This holiday weekend in the United States, Brad Mehldau begins a six-city run of solo European dates, bringing his program Three Pieces After Bach to Mupa Budapest in Hungary tonight and Konzerthaus Mozart Saal in Wien, Austria, on Saturday, followed by a sold-out show at Elbphilharmonie, part of the opening festivities at the long-awaited, newly completed venue in Hamburg on Monday. The Guardian has called this program “dazzling … a balance of space and intensity perfectly struck.” After additional performances in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Mehldau reunites with his trio—Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums—in Belgium next month, beginning a run of dates which includes stops in the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.

The Brad Mehldau Trio released Blues and Ballads on Nonesuch last year. The album, which the New York Times calls “beautiful,” landed on the lists of the Best Jazz Albums of 2016 from Jazzwise, PopMatters, Glide, Record Collector, NPR Music jazz critics, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times ("one of his trio's loveliest, most immediate outings yet"). Mehldau has been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo for his take on the Cole Porter tune "I Concentrate on You" on the album.

Mehldau released a duo album with saxophonist Joshua Redman, Nearness, last year as well. The album has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. It is among the Best Jazz Albums of 2016 according to Glide and NPR Music's jazz critics, and Jazzwise includes it among the Albums of the Year, calling it "outstanding ... it’s all about serving the song and playing in the moment.”

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Composer John Adams’s 70th birthday, which comes next month, is celebrated with a performance of his Son of Chamber Symphony by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Brad Lubman, at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on Saturday. Also on the program are works by Steve Reich, who celebrated his own milestone birthday, his 80th, in October. Also this weekend, Adams’s 1989 piece Songs from the Wound-Dresser is performed by baritone vocalist Christopher Maltman and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Joana Carneiro, at Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon on Sunday.

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Laurie Anderson takes part in PEN America's Writers Resist: #LouderTogether, a free event on the steps of the New York Public Library Sunday afternoon. She joins authors Andrew Solomon, Masha Gessen, Rosanne Cash, Jeff Eugenides, Amy Goodman, Jacqueline Woodson, Monica Youn, A.M. Homes, Moustapha Bayoumi, Alexander Chee, Michael Cunningham, and others in reading from writings and seminal texts of democracy and free expression including excerpts from the Constitution, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermons, George Orwell’s 1984, the Federalist Papers, and other prose and poetry selections. The event is family-friendly, free, and open to all.

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Brazilian samba singer Teresa Cristina performs at Arena Original Bank in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Her live album and DVD, Canta Cartola, was recorded in Rio in 2015 and released on Nonesuch last year. Caetano Veloso, who was at that performance, says: “"With Cartola's songs, Teresa's artistry really shows. Her elegance on stage, the simultaneous spontaneity and decorum of every gesture, the humor, the tone, impeccable intonation—all combine in this true creator-singer, a genuine artist."

Cristina and Veloso play two shows together in Salvador, Brazil, next weekend.

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Jeremy Denk began a trio of performances with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, yesterday, and continues with shows this morning and Saturday night. Denk joins the NSO in a performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Also on the program is Stravinsky's The Firebird and Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City Suite.

The New York Times says Denk “is a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs, in whatever combination—both for his penetrating intellectual engagement with the music and for the generosity of his playing.” The Washington Post has praised him for “expressing virtuosity, humor, nostalgia and experimental daring” as well as his “inimitable sensibility … alive to the work’s poetry, wit, impulsiveness and off-beat yet irresistible charm.”

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Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell take part in Remembering Earl: Music & Stories, a multi-artist tribute to the late, legendary banjoist Earl Scruggs, at Shelby High School’s Malcolm Brown Auditorium in Shelby, North Carolina, on Saturday.

Harris and Crowell won the Duo/Group of the Year Award for their 2015 album The Traveling Kind at the 2016 Americana Music Association Honors & Awards in Nashville. The longtime friends had previously won the same award for their debut duo album, Old Yellow Moon, at the 2013 ceremony. The Los Angeles Times calls The Traveling Kind "a gorgeous reflection on life, hard-won wisdom and celebration from two longtime friends and musical collaborators."

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Kronos Quartet collaborates with multi-media artist Trevor Paglen in a sold-out performance of Paglen’s Sight Machine at Historic Pier 70 in San Francisco on Saturday. For the performance, Paglen’s machine and AI-oriented visual work meets Kronos’s typically eclectic program of Bach, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, American blues, African folk, and more. The San Francisco Chronicle spoke with Paglen about the event, part of his residency at Stanford University, for an article you can read here.

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Lake Street Dive closes out its tour of the Antipodes with a set in the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent stage at the Sydney Festival in Australia tonight. The band then takes its Side Pony world tour to Japan for the first of two nights at Blue Note Tokyo on Monday.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegraph placed Side Pony at No. 2 on its list of the year's best albums (second only to Beyoncé's Lemonade). WFUV named it among the Top Albums of the Year, as did listeners of NPR Music's All Songs Considered.

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Pat Metheny begins a month-long US tour with drummer Antonio Sánchez, pianist Gwilym Simcock, and bassist Linda Oh (after sitting in with Sam Amidon for the NYC Winter Jazzfest earlier this week) at the Fine Arts Instructional Center Concert Hall in Willimantic, Connecticut, tonight, followed by shows at Barre Opera House in Barre, Vermont, on Saturday, and Collins Center for the Arts in Orono, Maine, on Sunday. Metheny first toured with this quartet last year and was met with rave reviews, with the Guardian giving this "tour de force from an improv king" four stars. "The rapport within this newly minted band was unmistakable."

Metheny released two albums on Nonesuch last year: The Unity Sessions and Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny. Both albums landed on Best Jazz Albums of 2016 lists and Metheny received the 80th Annual DownBeat Readers Poll Guitarist of the Year award.

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Chris Thile continues his inaugural season as host of A Prairie Home Companion with a show at Symphony Center in Chicago on Saturday. Joining him as special guests for the episode are Andrew Bird, Laura Marling, and comedian Beth Stelling. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.

Thile and Brad Mehldau will release a self-titled duo album, a mix of covers and original songs, on January 27. The two recently unveiled a video of their performance of Elliott Smith’s “Independence Day,” at Bowery Ballroom in NYC, which you can watch here.