This Easter weekend, the Magnetic Fields’ 50 Song Memoir concert tour continues in Boston. The newly expanded Magnetic Fields septet brings the stage extravaganza, directed by José Zayas, to the city where the band first came together for performances at the Berklee Performance Center tonight (songs 1–25) and Saturday (songs 26–50). Stephin Merritt, who wrote one song for every year of his life for the project and sings vocals on all 50 songs, spoke with the Improper Bostonian about the project ahead of this weekend’s shows. You can read what he had to say here.

The five-disc recording has received widespread critical acclaim. It's "quite an achievement," says NPR Music. "Some of its wordplay is truly remarkable ... More importantly, Memoir is a tour-de-farce of melody and arrangement." Pitchfork calls 50 Song Memoir “an immersive, incisive listen ... It suggests that our deepest wisdom can be located in our most personal thoughts." The Wall Street Journal calls it "a highly entertaining summary of pop culture of the past half-century … 50 Song Memoir is a treat.”

You can watch several music videos for the album originally created for the tour here.

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John Adams's dramatic symphony Scheherazade.2 receives its Japanese premiere in performances by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and violinist Leila Josefowicz, led by conductor Alan Gilbert, at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan on Monday and Tuesday.

Nonesuch released the first recording of Scheherazade.2 in September. The "cinematic music goes a long way in unfolding a potent drama," says NPR. "The fierceness and vulnerability Leila Josefowicz expresses contributes to an award-caliber performance." Scheherazade.2 "sets a whole new standard for narrative and theatrical vibrancy," exclaims the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Devendra Banhart brings music from his 2016 album, Ape in Pink Marble, to the sold-out Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, on Sunday. He returns for the second sold-out weekend next Sunday. Banhart heads to Japan for a pair of shows next month, before embarking on a European tour in June.

Uncut calls Ape in Pink Marble "excellent," praising Banhart as an “accomplished shaper of moods and atmosphere.” The Washington Post says the new album "feels as mysterious and inviting as a strange dream. The tempo dips to a reggae lull midway through while guitar solos delicately fill in spaces with carefully chosen notes."

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David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s musical Here Lies Love continues in previews at the Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Bagley Wright Theatre with performances all weekend. Opening Night is set for this Thursday, April 20. Nonesuch Records released the original cast album in 2014 and an all-star album of songs from Here Lies Love in 2010.

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Rhiannon Giddens concludes her run of Australian dates, featuring music from her new album, Freedom Highway, with two sets at the Byron Bay Bluesfest, performing on the Crossroads stage this afternoon and the Jambalaya stage on Sunday. Rolling Stone Australia includes Giddens in its “7 Must-See Acts at Bluesfest 2017,” writing, “once you hear her delicate, soulful brand of Americana, you’ll be hooked.” The Guardian, in its four star review of Giddens’s show in Sydney last week, calls the performance “magnificent … a virtuoso slice of Americana.”

Giddens released Freedom Highway earlier this year to critical acclaim. The Guardian calls it a “powerful and timely set,” while Pitchfork exclaims: "Rhiannon Giddens emerges as a peerless and powerful voice in roots music.” The Wall Street Journal concludes: "Detailed, strongly conceived and powerful in its music, singing and songs, Rhiannon Giddens’s Freedom Highway will get to you, and stick with you."

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Kronos Quartet closes out the 60th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, performing composer Jacob Garchik's new score to filmmaker Guy Maddin’s visual collage, The Green Fog, at Castro Theatre on Sunday. The program, titled “The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia with Kronos Quartet,” presents, in Maddin’s own words, his “parallel-universe version” of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 film, Vertigo.

As recently reported in the Nonesuch Journal, Kronos Quartet joins forces with label mates Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant for Folk Songs, an album of traditional songs with contemporary arrangements, to be released June 9 on Nonesuch. Folk Songs is available to pre-order from iTunes and the Nonesuch Store, where the album track "The Butcher's Boy," featuring Merchant, may be downloaded instantly.

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Audra McDonald, who recently performed at the Olivier Awards in London, concludes her four-night run at Leicester Square Theatre in London with performances tonight and Saturday. She is joined for the run by her husband, fellow Broadway star Will Swenson, with Seth Rudetsky of Sirius/XM Satellite Radio’s On Broadway as host and pianist. The Stage gives the performance five stars, calling it "an unmissable encounter with a Broadway superstar." McDonald brings her Tony Award–winning performance of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill to Wyndham’s Theatre in London on June 17.

New York Magazine exalts McDonald’s voice as “a thing of beauty with its silvery shine and precise tonal focus that plays so provocatively off the word. Despite the vocal sophistication, every expressive gesture has a wonderful immediacy,” adding that her repertoire is “flawlessly organized, strung together like a rope of pearls without one jewel out of place.”

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Pat Metheny heads to the Orpheum Theatre in Wichita, Kansas, for a headlining concert at the Wichita Jazz Festival, on Saturday. Metheny, joined by bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson, kick things off with a trio set, followed by a performance with the Wichita State University Symphony Orchestra, led by Mark Laycock, of string arrangements by composer Alan Broadbent.

Next month, Metheny meets back up with drummer Antonio Sánchez, pianist Gwilym Simcock, and bassist Linda Oh, for a month-long tour of Europe, followed by a small run of dates in the Northeast US. The guitarist 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."