Senegalese singer-songwriter Cheikh Lô will return to North America this April to play a series of venues and festivals featuring music from his critically acclaimed fifth album, Jamm. This will be the first opportunity for North American audiences to hear Lô performing songs from the album since its release in July 2011. The tour includes a performance at Carnegie Hall, sets at the New Orleans Jazz Fest and Louisiana International Festival, and shows in DC, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill, Ithaca, and Montreal.

On the acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums, Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to lyrics by folk legend Woody Guthrie for which he had not written music or made recordings. Tweedy and Bragg were "the perfect pair to conclude that Guthrie ... was a prophetic rock-and-roller with a whole lot to say," said the New York Times. On Record Store Day, April 21, Nonesuch will release Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, which includes the original two volumes of Mermaid Avenue (the second re-mastered); a third volume with 17 previously unreleased recordings from those sessions; the 1999 documentary on the sessions, Man in the Sand; and a 48-page booklet with new liner notes by Nora Guthrie, lyrics, archival photographs, and facsimiles of lyric sheets and sketches by Woody Guthrie. Pre-orders include an exclusive print of Guthrie’s lyric sheet for “Hoodoo Voodoo.”

The new album pairing works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and the works they inspired by composer/guitarist Jonny Greenwood, due out on March 13, is featured on NPR's All Songs Considered. Producer Robin Hilton exclaims of Greenwood's 48 Responses to Polymporphia: "You hear that, and I think: everything created by a synthesizer is just so irrelevant and boring now. You hear something that real and organic and knowing that it could be performed live with these string instruments, I mean, that's amazing to me." The Guardian's Tom Service spoke with both composers about the project and says of that piece: "48 Responses isn't just a good piece for a composer who is more used to the studio, it is a dazzlingly imaginative, gripping and novel work, full stop."

John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer received its long-awaited London premiere by the English National Opera this past weekend. The production, led by conductor Baldur Brönniman and director Tom Morris has received tremendous attention in the British press. The Times gives the production a four-star review and calls the opera "a serious work of art" and the production "absorbing and provocative." The Guardian calls it “a major achievement,” in a four-star review, and an editorial in the same paper describes the opera as “a serious, beautiful and nuanced work that engages with one of the intractable tragedies of our era.” The Financial Times calls the piece "Adams at his best."

Carolina Chocolate Drops’ new album, Leaving Eden, is out today. Rolling Stone, in a four-star review, says that the album “grows handsome fruit from a nation's tangled roots,” calling the record “a lesson in 21st-century American folk.” The  Los Angeles Times notes that “band spends much of this very fresh-sounding album aligning itself with traditional values.” USA Today notes that the group “may take their cues from 1920s string- and jug-band music, but they're simply a great band.”

Randy Newman launched his month-long European tour last week with the first date in Gateshead, England; the tour continued over the weekend at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, Scotland. Friday’s show was covered in a four-star review by the Daily Telegraph, which called it “a moving and powerful experience.” In another four-star review, the Scotsman refers to Newman as “an artist whose songs and subjects remain ageless,“ and the Herald's review refers to Newman's work as "miniature symphonies of wit and wisdoms." Newman plays Royal Festival Hall in London on Tuesday evening, and continues on to Ireland and Germany.

Laurie Anderson and Björk's Biophilia app developer Scott Snibbe participate in all-day NYC event Survival of the Beautiful: Scientists and Artists Ponder the Aesthetics of Evolution ... Björk continues her NYC residency at Roseland ... ENO gives John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer its London premiere ... Carolina Chocolate Drops tour the Midwest ... Philip Glass celebrates his 75th all weekend at NYC's Park Avenue Armory ... Emmylou Harris plays the HRC Equality Dinner in Nashville ... Kronos Quartet performs in New Jersey ... The Low Anthem headlines in New Hampshire ... Randy Newman tours Belgium ... Punch Brothers play the Northeast ... and more ...

John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer, featuring a libretto by Alice Goodman, receives its London premiere in performances by the English National Opera starting this Saturday. Director Tom Morris (War Horse) makes his opera directing debut. Following the 1991 premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer, the New York Times said the work “transmutes contemporary history into operatic poetry.” Adams and Goodman recently spoke with BBC Radio 3's Music Matters about the opera and the controversy that surrounds it. Morris does so as well in a video you can watch here.

Philip Glass turned 75 last month and celebrated in style with birthday concerts at (Le) Poisson Rouge and Carnegie Hall. There's much more to come this weekend with the Tune-In Music Festival's Celebrating the American Icon: Philip Glass at 75, a four-day event comprising five programs at NYC's Park Avenue Armory, featuring Glass’s own music, including his landmark piece Music in Twelve Parts, as well as music, poetry, and art created and performed by those who influenced him and those whom he has influenced throughout his career.

Randy Newman launches a month-long tour of Europe with a performance at the Sage Gateshead in England tonight, followed by performances in Glasgow, London, Dublin, and throughout Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Switzerland. Newman tells the Daily Telegraph about touring: "It keeps me sharp. I worried that there is evidence that says people do their best work before they are 30. But I’m as good or better. I haven’t changed a great deal from when I wrote my first song when I was 23.”

Punch Brothers celebrated the release of their new album, Who's Feeling Young Now?, with a special set at NYC's intimate Rockwood Music Hall last night that was captured in photos by Brooklyn Vegan. The band launches its North American tour outside Boston this Thursday. While in Paris last month, the band met up with the folks at Rolling Stone France to perform a short set. You can watch their performance of the album's title track here.

Carolina Chocolate Drops' new album, Leaving Eden, is due out next week on CD with vinyl to follow on March 20. Catch a sneak peek in a new video preview featuring the band's take on the Hazel Dickens tune "Pretty Bird" here. In the UK, the Independent on Sunday gives the album four stars. The band appeared on BBC Radio 6 Music's The Huey Show, discussing and performing songs from the new album, and are featured in The Arts Desk and the Guardian, which describes their sound as "a form of old-time jug band blues played with contemporary R&B attitude."