Allen Toussaint's new album, The Bright Mississippi, recently received a rating of 89 from Paste magazine, with reviewer Nick Marino calling the pianist-producer-songwriter "a one-man repository of New Orleans music," and writing of the album: "It’s called The Bright Mississippi, and it does indeed shimmer ... Like New Orleans itself, the album understands how to strut. But it also knows its manners. For all his funky pedigree, Toussaint comes off as a picture of elegance." Read more at pastemagazine.com.

Toussaint performed at the New Orleans House of Blues last night with his fellow Crescent City maestros, Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He celebrates his hometown once again this weekend on the main stage at the New Orleans JazzFest, performing on the two-weekend festival's closing day, this Sunday.

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Laurie Anderson joins her husband, Lou Reed, for two special performance this weekend. Tonight, the couple are at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for a benefit concert titled Yellow Pony and Other Songs and Stories, to support the organization. On Saturday night, Anderson and Reed will help celebrate the PEN World Voices Festival by participating in the sold-out PEN Cabaret, featuring, in addition to their performance, an adaptation of a work by Jonathan Franzen starring Parker Posey and James Franco, among others.

This week has also seen the US premiere of choreographer Trisha Brown's 2004 piece O złożony /O composite, set to a score by Anderson, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for the Trisha Brown Dance Company's 2009 Spring Season. Performances began earlier this week and run through Saturday. And From the Air: Two Installations, a work by Anderson featuring an audio piece and a video piece, which has been exhibited at New York's One gallery, closes this Sunday.
 
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After The Black Keys' performance in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this week, reviewer John Petric wrote in the city's Other Paper: "A hot night, a hot club, a hot band: The Black Keys at Skully’s Monday will go down as the show for all other shows to beat this year ... Oh, it was a stomping git-down of a good time, it was." Last night, they joined in the fun surrounding JazzFest with a performance at New Orleans's Contemporary Arts Center. It was their last scheduled performance before the summer's festival scene begins in earnest in June. In between, Dan Auerbach will make a two-week tour of the UK and the Continent with music from his recent solo debut on Nonesuch, Keep It Hid.

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Toumani Diabaté continues his US tour with the Symmetric Orchestra with stops in New England. After an intimate in-store performance yesterday at the Bull Moose record store in Portland, Maine, Toumani and the band are at the city's Merrill Auditorium tonight. Next, they head down to Middletown, Connecticut, for two days, giving a concert at Wesleyan University's Cromwell Concert Hall Saturday night, and then leading university students in a master class and workshop on Sunday.

Toumani is featured in a piece on WNYC/PRI show Studio 360, with host Kurt Anderson, this weekend. Tune in to your local public radio station or listen online at studio360.org.

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Bill Frisell starts off two days of events at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival tonight in a trio concert with Charlie Haden and Ethan Iverson at Melbourne Town Hall. Up next is a solo master class tomorrow afternoon at The Forum and a performance by his own trio, featuring Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen, tomorrow night at the same venue. Opening that last performance is The BBC, featuring Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Tim Berne, and Jim Black.

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It's been quite a week of public events for composer Philip Glass. Last Friday, Glass joined a cast of many for 45th-anniversary performance of Terry Riley's In C, spearheaded by Kronos Quartet's David Harrington. On Tuesday, he helped raise $300,000 for the St. Ann's Warehouse performance space in Brooklyn, New York, when he sat down with his cousin, Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life, for a performance and interview titled Glass on Glass. Among the highlights was a performance by the two of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra," which was the source for Glass's 1990 piece Hydrogen Jukebox.

Last night, Philip Glass helped inaugurate MIT's new Dalai Lama Center for Ethics & Transformative Values, in a benefit concert for the Cambridge center. In a similar vein, Glass's next live event, scheduled for next weekend at New York's Cooper Union's Great Hall, is a benefit for the Jewel Heart foundation, titled Art, Creativity, and Tibetan Buddhism: A Conversation on Relevance. Also participating are its founder, Gelek Rimpoche; painter Francesco Clemente; and actor Michael Imperioli.

Finally, Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, the documentary film on the composer's life by Shine director Scott Hicks, which was recently aired on PBS as part of its American Masters series, is now available on DVD. And, of course, Glass Box, a 10-CD retrospective of Philip Glass's Nonesuch recordings, is available now in the Nonesuch Store.

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Emmylou Harris and Kate and Anna McGarrigle will be a cast of many artists gathering to celebrate the life and work of the legendary singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, in honor of his 90th birthday, at a special Madison Square Garden concert event, this Sunday. All proceeds from the concert, hosted by Clearwater: Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders, will go to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the organization Seeger co-founded in 1966 to fight pollution on New York's longest river.

On stage in addition to Harris and the McGarrigle sisters will be the honoree himself, along with a diverse line-up of artists representing every genre of music, including Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Béla Fleck, Michael Franti, Arlo Guthrie, Ben Harper, Richie Havens, Kris Kristofferson, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Taj Mahal, John Mellencamp, Tom Paxton, Dar Williams, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Del McCoury.

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Fred Hersch has just been appointed to the New England Conservatory's jazz studies faculty, as has Miguel Zenon, a founding member, with Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, and others, of the SFJAZZ Collective. Hersch is an NEC alumnus, Class of 1977, and has previously served on its faculty. For more information, visit newenglandconservatory.edu. Hersch performs three concerts over two nights, Saturday and Sunday, at An die Musik in Baltimore, Maryland, with his Pocket Orchestra, featuring trumpeter Ralph Alessi, singer Jo Lawry, and percussionist Richie Barshay.

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Earlier this week, k.d. lang's tour took her to New Haven, Connecticut. Writer Thomas Kintner, reviewing the show for the Hartford Courant, describes k.d. as "an artist who can allure with any kind of music. The cool purity of her voice was a powerful centerpiece Tuesday night at the Shubert Theater in New Haven, where each tune was stamped with lang's particular charms." Read the review at courant.com. She had spoken with the Courant's Eric Danton before the show, about her career, her comedic inspirations, and her latest album, Watershed; you can read the interview also at courant.com.

This weekend, the tour swings over to York, Pennsylvania, tonight, for a set at the Strand Theatre, and back up to the Hamptons on Saturday, for an evening at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center.

And capping the weekend for k.d., before she closes out this leg of the tour in Staten Island on Monday, is a very special performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Sunday night. She'll join a host of female performers for the Center's 2009 Spring Gala celebrating Women in the Arts.
Also scheduled to appear are Stockard Channing, Suzanne Farrell, Patti LaBelle, Annie Leibovitz, Midori, Dianne Reeves, LeAnn Rimes, Chita Rivera, Linda Celeste Sims of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Lily Tomlin, Vera Wang, and many others, along with the National Symphony Orchestra.

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Brad Mehldau is in the Midwest this weekend, performing a solo set at Symphony Center in Chicago, tonight, then joining his Trio, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, for a show at Lawrence Memorial Chapel in Appleton, Wisconsin, tomorrow, and two sets at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis Sunday night. Next week, the Trio comes to New York City for a week's residency at the famed Village Vanguard, site of their most recent recordings, Live, and the Nonesuch Store exclusive digital release, The Complete Friday Night Sets. The New York Times's Nate Chinen, in recommended next week's shows, says Mehldau's "peerless trio ... has the glide to elevate just about anything, including Mr. Mehldau’s savvy originals."

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Joshua Redman and one half of his Compass double trio, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchinson, are touring the Southern Hemisphere, like label mate Bill Frisell, having just participated in the Melbourne International Jazz Festival in Australia, with both a master class by Redman and a trio performance yesterday. Tonight, they head up to Sydney to perform at The Basement, and then it's on to Malaysia early next week.

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Dawn Upshaw and longtime collaborator pianist Gilbert Kalish come together again at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston Sunday afternoon for a program of works by Ives, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Golijov, and Bolcom, as well as Michael Ward-Bergeman's Treny (Laments), with the composer joining on hyper-accordion, an instrument of his own design.

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Sara Watkins continues her US tour with a stop at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York, with special guests Mike and Ruthy, on Saturday. Leading up to a performance earlier this week at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, Sara spoke with nearby Connecticut's Metromix to answer five burning questions. Read them and her answers at connecticut.metromix.com.