St Germain's new, self-titled album was featured on today's episode of NPR's All Things Considered. "This isn't your typical globe-trotting cut-and-paste," says reviewer Tom Moon. "Where most DJs organize their work around static loops, St Germain seeks a less scripted, more improvisational atmosphere." He later concludes: "There's a lot of musical conversation going on here. St Germain went deep into West African music and discovered that to capture its nuances, he had to ditch some of his DJ tricks and open things way up. The result: a timeless African sound reconfigured ever so slightly for the electronic age."

The Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club will perform at The White House this afternoon in celebration of Hispanic Heritage month. A delegation of about 500 dignitaries and politicians from around the world will be hosted by President Barack Obama. The event is due to stream live at whitehouse.gov/live. Led by members of the original, Grammy Award–winning Buena Vista Social Club band, the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club will be the first Cuban musical group to perform at The White House in more than 50 years.

Lake Street Dive has just been signed to Nonesuch Records, which releases the band's label debut in early 2016. The four musicians, who are currently on a US tour, met as students at New England Conservatory. USA Today recently said of them, "The group is built around the powerhouse alto voice of Rachael Price, which sports traces of Amy Winehouse and Bonnie Raitt. That instrument is supported by the strong, smart songwriting and gorgeous harmony singing of band mates Bridget Kearney, Michael ("McDuck") Olson, and Michael Calabrese." Further details about the album and its release will be announced shortly, as will further tour dates.

Lianne La Havas, who is currently touring the US, recently stopped by NPR's World Cafe to talk with host David Dye about her new album, Blood, and perform three tracks from it—"Green and Gold," "What You Don't Do," and "Unstoppable"—as well as "Forget," from her debut album. "In 2012, Is Your Love Big Enough? came out, and it was a real breath of fresh air," says Dye. "It's really unusual to find any artist, but particularly one so young, who doesn't feel the need to be genre-defined in any way. What a great record ... Blood is here now, the new album, and as you will hear, it's a pretty spectacular record." Listen to the performance and interview here.

Audra McDonald will take part in a very special performance, "A Celebration of American Creativity," at The White House tonight, as part of the series In Performance at the White House. They will join President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and performers including Buddy Guy, Queen Latifah, Keb' Mo', Smokey Robinson, Esperanza Spalding, Brian Stokes Mitchell, James Taylor, and Usher, with special readings and remarks from Carol Burnett, in celebration of art and literature in unique American musical forms. The event will stream live at whitehouse.gov/live starting at 7:25 PM ET tonight. A Celebration of American Creativity: In Performance at the White House will premiere on PBS on Friday, January 8, 2016.

As announced last week, Nonesuch Records will release Junun, an album from composer/musician Shye Ben Tzur, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express, a group of Indian qawwali musicians, in November. Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson documented the recording sessions inside the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India. You can watch a clip from the film featuring the album track "Roked" here; the track is available to download now with album preorders. "Suddenly," The New Yorker writes in an article on Junun, "a person knows what it feels like to occupy a moment completely."

Kronos Quartet leads a weeklong workshop at Carnegie Hall April 9–15, 2016, open to student and young professional string quartets aged 18–35 to explore new works commissioned as part of Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. The tuition-free workshop culminates in a public performance at Zankel Hall and will also focus on several of Kronos’s signature works. The application deadline is November 17, 2015. Kronos performs at Zankel Hall on April 2. The group performs at the St. Ann's Warehouse opening in Brooklyn this Saturday and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan on Tuesday.

As previously noted, special one-night-only screenings of the documentary Paradise Is There, A Memoir by Natalie Merchant, The New Tigerlily Recordings have been announced for the fall. The film will be released by Nonesuch Records on November 6, 2015 on DVD as a companion piece to Natalie Merchant's upcoming album, Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings. Merchant will perform in a handful of international cities in the spring with her An Evening with Natalie Merchant: The 2016 Paradise Is There tour; tickets go on sale Friday. She has released the album track "Carnival," which you can hear here; pre-order the album to download it now.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicks off a tour of North America at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts tonight, followed by stops this month in Toronto, Chicago, Madison, Carmel, Columbus, Saratoga Springs, Northampton, and Boston. In December, the band heads West for shows in Boulder, Phoenix, Albuquerque, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, closing out the 2015 touring with a four-night residency at SFJAZZ in San Francisco, December 10–13. The tour features music from The Bad Plus Joshua Redman's recently released self-titled debut album, which the New York Times calls "a knockout," and NPR describes as "a roaring and beautiful summit meeting."

Today marks the release of the new, self-titled record from St Germain (aka Ludovic Navarre), his first in 15 years, and it's "well worth the wait," says the Independent. The album marries percussive grooves, which have always been central to his sound, with a new element: traditional Malian music. "St Germain is a remarkable album of rewarding and organic music," exclaims All About Jazz in a five-star review. "It is really a rare occurrence that an electronic music is crafted with so much style and substance as this record." There are moments "that lift the music into the higher spirit realms," says NPR. Mixmag says it "never strays from the sublime." It "deftly balances tradition and modernity and begs repeated listening," says Jazzwise. "Navarre continues to revolutionise electronic music."

Nonesuch Records releases Junun—an album from composer/musician Shye Ben Tzur, guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express, a group of Indian musicians—on November 20, 2015. Recorded in a makeshift studio inside the 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India, the album was made with Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich. It features Ben Tzur's compositions, which combine ecstatic, devotional Sufi qawwal musical traditions and his native Hebrew. Pre-orders are available now with an instant download of the album track "Roked." Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson documented the recording sessions; his film, also entitled Junun, debuted at the NY Film Festival and will stream exclusively on MUBI for the next 30 days.

Rhiannon Giddens returns to Austin City Limits … Jeremy Denk performs at The Kennedy Center … Emmylou Harris leads pet shelter benefit … Kronos Quartet performs at Stanford … Lianne La Havas continues in Canada … Audra McDonald sings in Massachusetts … Brad Mehldau heads to France … Pat Metheny plays Uppsala Guitar Fest … Randy Newman kicks off Europe tour … Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club takes "Adios" tour to California … Rokia Traoré performs Desdemona in LA … and more …