The Black Keys return to Saturday Night Live for their third appearance as musical guests, performing songs from their new album, Turn Blue. Charlize Theron hosts the show. Tune in or set your DVRs to watch at 11:30 PM Saturday night on NBC

Turn Blue is out Tuesday, but you don’t need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full all this week on iTunes as a First Play. You can also watch the music video for the album's first single, “Fever,” here.

The Keys have also just announced an extensive North American tour for this fall. Pre-sale ticket access is available with pre-orders of the album; tickets go on-sale to the general public on May 16. For details, click here.

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Natalie Merchant performs two sold-out shows at Milton Court Concert Hall in London on Saturday and Sunday, as part of Explorations: The Sound of Nonesuch Records, the Barbican’s month-long celebration of Nonesuch Records’ 50th anniversary. The concerts feature songs from her just-released self-titled album, her first of entirely original songs by the singer-songwriter in 13 years, and favorites from throughout her storied career.

The Daily Telegraph gives Natalie Merchant a perfect five stars, naming it Album of the Week, and says, “There is something quietly magnificent about her vocal presence, always perfectly set in unshowy arrangements that blend organic instrumentation with sombre yet luxurious orchestral shading.” The singer "is in terrific form," says the Times of London. "It is Merchant’s mature, versatile voice that steals the show."

Although this weekend’s shows are sold out, fans around the world can hear a live session with Merchant by tuning in to BBC Radio 2’s Weekend Wogan Sunday morning at 11 AM GMT. 

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Three of John Adams's operas are being performed in Europe this weekend: A Flowering Tree at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris tonight and Sunday; Doctor Atomic by the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasburg, France, tonight, and by the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Saturday; and Nixon in China, receiving its Irish premiere by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in Dublin on Sunday.

Across the Atlantic, two of Adams's pieces are being performed in the halls of Carnegie Hall in New York City: Harmonium, performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus in Stern Auditorium tonight, as part of the Spring For Music program, and his Chamber Symphony by Ensemble ACJW in Zankel Hall on Saturday.

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Richard Goode offers a sold-out solo piano recital at Macalester College’s Mairs Concert Hall in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon. The program features four of Beethoven’s late works: Sonatas Nos. 30–32 and Bagatelles, Op. 119. Goode famously recorded a landmark set of the Complete Beethoven Sonatas for Nonesuch in 1993; his latest Nonesuch release is the three-CD set of the Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos. Next week, Goode heads out West to California for performances in Santa Barbara, Stanford, and Rohnert Park.

“One could marvel at the incredible subtlety of Goode's coloring,” writes the Philadelphia Inquirer about his recent performance at the Kimmel Center, “which embraced a surface haziness one associates with Monet paintings, but always had a solid core. Great industry could be sensed behind these performances (ones of this caliber evolve as slowly as the music itself was composed).”

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Iron and Wine, aka singer/songwriter Sam Beam, makes his Shaky Knees Music Festival debut in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday afternoon, performing a set on the Peachtree Stage. This kicks off a string of spring and summer tour dates to come.

“There are the songs that beg for an open fire and the smell of pine, then the ones that shimmer and shine, lifting you onto your toes bring the weight out from your chest,” writes Tone Deaf about Iron and Wine’s recent performance in Melbourne. “Beam understands the ghosts that sit underneath our skin. He’s spent over a decade assigning lines and notes and sounds to something we don’t quite know how to say ourselves.” Such sounds can be heard on his Nonesuch debut album, Ghost on Ghost, released last year.

Conor Oberst (who also “lives with ghosts,” according to a recent Billboard interview you can read here), performs on the same Peachtree Stage at the Shaky Knees Music Festival on Saturday. That set is bookended by two more Southern shows in the Carolinas this weekend: at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina, tonight and the Charleston Music Hall in South Carolina on Sunday.

Oberst, whose new solo album, Upside Down Mountain, is due out Nonesuch Records on May 19, kicked off his months-long tour with a sold-out show in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, last night, and recently added several new tour dates in the fall, extended the tour into October. He will celebrate the album's release with a performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on May 19.

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Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra kick off a seven-night tour with Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in Germany this weekend: at the Kieler Schloss in Kiel on Saturday and Baden-Baden’s Festspielhaus on Sunday. On the program are Artūr Maskats’ Midnight in Riga, Bernstein’s Serenade, and Bizet-Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite. The tour continues in Germany in the week ahead.

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Kronos Quartet performs at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden tonight and the Cork Opera House in Ireland on Sunday. Tonight’s program features the world premiere of Karin Rehnqvist’s All Those Strings! and performances of Terry Riley’s The Serquent Risadome—which Kronos premiered at Carnegie Hall last month—and John Oswald’s Spectre, all of which were written for Kronos, as well as works by Wiley and Scott, and a traditional Greek song recorded on their new Nonesuch album, A Thousand Thoughts. The second half of tonight’s concert comprises George Crumb’s Black Angels, the piece that inspired Kronos founder David Harrington to form the group.

Kronos also gives the Irish premiere of Riley’s Risadome and of Phillip Glass’s String Quartet No. 6 on Sunday. Additionally, the Cork program includes works written for the Quartet by Donnacha Dennehy and Bryce Dessner, as well as Laurie Anderson’s Flow and Wiley’s Last Kind Words. On Tuesday, Kronos heads to London’s Barbican Hall to continue its 40th anniversary celebrations, giving the UK premieres of the Riley and Glass pieces plus world premieres of works by Dessner and Jarvis Cocker, as part of the Barbican's month-long Nonesuch celebration.

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The Brad Mehldau Trio concludes its six-night residency at the Village Vanguard in New York City this weekend, with two consecutive sets each tonight, on Saturday and Sunday. The venue has long been a part of the group’s history, as Mehldau and the Trio recorded a series of acclaimed live albums there from 1996 to 2001, and again in 2006. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that the Trio’s recent performance at the Manchester Craftmen’s Guild “wasn't one of those shows that pounded music into an audience; you almost had to reach out and touch it as you would a flower.”

“This is fascinating, carefully worked out, riveting music,” writes PopMatters about about Mehliana: Taming the Dragon, the debut album from Mehliana, Mehldau’s electric duo with Mark Guiliana, released on Nonesuch earlier this year. “I’d go so far as to call it—in its careful orchestration and unique textures—Ellingtonian. Beyond category.” Mehldau next joins Kronos Quartet and Timo Andres at the Barbican Hall in London next weekend, as part of Explorations: The Sound of Nonesuch Records.

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Pat Metheny Unity Group rounds out the Scandinavian leg of its world tour at the Stockholm Waterfront on Sunday, following two performances in Norway: at the Trondheim Jazz Fest tonight and the Oslo Konserthus on Saturday. Metheny and the Unity Group—woodwind player Chris Potter, drummer Antonio Sanchez, bassist Ben Williams, and multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi—bring the music of their Nonesuch released Kin (←→) to Germany and Luxembourg in the week ahead.

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Nickel Creek continues its tour in the Midwest in three different states this weekend: a sold-out performance at the Riviera Theater in Chicago tonight; the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee on Saturday; and the State Theatre in Minneapolis on Sunday. The band kicks off the Western leg of the tour in Colorado on Tuesday, bringing with them the songs of their new album, A Dotted Line, released last month on Nonesuch Records. The video for one of those songs, “Destination,” received its world premiere via NPR Music earlier this week, you can watch it here.