Carolina Chocolate Drops follow a Nor'easter to the Northeast with two stops in the region this weekend. First up is a performance with local Gypsy music purveyors the Luminescent Orchestrii at New York's Bowery Ballroom tonight. "The trio has a playful bent," says the New York Times in recommending tonight's show; "it covers, with pluck and verve, Blu Cantrell’s R&B revenge anthem, 'Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)'—but their more traditional cuts are just as spirited."

On Sunday, the Chocolate Drops play a Saturday night set at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston with David Wax Museum opening. The Boston Globe says: "We felt so inspired after hearing this band's music that we tried to play the bones ... Take a listen to the trio's infectious, down to earth renditions of old-time string and jug-band music and see whether you're not similarly moved."

The Washington Post Express, previewing last night's show at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, described the band's Nonesuch debut album, Genuine Negro Jig, as "brilliant." "With their deft musicianship and curatorial knowledge of string band music," says Express writer John Murph, "the Carolina Chocolate Drops are the real deal."

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Laurie Anderson returns to the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer in Troy, New York, to perform her latest theater piece, Delusion tonight and Saturday. It was during multiple residencies at EMPAC last year, in part, that Anderson developed the piece. Anderson discusses that process in a preview of this weekend's shows in the Albany Times Union. Read the article at timesunion.com.

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Rhys Chatham, whose Lincoln Center Out of Doors performance of A Crimson Grail was released last month on Nonesuch, returns to New York and to the cutting-edge cultural space he once curated: The Kitchen. Chatham and artist Angie Eng perform the a multimedia piece, Echodes, there Friday and Saturday. Chatham, on trumpet, and his fellow musicians—drummer Kevin Shea and electric bassist David Sims—accompany Eng's real-time generated projected imagery of hand-manipulated objects and video footage. Time Out New York recommends it as Top Live Show. Chatham is the subject of a feature profile in the Wall Street Journal available at online.wsj.com.

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Shawn Colvin follows her performance last night at Anthology in San Diego with a second show tonight. Colvin spoke with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch prior to a recent show in that city. You can read the Q&A at stltoday.com.

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Wanda Jackson is in Texas this weekend to play The Continental Clubs of Austin tonight, with Rosie Flores, and Houston on Saturday. Austin's American Statesman says: "It's an exciting time to be Wanda Jackson." The Boston Globe says of her recent Boston-area show: "Jackson’s signature growl was in glorious form. Her voice still has its distinct, syrupy twang, and she was vibrant as ever, weaving recollections, wisecracks, and in-the-moment observations in among the music."

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Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica are in Germany all weekend, performing at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg tonight, the NDR Landesfunkhaus Niedersachsen in Hanover on Saturday, and the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin on Sunday. Featured on the program are works from the artists' recent Nonesuch release, De Profundis.

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Strange Powers, the new documentary feature that follows Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields over a decade of music making, will be screened this weekend as part of the London Film Festival, tonight at BFI Southbank and Saturday at ICA Cinema the ICA.

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Natalie Merchant continues her tour of the US Northeast backed by full symphony orchestras with performances at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts in Morristown, New Jersey, tonight, and the American Music Theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. The tour concludes with a show at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday featuring the Delaware Symphony Orchestra.

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Pat Metheny continues his Orchestrion tour, featuring the music and instruments of his latest Nonesuch release of the same name, performing at the Lehigh Performing Arts Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, tonight; the University of Buffalo's Center for the Arts in upstate New York, on Saturday; and the Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan, on Sunday.

"For more than three decades," says the Allentown Morning Call in a preview of tonight's show, "Metheny has set himself apart from the jazz mainstream, expanding and blurring boundaries and musical styles." Writer Steve Siegel spoke with Metheny for an interview you can read at mcall.com.

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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Punch Brothers close out the West Coast leg of their tour with a performance at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium tonight, performing "with a sense of adventure that's hard to resist," says the San Francisco Chronicle. The band heads back East to perform with T Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Revue at Boston's Wang Theatre on Saturday, proceeds from which will be donated to The Participant Foundation to support music and arts education programming in public schools.

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Joshua Redman continues his four-night residency at Blues Alley in Washington, DC, through Sunday, with two sets each night. Redman is joined by his Trio, featuring bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, one half of the double trio he assembled for his latest Nonesuch release, Compass.

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Sara Watkins opens for Celtic band Gaelic Storm at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California, on Sunday. As recently reported in the Nonesuch Journal, Watkins will appear on the big screen as a guest on A Prairie Home Companion as the show is broadcast live in movie theaters across North America next Thursday.