Pat Metheny Unity Group—featuring woodwind player Chris Potter, longtime collaborator Antonio Sanchez on drums, Ben Williams on bass, and multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi—covers a lot of ground this weekend with performances in three different states: at the Paramount Theatre in Denver, Colorado, tonight; the Topeka Performing Arts Center in Topeka, Kansas, on Saturday; and Metheny’s home state of Missouri, where the Group performs at The Pageant in St. Louis on Sunday. Growing up a few hours away in Lee’s Summit, Metheny and his father and brotherplayed summer concerts with the local Unity Church’s Unity Band, a name he adopted for his new group.

Metheny further expands upon the idea of “unity” in the Unity Group’s new debut album, released last month on Nonesuch Records and aptly entitled Kin (←→). Reviewing their recent performances, The Oregonion describes how the “Unity Group wrapped rhythms and melodic ideas from various parts of the world into a pan-cultural collage,” while the Santa Barbara Independent notes Metheny’s kinship with the audience: “[His] ideas flow so steadily that his music feels inevitable. His playing makes a connection to the room that’s as direct and intimate as breathing.”

The North American leg of Pat Metheny Unity Group’s world tour continues in the US Midwest, and through the Northeast before the end of the month.

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John Adams leads the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the Canadian premiere of his 2011 piece Absolute Jest at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto tonight, closing out the TSO’s tenth-annual New Creations Festival, which focused on Adams’s music. Tonight’s performance of Absolute Jest, a piece influenced by late Beethoven scherzos, features the St. Lawrence String Quartet, for whom the piece was written. Earlier in the program, TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian leads the orchestra in a work by Vincent Ho and the world premiere of a TSO commission by Brian Current.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops round out the southern leg of their US tour at the McCelvey Center Theater in York, South Carolina, tonight, as part of the Center’s Southern Sound Series, and at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Bristol, Tennessee, on Saturday. They head up into the Northeast starting in the spring, with dates in Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, DC, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Connecticut.

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Richard Goode joins Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in Princeton, New Jersey, on Sunday, for a special performance that combines solo piano pieces and original poetry. Over the course of many months, Goode and Williams met regularly to refine the program, which features works by Bach, Chopin, Schumann, Mozart, Brahms, Janáček, and Beethoven, and musically-inspired poems interspersed throughout.

In the Asbury Park Press, Director of Princeton University Concerts Marna Seltzer, describes how “two great artists, both poets in their own right, have found partnership in each other and are creating something for us as a real joint partnership.” Goode and Williams discuss their work in a pre-concert talk, and Goode—described by the New York Times as “a poet of the piano”—offers a free master class at the University’s Taplin Auditorium on Monday morning.

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The 2013 Americana Music Honors & Awards ceremony, at which Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell took home the Duo of the Year and Album of the Year awards for their album Old Yellow Moon last September, will be broadcast in full on AXS TV this Sunday, March 9, at 8 PM ET. Dr. John was also presented the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, and Ry Cooder presented an award.

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Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra kick off the “Born in Riga” concert series at the Culture Center Ziemeļblāzma in Kremer’s hometown of Riga, Latvia, tonight, celebrating the city’s new status as a European Capital of Culture. On the program are Mozart’s Concerto No. 5, K. 219; Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 21 (featuring Russian pianist Andrei Korobeinikov); and an orchestral arrangement of Weinberg’s Quintet, Op. 18. Kremer and his chamber orchestra, joined by Korobeinikov, go on to perform at Gors Concert Hall in Rēzekne on Sunday.

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Kronos Quartet, also performing in its native city, offers an all-ages performance at the SFJAZZ Center on Saturday morning, as a part of San Francisco Performance’s Family Matinee series. The globe-trotting quartet brings its explorations in music from many continents back home. Kronos, continuing its 40th anniversary concert season, heads down the Golden State for upcoming dates in San Diego and Los Angeles.

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Audra McDonald joins the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall in Atlanta on Saturday, for the annual Symphony Gala benefitting the ASO’s education and community and engagement programs. This year’s gala celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Orchestra’s Talent Development Program, which prepares musically gifted African American and Latino classical music students for careers as professional musicians. McDonald and the ASO perform songs from her new album, Go Back Home, as well as other songs from the American songbook.

McDonald returns to Broadway this spring to play Billie Holiday in the musical Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, a play that follows the life of Holiday through the music that made her famous.

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Brad Mehldau and his Trio continue their European tour at L’onde in Velizy, France, on Saturday. They perform in Brussels on Monday before returning for dates in five more French cities.

Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, the debut album from Mehldau’s electric duo with drummer Mark Guiliana, was released last week on Nonesuch Records, with the vinyl to follow later this month. “Ranging from lush, dreamscapes to febrile urban funk workouts,” says MOJO, “the album resonates like an imaginary ‘70s film score.”

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Natalie Merchant joins the Virginia Symphony Orchestra for a performance at Christopher Newport University’s Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News, Virginia, on Saturday. Along with new works, the show features favorites from throughout Merchant’s storied career, including selections from her 2010 Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep.

Nonesuch Records will release Merchant’s new self-titled album on May 6. The recording is the multi-platinum singer’s sixth solo collection, and her first of entirely original songs in 13 years. Natalie Merchant is available for pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Punch Brothers kick off a US tour with a sold-out show at Oberlin College’s Finney Chapel in Oberlin, Ohio, on Sunday, as a part of a three-part residency there that includes lectures and workshops with the students. “We had this little theme that was lying underdeveloped in our iPhone voice memos, and we showed it to the kids in talking about our writing process,” mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer about collaborating with students during a composition workshop. “We started applying it there with them as if they were members of the band and wrote some really cool stuff.”

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Joshua Redman Quartet—Aaron Goldberg, Reuben Rogers, and Gregory Hutchinson—continues its European tour in Germany at Jazz Club in Hannover tonight, and a sold-out show at Theater Stübchen in Kassel on Saturday. The Quartet heads west to perform at Philharmonie Luxembourg in Luxembourg City on Sunday. The month-long tour, which kicked off in Switzerland on Wednesday, includes stops in Austria, France, and Italy.

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Rokia Traoré brings the music of her latest Nonesuch album, Beautiful Africa, and more to De Oosterpoort’s Kleine Zall in Groningen, the Netherlands, on Sunday.