Björk joins members of the band Dirty Projectors for a sold-out benefit concert at the Housing Works Bookstore Café in downtown New York City tonight. She will unveil a suite of new music composed for her, written for five voices, by the band's David Longstreth. Longstreth and three other members of the band will sing the remaining four voice parts.

Since opening its doors in 1998, Housing Works’ Bookstore Café has hosted countless readings, panels, and performances, with every dollar raised going to support the organization's mission to end homelessness and AIDS.

According to Housing Works, Stereogum Senior Writer Brandon Stosuy, a board member of the organization, approached the artists about performing together at the Bookstore Café. The Dirty Projectors had covered Björk's "Hyperballad" for a Stereogum tribute CD last year. Tonight's two opening acts, Ólöf Arnalds and Kurt Weisman, were selected by the headliners.

The New York Times's Amanda Petrusich, in recommending the event, writes: "Given Björk’s established proclivity for layering and manipulating raw human voices ... the collaboration should be fruitful, if not sublime."

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John Adams's 1988 orchestral work Fearful Symmetries and Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata provide the setting for the ballet As Above, So Below, choreographer Mark Godden's ode to romantic love, which the Royal Winnipeg Ballet performs at the Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall through Saturday. It's part of the company's Extreme Ballet program, which also includes works by choreographers Itzik Galili and Peter Quanz.

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Laurie Anderson brings Burning Leaves, her new collection of songs and stories, to the Konzertsall at the Universität der Künst in Berlin. "This is a great chance for me to put together a couple of decades of my favorite stories and songs," says Anderson. "It's wild to see them next to each other. They tell a whole different story."

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The Bill Frisell Trio, featuring Tony Scherr and Kenny Wollesen, continues its residency at the Cotton Club in Tokyo through Saturday, before heading back to the States in preparation for another residency, this time at New York's Village Vanguard, starting on Tuesday. It was at the Vanguard that the "East" half of Frisell's 2005 double disc, East/West, was recorded with Scherr and Wollesen.

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Philip Glass joins painter Francesco Clemente and actor/director Michael Imperioli for a conversation on relevance, titled Art, Creativity, and Tibetan Buddhism, at the Cooper Union's Great Hall, in New York City, Saturday evening. Proceeds will benefit the Jewel Heart organization, whose founding director, Gelek Rimpoche, will also participate.

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Richard Goode, capping off a week that saw the release of his three-disc recording of the complete Beethoven concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, led by Iván Fischer, and a solo concert performance of works by Bach and Chopin at Carnegie Hall, gives an encore performance of that program in the intimate space of New York's Washington Irving High School auditorium.

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Kronos Quartet is in Speyer, Germany, tonight for a performance at the city's Gedächtniskirche as part of the Palatia Jazz Pfalz International Jazz Festival. On the program are works by J. G. Thirlwell, John Zorn, Hamza El Din, and Aleksandra Vrebalov's …hold me, neighbor, in this storm…, from the Quartet's forthcoming Nonesuch Release, Floodplain, due out on May 19. On Sunday, the group will be joined by special guest Wu Man on pipa for Tan Dun's Ghost Opera at Barbican Hall in London. It's their last scheduled performance till a June 5 concert at the Sydney Opera House, featuring the world premiere of Jon Rose's Music from 4 Fences.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio, featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard (playing a new, old drum set, Mehldau announced from stage last night), continues its weeklong, fully sold-out residency at New York's Village Vanguard. "Appearing with his trio, which sold out the full week in advance," says the New York Times in its review of Tuesday's set, "Mr. Mehldau conveyed a spruce informality, mixing impulse with erudition."

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Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone are in the midst of a two-week run at Cleveland, Ohio's Palace Theatre. The production, titled An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, runs at the Palace through May 17.

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Punch Brothers perform at the inimitable Pennsylvania Rennaissance Faire Grounds in Manheim, Pennsylvania, tonight. The group's set is preceded by a VIP Brewfest tasting, and, all night, the Swashbuckler Brew Pub will be serving it’s hand-crafted ales and Mount Hope Wines.

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Allen Toussaint plays a free set at the Clark County Amphitheater in Las Vegas on Saturday, part of the city's Jazz in the Park series. The event's organizers offer that picnics are welcome.

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Dawn Upshaw and her frequent collaborator, composer Osvaldo Golijov, oversee the culminating concerts of their Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop, Composing Song, for composers and singers, this weekend in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. For the workshop, conducted in partnership between Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute and the Bard College Conservatory of Music (where Upshaw is the artistic director of the graduate program in vocal arts), eight young composers were commissioned to write new solo or duo vocal works for the 12 singers chosen to participate, and worked with Upshaw and Golijov to prepare the pieces for their world premiere performances this weekend, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

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Sara Watkins is at the Abbey Pub in Chicago tonight with songs from her recently released self-titled solo debut album, and at Soughtgate House in Newport, Kentucky, tomorrow. Leading to the latter show, Sara spoke with nearby Cincinnati's Enquirer about working with Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones on the new Nonesuch release in a Q&A available at news.cincinnati.com. She'll bring the show back to familiar ground, Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles, next Thursday, prompting a feature article in L.A. Weekly, which you can read at laweekly.com.