Randy Newman will play three UK concerts as part of a European tour in February and March 2012 to coincide with the release of the CD/DVD album package Randy Newman: Live in London in November. The tour includes dates in Gateshead, Glasgow, and London, as well as cities in Belgium, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland.

As you may have heard, The Black Keys’ new album El Camino will be released December 6 on Nonesuch Records. But no need to wait till then to hear some brand new music off the album. You can listen to “Lonely Boy,” the first single off of El Camino, today! Get a first listen of "Lonely Boy" in the video here. And be sure to pre-order the album from the Nonesuch Store now to get an instant download of the song.

Alarm Will Sound will be the Artists-in-Residence at the third annual Mizzou New Music Summer Music Festival, held in July at the University of Missouri. Eight composers from around the world will be selected through a portfolio application process to compose a work to be performed by Alarm Will Sound. The application deadline is November 1. Donnacha Dennehy will be a guest composer, participating in discussions and master classes.

Laurie Anderson's new exhibition, Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo, made its debut at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia last month. The exhibition, which runs through November 19, uses the structure of a diary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead to explore the themes of love and death, the many levels of dreaming, and illusion. Anderson gave a talk at the museum titled "Animal Stories," an excerpt of which you can watch here, along with a video in which she walks viewers through the exhibition.

Malian duo Amadou & Mariam are featured in the first installment of a video interview series from difrent.org, a new website dedicated to promoting music and culture as a means for social change. They talk with the site's founder, musician/activist Stephan Said, about the roots of social change in Malian music and how the universal language of music can break down barriers all over the world. "We have always sung for social change," says Amadou. Watch the interview here.

Gidon Kremer returned to Lincoln Center in New York on Saturday for the second-annual White Light Festival, "an exploration of music’s power to illuminate our interior lives," to present a program titled Homage to J.S. Bach. The program centered around Bach's Chaconne for solo violin and included the US premiere of Silvestrov's Dedication to J.S. Bach. The New York Times calls the Bach piece "as transcendent a work as you will find." Kremer joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra this week at Boston's Symphony Hall for works by Schumann and Strauss.

The line-up for the 2012 Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, Scotland, was announced today and among the artists on this year's line-up are the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers. The Nonesuch Records label mates are playing a double header show together at O2 ABC 1 Glasgow on January 20. Both bands are playing their own headliner shows in London that week; Punch Brothers also join Amos Lee for several shows in Europe then.

Rokia Traoré joins forces with director Peter Sellars and Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison to create a new theater piece titled Desdemona, which receive its US premiere at the Zellerbach Playhouse at the University of California in Berkeley this week. It receives its New York premiere next week at Lincoln Center as part of the White Light Festival. The Associated Press says: "Traoré's stage presence is magnetic."

Audra McDonald brought her US tour to a place where the four-time Tony Award winner is quite at home—the New York City stage—when she performed at Carnegie Hall Saturday night. The New York Times' Stephen Holden calls McDonald "a one-of-a-kind musical super-talent" who received "an unbroken wave of adoration" from the Carnegie Hall crowd. This echoes the Los Angeles Times' recent concert review, which says: "Audra McDonald is amazing ... one in a million."

Audra McDonald—"one in a million" (LA Times)—performs at Carnegie Hall ... Laurie Anderson does Delusion in Providence ... Alarm Will Sound plays NY's SONiC Festival ... Björk brings Biophilia to Reykjavik ... The Black Keys are in Seattle ... Carolina Chocolate Drops, Richard Goode play Wisconsin ... Wanda Jackson closes out US tour in North Carolina ... Gidon Kremer celebrates Bach at Lincoln Center ... Kronos Quartet plays WOMAD in Australia ... k.d. lang is out West ... The Low Anthem closes out US tour in Boston ... Jessica Lea Mayfield supports the Avett Brothers in Arizona ... Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman close out duo tour at SFJAZZ ... Natalie Merchant gives benefit concert in upstate NY ... Pat Metheny Trio launches European tour ... Sara Watkins takes Watkins Family Hour to Texas ... and more ...

Pat Metheny, fresh off his US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier, launches a 30-city European tour this weekend with Grenadier and fellow Pat Metheny Trio member Bill Stewart, on drums. This is the first time in nearly a dozen years that the Trio behind the albums Pat Metheny Trio 99>00 and Trio Live will have toured Europe. MPR, reviewing Metheny's new solo album, What's It All About, says: "Metheny has redefined how jazz is played on the guitar." The forthcoming reissue of his 1999 duo album with Jim Hall, announced in yesterday's Nonesuch Journal, is available to pre-order.

As part of Record Store Day's "Back to Black" Friday on November 25, 2011, The Black Keys will release a limited-edition vinyl 12-inch of their new single, "Lonely Boy," to participating indie music retailers. Both the lead track and the B-side, "Run Right Back," are featured on the band's forthcoming album, El Camino, which hits stores on December 6.