Laurie Anderson concludes California tour ... David Byrne talks bikes in Vancouver ... Carolina Chocolate Drops close out US tour in Illinois ... Shawn Colvin plays Pennsylvania and Maine ... Philip Glass gets NEA Opera Honors ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica close out Europe tour ... The Low Anthem joins Josh Ritter in Maine ... Pat Metheny concludes Orchestrion tour ... Joshua Redman Trio traverse Georgia ... Chris Thile does duo show in NYC ... Sara Watkins plays with John Prine ... and more ...

AfroCubism is out in North America in just over a week, when the eponymous band kicks off a brief tour of the US and Canada. It was recently featured on The Strand from the BBC World Service, which calls it "a gorgeous mix of African and Caribbean traditions"; host Mark Coles calls the track "Jarabi" "one of the most beautiful things I've heard in a long time." The album was also recently featured on CNN International and earns four stars from the Daily Telegraph.

Ben Folds's fall tour, featuring music from Lonely Avenue, his new album with Nick Hornby, kicks off soon and now includes a New York City show December 14. That comes amidst the second season of NBC’s a cappella competition The Sing-Off. Folds returns as a judge on the successful series, which starts December 6 and will reward America’s best a cappella group with a professional recording contract and $100,000.

Philip Glass will receive the 2010 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Opera Honors Award at The Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, DC, tonight. The awards ceremony and concert will feature musical tributes from soloists joined by the Washington National Opera Orchestra. Also being honored tonight are soprano Martina Arroyo, general director David DiChiera, and music director Eve Queler.

Laurie Anderson performs her newest work, Delusion, at UCLA's Royce Hall tonight, as part of her week-long tour of California. The Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed says of the piece: "To reveal too much would be to spoil amazement. A supreme dramatist, Anderson makes nearly every sentence a dramatic surprise, every visual image a bolt of wonderment." Nevertheless, he can say that Delusion is a "powerful, moving, incredibly rich work."

Steve Reich is next week's BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week. Each day next week, the program will present interviews with Reich and music from throughout his career, from 1965's groundbreaking It's Gonna Rain to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet, featured on his latest Nonesuch album. "Just as composers like Beethoven, Shostakovich and Mahler captured their era in their compositions," says the BBC, "so Reich's music distills the pulsating rhythm and routine of 21st century urban life."

Brad Mehldau is set to launch his Highway Rider tour with the world premiere of the piece due at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis on November 5 and 6, followed by the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 9. The latter is the first event of Mehldau's tenure as holder of the Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall. As such, he has published the first in a series of blog posts on the Carnegie Hall website, offering insight on composition and improvisation.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops have been named to The Root 100, the "list of young achievers and pace setters for 2010" from The Root, which says of the performers on the list: "We like them because they lift black music out of the box into which some critics try to shove it." The Boston Phoenix describes the band's recent Boston show as "a beauty ... The crowd were standing and packed, and hooting and hollering from the beginning." They conclude their US tour this weekend, then head to Europe.

Punch Brothers have returned to New York City for two shows. First up is T Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Revue at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre tonight. The Boston Globe said the performances at Saturday's Revue debut "were uniformly inspired," with Punch Brothers "in fine rhythmic form"; the Boston Herald includes their set among the night's "stellar moments." On Thursday, the quintet joins Dierks Bentley on Live! With Regis and Kelly and at Brooklyn's Southpaw.

With just a week to go before The Black Keys launch their European tour, the band has released an iTunes Session. Recorded in Toronto last August during the band's North American summer tour, the ten-song album includes songs from the duo’s latest album, Brothers, as well as “Your Touch” from their 2006 Nonesuch debut album, Magic Potion, and “Chop and Change,” which was featured on the soundtrack of film Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Watch the band's interview with SPIN, from the Austin City Limits festival, here.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby follow last week's New York City appearances with a PEN/Faulkner event at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC. Hornby will read from his latest novel, Juliet, Naked; Folds will perform songs from their album, Lonely Avenue. The Washington Post Express calls them "a match made in heaven." Folds has just added a New York City date to his fall tour, with tickets now available to fans, and will return to DC in December to present his photography at National Geographic.

Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat, the composer's first-ever collection of his lyrics, is out now in the UK and is due out in the US next week. The collection includes the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981 along with personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes photos. Variety declares London "smitten with Sondheim." Financial Times says "Sondheim has brought unprecedented depth to musicals"; one sees a Sondheim show "for the exhilaration of seeing a popular art form stretched to its limits." Sondheim's Evening Primrose will receive a one-night-only reading next week, the night before the original TV production is out on DVD. Bernadette Peters will receive the the Signature Theatre's 2011 Sondheim Award.