Joshua Redman and his trio gave an Opening Night performance at the Indianapolis Jazz Festival earlier this month that All About Jazz calls "a brilliant start" to the festival, which ended yesterday. The set featured songs from Redman's latest Nonesuch release, Compass, review calls "another exquisite journey" from Redman.

Shawn Colvin gave a trio of performances on the East Coast late last week, beginning with a set at Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, that showed off her "quirky, thoughtful charm," says the Hartford Courant. Colvin "forged riveting moments" and "eased through a selection of tunes that brought out the luster in her singing."

As The Low Anthem's tour transitions from Europe back to the States next week, Lake Fever Sessions has published three performance videos the group recorded during a stop in Nashville earlier this year: "Ticket Taker," "Charlie Darwin," and "This God Damn House." The band's rich and varied influences, says Lake Fever, "create a stark, though strangely lush at times, canvas for their melodic folk tunes."

David Byrne, long a bike enthusiast and proponent of this auto alternative, releases Bicycle Diaries, a new book described by the Los Angeles Times as "a two-wheeled travelogue from a keen cultural observer." He also begins an eight-city panel tour—Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around—to discuss these issues. As New York magazine explains, "If the conventional idea of the artist is as a kind of highly specialized genius, Byrne prefers to be an omnivore."

Chris Thile recently premiered his Mandolin Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and performs it again this weekend with the Oregon Symphony, after which, Thile joins his fellow Punch Brothers for a three-week US tour, including Carnegie Hall. The group’s next record is scheduled for 2010. "The new album is the next step in the natural progression of Punch Brothers," says band member Gabe Witcher, "from a group first assembled to render Thile’s composition, The Blind Leaving the Blind, to a collective compositional entity in its own right."

The Low Anthem closes out its European tour this week with stops in Hamburg, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris, before heading home to the States for Austin City Limits and an extensive US tour with Blind Pilot. And with a performance in Amsterdam this week, it's fitting that The Low Anthem is offering a free copy of its performance of Bob Dylan's "Dignity" recorded in that city when you sign up for the group's mailing list.