Fleet Foxes continue their Crack-Up world tour with a sold-out performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Saturday, followed by a concert at Comerica Theatre in Phoenix on Sunday. The US tour continues with concerts in Red Rocks Amphitheatre, shows in Santa Fe and Omaha, and two nights each in St. Paul and Chicago. The next European leg of the tour begins at the Iceland Airwaves festival in November.

Crack-Up, released in June on Nonesuch Records, is “likely to be the most remarkable album you will hear this year,” exclaims the Times of London. “The return of one of the most original bands of this century." Pitchfork calls it "their most complex and compelling album to date."

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Composer John Adams gave a preview of his new opera, Girls of the Golden West, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City yesterday, and returns to do so again tonight, as part of the museum’s Works & Process series. At the Guggenheim, Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars discuss the piece with San Francisco Opera general director Matthew Shilvock and set designer David Gropman. The evening also features performances from the piece, prior to its world premiere in San Francisco next month, by mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and soprano Hye Jung Lee, accompanied by pianist John Churchwell.

The New York Times calls Girls of the Golden West “the most eagerly anticipated new opera of the season.”

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Sam Amidon begins a fall tour of North America, in support of his latest album, The Following Mountain, in the Pacific Northwest this weekend, playing Fremont Abbey Arts Center in Seattle on Saturday and Mississippi Studios in Portland on Sunday. Amidon released a new video for the song "Warren," directed by John Hardwick, yesterday; you can watch it here.

The London Evening Standard gives The Following Mountain four stars, praising its “captivating arrangements and elegiac charm.” The Irish Times gives it four stars as well, calling it “breathtaking … a fascinating signpost to the future.”

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Laurie Anderson brings The Language of the Future to the Klangpuren Festival at SZentrum in Schwaz, Austria, on Sunday. 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. The DC Metro Theater Arts calls the project “profoundly provocative,” adding that Anderson “delivers her stories in a simple, arresting style, sincere and seemingly without polish.”

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Rhiannon Giddens takes her US tour, featuring music from her new album, Freedom Highway, to the Midwest this weekend, performing at The Vic Theatre in Chicago tonight and the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington on Saturday. She then heads South for a concert at Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville on Sunday. The Bluegrass Situation writes, “Every now and then, a voice comes along that is so thoroughly in tune with the times that it can't—and shouldn't—be ignored. This year, that voice belongs to Rhiannon Giddens.”

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Randy Newman continues his fall tour of the United States, featuring music from his new album, Dark Matter, with a performance at Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. Newman heads back out on the road next month, beginning in California with a show in Napa and a set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

Newman recently gave some personal insight into his catalog by way of a Rolling Stone “My Life in 15 Songs” feature. You can hear his selections and read what he had to say here.

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Chris Thile heads to Pennsylvania this weekend for a sold-out solo performance at Swarthmore College’s Lang Concert Hall on Saturday. “The most impressive musicians are often versatile, but few match the breadth of the brilliant mandolinist Chris Thile,” says the New York Times. “His versatility is apparent in the remarkable range of colors and shadings he produces on his instrument; phrases unfold with myriad subtle gradations.”

Thile, coming off a recent US duo tour with Brad Mehldau, begins his second season of A Prairie Home Companion next month, with special guests including Randy Newman, among others. He and Mehldau take the duo tour, which Forbes recently called “magical … an absolute blast,” to Europe in November.

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Rokia Traoré brings her project, The Dream Mandé – Djata to Le Manège in Maubeuge, France, tonight.

Traoré has created a narrative for the piece in the form of a Mandingo epic, reported, played, and sung throughout the show against a backdrop of Mandingo classics performed with Mamah Diabaté on n’goni and Mamadyba Camara on kora.

“The Dream Mandé project concerns traditional Malian music,” says Traoré, “but it is also proof that modernity is bringing us to inevitable changes, sometimes giving the possibility to offer a vigor and a sense to the past through contemporary concepts that go against established customs.”