Tune in to The Late Show with David Letterman tonight at 11:35 PM ET to see Punch Brothers perform with Steve Martin. The band opens for the Dave Matthews Band twice this weekend: at the Times Union Center in Albany, tonight, and at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Philadelphia on Saturday. From there, Punch Brothers head down to Carrboro, North Carolina, for a set at Cat's Cradle on Sunday.

While Dave Matthews Band may be headlining the first two shows, "get there early and allow the opening act, Punch Brothers, to stretch your ears and scorch the air," implores the Philadelphia Inquirer's John Timpane. "As their recent CD, Antifogmatic, makes abundantly clear, these five are on fire to create something new."

Timpane goes on to exclaim of their playing: "Virtuosity: simply ridiculous. [Chris] Thile is widely regarded as the best mandolinist in (at least) this arm of the galaxy, and the rest are just as prodigious. The 10 tunes on Antifogmatic feature stratospheric playing, arrangements bound for anywhere, five instruments with five gorgeous voices."

Read the complete article at philly.com.

The band is also featured in the Charlotte News Observer in a preview of Sunday's show at Cat's Cradle. Riffing off their new album's title, which refers to a 19th-century term for a bracing alcoholic beverage, the paper says the band is "like a toddy for the soul." News Observer staff writer David Menconi says of the album: "Antifogmatic is indeed warm, an elegant picking session that bridges the gap between bluegrass and classical music. And if you've never thought of such a gap as something that needs bridging, that can mean only that you've never heard the Punch Brothers." Read the article at newsobserver.com.

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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, the musicians featured on the newly released AfroCubism album launch a three-city North American tour tonight with a performance at Metropolis in Montreal, Canada. The group performs at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston on Sunday and at The Town Hall in New York City on Tuesday. The Boston Globe calls it " the most important world-music tour of the season."

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Laurie Anderson performs Transitory Life—a collection of songs and stories from her theater pieces The Speed of Darkness, Happiness, The End of the Moon, and Homeland—at the De La Warr Pavilion Auditorium in East Sussex, England, on Saturday.

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The Black Keys finish the UK leg of their European tour this weekend with two O2 Academy concerts, with The Walkmen opening both nights: first in Liverpool on Saturday, then in Bournemouth on Sunday.

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David Byrne will be in attendance at a Saturday screening of Ride, Rise, Roar, a new concert film documenting David Byrne's 2008-09 tour The Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno, at the Eisner Auditorium in New York University's Kimmel Center. The screening is part of DOC NYC, New York's documentary festival.

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Ben Folds begins his fall tour, featuring music from Lonely Avenue, his recently released album with Nick Hornby, at The Riviera in Chicago tonight. He and his band head next to The Fillmore in Detroit on Saturday and The Orbit Room in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Sunday.

The Grand Rapids Press calls Lonely Avenue, Folds's Nonesuch debut, "one of the best albums of his career" and Sunday's Orbit Room concert "a can't-miss show."   

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Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica continue their tour of North America at the Koerner Concert Hall of Toronto's Royal Conservatory tonight. The Toronto Star calls Kremer "a classical superhero" who "invariably delivers music at the very highest level of passion and accomplishment." On Saturday, the group performs at the Harris Theater in Chicago. The tour program includes several selections from their latest Nonesuch release, De Profundis. The Chicago Reader calls it a "beautiful" album, citing the performers' "warm, full sound and sweeping, loosely Romantic performances."

The Denver Post, in a review of the group's concert in that city earlier this week, says "Kremerata Baltica plays with uncommon directness, muscularity and precision, qualities that were all abundantly in evidence during its laser-focused performance" of the album's title track.

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Kronos Quartet performs at Northeastern University's Blackman Auditorium in Boston tonight. Kronos artistic director and violinist David Harrington describes the program, titled Music Without Borders, as "a celebration of music as cultural expression and survival, and a journey to uncover what ultimately connects us in the face of an increasingly divided world."  Featured on the program are works by Midhat Assem, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Hanna Kulenty, and others.

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The Low Anthem is the surprise special guest group in a hometown show with Deer Tick at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, Saturday afternoon.

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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Brad Mehldau's Highway Rider receives its world premiere performance tonight and Saturday at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. Mehldau performs with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Jeff Ballard, Larry Grenadier, Joshua Redman, and Matt Chamberlain. "Mehldau has built a career on mixing musical styles and influences into something celebrated as distinctly original," says the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He has put that aesthetic to particular work in his newest album Highway Rider, a piece that flexes Mehldau's composing muscles as much as it does his jazz piano acumen."

In a concert preview, the Tribune calls tonight's show "the season's most ambitious jazz gig." The "very impressive" Nonesuch recording of the piece "adds up to even more than the sum of its estimable parts. In person, it just might be transporting."

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Natalie Merchant joins New York Times chief pop music critic Jon Pareles for A Conversation with Music at TheTimesCenter in New York City on Saturday. As part of the paper's TimesTalks series, Merchant will talk with Pareles about her music and perform songs from her debut Nonesuch album, Leave Your Sleep.

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Strange Powers, the new documentary feature that follows Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields over a decade of music making, shows in Los Angeles, Hartford, and Durham tonight, following the October 27 premiere at the Film Forum in New York City, and last night's opening in Toronto. The film plays at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin starting Sunday. Merritt and filmmaker Gail O'Hara will appear at the 7:40 PM screenings at LA's Laemmle's Sunset 5 tonight and Saturday night. For more information, visit strangepowersfilm.com.

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Stephen Sondheim discusses his career and his recently released book of collected lyrics, Finishing the Hat, at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco on Saturday. While the event is sold out, tickets are still available for a live simulcast taking place in Fisher Hall.

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Allen Toussaint is on tour with Nicholas Payton and the Joe Krown Trio, featuring Walter "Wolfman" Washington and Russell Batiste, with a program titled New Orleans Nights. The tour makes two stops in North Carolina this weekend: the Knight Theater in Charlotte on Saturday and Duke University's Page Auditorium in Durham on Sunday. Toussaint explores the work of his New Orleans forebears on his latest album, The Bright Mississippi, to which Payton contributes as well.

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Sara Watkins continues her UK tour, with her brother Sean accompanying her on guitar. They perform at the Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd, Wales, tonight; the Civic Theatre in Bedford, England, on Saturday; and St. Bede's in Chorley, on Sunday.

Watkins is the subject of a feature article in the Herald Scotland, which takes a look at her early days with Nickel Creek and her self-titled solo album, released on Nonesuch. Watkins tells the Herald's Rob Adams about connecting with the album's producer, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.