Sam Amidon plays a free set at Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn on Saturday, opening for Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series. Amidon embarks on a European tour in the autumn, beginning with his first-ever headline show at Union Chapel in London on October 26.

His newest album, The Following Mountain, was released in May via Nonesuch Records. The London Evening Standard gives the album four stars, praising its “captivating arrangements and elegiac charm.” The Irish Times gives it four stars as well, calling it “breathtaking … a fascinating signpost to the future.”

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Fleet Foxes continue their North American tour, featuring music from their new album, Crack-Up, with two sold-out shows at Massey Hall in Toronto tonight and Saturday, followed by a concert at the Masonic Temple Theatre in Detroit on Sunday.

Crack-Up was released in June on Nonesuch to great critical acclaim. "Rewarding, involving, and meticulous," says the AP, "Crack-Up has been well worth the wait." "Likely to be the most remarkable album you will hear this year," exclaims the Times of London. "The return of one of the most original bands of this century." Uncut calls it “astonishing.”

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Rhiannon Giddens is at the Newport Jazz Festival this weekend. She plays a special evening concert at the International Tennis Hall of Fame with Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue tonight, followed by a festival set at Fort Adams State Park on Saturday afternoon. Giddens then heads to New York, for a performance at The Egg in Albany on Sunday.

Giddens was in Newport just last weekend for what Rolling Stone named one of the “10 Best Things We Saw” at the Newport Folk Festival: a “triumphant” and “spellbinding” set that “provided the weekend’s finest, and most essential, dosage of traditional American music.”

Her new album, Freedom Highway, was released in February 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.”

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Emmylou Harris concludes her four-city run of European dates with a performance at Oslo Konserthus in Norway tonight. The New York Times has called Harris “the reigning queen of Americana.” The Wall Street Journal says: “Her voice remains an open channel for otherworldly beauty, earthy and ethereal in equal measure.”

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Randy Newman, who performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this week, gives a concert to benefit National Jewish Health at Belly Up in Aspen, Colorado, on Sunday.

Dark Matter, Newman's first album of new material in nine years, is out now on CD and digitally from Nonesuch, with the vinyl due August 18. NPR says Newman "remains first and foremost a craftsman of song, capable of telling ordinary stories in ways no one quite has before." The Associated Press writes that Newman is "still at the top of his game … Dark Matter is a typically engaging mix of topical tunes, quirky characters, history lessons and wry asides."

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Conor Oberst, with The Felice Brothers as his backing band, launches his European Salutations tour with a set at A Summer’s Tale, the festival in Westergellerser, Germany, tonight. He has a show at Beatpol in Dresden on Saturday, and a set at OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland, on Sunday.

Oberst was a guest on the Charlie Rose show last week, in which he spoke with Rose about and performed songs from his new albums, Salutations and Ruminations. You can watch the interview and performances here.

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Punch Brothers, currently on the road with I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan) and special guest guitarist Juliane Lage, take the American Acoustic tour to upstate New York this weekend, performing at the Chautauqua Pavilion in Chautauqua tonight and the Anderson Center in Binghamton on Sunday.

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Saxophonist Joshua Redman, currently touring Europe with his Still Dreaming quartet— trumpeter Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Brian Blade—performs at Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester tonight, followed by a set at Ystad Theater in Sweden on Sunday morning, as part of Ystad Jazz Festival.

Still Dreaming, which the Boston Globe calls an “all-star unit in its own right,” was formed in homage to the late Dewey Redman, Joshua’s father, and his role in the classic Ornette Coleman alumni quartet Old and New Dreams. The New Yorker says that Joshua Redman has “convened a quartet in honor of the former band, combining three players equally attuned to controlled free improvisation.”