Guitarist Mary Halvorson joins pianist Sylvie Courvoisier for both early and late duo sets at the Jazz Gallery in New York City on Saturday. Halvorson’s new album, Cloudward, featuring eight new compositions she performs with her sextet Amaryllis—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—will be released in January. You can hear the opening track, “The Gate,” here.

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Further downtown, Chris Thile and his fellow Punch Brothers continue The Energy Curfew Music Hour, their new, fully acoustic musical variety show with special guests, at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City on Sunday. This week’s guests: Sylvan Esso (Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath and her husband Nick Sanborn) and The A’s (Meath and Mountain Man bandmate Alexandra Sauser-Monnig aka Daughter of Swords). The recently expanded eight-concert series now runs through January 27, with each night being recorded for future release as an Audible Original. The show imagines a near future where electricity is rationed worldwide with 24 hours of the energy grid down to promote the unplugged lifestyle. In this future, The Energy Curfew Music Hour broadcasts across the country the hour before the lights go out.

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Just north of the City, composer and guitarist Yasmin Williams performs at Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown, New York, tonight, as special guest of Watchhouse, before heading south to Philadelphia to play the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, in support of Aoife O'Donovan. Earlier this year, Williams released her first song on Nonesuch, “Dawning.” The track—featuring O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing—provides an early peek at her Nonesuch debut album, due in 2024 (details to come). You can hear the song and watch the video for it here. “Williams … is one of the country’s most imaginative young solo guitarists,” says the New York Times. “[Her] radiant sound and adventitious origins have made her a key figure in a diverse dawn for the solo guitar.”

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Multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Yussef Dayes, currently touring the US with music from his critically acclaimed new album, Black Classical Music, plays the Oasis Wynwood in Miami tonight. NPR Music names Black Classical Music one of the Albums of the Year, declaring it “an absolute feast,” while Paste says “Dayes’ debut is an enormous statement of his talent.” AllMusic considers it “easily a top pick for best albums of 2023.” The album has landed at No. 6 on Rough Trade's list of the Best Albums of the Year and is included in BBC Radio 6 Music’s Albums of the Year.

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Pianist Jeremy Denk is in Massachusetts this weekend, giving a solo recital of music written by women composers from the 19th century to the present, at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston on Saturday and Groton Hill Music Center’s Meadow Hall in Groton Hill on Sunday. The program includes works by Clara Schumann, Tania Leon, Cecile Chaminade, Meredith Monk, and more. Denk also performs Robert Schumann’s Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations) and Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. You can hear him perform Brahms, Robert Schumann, and many other composers on his 2019 album, c. 1300–c. 2000, which the Telegraph called “quite exhilarating” and BBC Radio 3 called “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital.”

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Vagabon (aka Lætitia Tamko) who began the West Coast leg of her North American tour, featuring music from her new album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, in San Francisco earlier this week, continues with shows at Madame Lou’s in Seattle tonight, Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver on Saturday, and Mississippi Studios in Portland on Sunday. The tour concludes with a concert at Lodge Room in Los Angeles next week. Sorry I Haven’t Called is an album “that chases joy at every turn,” says Dork in its four-star review, and “cycles through urgent dance, fiery indie, and feel good pop with a resilient sense of euphoria underpinning every joyous moment.” “To unspool Tamko’s music is a bountiful reward,” says Paste. “Especially on Sorry I Haven’t Called, the work is dazzling and stirring.” Last week, Tamko joined Sheroes host Carmel Holt to talk about the new album; you can hear their conversation here.