Kronos Quartet showcases its Fifty for the Future commissioning project close to its Bay Area home with a concert at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, tonight. The Quartet is joined by ninety-five students from seven area schools ranging from eighth grade through conservatory for performances of works written and composed for Kronos's learning repertoire and commissioning initiative for emerging string quartets. The concert includes works by Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Wu Man, and Aleksandra Vrebalov; world premieres of new pieces by Misato Mochizuki and Mario Galeano Toro; and a performance by composer/haegeum player Soo Yeon Lyuh.

“Kronos Quartet has spent some four decades on the cutting edge of new music, forging a vast international network of collaborators,” says the San Francisco Chronicle, “but the San Francisco string quartet’s global vision has rarely seemed as timely and urgent.”

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Sam Amidon is in Bergen, Norway, this weekend, performing at Underlig tonight and at Bergen Jazzforum on Saturday as part of the Finsejazz festival. He will tour the UK as special guest of Laura Veirs in February.

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Laurie Anderson, who is nominated for a Grammy Award with Kronos Quartet for their collaboration Landfall, gives the keynote address with philosopher and Rice University professor Timothy Morton at A Night of Philosophy and Ideas 2019, an evening of conversations and performances at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice on Saturday. The free event, co-presented by the French Embassy, honors the Paris Climate Accord and examining efforts to spur environmental action.

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Pianist Jeremy Denk gives solo recitals at Duke University’s Baldwin Auditorium in Durham, North Carolina, tonight, and Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, New York, on Sunday afternoon. He performs works by Beethoven, Bizet, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, and John Adams.

Denk's new album, c.1300–c.2000, due February 8, is available to pre-order now with an instant download of Binchois's Triste Plaisir and Brahms's Intermezzo in B Minor from Klavierstücke, Op. 119, No. 1.

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Tigran Hamasyan is in the UK this weekend, performing at St John the Evangelist in Oxford tonight, Sage Two in Gateshead on Saturday, and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Sunday, as part of the Celtic Connections festival. He is joined on Saturday by the Voices of Hope children’s choir and on Sunday by trumpeter Arve Henriksen.

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Gabriel Kahane continues his tour of the US West with a performance at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on Saturday. This leg of his tour, featuring music from his new album, Book of Travelers, concludes next week with shows in Portland and Seattle; he performs along the East Coast next month.

Book of Travelers “is full of deeply felt lyrics, exquisitely composed piano accompaniments, unexpected harmonic and rhythmic twists, and stylistic flourishes taken from jazz, blues, classical, and American folk music,” says San Francisco Classical Voice in an interview with Kahane ahead of Saturday’s show, available at sfcv.org. Kahane also recently spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle; you can read that interview here.

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Lake Street Dive concludes the current leg of its Free Yourself Up tour with a sold-out show at The Civic Theatre in New Orleans tonight. The band heads to Europe and the UK for a two-week tour in April. Tickets for Lake Street Dive’s summer tour with The Avett Brothers are on sale now.

Free Yourself Up was named one of the Best Records of 2018 by Pop Matters, which says the album “cleverly pulls off the rare hat-trick of not only being the band's most instantly accessible album but also their best.”

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Chris Thile hosts his public radio show, Live From Here, at Symphony Center in Chicago on Saturday, with special guests Jason Isbell, Gaby Moreno, Eighth Blackbird, and comedian Kurt Braunohler. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans here and around the world can watch live online at livefromhere.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.