Happy International Women's Day! Cécile McLorin Salvant begins a five-city European tour of her multimedia theatrical piece Ogresse—featuring her own original libretto, costume design, visual projections, and an ensemble led by Darcy James Argue—at Elbphilharmonie’s Great Hall in Hamburg on Saturday. The tour continues with performances in Vienna, Antwerp, Luxembourg, and Brussels in the week ahead. Described as “staggeringly original” by the Wall Street Journal, Ogresse blends jazz, chamber music, opera, art song, and many generations of storytelling traditions. Salvant will bring Ogresse home to New York City next year as part of her four-concert Carnegie Hall Perspectives series. Her 2023 album, 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 next week.

Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society ensemble's 2023 album, Dynamic Maximum Tension, made year’s best lists from NPR Music, Slate, PopMatters, and Stereogum, which calls it “simply some of the most exciting music being made right now … Argue’s music shifts and whirls like an entire galaxy in orbit around itself, and it’s breathtaking to listen to.”

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Works by composers John Adams and Steve Reich are being performed at the 48 Hours of American Composers Festival taking place at the Philharmonie in Haarlem, Netherlands, this weekend: Reich’s Double Sextet tonight and Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine on Saturday.

In Paris, Adams’s new orchestral piece, Frenzy, is given its French premiere performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Simon Rattle at Philharmonie de Paris on Saturday, following last week's world premiere in London, and four pieces by Reich—Violin Phase, Piano Phase, Come Out, and Clapping Music—score choreographer’s Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Fase, performed by Rosas Dance Company at The CENTQUATRE tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday, as part of the Séquence Danse Paris Festival.

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Pianist Richard Goode performs an all-Beethoven program at West Side Presbyterian Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey, on Sunday. On the program are Six Bagatelles from Op. 119, nos. 6–11; Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109; and 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120. Gramophone calls Goode's famed 1993 set of the complete Beethoven sonatas “one of the finest interpretations ever put on record.” Fellow pianist Timo Andres, in his recent Nonesuch Selects video, says: “Here’s a box you can’t live without.”

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Hurray for the Riff Raff, aka Alynda Segarra, continues their North American tour, featuring music from their new album, The Past Is Still Alive, at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday, before heading up to Canada for a show at Great Hall in Toronto on Sunday. The Past Is Still Alive, was released last month to widespread critical acclaim, including a Best New Music review from Pitchfork, which calls the album “fantastic.” NPR exclaims: “Segarra has created an epic tale of life on the road, a nearly mythic version of their own life story that stands alongside other great American musical travelogues … career-defining.” Rolling Stone calls it an “astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record ... the best batch of songs Segarra's ever written.” Paste calls it “a celebratory measure of love, sanctuary, and defiance ... In their hands, the trauma of the present day is a prelude to the possibilities of a better tomorrow.”

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Kronos Quartet live-scores filmmaker Sam Green’s A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary in California this weekend, performing at Baker-Baum Concert Hall at Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla tonight and Soka Performing Arts Center’s Concert Hall in Aliso Viejo on Saturday. The multimedia experience—called “mind-blowing” by Newsweek and “magical" by the Los Angeles Times—blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with some of the many artists with whom Kronos has collaborated, like Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man, and Terry Riley. As Green tells the multi-decade and continent-spanning story of the quartet, Kronos revisits its extensive body of work, performing music by George Crumb, Laurie Anderson, John Adams, Clint Mansell, John Zorn, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and many others.

As part of the Kronos: Five Decades celebrations, Nonesuch released the group’s award-winning 1990 album Black Angels on vinyl last month; the Evening Standard included it among the “100 Definitive Classical Albums of the 20th Century.” Late last year, Nonesuch released the first-ever vinyl edition of the acclaimed 1995 album Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass, which the Washington Post called “an ideal combination of composer and performers.” Last week, Kronos founder and violinist David Harrington shared the fifth of five decade-spanning anniversary playlists; you can hear it here.

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Mandy Patinkin brings his Being Alive tour—a collection of his favorite Broadway and classic American tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Harry Chapin, and more—to Florida State University’s Ruby Diamond Concert Hall in Tallahassee tonight, accompanied by pianist Adam Ben David. Patinkin's latest album, Children and Art, was released on Nonesuch in 2019.

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Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion bring music from their 2021 album, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, to Germany for a performance at Konzerthaus in Berlin on Sunday. On the album, Shaw and Sō Percussion developed songs in the studio, with lyrics inspired by their own wide-ranging interests: James Joyce, the Sacred Harp hymn book, a poem by Anne Carson, the Bible’s Book of Ruth, the American roots tune “I’ll Fly Away,” the pop music of ABBA, and more. NPR Music's Tom Huizenga says the album “showcases Shaw's flexible voice—clear as a mountain stream, flowing with expression in many directions.”