Happy Record Store Day weekend! The Coachalla Valley Music and Arts Festival begins today at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA. The Arcs, on their West Coast Caravan tour, perform at the festival both this weekend and next, as do Mbongwana Star and St Germain.

The Arcs, who kicked off their tour at the beginning of the week, will play a sold-out show at the Fillmore in San Francisco tonight before taking the stage at Coachella on Saturday. The Arcs’ debut album, Yours, Dreamily, “takes what Auerbach does at his best, in and out of the Keys,” says Rolling Stone, “texturally enriched blues propelled with garage-rock force—and adds a riveting jump in eccentricity.” The New York Times describes their live show as a “rock and soul revue that can knock out Motown beats, fuzz-toned boogies or slow-grooving R&B.”

Mbongwana Star and St Germain both take the Coachella stages today, with St Germain continuing his own North American tour on to the Mezzanine in San Francisco Saturday night.

Mbongwana Star’s debut album, From Kinshasa, which was released on World Circuit last year and distributed in the US on Nonesuch, has been praised by the New York Times for “the band’s crisp, versatile rhythm section, its angular guitar and its lived-in voices,” and by NPR, which writes that the album's "ambition extends to the astral plane, absorbing post-punk, funk and techno along the way.”

St Germain’s newly released self-titled album has been called a "remarkable album" by All About Jazz, while Exclaim, in a recent live review, says, “St. Germain has created something rich and masterful.”

---

John Adams conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic and violinist Leila Josefowicz in his Scheherazade.2 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall tonight and tomorrow. Performances of the program—which also includes Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome—began last night. Adams wrote the piece for Josefowicz, who gave the premiere performance last year.

Scheherazade.2 “triumphs,” exclaimed the Seattle Times, in a review of last month’s West Coast premiere with Josefowicz and the Seattle Symphony. ”"It’s a monumental score …. There’s nothing else like it.”

Adams returns to the Disney Hall stage on Tuesday to lead the LA Phil New Music Group and Los Robles Master Chorale in a performance of works including selections from his song play I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, and the world premiere of a new piece by composer Jacob Cooper. It’s part of the Green Umbrella series.

There’s more of Adams’s music at the hall next week as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Edo de Waart perform The Chairman Dances next Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

---

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kick off a seven-city US tour at The Kennedy Center's Crossroads Club in Washington, DC, tonight. The band moves on to play the Gem Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, tomorrow night, and two shows at Murry’s in Columbia, Missouri, on Sunday.

---

Olivia Chaney plays the first of what will be many UK shows to come (including a June tour with Ben Folds and yMusic) with a set at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, at Pontin's Prestatyn Holiday Centre in Prestatyn, North Wales, on Sunday afternoon.

Chaney recently performed alongside several Nonesuch label mates at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Wall Street Journal praised the gathering, writing, “Here, the like-minded came together, often gloriously so, to challenge themselves, each other and a grateful, satisfied audience with artistry that may fit no easy category but is essential to grasping the richness of contemporary music.”

---

Ry Cooder, Sharon White, and Ricky Skaggs conclude this leg of their Cooder-White-Skaggs tour with two shows in New York State this weekend: they play the State Theatre of Ithaca on Saturday and the Tarrytown Music Hall on Sunday. The trio reunites for the Regina Folk Festival in Canada this August.

---

Jeremy Denk gives a solo piano recital, bringing his program of Bach, Stravinsky, Schubert, Ives, and more to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in New York City on Sunday.

The New Yorker describes the program as "a dazzlingly broad array of solo work." Denk spoke with New York classical music station WQXR about the program, its conception, and its larger intentions. You can read the interview here.

---

Kronos Quartet concludes a week-long workshop for young professional quartets at Carnegie Hall in New York City as the workshop participants—the Argus, Friction, and Ligeti Quartets—perform in Zankel Hall tonight. In the workshop, the musicians examined pieces created as part of Fifty for the Future, Kronos’s new commissioning project. The Zankel program features the New York premieres of three such works—Fodé Lassana Diabaté’s Sunjata's Time, Garth Knox’s Satellites, and Wu Man’s Four Chinese Paintings—as well as selections from Terry Riley’s Salome Dances for Peace, which was written for Kronos in 1986.

Kronos continues on to the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center in The Villages, Florida, on Sunday. The program includes Fifty for the Future pieces by Diabaté, Wu Man, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; works by Pete Townshend and Geeshie Wiley; the traditional tune “Tusen Tankar,” which Kronos recorded on the album A Thousand Thoughts; and Riley’s “One Earth, One People, One Love,” from Sun Rings.

---

Lake Street Dive continues its European tour, featuring music from its Nonesuch Records debut album, Side Pony, with two shows in Germany this weekend: at Postbahnhof in Berlin tonight and Ampere in Munich on Sunday.

---

The Brad Mehldau Trio—Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Jeff Ballard on drums—launches a tour of the United States and Europe ahead of its forthcoming album Blues and Ballads, with a concert at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston tonight and the Swyer Theatre at The Egg in Albany on Saturday. Mehldau goes solo for a set at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church near his childhood hometown in Hartford on Sunday, before resuming the trio tour next week.

---

Chris Thile once again co-hosts public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor at The Town Hall in New York City on Saturday. Keillor and Thile, who is set to take over as the show’s new host this fall, will be joined by singer-songwriters John Fullbright and Aoife O’Donovan. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can listen to the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 5 PM CT.

Thile joins his fellow Punch Brothers next month for a two-week US tour.

---

Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, touring in support of their new live album, Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música: Multishow Live, play two shows in Miami this weekend: at the Bayfront Park Amphitheater on Saturday and the Saxony Theater at Faena Hotel Miami Beach on Sunday. They conclude the tour in New York next week, with two sold-out shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Jazzwise gives Dois Amigos four stars, calling it "a glorious celebration of Brazilian music, the art of the singer-songwriter, and an enduring friendship." NPR says, “simplicity is beauty in the new live album from Brazilian music legends Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil … It's almost startling to encounter music like this—refined to an essence, simple, graceful and complete."

Reviews of the concerts have noted the intimacy between Veloso's and Gil's voices and guitars, with Reuters calling their Montreux performance "pure and poignant," and the Guardian calling it "historic … a classy and emotional performance," saying, "They are now in their early 70s, and they are still remarkable." The Los Angeles Times, in a review of the US tour’s opening show last weekend, says it was “a pleasure … to watch two masters at work.”