Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the free, annual outdoor music festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, returns for the 15th year this weekend and, as is often the case, featured among the performers are a number of artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Kronos Quartet, Conor Oberst, and Punch Brothers.

Conor Oberst curates the festival’s Rooster Stage all day today, presenting a return of the aptly titled Conor Brings Friends for Friday, with sets from M. Ward, Johnathan Rice, Jessica Pratt, The Felice Brothers, Laura Marling, and Oberst himself. He concludes his tour with M. Ward and The Felice Brothers at The Fillmore, also in San Francisco, on Saturday.

Kronos Quartet performs in a chamber orchestra conducted by the one and only Van Dyke Parks as part of a performance of Big Star's Third by an all-star band and other special guests, including Steve Earle and Robyn Hitchcock, at the Arrow Stage tonight.

Punch Brothers play at the Banjo Stage tonight, and then head south to Los Angeles for a set at The Greek Theatre, as part of the LA Bluegrass Situation festival, on Saturday.

Ry Cooder takes his tour with Sharon White and Ricky Skaggs—the Cooder-White-Skaggs tour—to the festival’s Banjo Stage on Saturday, but not before a stop at the Great American Music Hall, in San Francisco, tonight.

Emmylou Harris, who will have performed at all 15 years of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, is joined by Rodney Crowell to close out the Banjo Stage on Sunday, performing songs from their two duo albums, The Traveling Kind and Old Yellow Moon, and much more.

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Laurie Anderson premieres a new work, Habeas Corpus, created in collaboration with Mohammed el Gharani, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, at the Park Avenue Armory this weekend. The work, which was commissioned by the Armory, expands on Anderson's fusing of storytelling and technology, creating an installation and performance piece that examines lost identity, memory, and the resiliency of the human body and spirit. It premieres today and continues through Saturday and Sunday.

The installation, which includes a soundscape designed by the late Lou Reed, runs during the day, followed by evening performances from Syrian singer Omar Souleyman, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, guitarist Stewart Hurwood, and Anderson herself. Anderson wrote about the project at length for the New Yorker; you can read the essay here.

Laurie Anderson’s new film, Heart of a Dog, receives its US premiere at the New York Film Festival this Thursday. The complete soundtrack recording of the film will be released on Nonesuch on October 23 and is available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store with a limited-edition, autographed print.

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Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, a core band featuring several of the original musicians from Buena Vista Social Club, takes its "Adios" tour to the Pacific Northwest, with a show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle tonight and at Schnitzer Hall in Portland on Sunday. Musicians from the original Grammy Award–winning album perform, including band leader and trombonist Jesús “Aguaje” Ramos, trumpeter Guajiro Mirabal, laúd virtuoso Barbarito Torres, vocalist and guitarist Eliades Ochoa, and vocalist Omara Portuondo, along with a younger generation of Cuban musicians, such as vocalist Carlos Calunga and pianist Rolando Luna.

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, will be reissued on vinyl by World Circuit Records on October 30 and is available to pre-order in North America in the Nonesuch Store.

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Olivia Chaney concludes her week-long tour as a special guest of The Decemberists with two shows in Texas: at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, tonight, and at Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater in Austin, an ACL Festival Late Night Show, on Saturday. She then heads to California for a special solo show at McCabe's in Santa Monica on Sunday. Chaney made her album debut with the release of The Longest River on Nonesuch Records earlier this year.

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Rhiannon Giddens continues to tour the US behind her recently released solo debut album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, with a set at the sold-out Austin City Limits festival tonight, before resuming her tour with special guest Leyla McCalla at Tipitina’s in New Orleans, on Saturday, and the Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola, Florida, on Sunday.

Giddens recent performance on NPR’s Mountain Stage receives its broadcast premiere this weekend, airing on radio stations across the US. To find out where and when, visit mountainstage.org.

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Lianne La Havas continues her North American tour with a show at Danforth Music Hall in Toronto tonight, St. Andrews Hall in Detroit on Saturday, and Park West in Chicago on Sunday. She performs songs from her debut album, Is Your Love Big Enough?, and her recently released album, Blood, which Rolling Stone says "demands, and rewards, all the attention you can give it.”

Billboard gave La Havas’s recent NYC show at Terminal 5 four–and-a-half stars, reporting that she “brought the house down with an immaculate performance” and noting that in the live show, “La Havas was no less evocative than her short but powerful catalog.”

La Havas recently performed an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert. "La Havas is soulful yet playful, raw and vulnerable in a commanding kind of way, and her new second album, Blood, is as amazing as the first," says NPR's Suraya Mohamed. "If you're like me, you will never get enough." See why here. And catch La Havas on CBS This Morning Saturday this weekend.

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Brad Mehldau heads to Vienna, Austria, joined by Joris Roelofs on clarinet and Michael Williams on cello, for a live scoring of Josef von Sternberg’s 1925 silent film The Salvation Hunters. This special event takes place at Vienna’s Konzerthaus Großer Saal tonight.

Nonesuch releases Brad Mehldau's 10 Years Solo Live eight-LP vinyl box set, culled from 19 live recordings made over a decade of the pianist's European solo concerts, on October 16, with the four-CD set to follow in November.

Mehldau’s extended take on Massive Attack's "Teardrop," from the forthcoming box set, led WNYC's New Sounds' look at this month’s new releases. It's a version "I think is really brilliant," says host John Schaefer. The 8-LP set "is so ambitious that we may well still be listening to it when we do next month’s new releases program." Hear it here.

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Audra McDonald helps make the Happiest Place on Earth even happier when she performs at the Disneyland Hotel tonight, as part of the Gay Days Anaheim weekend of celebrations in the Magic Kingdom.

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Randy Newman stays close to home for a performance at Royce Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday, before heading out for a month-long tour of Europe and the UK. Westside Today, in a preview of Saturday’s show, exclaims: “With songs that run the gamut from heartbreaking to satirical and a host of unforgettable film scores, Randy Newman has used his many talents to create musical masterpieces widely recognized by generations of audiences.”