Pat Metheny's North American Orchestrion tour comes to a close this weekend with two shows at The Town Hall in New York City tonight and Saturday. Up next, starting June 2, Metheny takes his one-man band to South Korea and Japan for a seven-show run.

New York Times music writer Nate Chinen describes the shows as "a homecoming, a culmination and, for portions of his New York fan base, a chance for minds to be blown." The New Yorker says Metheny, with the orchestrion, "replicates the atmospheric sonic landscape of the Pat Metheny Group albums with amazing faithfulness; the steam-punk dream machine is a perfectionist’s fantasy come true." Time Out New York writes of the Orchestrion album: "Soaring over customarily rich, yearning chord progressions and shimmering washes of light, pinging cymbals, Metheny’s guitar sounds soulful and airy—at no point boxed into mechanistic rigor."

The NPR jazz blog A Blog Supreme contributor Felix Contreras reports from the recent orchestrion performance in DC. "I was reminded that no matter who—or what—he has on stage with him, Pat Metheny plays music as if at the end of the show he would be prevented from doing so for the rest of his life," says Contreras. "He makes every note matter, and infuses each with so much emotion that it's very hard not to get swept up in the moment ... His tour with the orchestrion will likely be talked about for quite a while." Read more at npr.org.

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Perspectives: John Adams, the two-week celebration of John Adams's music at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, comes to a close this weekend with Friday and Saturday night performances of a program first heard last night. Adams leads the National Symphony Orchestra in his Doctor Atomic Symphony and The Dharma at Big Sur, featuring violinist Leila Josefowicz. The composer will preface performances of Doctor Atomic Symphony by introducing a brief screening of Gerald Finley singing "Batter My Heart," the aria that closes Act I of the opera Doctor Atomic, and an orchestral version of which is featured in the symphony. Also on the program are works by Britten and Stravinsky.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops make two stops in Indiana this weekend, starting with a show at The Bishop in Bloomington tonight, followed by an evening slot in the Ohio River Valley Folk Festival in Madison, Indiana, on Saturday, playing just before Loudon Wainwright III takes the stage on the banks of the Ohio River. Then on Sunday, the trio heads West for the free Living Traditions Festival in Salt Lake City. There's a preview of that event in the Salt Lake Tribune.

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Shawn Colvin is in Napa, California, to perform at the Uptown Theatre on Saturday, with singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb opening.

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Bill Frisell has two shows at the Moers Festival, held in the Schlosspark in Moers, Germany, this weekend. On Saturday, he is joined by his Trio, featuring Eyvind Kang on violin and Rudy Royston on drums; on Sunday, it's a duo set with trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

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Philip Glass has performances in Italy all weekend, starting with a special 40-year retrospective of the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome tonight. On Saturday, Glass and the ensemble perform his score to the groundbreaking film Koyaanisqatsi at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Stresa on Saturday. And on Sunday, the composer offers a solo recital in Vicenza's Piazza dei Signori.

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Kronos Quartet, which recently announced its summer tour plans in the Nonesuch Journal, has one more concert in this month's European tour, at Graf-Zeppelin-Haus in Friedrichshafen, Germany. On the program are works by Ramallah Underground, Michael Gordon, Terry Riley, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and others.

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As reported earlier this week in the Nonesuch Journal, k.d. lang and Tony Bennett are the headlining performers at the San Francisco Symphony's Black & White Ball at Davies Symphony Hall Saturday night. Proceeds go to support the Symphony's Adventures in Music education program, which provides comprehensive music education to children in San Francisco public elementary schools.

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Natalie Merchant launches her first UK tour in eight years this weekend with a sold-out show at London's HMV Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday. In today’s issue of the Times of London, writer and philosopher Alain de Botton says of her recent Nonesuch debut album, Leave Your Sleep: "It’s poignant and tuneful and the voice is, as always, sheer genius."

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Youssou N'Dour performs at two festivals in Europe this weekend: tonight on the Musiques Métisses main stage in Angoulême, France, and Sunday at Talavera Mainwiesen in Würzburg, Germany, for the Africa Festival.

In the US, I Bring What I Love, the documentary look at N'Dour's Grammy-winning album Egypt, will be shown at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon. The screening is free.

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Punch Brothers are in Boston tonight, opening for Josh Ritter at the Orpheum Theatre, and in Nashville on Saturday, when they'll perform with Dierks Bentley for his show at the Ryman Auditorium. The band's previously scheduled show at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont, has been canceled; credit card refunds have already been issued and cash refunds can be made at the box office.

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Last weekend, Allen Toussaint performed at Gulf Aid, a benefit concert in New Orleans to raise funds for wetland recovery efforts and to support fishermen and families affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This weekend, Fuse will broadcast the concert starting at 11 PM ET on Saturday. The concert also featured performances by Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Mos Def, and many others.
      
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Sara Watkins has been opening for Vienna Teng and Alex Wong in California of late and plays two final shows with the singer-songwriters this weekend: tonight at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica and Saturday at Anthology in San Diego.

Watkins spoke with San Diego Union Tribune music critic George Varga about this hometown show and her 2009 self-titled Nonesuch debut album. You'll find the article at signonsandiego.com.

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Wilco is currently on tour in Scandinavia, performing at Pakkahuone in Tampere, Finland, tonight, and at Cirkus in Stockholm on Sunday.