Amadou & Mariam's new album, Welcome to Mali, receives its US release on Nonesuch in less than two weeks. Time magazine calls the album "a joyous, hook-filled guitar album with impressive range." The review notes that the blend of influences from Western rock to traditional African instrumentation provides "a thrilling sense of dislocation." The duo are also featured in the CMJ.com Spotlight, which insists that "Welcome to Mali is not to be cast off as cultural art du jour, but rather hailed as a global pop phenomenon."

Steve Reich is the featured composer at this weekend's cycle of the Salzburg Biennale, a new festival for contemporary music. Events begin tonight with a performance of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Fase, featuring four works by Reich, and continue through the weekend with performances of Reich's works by the Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, Synergy Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, and the composer himself. Interspersed are performances by a traditional Balinese gamelan, to reflect its influence on the composer.

Gerald Finley, the star of John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic, is the subject of a feature profile in the Globe and Mail, which examines Finley's work with "opera's great chronicler of modern history," particularly in a role that "sometimes feels like the nightly equivalent of a triathlon." Violinist Leila Josefowicz tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about performing Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur, which she will do again this weekend, with the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The piece "takes you to a different place," she says, "with total strength vs. vulnerability at the same time."

Laurie Anderson is a featured artist in the Guggenheim Museum's current exhibit The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, which examines the influences of Asian culture on American artists. In addition to the inclusion of her work in the exhibit, the museum presents two live performances by Anderson, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the Guggenheim's theater, tonight and tomorrow night.

Kronos Quartet kicked off the fourth-annual MusicNow Festival last night with its first of two MusicNow performances at Cincinnati's Memorial Hall; the group performs again tonight with a program of music from Africa, Mexico, India, Greece, and the Middle East. Toumani Diabaté, who was scheduled to appear as well, has had to cancel due to an illness. The festival's organizers report that they are working to reschedule his performance for another day.

Kronos Quartet and Toumani Diabaté are set to headline the fourth-annual MusicNow festival in downtown Cincinnati's Memorial Hall, which runs tonight and tomorrow night. The festival is curated by Cincinnati native Bryce Dessner, of The National. For tonight's concert, Kronos will perform two new pieces commissioned for the festival, including one by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry; opening are The Books. Tomorrow night, the Quartet will open the show with music from across the globe, before Diabaté takes the stage with songs from The Mandé Variations.

Dan Auerbach's US tour, featuring music from Keep It Hid, his recent Nonesuch solo debut, continues tonight at Wonder Ballroom in Portland, Oregon. The Portland Mercury says Dan's new record "uncovers new corners of his talents. It's an instant classic ..." and expects he'll "give us a rock 'n' roll show of the highest order." Willamette Week says the album "emits sincerity and genuineness" and says "Auerbach’s poignant, emotionally charged lyrics and precise guitar work shine ...'" Dan's recent interview and performance at Minnesota Public Radio's The Current is now available online.

On Tchamantché, Rokia Traoré's recently released album, the Malian-born singer-songwriter "strikes out in a new direction while staying true to her African roots," says Dusted magazine. "The results are strikingly creative," producing "Traoré’s best work so far, and absolutely not to be missed." She performed last night at Sydney's Enmore Theatre in what Australian Stage describes as "two solid hours of groundbreaking, extra-African music ... by turns, startling, beguiling, seductive, spellbinding, exquisite, refined, rocking, intimate, infectious, affecting and 'funktional.' But, most of all, exciting, stirring the blood, vigourously."

Amadou & Mariam are gearing up for Nonesuch's March 24 US release of their latest album, Welcome to Mali. They're also preparing for a US tour that will include a number of dates opening for Coldplay. Spinner says the pair will have no trouble rocking out for the arena crowds, citing Amadou's love of rockers like AC/DC and suggesting "this shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed the rise of the couple in recent years from obscurity to international sensations. There was always a broad rock and pop consciousness in even their most straightforward music." "People can get into our music because they can hear the rock in it, the pop in it," Amadou tells Spinner. "People can find things they know in it. Maybe that's why it touches them."

Joshua Redman's new album, Compass, released last month, features pieces for trio, a format he had explored on his previous release, Back East, as well as the bold combination of all five members of its two separate trios into a double trio. In the March issue of JazzTimes magazine, writer Jeff Tamarkin talks to Redman about his taking "the trio concept to another place altogether," as he "ups the ante on the standard trio model" for Compass.

Elliott Carter: A Nonesuch Retrospective, a four-disc set featuring the recordings of the composer's works made for the label from 1968 to 1985, was recently released in celebration of the Carter's 100th birthday. "Among tributes to the centenarian master," says the Sunday Times (UK) in its four-star review, "few are as nicely judged as this set of recordings made for Nonesuch." The Buffalo News gives three stars to "this exceptional four-disc box," asserting that the performances it features "give the music its optimal opportunity to be heard."

John Adams's two most recent operas were performed in opposite hemispheres this past weekend: A Flowering Tree (2006), in its Australian premiere at the Perth International Arts Festival Friday and Saturday, and Doctoc Atomic (2005) in English National Opera's continuing London production. Western Australia Today describes the former's score as "complex, occasionally challenging and often beautiful," eliciting an enthusiastic response from the audience and multiple curtain calls. The Australian suggests, in light of the festival's success, "Adams might have come away reassured that appetites for high-quality artistry can survive, even thrive, in a recession."