Audra McDonald joins fellow Broadway legend Barbara Cook on Sunday for a one-night-only concert at New York's Al Hirschfeld Theater titled Audra McDonald & Barbara Cook: Broadway Voices for Change, to benefit America Votes, the largest grassroots voter mobilization effort in the US. The event will be hosted by actors Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker.

The Black Keys play what could be a once-in-a-lifetime benefit show tonight, sharing the stage at the Akron Civic Theatre with fellow Akron favorite sons, Devo. Proceeds from the show go to the Summit County Democratic Party and local efforts on behalf of the Obama Presidential campaign.

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Performances of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic at New York’s Metropolitan Opera continue this Saturday, following Monday’s premiere. The new production’s unveiling led New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tomassini to rave: "This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music ... Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density."

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has named John Adams its Composer of the Year, during the organization’s remarkable 250th anniversary season. This weekend, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, Leonard Slatkin, leads two performances, tonight and Sunday afternoon, in which the composer’s 1996 piece Slonimsky’s Earbox is paired with Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony.

Also this weekend, the Tallahassee Symphony, led by Miriam Burns, performs The Wound-Dresser, set to text by Walt Whitman, at its hometown’s Bradfordville Baptist Church on Saturday, for a concert titled War and Peace. And the Southeastern Ohio Symphony Orchestra plays the ever-popular Short Ride in a Fast Machine at Brown Chapel on the Muskingum College campus in New Concord, Ohio.

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After a performance at the Moore Theatre in Seattle last night, Laurie Anderson brings her Homeland tour north of the 49th parallel for a show at the Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver. Prior to last night’s show, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer featured an interview with Laurie, in which she describes the perks of her profession as “a way to be free and also a way to be irresponsible.”

Leading to this weekend’s performance, Laurie spoke with Alexander Varty of Vancouver’s Straight.com, which describes her hopes for Homeland, especially in relation to what she sees as the skewed paradigm of the current administration:

Anderson's aim isn't simply to offer an alternative to that official narrative, with its inconsistencies, half-truths, and outright lies. She's also hoping to do her part in changing the world for the better, which she's optimistic enough to see as one possible outcome of our current political and economic unrest.

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Sérgio and Odair Assad have joined fellow Grammy winners the Turtle Island Quartet for a college tour with a program titled String Theory, covering musics from Africa and India to the Appalachian Mountains, to the rhythmic poetry of the Balkans, the warmth and passion of Brazil, the hard-swinging elegance of Gypsy jazz, and everything in between. After a performance last night at Jorgenson Auditorium at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the weekend holds three consecutive tour stops: tonight at the Wilkins Theater at Kean University in Union, New Jersey; Saturday at the GMU Center for the Arts at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; and Sunday at Jemison Concert Hall at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The last includes a free prelude musical discussion prior the performance.

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Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Celebrating Gomidas Vartabed tour, with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, continues tonight in the soprano’s home country of Canada in a performance at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. She heads back to the States for an afternoon concert at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston on Sunday, before coming to New York for Monday night’s Carnegie Hall performance in Zankel Hall.

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David Byrne continues to tour with Songs of David Byrne & Brian Eno tonight at the Holland Performing Arts Center’s Kiewit Concert Hall in Omaha, Nebraska. Then it’s two stops this weekend in Missouri: tomorrow night at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis and Sunday night at the Uptown Theatre in Kansas City. The recent tour stop in St. Paul, Minnesota, led The Rake to comment: "’This groove is out of fashion," David Byrne sang during his first song Tuesday night at the State Theatre. Then he spent the next two hours disproving it.”

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Shawn Colvin plays two shows in Mississippi this weekend: tonight at the Lyric Theatre in Oxford and tomorrow at Mississippi State’s Riley Center in Meridian. She’ll head to the Midwest next weekend with shows in Wisconsin and Chicago.

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Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble brought the composer’s new piece Book of Longing, based on the poetry and images of Leonard Cohen, to Australia’s famed Melbourne Festival earlier this week and plays its final performance there this evening. More at melbournefestival.com.au. One headline from the Australian paper The Age exclaims: “Glass overflows with the beauty of Cohen's poems.”

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Richard Goode performs in the Master Pianists series at Kansas City’s Folly Theater on Saturday. The concert is a presentation of the Friends of Chamber Music. Info: chambermusic.org.

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The fall leg of k.d. lang’s Watershed tour is under way with performances each night this weekend, starting with tonight’s show at the Chicago Theatre, then heading to St. Louis for Saturday’s event at the Touhill Performing Arts Center, and finishing the weekend Sunday night in St. Paul at the O’Shaughnessy at the College of St. Catherine, part of the venue’s Women of Substance series. Previewing the Sunday show, the St. Paul Post-Dispatch’s pop music critic Kevin C. Johnson spoke with k.d. about her latest release, which he counts as “lovely.”

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The Magnetic Fields’ fall Distortion tour winds its way south with a stop at Atlanta’s Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center tonight and at Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall on Saturday. For feedback from the past week’s tour, read yesterday’s Nonesuch Journal article, in which the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called the tour a "victory lap for one of the most idiosyncratic and interesting bands in indie pop."

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Randy Newman takes his Harps and Angels tour to San Francisco tonight for the 26th annual San Francisco Jazz Festival. The performance, titled The New American Songbook, will be held at Davies Symphony Hall. He’ll play two more concerts in his home state this weekend, with a Saturday show at the Golden State Theatre in Monterey on Saturday and Sunday at the Lobrero Theatre in Santa Barbara, leading the Santa Barbara Independent to exclaim that Harps and Angels "finds the native Californian at his satirical best."

You can also hear Randy on the radio this Sunday on BBC Radio 4 at 11:15 AM GMT. He’ll be the featured guest on Desert Island Discs, one of the channel’s most popular and long-running shows, dating back to 1942. Randy will present the eight records he would take with him on a desert island. The episode will re-air next Friday, October 24, at 9 AM GMT. Tune in on bbc.co.uk/radio4.

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Nicholas Payton set up residency at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York City earlier this week with a sextet that includes Robert Glasper, piano; Vincente Archer, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums; Danny Sadownick, percussion; and Nicole Hurst, vocals. The performances continue through the weekend with multiple sets each night. For more information, visit the Jazz at Lincoln Center site, jalc.org.

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Joshua Redman’s trio with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchinson plays tonight at the University of Miami, before the personnel changes up for a European tour, with Brian Blade taking over on drums. Remdan led a master class at the University yesterday afternoon; both events are part of its Frost School of Music’s 25th annual Festival Miami.

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Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer return to the road with music from their recent Nonesuch duo debut at the Charleston Music Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, tonight. On Saturday, they’ll take the show to the Rialto Theatre in Atlanta.

The Charleston City Paper’s Erica Jackson previews tonight’s show with an interview with the two musicians, in which she describes the pair’s early years as Chris “doing his child prodigy bit” and “Meyer established himself as a bassist without equal” and quips, “Both hearing and seeing the virtuosic duo's quick repartee is an amazing experience.” You’ll find the interview at charlestoncitypaper.com.