The Arcs kicked off their first tour at Kantine in Cologne, Germany, last night, and visit Posthanhof in Berlin tonight and X-TRA in Zurich on Sunday. The tour continues in the weeks ahead with stops in Brussels, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Milan. Fans in the UK can catch the band on Later… With Jools Holland on BBC Two, performing "Outta My Mind," "Pistol Made of Bones," and "Put a Flower in Your Pocket" off Yours, Dreamily, their debut album, tonight.

The North American leg of the tour begins at First Ave in Minneapolis on December 1. The Arcs will release a vinyl 10” entitled The Arcs vs. The Inventors Vol. I, featuring Dr. John and David Hidalgo, on Record Store Day’s Black Friday event, November 27.

The Arcs are featured in the latest Song Exploder podcast, in which band mates Dan Auerbach, Richard Swift, and Leon Michels break down the album track "Put a Flower in Your Pocket" and talk about how all of the pieces came together to make the song.

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Sam Amidon closes out his four-night Midwest run with Wilco’s Nels Cline at The Back Room at Colectivo in Milwaukee tonight and the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis Saturday. In advance of last night’s show outside Chicago, Amidon stopped by WBEZ’s Morning Shift to perform songs from his latest album, Lily-O, and more; you can hear the set here.

Amidon hits the road again next month, for a two week tour supporting San Fermin.

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Laurie Anderson is in Los Angeles for select screenings of her new film, Heart of a Dog, at the Landmark Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles tonight and tomorrow. Each night, Anderson takes part in a Q&A after the 7:30 PM screening and introduces the film before the 9:55 PM screening. Heart of a Dog’s run has been extended at Film Forum in New York City and opens in additional theaters in New York and New Jersey this weekend. It is also being shown at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville tonight.

"Like a docent of the soul, Laurie Anderson guides us through the often confounding and illuminating stages of love, death and loss in Heart of a Dog, a transfixing personal essay," says the Los Angeles Times. It's Anderson's spirit—"beautifully inquisitive, witty, open, lyrical and generous—that makes Heart of a Dog so dreamily memorable."

The complete film soundtrack is available on Nonesuch Records.

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Timo Andres joins violinist Tim Fain as part of Composers Concordance and the Eclectic Virtuosi Series at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City on Sunday.

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Tyondai Braxton gives a solo set at Brighton Music Hall as part of the Boston Hassle Fest on Saturday. The festival is having an early bird record giveaway each day, where the first 25 attendees through the door can choose from an assortment of free records, including Braxton’s Nonesuch debut, HIVE1.

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Rhiannon Giddens kicks off the next leg of her Tomorrow Is My Turn tour at the Silver Creek Event Center in New Buffalo, Michigan, tonight and the Théâtre Petit Champlain in Quebec City on Sunday. Birds of Chicago open the first five shows of the tour, which continues in Canada and throughout the US Northeast in the weeks ahead.

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Richard Goode plays works by Mozart and Brahms at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in Scotland on Sunday.

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The Tigran Hamasyan Trio, with Sam Minaie on bass and Arthur Hnatek on drums, continues its tour of Europe with stops at the Grand Théâtre in La Rochelle, France, tonight and JazzFest Berlin on Saturday. Hamasyan released his Nonesuch debut, Mockroot, featuring the Trio, earlier this year.

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James Farm, the acoustic jazz quartet featuring saxophonist Joshua Redman (Happy National Saxophone Day!), pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Eric Harland, is currently touring Europe and the UK, with two stops in the Netherlands this weekend, including Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam tonight and the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven, as part of the So What's Next? Festival, on Saturday.

James Farm released its self-titled debut on Nonesuch in 2011 and its sophomore album, City Folk, last year.

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Lake Street Dive concludes its West Coast tour in California this weekend, with shows at Campbell Hall at the University of California in Santa Barbara tonight and the Cal Poly Performing Arts Center in San Luis Obispo on Saturday. Tickets for the band’s just-announced “Memory Lane Tour” of the US Northeast, starting in New York next week went on sale (and quickly sold out) this morning.

Lake Street Dive’s Nonesuch Records debut album is due early next year.

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Audra McDonald concludes her Australian debut tour with the final two shows of a three-night residency at the Sydney Opera House tonight and Saturday.

Australian Stage was on scene for McDonald’s performance at Hamer Hall in Melbourne last weekend, calling the evening a “magical mix of show tunes and Great American Songbook classics,” adding that, “with a strong, rich soprano voice and accompanied by a trio of musicians, the stylish, articulate Audra McDonald gave her devoted fans an evening to remember.”

The Sydney Morning Herald gives her performance at the Sydney Opera House last night four stars. "Despite all the evidence to the contrary the art of singing is not quite dead," writes the Herald's John Shand. "Audra McDonald was the very embodiment of it, her work as finely nuanced and sophisticated as that of a great instrumentalist. So much was right: her apparent effortlessness, the absence of false emotion, her purity of tone and the evenness of it across her impressive range. Every choice she made, whether of dynamics, phrasing, timbre or breath control, was exquisite, and entirely in the service of making the songs touch her audience."

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The Brad Mehldau Trio—with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums—kicked off a 10-day tour of North America this week, continuing with a sold-out show at the Auditorium at TSRI in San Diego on Saturday and joining Billy Childs’s Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro program at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Nonesuch Records released Brad Mehldau's 10 Years Solo Live, culled from live recordings made over a decade of the pianist's European solo concerts, as an eight-LP set last month. It will be released as a four-CD set and digitally on November 13.

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Randy Newman closes out his European tour on a double bill with Tori Amos for The Art of Songwriting at Event Halle Basel in Switzerland tonight as part of the Baloise Session series. The Guardian gave Newman’s performance at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall last weekend a perfect five stars, calling Newman “a great American songbook unto himself.”

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Youssou N'Dour continues his two-week tour of North America with stops at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight, Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on Saturday, and Meany Hall for the Performing Arts in Seattle on Sunday.

The New York Times recommended N’Dour’s show at Terminal 5 last weekend, saying “the impassioned emissary of Senegalese mbalax music, never fails to deliver generous marathon sets of joyous song and sprightly moves.”

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Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, a core band featuring several of the original musicians from Buena Vista Social Club, concludes the current leg of its "Adios" tour with a show at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday. The group heads next to Latin America and Asia, before returning to Europe, culminating at London's O2 in April.

The tour has received critical acclaim, with the Guardian heralding the group’s performance as “transcendent, heartfelt and a whole lot of fun.” The Boston Globe says “as swan songs go, this was one for the ages.”

The original Buena Vista Social Club album, which became a cultural phenomenon and helped introduce Cuba's rich musical heritage and pre-revolutionary past to the world, is now available on vinyl from World Circuit Records, distributed in North America by Nonesuch.

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Chris Thile continues his month-long solo tour of the United States with a concert at de Jong Concert Hall at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, tonight, followed by two shows in California, at MCASD Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla on Saturday and Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara on Sunday.

The South Bend Tribune called Thile’s performance at Goshen College last weekend a “truly transformative experience,” saying it was the kind of show that leaves you “completely speechless, but with so much to say.”