Kronos Quartet helps close out the 10th annual Sacrum Profanum festival in Kraków, Poland, with the culminating concerts of the week-long festival, held at the Tinning Plant of ArcelorMittal Poland.

First comes an evening's celebration of iconic Polish composers, opening with Kronos Quartet's performance of Krzysztof Penderecki's String Quartet, an excerpt from Lutoslawski's String Quartet, a section of Górecki's String Quartet No. 2 (which was written for Kronos), and Wojciech Kilar's Orawa. Other artists for the evening include Skalpel, King Cannibal, DJ Food, Grasscut, and DJ Vadim.

Sacrum Profanum closes with two finale concerts, Sunday and Monday nights, for which Kronos Quartet is joined by Icelandic band Sigur Rós. While the Kronos repertoire has included the Sigur Rós piece Flugufrelsarinn (“The Fly Freer”) for some time (see the digital single Kronos Quartet Plays Sigur Rós), these concerts mark the first time the two groups will perform together. The Kronos program features Flugufrelsarinn and Nicole Lizée's Death to Kosmische.

Earlier in the week, Sacrum Profanum saw world-premiere performances from Alarm Will Sound and Bang on a Can All-Stars.

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Laurie Anderson brings her latest performance piece, Dirtday!, halfway across the globe with performances in Scandinavia and the US West Coast this weekend: at the Uppsala Konsert & Kongress in Uppsala, Sweden, tonight, and at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in Portland, Oregeon, on Sunday for the TBA Festival. Dirtday! is the third and final element of Anderson’s triptych of solo story works, which also includes Happiness and The End of the Moon.

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Billy Bragg has been celebrating the Woody Guthrie centenary with acoustic shows across the UK this week featuring songs from the Mermaid Avenue albums, in which Bragg and Wilco set Guthrie's words to music. Bragg is been joined by special guests along the way, including this weekend's shows at O2 ABC in Glasgow with KT Tunstall tonight and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London with Joe Henry and Grace Petrie on Sunday. The tour comes to a close on Monday with a show at Vicar Street in Dublin with Andy Irvine. Bragg takes the show to New Zealand and Australia next month.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops have made their way to the Northeast, following last night's performance in New Hampshire with a set at the Grand Point North Festival in Burlington, Vermont, today and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, on Saturday.

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Rhys Chatham has gathered a veritable army of 100 guitarists and eight bassists to perform his monumental work A Crimson Grail at the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, England, tonight. The free performance is part of the Liverpool Biennal and marks the UK premiere of the piece.

In 2010, Nonesuch Records released a recording of the outdoor version of A Crimson Grail—featuring 200 guitarists, 16 bassists, five conductors, and one percussionist—from a performance at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. The BBC calls it "a remarkable, engrossing work" that "achieves an immersive, exultant sense of the sublime." The New York Times says: "It might justly be considered 'music to pray to.’”

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Shawn Colvin is in her hometown of Austin, Texas, tonight to perform two sets at the One World Theatre. She stays in Texas for a show at the Dosey Doe in The Woodlands Saturday night.

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Nataly Dawn, whose debut solo album, How I Knew Her, will be released on Nonesuch Records in January, joins Rochester, New York–based singer-songwriter Lauren O'Connell for a sold-out concert in San Francisco as part of the KC Turner House Concert Series. The two released a duo EP together in 2010. Watch the video for the first song off of How I Knew Her here.

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As noted earlier today in the Nonesuch Journal, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's famed opera Einstein on the Beach returns to New York for the first time in 20 years with performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)'s Howard Gilman Opera House tonight, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. The eight-show run continues this week and through next weekend.

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Adam Guettel concludes a five-night run at the Hippodrome in London with shows tonight and Saturday. The residency showcases music from throughout the composer's career, including his musicals The Light in the Piazza and Floyd Collins and the song cycle Myths and Hymns. Guettel "certainly knows how to charm his listeners," says the Times of London. "His impressively relaxed singing voice, which sometimes slips into a supple falsetto, has a touch of James Taylor about it."
 

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Lianne La Havas brings her week in North America to a close this weekend, following shows at Bowery Ballroom in New York City on Tuesday and Le Belmont in Montreal last night. La Havas is in Los Angeles to give a free in-store performance at the Amoeba Music in Hollywood this evening at 6 PM.

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k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang continue their tour of lang's home country of Canada with a performance at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, tonight. The Edmonton Journal, reviewing Wednesday night's concert at the Jubilee Auditorium, says lang's voice "was nothing short of towering."

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Pat Metheny's Unity Band—featuring Chris Potter on sax and bass clarinet, Antonio Sanchez on drums, and Ben Williams on bass—continues its US tour with a four-night residency at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley in Seattle that began last night and runs through Sunday with two shows each night.

In advance of the residency, Metheny spoke at length with the Seattle Music Insider about the new band and their self-titled debut album, released earlier this year on Nonesuch. It marks the first time since his 1980 release 80/81 that Metheny has recorded with a band that features tenor saxophone.

"The nine songs that span the Unity Band album encompass a wide diversity of sounds in both acoustic and electronic settings, including a cameo appearance from Metheny’s Orchestrion," writes SMI's Jonathan Sindelman. "In listening to the new album, the merits of the 80/81 band are further substantiated by a concept Metheny continues to further distill—utilizing the very best combination of timing, resources, and talent as a way to unify ideas and create music that satisfies the highest level of expression." Read more and see what Metheny has to say at seattlemusicinsider.com.
 
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Joshua Redman and his Trio, featuring Reuben Rogers on bass and Gregory Hutchinson on drums, continue their five-day, five-city tour of Ireland and Northern Ireland through the weekend, with performances at Triskel Christchurch in Cork tonight, The MAC in Belfast on Saturday, and, closing out the tour, at the Ireland Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire on Sunday.
 
Meanwhile, NPR Music is rebroadcasting a concert from the 2011 Berklee Beantown Jazz Festival by James Farm, the collaborative band featuring Redman, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland, at npr.org.

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Chris Thile performs a sold-out solo show in the intimate space of Rockwood Music Hall's Stage 2 in New York City Sunday night.

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Sara Watkins and her brother Sean present the latest Watkins Family Hour show at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles on Saturday night. They will be joined for the event by special guests Nikka Costa and Dan Wilson, who wrote the song "When It Pleases You," off Sara Watkins' latest album, Sun Midnight Sun. The video for the song premiered earlier this week on CMT and can be seen on YouTube and nonesuch.com/media.