Kronos Quartet’s second-annual hometown festival, Kronos Festival 2016: Explorer Series, which began at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco last night, continues throughout the weekend. In 2014, Nonesuch Records released the five-disc box set Kronos Explorer Series, comprising five classic albums from five different parts of the world.

Tonight’s program, Only Sound Remains, finds Finnish musician Ritva Koistinen performing with Kronos on the zither-like kantele for the US premiere of Karin Rehnqvist’s All Those Strings!. San Francisco Girls Chorus joins Kronos for the West Coast premieres of Sahba Aminikia’s Sound, Only Sound Remains and Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Bubbles. Kronos ends the night with a performance of music from renowned Indian film director R.D. Burman, whose music they celebrated in a 2005 album with Asha Bhosle, You’ve Stolen My Heart.

Saturday’s program, A Thousand Thoughts—echoing the title of a 2014 Nonesuch Kronos album—features Malian balafon player Fodé Lassana Diabaté joining Kronos for the US premiere of Sunjata’s Time, his new work written for Kronos’ Fifty for the Future project. Kronos also performs Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s One Hundred Goodbyes, which marks the upcoming centenary of the 1916 rebellion that led to Ireland’s independence. Homayun Sakhi Trio joins Kronos to perform Sakhi’s Rangin Kaman (Rainbow).

The festival concludes on Sunday morning with Around the World with Kronos and Friends, a family-friendly celebration of Lunar New Year, featuring music from around the globe. Guest performers include Vietnam-born đàn Tranh player Vân-Ánh Võ, UK-born multi-instrumentalist David Coulter, and Malian balafon player Fodé Lassana Diabaté, with a lion dance performed by San Francisco’s own Chung Ngai Dance Troupe.

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Sam Amidon plays a trio of solo shows in Belgium this weekend, beginning at C-Mine in Genk tonight, Cultuurcentrum in Mechelen tomorrow, and CC Ter Vesten in Beveren on Sunday.

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Jeremy Denk, currently touring Europe and the UK, gives a lecture on and performance of Bach’s complete Goldberg Variations at deSingel in Antwerp, Belgium, on Saturday, and at the University of Sheffield in England on Sunday.

Denk has been called “one of the great interpreters of Bach” by the San Diego Reader. His 2013 recording of the Goldberg Variations, which included a DVD lecture-demonstration of the piece, was met with critical acclaim, with the New York Times praising his "profound affinity with Bach."

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Rhiannon Giddens concludes her UK tour with the Transatlantic Sessions group of musicians from both sides of the Atlantic, playing at Millenium in Derry tonight. The tour has been met with great critical acclaim. "Anyone who has heard Rhiannon Giddens—the singer who has just delivered one of the albums of the decade—will know that she is a very special talent," says the Times's Clive Davis in a five-star review of this week's sold-out Transatlantic Sessions concert at London's Festival Hall. "Her homage to Odetta on 'Waterboy,' which sounded even more volcanic than usual, brought the first half of this concert to a climax." The Scotsman cited Giddens for her "incandescent brilliance."

Giddens recently spoke with the Sydney Morning Herald about the variety of American roots that inform her music, interpreting traditional pieces, and her recent foray into original songwriting. She will tour Australia in March. You can read the article in its entirety here.

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Richard Goode will give a solo piano recital of various works by Beethoven at the Seligman Performing Arts Center in Franklin, Michigan, on Saturday. The New York Times has praised Goode for his “fastidious musicianship, infallible fingers, warming spirit and vital connection to the living traditions set down by his predecessors.” The Denver Post says “he might well be without equal when it comes to the music of Beethoven.”

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Lianne La Havas kicked off her sold-out solo tour of the United States this week, which continues at Rough Trade in Brooklyn tonight and Ortlieb’s Lounge in Philadelphia tomorrow. Billlboard, reviewing Monday’s tour-opening concert in New York City, proclaims it “an unqualified success.”

La Havas recently spoke with the Boston Globe, which says that she “has emerged as a poised and powerful young singer.” You can read what she had to say here.

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Chris Thile once again guest hosts public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion from its home base at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday afternoon. Thile welcomes as special guests, several of his fellow Punch Brothers, Paul Simon, Andrew Bird, Sarah Jarosz, and comedian Maria Bamford.

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 4:45 PM CT.

Tickets for Punch Brothers just-announced May tour dates—stopping in Nashville, Birmingham, Athens, Cambridge, Milwaukee, and Chicago—are on sale today.

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Rokia Traoré kicks off her 2016 tour with a performance at the Roundhouse in London on Saturday, and then heads to the Continent for a show at Centralstation in Darmstadt, Germany, on Sunday.

Traoré releases her sixth album, Né So (Home), on Nonesuch Records next Friday. The album, which features 10 original songs and a cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," is streaming in full till then as an NPR Music First Listen. NPR calls it a "gorgeous new album" from a "fantastically gifted" artist. Hear it here.