Randy Newman is a guest on the public radio show A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by fellow Nonesuch artist Chris Thile, broadcast live from the show’s home base, the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday. Other guests on the episode are Margo Price and comedian/actress Alice Wetterlund; Madison Cunningham joins Thile as duet partner. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend; fans everywhere can watch the live broadcast online at prairiehome.org starting at 4:45 PM CT.

Randy Newman released Dark Matter, his first album of new material in nine years, in August. Produced by long-time Newman collaborators Mitchell Froom, Lenny Waronker, and David Boucher, the album includes songs about Vladimir Putin, the Kennedy brothers, Sonny Boy Williamson, science vs. religion, love and loss, and more. NPR says Newman "remains first and foremost a craftsman of song, capable of telling ordinary stories in ways no one quite has before."

Chris Thile's new album, Thanks for Listening, a collection of new studio recordings of songs originally written as Songs of the Week on A Prairie Home Companion, is due December 8 and is available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store. Thile was a guest on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show this week to discuss and perform from the album; you can listen to the session here.

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Sam Amidon began his autumn tour of Europe, in support of his new album, The Following Mountain, last night, and continues with concerts at Café Mono in Oslo, Norway, tonight, and Folk å Rock in Malmö, Sweden, on Sunday. The Irish Times gives the new album four stars, calling it “breathtaking … a fascinating signpost to the future.”

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Laurie Anderson is in Santiago, Chile, this weekend, bringing The Language of the Future to Teatro Caupolicán on Saturday, following an artist talk at the University of Santiago Planetarium today, both part of the En Orbita festival. The piece is Anderson’s ongoing exploration of the American narrative, a collection of songs and stories about contemporary culture that crosses borders between dreams, reality, and the world of information.

“A musician, visual artist, performer, and creator of a sound universe that incorporates and projects cultural diversity, refined art, and an absolute rejection of conventional structures of art, Laurie Anderson is one of the most eclectic and innovative artists of today,” says Chile’s 24 Horas, in a preview of Anderson’s first concert in the country in nearly a decade.

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Pianist Jeremy Denk is at deSingel in Antwerp, Belgium, tonight, giving a lecture-demonstration called “Variations: Thoughts on a musical phenomenon,” which includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann. The Washington Post calls Denk “an artist of uncommon communicative ability, whose playing gives as much intellectual as sensual pleasure.”

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Fleet Foxes' performance on Live from the Artists Den, featuring songs from the band's new album, Crack-Up, which first aired on PBS stations late last month, continues its roll-out on stations across the US this weekend, airing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Memphis, Albuquerque, and Honolulu. There are more stations scheduled for next week in Nashville, Omaha, and Indianapolis, with Atlanta, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Knoxville, and still more to follow in the coming weeks. To find a station near you, visit artistsden.com.

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Pianist Richard Goode gives a recital in the Modlin Center for the Arts' Camp Concert Hall at the University of Richmond in Virginia tonight. On the program are works by Byrd, Bach, Beethoven, and Debussy. The Beethoven piece, Sonata No. 28 in A Major Op. 101, is one of the complete Beethoven sonatas Goode recorded on Nonesuch in 1993 and reissued in a new ten-CD box set last month.

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Tigran Hamasyan continues his European tour, featuring music from his new album, An Ancient Observer, in Germany this weekend: at Jazz am See in Allenbach tonight and Prinzregententheater in Munich on Saturday. To mark the start of the tour, Hamasyan released a video giving an inside look at the first leg of his tour following the release of An Ancient Observer earlier this year. You can watch it here.

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The Magnetic Fields bring 50 Song Memoir to Arts Centre Melbourne's Hamer Hall this weekend, as part of the Melbourne Festival, in the exclusive Australian presentation of the show. The group performs the first program of the album’s first twenty-five songs on Saturday and completes the set with remaining twenty-five songs on Sunday. Songwriter Stephin Merritt spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald—which had given four stars to the album upon its release in March—about what to expect at this weekend’s performances; you can read what he had to say here.

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Pat Metheny continues his European tour with drummer Antonio Sánchez, pianist Gwilym Simcock, and bassist Linda Oh in Germany, playing Konzerthaus in Dortmund tonight, Haus Auensee in Leipzig on Saturday, and Konzerthaus in Munich on Sunday.

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Conor Oberst, with the Felice Brothers as his backing band, takes his Salutations tour to Florida, for concerts at Culture Room in Ft. Lauderdale tonight, Capitol Theatre in Clearwater (an update from the originally scheduled State Theatre in St. Petersburg, due to overwhelming demand) on Saturday, and Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola on Sunday. The Miami New Times recommends tonight’s show in a feature on Oberst, which you can read here.

The Independent gives Salutations a perfect five stars, calling it "the best work of the singer’s career." The Evening Standard, reviewing a recent London show, praises Oberst’s “remarkably honest performance,” writing that he “remains as compelling a songwriter as he ever has been.”

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Joshua Redman and his trio— bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Kendrick Scott—head to Asia this weekend, performing at Blue Note in Beijing tonight and Saturday, followed by a set at Jarasum Island in Gapyeong, Korea, on Sunday, as part of the Jarasum International Jazz Festival.