Kronos Quartet is at Zankel Hall in New York City tonight to give the opening concert of Carnegie Hall’s six-week festival The ’60s: The Years that Changed America. Kronos pays homage to some of the decade’s great icons, including Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, with performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” and Steve Reich, with a performance of his 1968 piece Pendulum Music. Also on the program are “The House of the Rising Sun,” Ken Benshoof’s Odds and Ends, and the world premiere of two new works inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Studs Terkel and commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

The New Yorker, in a preview of tonight’s concert, says: “Kronos, a group that has redefined the string quartet as an ensemble that is popular, experimental, and classical all at once, has something to say about American musical heritage.”

The quartet heads upstate for a concert at the PepsiCo Theatre in Purchase on Saturday. On the program are works by Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Sigur Ros, Pete Townsend, Philip Glass, and more, including pieces composed for the quartet’s Fifty for the Future commissioning project.

The recording of Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson’s first collaboration, Landfall, is due next month via Nonesuch Records. The Washington Post calls the piece, which was inspired by Anderson’s experience of Hurricane Sandy, "riveting, gorgeous."

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Pianist Jeremy Denk begins a run of dates with violinist Stefan Jackiw at Duke University’s Baldwin Auditorium in Durham tonight. The program, Ives Violin Sonatas, features the American composer’s Violin Sonatas Nos. 1–4, as well as early American hymns featuring the New York Polyphony vocal quartet.

Denk and Jackiw recently spoke to the Boston Globe, ahead of their show at New England Conservatory next week. You can read the interview here.

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Fleet Foxes conclude their Crack-Up tour of Asia with a concert at Big Cat in Osaka, Japan, tonight. The band resumes its US tour in early March and has just announced a number of new headlining shows and festival sets into the summer months. The Times of London calls Fleet Foxes “one of the most original bands of this century.”

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Natalie Merchant performs as special guest of The Klezmatics at The Town Hall in New York City on Saturday. The Natalie Merchant Collection—a deluxe ten-CD box set compiled by Merchant—was released last year on Nonesuch. Mojo gives the set five stars, calling it “magnificent ... a definitive and absorbing celebration of an artist with a singular voice and vision.” The Daily Telegraph says, “Merchant is a rare breed: an artist who has never compromised, but instead evolved with integrity, thought, and meaning.”

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Several Steve Reich works are being performed by Colin Currie Group at Kings Place in London on Saturday. The program, entitled Time Phase, includes percussive pieces Music for Pieces of Wood, Mallet Quartet, and Drumming Part 1, as well as New York Counterpoint, Vermont Counterpoint, and Quartet, of which Colin Currie Group gave the world premiere in London in 2014.

Nonesuch releases the first recording of Quartet, performed by Colin Currie Group, and Reich’s 2015 piece Pulse, performed by International Contemporary Ensemble, on a new album next month. The album is available to pre-order at iTunes and the Nonesuch Store, with an instant download of the third movement of Quartet, Fast.

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Chris Thile, whose new solo album, Thanks for Listening, was released last month, hosts his public radio show Live From Here at Saenger Theatre in New Orleans on Saturday, with special guests John Prine, Sylvan Esso, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and comedian Rory Scovel. Gaby Moreno joins Thile as his duet partner.

Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch live online at livefromhere.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.

Thile spoke with the Portland Tribune ahead of Saturday’s show for an interview you can read here.

The Santa Barbara Independent, reviewing a solo Chris Thile performance from earlier this month, praises the “densely woven fabric of this artist’s singular vision,” citing a “seemingly boundless musical talent.” PopMatters calls the new album “a modern masterpiece.”