Ben Folds plays Kansas City and Louisville, talks to Australia's Triple J ... John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony receives Australian premiere ... The Black Keys kick off US tour ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica finish at Finnish fest ... The Low Anthem tours East Coast ...  Audra McDonald performs at Aspen benefit ... Natalie Merchant tours Midwest ...  Pat Metheny Group concludes European tour ... Punch Brothers are up in Alaska ... and more ...

Natalie Merchant brought her Leave Your Sleep tour to the Chicago Theatre for what the Chicago Tribune calls an "uplifting show," in which Merchant's "multimedia presentation enchanted with childlike wonder and wide-eyed imagination." The Tribune cites her "refreshing enthusiasm and approachable demeanor" and, most important, her "tender, intimate voice."

Audra McDonald performs in the Aspen Music Festival's Season Benefit this weekend. Her performance at The White House's A Broadway Celebration airs October 20 on PBS; she'll be on PBS again November 24, when Great Performances airs Lincoln Center's Stephen Sondheim: The Birthday Concert. "The brilliance of Audra McDonald," says the Boston Globe in a review or her recent Tangelwood recital, "is not just her ability to move through" the many styles comprising musical theater, "but that one never notices the change of channel."

Laurie Anderson will be among the jury members of YouTube Play, a video biennial from YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum meant to search for and showcase talent in online video. Other jury members include Animal Collective, Darren Aronofsky, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, and Stefan Sagmeister. The deadline for submissions is July 31. The jury's selections will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in October.

The Black Keys' Tonight Show performance of "Tighten Up," off their album Brothers, is now at nbc.com. With their US tour set to start tomorrow, Time Out New York selects the three New York City concerts the Top Live Show (or, rather, shows) for the week.Time Out says "there’s a realness to what the Black Keys do, along with a lack of pretension that sets them apart from pretty much every other act in Billboard’s top ten (Brothers entered the chart at No. 3)."

Philip Selway spoke with the Associated Press about his forthcoming solo debut album, Familial, for an interview broadcast live online via the AP Livestream channel you can watch here. Selway talks about the impetus behind the solo project, his under-the-radar writing process, the source of the title, and how working with a new set of musicians on Familial differed from working with his longtime bandmates in Radiohead.

Laurie Anderson will be signing copies of her latest Nonesuch release, Homeland, at New York's Other Music record store tonight at 8 PM. Tonight's event will feature a performance from Fenway Bergamot, Anderson's male alter ego, plus a raffle for tickets to Anderson's performance at BAM this fall. VenusZine says: "To call her a legend is to understate the obvious."

The Black Keys are back in the US after a European tour, ready to launch their North American summer and fall tour. Before they hit the road, the band performs "Tighten Up," off their latest album, Brothers, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. Also featured on tonight's episode are actor Zac Efron and "supernatural entertainer" Lior Suchard. Tune in at 11:35 PM ET on NBC.

Punch Brothers' US tour takes them far north to the Alyeska Resort in Alaska this weekend. The Huffington Post compares the band to the Beatles as artists who "redefine a genre of music for the ages," calling Chris Thile "a compositional genius" and saying all five band members "play with an energy and a passion of trailblazers." Billboard says the band "is building a case for bigger fame" with their new album, Antifogmatic.

Natalie Merchant's summer tour continues this week, as she and her eight-piece band head to Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. Merchant will sign copies of her new album, Leave Your Sleep, at Borders in Chicago on Thursday. The Chicago Sun-Times says the album "is as gorgeous as it is ambitious ... Leave Your Sleep reawakens the soul to the spirit of poetry."

Audra McDonald follows her stellar Tanglewood performance with a trip to Washington, DC, to perform at A Broadway Celebration, hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House, tonight. Tune in to a live web stream of tonight's event starting at 7 PM EDT on whitehouse.gov. The show will be broadcast on PBS stations across the US starting October 20.

Laurie Anderson played the fourth and final concert in her brief tour with music from her album Homeland at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday. The Washington Post calls Homeland "one of her best ... more contemplative, as well as prettier than Anderson's best-known work." She will sign copies of the new album at Other Music in New York City on Wednesday.