Björk continues her nine-show Biophilia residency at the brand-new Harpa Concert Hall in her hometown of Reykjavik with the second of two Iceland Airwaves Festival sets on Sunday. Rolling Stone's David Fricke calls Wednesday's Reykjavik premiere "remarkable." The residency, which continues through November 7, is fully sold-out. Nonesuch has teamed up with Icelandair to offer one lucky fan two tickets to the closing-night performance, along with round-trip airfare for two, plus accommodations for two nights at Hotel Natura in Reykjavik. The contest is open to US residents over the age of 18. To enter to win, go to Björk's Facebook page now.

During the residency, Björk will be performing material from the newly released Biophilia, plus favorite songs from throughout her varied career. Björk has commissioned a set of unique musical instruments to accompany her on the live tour. The team that created these instruments include an English inventor, an Icelandic organ builder and a graduate of MIT Media Lab. Among these creations are four 10-foot pendulum-harps, in which the swinging motion plucks the strings and illustrates the songs' gravitational subject matter. There is also a unique 10-foot pin barrel harp called the Sharpsichord, a midi-controlled pipe organ and celeste (re-fitted with bronze gamelan bars), twin musical tesla coils, a hang player, and an award-winning 24-piece Icelandic female choir.

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Laurie Anderson brings her latest performance piece, Delusion, to the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, tonight. "She successfully merges an infatuation with technology with the sensibility of an old-fashioned storyteller," writes the Kansas City Star's Bill Brownlee of Anderson's recent performance of Delusion there. "Anderson is an ambitious yet accessible artist."

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Timothy Andres joins the NOW Ensemble for a marathon concert curated by the JACK Quartet at the Miller Theatre in New York City on Sunday. The performance is a part of the SONiC Festival, which begins today and runs through Saturday, October 22.

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Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops is making a couple of appearances this weekend with Sxip Shirey of Luminescent Orchestrii, with whom the Chocolate Drops released a four-song EP earlier this year. The two are joined by Joe “Bass” DeJarnette of The Wiyos for a project called Sonic New York. Following last night's performance at Joe's Pub in New York City, the three head up to Portland, Maine, to perform at One Longfellow Square tonight, followed by a show at Studio Red Hook in upstate New York tomorrow.
 
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Richard Goode continues his 2011-12 concert season with a performance at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium this Sunday afternoon. Goode joins The Met Orchestra, led by Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi, for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503. Also on the program are the Overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute, Strauss's Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, and the world premiere performance of a new work by John Harbison, with a text by Alice Munro, sung by mezzo-soprano Christine Rice.

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Wanda Jackson continues her week-long Florida stint with two more performances this weekend. She plays first at the Jaeb Theater in Tampa tonight, followed with a Sunday set in Pensacola Beach, as part of the three-day Deluna Fest.

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Kronos Quartet is in Australia, offering three performances of Sun Rings, Terry Riley’s musical odyssey into the farthest reaches of the solar system, in its Australian premiere at the Melbourne East Recital Centre over the weekend and into next week. The concerts are part of the Melbourne Festival, which runs through next weekend, celebrating music, theatre, dance, visual arts, and multimedia.

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k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang are in the Southwest this weekend for three shows, starting with a sold-out show at the Lensic in Santa Fe, New Mexico, tonight, followed by two Arizona dates: at the University of Arizona's Centennial Hall in Tucson on Saturday and the Mesa Arts Center's Ikeda Theater on Sunday. Singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson opens all three shows.

"For 90 minutes lang and company took us on a luxurious ride through earthy country and sublimely melodic pop," writes Dallas Morning News music critic Mario Tarradell of their recent performance there. "With her five stellar musicians, lang offered nearly all of Sing It Loud, her penetrating and potent new CD." 

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Jessica Lea Mayfield performs at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville tonight in a showcase for the Americana Music Association Festival. Mayfield performed at the AMA Honors and Awards ceremony held last night at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, where she was nominated for 2011’s best New/Emerging Artist award.

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Audra McDonald takes her North American tour to California this weekend: first in her hometown of Fresno, where she performs with the Fresno Grand Opera Orchestra at the Warnors Theatre tonight, then at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on Saturday.

"I always want to come and sing in Fresno," McDonald tells the Fresno Bee's Donald Munro in a preview of tonight's show. "I'm excited to come home." She spoke with Fresno radio station K-Jewel 99.3 FM's Bruce & Feleena this morning. You can listen to the segment again at kjwl.com.

McDonald has earned rave reviews for her performance thus far. The Boston Globe's Matthew Guerrieri, reviewing her tour-opening performance at Boston's Symphony Hall, says: "McDonald is one of the most consummate performers there is, effortlessly intimate, casually masterly, seemingly more comfortable on stage than most people are anywhere."

The Washington Post's Nelson Pressley writes of last week's show in DC: "Inspiration was the name of the game at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Tuesday night. See Audra McDonald, be a better person." Pressley concludes: " By the end, the intelligently controlled, radiant McDonald never sounded more soulful or blissfully free."

The Vancouver Sun, reviewing McDonald's recent performance at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre, calls it "one of the more exhilarating programs offered here in some time." Reviewer David Gordon Duke says: "McDonald's instrument is rich and her technique solid. She delivers text with flawless diction and reveals the subtle emotional subtexts of her repertoire."

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Pat Metheny closes out his US duo tour with bassist Larry Grenadier and his week-long residency at the Blue Note in New York City this weekend. As he did throughout his six-night stay at the Manhattan landmark, Metheny and Grenadier play a double set each night. These final dates will close out a 20-city US tour, which will be followed up by a month-long European tour for the remainder of October and into November.

The New Yorker says: " Pat Metheny, one of the most admired guitar stylists of the past four decades, gets a chance to deliver some unadorned jazz improvising as he performs duets with the acoustic bassist Larry Grenadier."

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Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau, who began their brief US tour last night, are making three university appearances this weekend. The duo will be in Philadelphia tonight, performing at the Zellerbach Theatre at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, which marks the start of the Center's 40th anniversary season. They make their way on to New York City on Saturday to perform at The New School's Tishman Auditorium. That too marks a historic occasion: the 25th anniversary of The New School's Jazz & Contemporary Music program, where Mehldau once studied. Redman and Mehldau wrap up their weekend at Cornell University's Bailey Hall in Ithaca on Sunday.

Time Out New York, previewing Saturday's show, says to "expect raw passion intermingled with the pair's tender lyricism."

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The 75th birthday celebrations for Steve Reich continue in Paris this weekend as the Cité de la Musique continues its Pulsations festival honoring the composer. On Saturday, percussion students from the Conservatoire de Paris perform Reich's 1986 piece Six Marimbas in a free concert at Rue Musicale. Also on Saturday, and again on Sunday, in the Salles des Concerts, choreographer Karine Saporta presents a new version of her piece Notes (2008), including the work of video artist Angie Eng and set to the music of Steve Reich: Violin Phase, Different Trains, It's Gonna Rain, and Triple Quartet.

Across the English Channel, the London Symphony Orchestra is offering its own celebration of Reich's 75th birthday with two different events in London this Saturday featuring Reich's music: an afternoon performance demonstration by orchestra members with students from the Guildhall School at LSO St. Luke's followed by an evening concert at Barbican Hall with Synergy Vocals. The evening's all-Reich program includes Three Movements, The Four Sections, Clapping Music, and The Desert Music.

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Allen Toussaint performs with the legendary Mavis Staples at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver on Sunday. "His playing on projects as recent as 2009's exceptional Joe Henry-produced The Bright Mississippi is pristine," writes The Province's Stuart Derdeyn of Toussaint's Nonesuch debut album. "This jazz recording featured such heavy hitters as pianist Brad Mehldau, saxophonist Joshua Redman, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, clarinetist Don Byron and guitarist Marc Ribot on tracks from geniuses ranging from his New Orleans homeboys Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt and others."

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Sara Watkins plays two solo shows this weekend, beginning in Memphis, Tennessee, where she'll perform a solo show at the Buckman Performing Arts Center on Saturday. She plays the Harvest Music Festival on Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas, on Sunday.