Joshua Redman kicks off a tour with his Quartet—pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers, drummer Gregory Hutchinson—at Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz tonight, followed by multiple-set stops in Portland, Seattle, and Denver. The tour moves east for sets at the Elkhart Jazz Festival in Indiana and in the Berkshires. Larry Grenadier swaps in for Rogers as the Quartet holds a six-night residency at the Blue Note in NYC for the Blue Note Jazz Festival. Redman and a different Quartet—pianist Kevin Hays, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Jorge Rossy—tour Europe in July, stopping in Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, and Spain.

American Tunes, the final recording by legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint, is out now. Produced by Joe Henry, it features both solo piano recordings and others made with a band plus special guests Rhiannon Giddens and Van Dyke Parks. There are works by Toussaint, Professor Longhair, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Paul Simon, and others. It's "a rich pianistic tour de force of American music," says the Los Angeles Times, "a gorgeous, grace-filled journey through the history of American popular music by one of its most artful proponents." The Times of London calls it "gorgeous," exclaiming: "Swan songs don't get any better." Uncut calls it "the perfect eulogy for one of America's true musical greats." Watch Toussaint's performance of Paul Simon's "American Tune" on Austin City Limits in 2009 here.

Louis Andriessen's Theatre of the World receives European premiere in Amsterdam … The Bad Plus Joshua Redman plays Hollywood Bowl … Olivia Chaney, Joe Boyd perform in Wales … Michael Daves plays three trio sets in Massachusetts … Lake Street Dive tours the Southeast … Conor Oberst performs in New Haven and Brooklyn … Punch Brothers headline Huck Finn Jubilee ... The Staves are in Montreal … and more …

Audra McDonald, currently on Broadway in Shuffle Along, joined The Late Late Show host James Corden for a very special, all-Broadway Carpool Karaoke last night, along with Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda; Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, now on Broadway in Fully Committed; and 30 Rock's Jane Krakowski, now in She Loves Me. Corden, who hosts the Tony Awards this Sunday, and crew rode through NYC singing out show tunes from Hamilton, Rent, Jersey Boys, and, Les Misérables. Watch it here.

Michael Daves tours three Northeast cities this week in support of his new album, Orchids and Violence. Joining him are Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny and fiddler Brittany Haas. The tour stops at World Café Live in Philadelphia on Thursday, The Red Room @ Café 939 in Boston on Friday, and The Parlor Room in Northampton on Saturday. "Noam and Brittany are both incredible improvisers and great listeners," says Daves. "These shows are going to be full of surprises." You can watch the trio perform the album track "June Apple" here.

Today marks the release of Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Blues and Ballads, which comprises interpretations of songs by other composers, this time with the focus on blues and ballads implied by the album’s title. "Stellar jazz pianist Mehldau again proves that three is the magic number," says MOJO in a four-star review, "resurrecting the trio that has consistently advanced the jazz lexicon in the course of the past 20 years. A spellbinding set whose salient features are subtlety and understatement. Sublime stuff." The Times of London, in its five-star review, says: "Yet another rhapsodic rollercoaster from this master of romantic complexity."

Randy Newman, Lake Street Dive play the Nelsonville Music Festival in Ohio … Richard Goode plays Beethoven in Poland ... Brad Mehldau continues Blue Note residency in NYC with Mark Guiliana, John Scofield … The Staves launch North American tour … and more …

Legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint's final recording, American Tunes, is out on Nonesuch Records next Friday, June 10. But you don't need to wait till then to hear it: the album is streaming in full here till then as an NPR First Listen. The album presents "an almost retrospective, autumnal focus on the ideas which made him and his music," writes NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon. "It's hard not to read a subtext here: that all these songs belonged in the canon which gave rise to Toussaint and his city, and thus to the bigger picture of important American tunes." Hear the album in full here.

Tigran Hamasyan was among the winners at the ECHO Jazz 2016 Awards. He took part in the awards ceremony held at Kampnagel in Hamburg on May 26, which was broadcast on NDR, receiving his award for International Instrumentalist of the Year, Piano, for his album Mockroot and performing the album track "Lilac." You can watch the performance here. Among the other winners were James Farm, named International Ensemble of the Year for its album City Folk, and Brad Mehldau, who received a special prize for his box set 10 Years Solo Live.

The Staves embark on a 19-city North American tour beginning with a sold-out show at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on Friday, followed by shows in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Toronto, Nashville, Atlanta, St. Louis, DC, Brooklyn, and more, including a sold-out date at NYC's Bowery Ballroom and sets at the Firefly, Winnipeg, Newport, and Eaux Claires festivals. The English trio's newly released EP, Sleeping In A Car, is available everywhere digitally; CDs will be available exclusively at the Staves' shows.

Steve Reich has been awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. Established in 2004, the Nemmers Prize honors classical music composers of outstanding achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. "It is particularly gratifying to be honored in this way by a school of music, which demonstrates such passionate commitment to the study, composition, and performance of new music," says Reich. "I look forward to my two residencies at Northwestern for concerts of my music in 2017."

Laurie Anderson, in an interview with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark's Louisiana Channel, offers some sage advice to people both young and old. She suggests that applying a term as broad as "multimedia artist" to herself has helped keep her work from being pigeonholed and concludes: "Whatever makes you feel really free and really good, that's what to do. It's really simple." You can see what else she has to say in the video here. In another video, she discusses her correspondence with John F. Kennedy in 1960, which informed her new piece The Language of the Future: Letters to Jack.