Following last week’s Steve Reich Festival in Manchester, Steve Reich’s music is again a festival’s focus, this weekend Radio France’s Festival Présences in Paris. Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France led by Brad Lubman performs The Desert Music at the Philharmonie tonight at the same time that Colin Currie Group performs Come Out and It’s Gonna Rain at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique. On Saturday, the Orchestre National de France led by Cristian Macelaru gives the French premiere of Music for Ensemble and Orchestra at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Auditorium, while Ensemble Next performs Double Sextet in Studio 104, where Miroirs Étendus performs City Life. On Sunday, Quatuor Tana performs Different Trains in Studio 104, and then Roomful of Teeth and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France close out the festival with a performance of Tehillim and Caroline Shaw’s Partita for Eight Voices in the Auditorium. That follows Shaw’s performance of several of her own pieces earlier in the day at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Auditorium.

"I want the music to be played, I want the music to be listened to. I want to know people have felt things,” Steve Reich told Financial Times' Christopher Grimes ahead of both festivals. “I’m very grateful that my music has been listened to and appreciated. It’s a great source of happiness.” You can find the feature here.

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The Staves kicked off a tour of the US Midwest and South, as special guest of Nickel Creek—Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins—earlier this week, and continue with shows at Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines, Iowa, tonight, and Murat Theatre at Old National Centre in Indianapolis on Saturday. Last month, The Staves released their new single, “I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It,” from their upcoming album, All Now, due March 22. You can hear it and watch a lyric video for it here. The band begins a headline tour in April. Nickel Creek’s album A Dotted Line was released on Nonesuch in 2014.

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Laurie Anderson joins poet Jane Hirshfield in conversation at the Rubin Museum in New York City tonight for the sold-out inaugural installment of About Time, a series of on-stage conversations in which Anderson tackles questions to help us reframe the concept of time and perhaps our perspective on life. Last weekend, Anderson received the Recording Academy’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award during GRAMMYs weekend in Los Angeles.

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Composer and pianist Timo Andres continues a five-night run with the Oregon Symphony, conducted by David Danzmayr, performing his piano concerto The Blind Banister, the title piece to his upcoming album, due March 22. Andres originally wrote the piece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, to be performed alongside Beethoven’s second concerto. “I started writing my own cadenza to Beethoven’s concerto,” he says, “and ended up devouring it from the inside out.” This week’s program, performed at Smith Auditorium in Salem tonight and Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Saturday and Sunday, includes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Egmont Overture and Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers.

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Rhiannon Giddens kicks off a two-week European tour, featuring music from her new album, You’re the One, at Maison de la Culture in Creteil, France, on Saturday, before heading to the Netherlands for a show at Doornroosje Main Hall in Nijmegen on Sunday. On You’re the One, “Giddens melds the past and present, writing a bold new future for herself in the process,” says Rolling Stone. “One of Americana music's most vital voices expands her sound without abandoning her roots.” “It’s easy to hear the joyous spirit in which she’s singing these songs,” says Folk Alley, “and Giddens delivers a little masterpiece of an album that showcases her commanding presence as a singer and songwriter.” Uncut calls the album an “accomplished tour d’horizon by [a] prolific polymath.”

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Guitarist Mary Halvorson and her Amaryllis sextet—vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Nick Dunston, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, trumpeter Adam O'Farrill, and trombonist Jacob Garchik—bring music from their new album, Cloudward, to University of Maryland’s The Clarice in College Park tonight and 92Y’s Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center in New York City on Saturday. Cloudward features eight new compositions Halvorson performs with the sextet—the improvisatory band that performed on her acclaimed 2022 Nonesuch debut albums Amaryllis and Belladonna—and “reveals a newfound sense of beauty and clarity,” per the Guardian. “[Halvorson] outdoes herself again,” says All About Jazz. “Cloudward is just too good.”

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Pianist Brad Mehldau gives the Bay Area premiere of his new work, Fourteen Reveries, at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, on Saturday. The program also includes selections from his Suite: April 2020 and more. Mehldau's new solo album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles, landed on year’s best lists from Jazzwise and DownBeat, which describes it as “the music of The Beatles channeled through the mind of one of our greatest living pianists.” “A great improvising pianist takes on The Beatles,” says Mojo. “An inspired set that reveals new ways of hearing pop classics.”

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Cécile McLorin Salvant and her quartet—pianist Adam Birnbaum, bassist Paul Sikivie, and percussionist Keita Ogawa—bring music from her critically acclaimed new album, Mélusine, and more to upstate New York for a performance at University at Buffalo’s Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, as part of the school’s Slee Visiting Artist Series. Mélusine, which DownBeat includes in its year’s best list and calls “a masterpiece of thoughtful, adventurous music,” is up for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album; public voting is open now at naacpimageawards.net.