The Magnetic Fields give the world premiere performances of 50 Song Memoir at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, tonight and Saturday. The 50-song album, which chronicles the 50 years of songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life with one song per year, will be performed over two nights in each city (songs 1–25 on night one, songs 26–50 on night two). On the album, Merritt plays more than 100 instruments, ranging from ukulele to piano to drum machine to abacus. In the stage extravaganza, directed by Jose Zayas, the music will be played and sung by a newly expanded Magnetic Fields septet in a stage set featuring 50 years of artifacts both musical and decorative. The seven performers each play seven different instruments, either traditional or invented in the last 50 years.

Merritt spoke with the Boston Globe ahead of this weekend’s shows; you can read the feature here. The band heads to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival in December and begins a full US tour following the album’s release in March. The album, in 5-LP and 5-CD editions and as a standalone book with a full-album download, is available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store now.

---

The Saint Louis Symphony and Chorus, conducted by David Robertson, and joined by the St. Louis Children’s Choirs, performs John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls at Powell Hall tonight, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. Also on the program are Mozart’s Requiem and Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question.

The St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by musical director Marin Alsop, perform Adams’s Absolute Jest, a piece in which he explores his affinity for Beethoven, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall tonight and Saturday. The orchestra also performs Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Earlier this week, the BSO gave the world premiere of Timo Andres’s Everything Happens So Much.

---

Rhiannon Giddens and fiddler/banjoist Dirk Powell, currently touring California together, play the Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo tonight. Last week, Giddens unveiled a recording of "Freedom Highway," the song written by Pops Staples and recorded by the Staple Singers in 1965, from her forthcoming album, which is due in early 2017. You can hear it here.

“Giddens is of her time,” says the New Yorker. “Her syntax and harmonic strength are part of a tradition of American music: storytellers who joyfully preach the truth from a woman’s point of view—sometimes with trouble in mind, too.”

---

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell can be seen performing “Bring It on Home to Memphis,” from their 2015 duo album The Traveling Kind, on PBS stations across the US this Saturday on Austin City Limits. It’s part of a special featuring highlights from this year’s Americana Music Association Honors & Awards. Harris and Crowell took home the Duo/Group of the Year Award for their 2015 album The Traveling Kind at the ceremony, held at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville this past September.

---

Kronos Quartet performs at Teatro Auditorium Manzoni as part of the Bologna Jazz Festival in Italy on Saturday. The program includes pieces by Charles Mingus, Jelly Roll Morton, Pete Townshend, and Geeshie Wiley, as well as works from Fodé Lassana Diabaté, Aleksandra Vrebalov, and Tanya Tagaq, whom Kronos has commissioned as part of its Fifty for the Future project.

---

Lake Street Dive concludes its tour of the UK and Ireland, featuring music from its new album, Side Pony, with a show at Cyprus Avenue in Cork, Ireland, tonight. The band returns to Australia and New Zealand for dates in December and January, followed by just announced US dates for February and March. You can check out all the tour dates here.

Lake Street Dive released Side Pony in February to critical acclaim, with the Boston Globe praising it as an "exuberant, harmony-rich blend of pop, soul, and jazz,” and Paste stating that the band’s “experimentation reaps triumphant results.”

---

Chris Thile continues his inaugural season as host of A Prairie Home Companion with a sold-out show at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver on Saturday. Joining him as special guests for the episode are label-mates The Staves, Trey Anastasio, and comedian Tig Notaro. 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 3:45 PM MT.

As recently reported in the Nonesuch Journal, Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau will release their first duo record, Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau, a mix of covers and original songs, in January 2017.