Chris Thile takes over as host of A Prairie Home Companion on the sold-out, season-opening episode, broadcast from the show’s home base at Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday. Joining Thile as special guests for the episode are label mates Lake Street Dive, which completed its Side Pony US fall tour earlier this week, as well as Jack White. The new A Prairie Home Companion house band also includes two of Thile's fellow Punch Brothers: Chris Eldrige on guitar and Paul Kowert on bass. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can listen to the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 4:45 PM CT. There will also be a live videostream via the show's YouTube channel.

Check out the New York Times Magazine’s recent feature on Thile and the beloved public radio show here. And you can hear what Thile said about it this week on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show here.

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Sam Amidon, in the midst of a six-date run supporting singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, plays a solo show at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina, tonight, before joining up with Thompson again at the Charleston Music Hall in South Carolina on Sunday. Indy Week’s Brian Howe, in recommending tonight’s show, notes Amidon’s “unforgettable voice, an instrument in which technical sophistication tempers oaky roughness. Amidon's art-folk integrates elements of jazz and contemporary classical; he sounds like someone dreaming of Americana rather than studying it.”

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Devendra Banhart gives a special guest DJ set as part of an event at The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles tonight. Banhart’s new album, Ape in Pink Marble, was released on Nonesuch last month. Uncut calls it "excellent."

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Jeremy Denk concludes his five-concert run with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, performing works by Mozart and Schubert, at Dartmouth’s Spaulding Auditorium in Hanover, New Hampshire, tonight, and the Kaufmann Concert Hall at 92Y in New York City on Saturday. Tonight’s performance features a post-concert discussion with the musicians.

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Richard Goode gives a solo piano recital in Armstrong Concert Hall at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, on Sunday afternoon. The New York Times has praised Goode for his “fastidious musicianship, infallible fingers, warming spirit and vital connection to the living traditions set down by his predecessors.”

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Emmylou Harris and Robert Plant continue the North American Lampedusa: Concerts for Refugees tour, with Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, and The Milk Carton Kids. The tour aims to raise awareness for the unprecedented worldwide refugee crisis, with funds going to support Jesuit Refugee Service's educational programs for refugees around the world. The eleven-city tour stops at Massey Hall in Toronto tonight, with special guest Ron Sexsmith, and Berklee Performance Center in Boston on Sunday, with special guests Nancy and Beth. Joan Baez joins next week when the tour visits New York City.

The Kansas City Star, in review of last Saturday’s show, calls it “perfect,” writing that “the performances were stellar and true as the show’s purpose.”

Plant and his band the Sensational Space Shifters can be seen on PBS stations across the United States as their recent Austin City Limits set premieres on Saturday. This marks Plant’s first time on the ACL stage in more than a decade.

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Portuguese singer Mariza embarks on a two-week North American tour in support of her newest album, Mundo, beginning at Berklee Performance Center in Boston tonight, followed by The Town Hall in New York City on Saturday and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on Sunday. "Mundo is a sensually charged, wonderful album that is truly a work of art," exclaims All About Jazz. “The enormity of Mariza's gift is immediately and intoxicatingly evident upon first hearing.” She spoke to the Boston Globe ahead of tonight’s show; you can read the interview here.

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Conor Oberst marks the release of his new album, Ruminations, by performing the record in its entirety at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City tonight. The performance will be simultaneously webcast via NPR Music's Facebook page.

Oberst recently stopped by Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current for an in-studio performance and interview. You can hear that session here.

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Saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau have brought their world tour, featuring music from their new duo album, Nearness, to Asia. Following a residency at Blue Note Tokyo earlier this week, they have one more night in the city, performing at the Cotton Club tonight, before departing Japan for the LG Arts Center in Seoul on Saturday and Expo Park in Shanghai on Sunday.

All About Jazz gives Nearness four-and-a-half stars. The Guardian praises the album’s “terse lyricism and harmonic journeys” in its four star review. “Always lyrical, the music nonetheless sometimes sounds at the edge of a precipice—it’s improv in the most exposed of situations.”

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Caetano Veloso and Teresa Cristina have brought their world tour to the United States, and, following two nights at The Town Hall in New York City, play the Symphony Center in Chicago on Sunday.

The Chicago Reader, in recommending Sunday’s show, says Veloso “can conjure a universe with nothing more than his voice and an acoustic guitar,” and Cristina, on her new live album and DVD, Canta Cartola, “brings a burnished depth to the music, her full-bodied voice balancing sadness and joy.”