As the United States inaugurates a new president this weekend, composer John Adams’s groundbreaking opera about an earlier president, Nixon in China, returns to the Houston Grand Opera, which commissioned the piece, for performances at the Wortham Theater Center, where the opera received its world premiere 30 years ago this year. The production opens tonight and continues on Sunday afternoon and over three nights in the week ahead. The Boston Globe called the 1987 work “a milestone in American operatic history.” The Grammy Award–winning first recording, released on Nonesuch in 1988, "has an eloquence not since matched," says Los Angeles Times.

Also this weekend, a more recent piece by Adams, his City Noir from 2009, is performed by the San Diego Symphony, conducted by Cristian Macelaru, at Copley Symphony Hall tonight and Sunday afternoon. The program also includes works by Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein. Nonesuch released a recording of City Noir paired with the debut recording of his Saxophone Concerto in 2014. The album, performed by the St. Louis Symphony, led by Music Director David Robertson, with saxophonist Timothy McAllister, was a Grammy Award winner for Best Orchestral Performance.

John Adams is the guest on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters, which airs on Saturday at 12:15 PM GMT. Tune in then to hear him talk with host Tom Service about the timely topic of the role of music in America's political and cultural life.

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Jeremy Denk brings his Medieval to Modern program—six centuries of Western music, from the Medieval and Renaissance eras through Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms to Stockhausen and Philip Glass—to the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater in Philadelphia tonight. The Telegraph calls the program “exhilarating.” Tonight’s sold-out performance includes a free pre-concert lecture with Denk and guest scholar, pianist/painter/author David Dubal.

Denk gives a solo recital at the Booker Hall of Music’s Camp Concert Hall in Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday, followed by a free piano masterclass on Sunday morning.

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Emmylou Harris is joined by friends including country legend John Prine for a sold-out concert at City Winery in Nashville on Sunday to benefit Harris’s dog rescue, Bonaparte’s Retreat. The New York Times has called her “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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Kronos Quartet performs at the Sherwood Auditorium at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, California, tonight, and the Musco Center for the Arts at Champan University in Orange, California, on Saturday. On its typically eclectic program are works written or arranged for the quartet, including pieces by Terry Riley, Clint Mansell, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Omar Souleyman, as well as compositions from Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Tanya Tagaq, Wu Man and others whom Kronos has commissioned as part of its Fifty for the Future project. Saturday’s show is recommended by the San Diego Union Tribune, which writes that Kronos Quartet is “still pushing musical boundaries with tireless zeal.”

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Brad Mehldau concludes his six-city run of solo European dates, bringing his program Three Pieces After Bach to Theater Liechtenstein in Schaan, Liechtenstein, tonight, and Cinema Teatro Di Chiasso in Chiasso, Switzerland, on Saturday. The Guardian has called Three Pieces After Bach “dazzling … a balance of space and intensity perfectly struck.”

Mehldau is joined by his trio—Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums—next month, for a run of dates in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.

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Pat Metheny continues his month-long US tour with drummer Antonio Sánchez, pianist Gwilym Simcock, and bassist Linda Oh, with shows at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, Connecticut, tonight, Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, and Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, on Sunday.

“Guitarist Pat Metheny has long reigned as one of the best guitarists in jazz—or any genre,” exclaims the New Hampshire Union Leader in an interview with Metheny ahead of a show in the state earlier this week; you can read what he had to say here.

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Conor Oberst began a three-week tour of Europe and the UK earlier this week, and continues with a show at Kaufleuten in Zurich tonight and a sold-out show at Gloria in Cologne on Saturday.

As reported earlier this week in the Nonesuch Journal, Oberst will release a new album, Salutations, on Nonesuch Records, on March 17. The album is a companion piece to his 2016 solo album, Ruminations, and includes full-band versions of that album’s ten songs, plus seven additional songs. The album is available to pre-order now. Tickets to Oberst’s newly announced US tour with The Felice Brothers as his backing band go on sale starting this Saturday.

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Joshua Redman helps ring in the fifth season of SFJAZZ at Miner Auditorium in San Francisco this week with a trio of tribute shows this weekend, performing alongside Indian composer and percussionist Zakir Hussain, singer Mary Stalling, guitarist Bill Frisell, the SFJAZZ Collective, and more. In keeping with the season’s “Traditions in Transition” theme, Redman curates three tribute concerts this weekend: two to predecessors who have passed—tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson tonight and vibraphone and marimba player Bobby Hutcherson on Saturday—and one to saxophonist John Handy, concluding the season’s opening week celebrations on Sunday.

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Chris Thile continues his inaugural season as host of A Prairie Home Companion with a show at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California on Saturday. Joining him as special guests for the episode are Ryan Adams, Kacey Musgraves, and comedian Kevin Nealon. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 2:45 PM PT. "This is the first time I've had a new job since I played my first concert when I was seven years old," Thile tells Time Out Los Angeles. "My job has always been musician, and this year it expanded to include radio show host." You can read what else he had to say here.

Thile and Brad Mehldau will release a self-titled duo album, a mix of covers and original songs, next week. The two recently unveiled a video of their performance of Elliott Smith’s “Independence Day,” at Bowery Ballroom in NYC, which you can watch here.

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Caetano Veloso and Brazilian samba singer Teresa Cristina play the Acoustic Shell of the Teatro Castro Alves in Salvador, Brazil, tonight and Saturday.

Veloso and fellow Brazilian singer/songwriter/guitarist Gilberto Gil released a live double album, Dois Amigos, Um Século de Música: Multishow Live, in the US last year. The album has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

Cristina’s album and DVD, Canta Cartola, recorded live in Rio in 2015, was released on Nonesuch last year as well. Veloso, who was at that performance, says: “"With Cartola's songs, Teresa's artistry really shows. Her elegance on stage, the simultaneous spontaneity and decorum of every gesture, the humor, the tone, impeccable intonation—all combine in this true creator-singer, a genuine artist."