Room at The Driskill for the ASCAP Showcase.

The New York Times's David Carr took in an earlier set from the trio at the Galaxy Room and described it as his "first 'having a moment' moment of the festival." Austin 360's Brian T. Atkinson spoke with band member Justin Robinson shortly after the band's arrival in Austin about the success of their recent Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig, and what to expect at SXSW.

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John Adams is in Paris Saturday for a full day dedicated to him and his works at Cité de la Musique, a continuation of Domain privé John Adams, an 11-day celebration of the composer's music, the remainder of which will be held at the Cité de la musique, featuring six concerts, three premieres, and a forum with Adams.

All day Saturday, the Amphitheater of Cité de la musique will play host to Forum John Adams, which begins with a screening of Wonders Are Many, the documentary that goes behind the scenes of Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, followed by a discussion with the composer and then a performance of his 1993 tape piece Hoodoo Zephyr under sound engineer Mark Grey.

The day's activities culminate in a performance of Adams's most recent opera, A Flowering Tree, by the Orquestra Gulbenkian, in the Cité de la musique Concert Hall, featuring soprano Jessica Rivera, who originated the role and performed on the original Nonesuch recording. Prior to the concert, musicologist Evan Rothstein will lead a pre-concert "Zoom on a Work," which takes a closer look at the piece and helps audience prepare for the performance.

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Laurie Anderson performs the chamber concert version of her piece Amelia Earhart at the Stadtcasino in Basel, Switzerland, tonight.

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Louis Andriessen has been in Birmingham, England, all week for the Birmingham Conservatoire's five-day Frontiers+Andriessen festival, dedicated to the composer's work. The festival concludes today, starting with an all-Andriessen concert this afternoon by tutors and students of Birmingham Conservatoire.

The final concert of the celebration focuses on two larger works, M is for Man, Music, Mozart and La Passione. The former piece will be shown with the accompanying film made by Peter Greenaway. At the beginning of the second half of the program, an Honorary Doctorate of Birmingham City University will be conferred on the composer.

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Kronos Quartet concludes its season-long Carnegie Hall Perspectives—which, wrote the New York Times' Allan Kozinn, "explores the expansive, stylistically borderless repertory for which this ensemble is known"—with a Young Artists Concert in Carnegie's Zankel Hall on Sunday. It is the culminating event of a weeklong Professional Training Workshop led by Kronos and pipa virtuoso Wu Man, featuring three young professional string quartets and two pipa players as they explore collaborative repertoire, including Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera and Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic.

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After a sold-out North American tour, The Magnetic Fields bring the music of Realism, their latest Nonesuch release, to Europe. The tour hits three spots in the UK in the coming days, beginning with a show tonight at Manchester Cathedral, followed by a Saturday night set at The Assembly in Leamington Spa. The band plays London's Barbican Centre on Monday.

To preview the shows, Stephin Merritt performed a live session for BBC 6 Music's Marc Riley show last night. Merritt gave a rare solo ukulele performance of "Seduced and Abandoned" off of Realism and "The Book of Love" off the band's seminal 69 Love Songs. Listen online, beginning about 12 minutes in, at bbc.co.uk/6music.

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Brad Mehldau continues his solo tour of Europe with two shows in the Netherlands, at Oosterpoort in Groningen tonight and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam on Saturday, followed by a Sunday night set at Horsens Ny Teater A/S in Horsens, Denmark. After two stops in Italy, he returns to North America next week.

Mehldau's latest Nonesuch release, Highway Rider, out this week, makes the Guardian's F&M Playlist of songs and albums its music team "just can't turn off." Music critic John Fordham distills his earlier five-star album review, saying the album "reveals a great leap forward in composition techniques for mixed jazz/classical bands, and an inspired arranger's sense of how to deploy the piano trio alongside sax soloist Joshua Redman."

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Pat Metheny concludes the European leg of his Orchestrion tour in Italy, with a show at the Teatro Blondo in Palermo on Sunday and a final performance at the Teatro Metropolitan Catania on Monday. The big US tour begins on April 6 at the Creative Arts Center in Morgantown, West Virginia.

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Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone, both of whom performed in the 80th Birthday Concert for Stephen Sondheim at Lincoln Center earlier this week, bring their duo show to McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, California, this weekend for three performances: one tonight and two on Saturday.

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On the subject of Stephen Sondheim, the composer's pre-birthday celebrations continue (the actual birth date is this Monday) through the weekend with a series of free events at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, on Saturday and Sunday. Among the weekend's highlights are a backstage tour of the theater's production of Sweeney Todd; discussions with the actors; screenings of film adaptations of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy, and West Side Story; and a Sondheim songbook sing-along and cake-cutting celebration.

The cast of the Broadway revival of Sondheim's A Little Night Music, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, will give a special performance to benefit the Actors Fund Sunday night at 8 PM. Nonesuch / PS Classics release the cast recording on April 6.

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Chris Thile performs his Mandolin Concerto with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra in Wilmington's Grand Opera House tonight and Saturday. Also on the program are works by Copland and Dvorák.

Thile recently performed the piece with the Winston-Salem Symphony, which received high praise from the Winston-Salem Journal for both the piece and its composer. "Occasionally, an artist comes along to remind us of how exciting classical music's past must have been—and how promising its future can be," writes Journal reporter Ken Keuffel. "Such a person is Chris Thile ... whose contributions in classical music are quickly coming to equal those he has made in bluegrass."

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Allen Toussaint performs at Auditorium II Parco della Musica in Rome tonight. The Los Angeles Times described Toussaint's music as "sumptuous" after a recent performance with the Blind Boys of Alabama at UCLA's Royce Hall. Toussaint was honored by the Young Audiences New York (YANY) at the organization’s Children’s Arts Award Benefit in New York this past Monday for his contributions to the arts.

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Dawn Upshaw joins pianist Emanuel Ax at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco Saturday night for a program of works by Chopin and Schumann and Stephen Prutsman's Piano Lessons, a San Francisco Symphony co-commission.