Today marks the US theatrical debut of the documentary film Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, an examination of Egypt, N'Dour's 2004 album, which highlights the tolerance central to his practice of Islam. The New York Times enjoys the ample opportunities for audiences "to groove to [N'Dour's] crisp, soaring, polyrhythmic music." The Daily News says its director has "given fans a gift in her performance-heavy documentary" and "an enlightening portrait" to newcomers. The director tells Metro: "Through his music, Youssou brings together audiences of many cultures and many faiths. He shows us that each individual has the power to affect change.”

Seya, Oumou Sangare's first album in six years, is out now. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A, citing "grooves limpid enough to dive into" and comparing Sangare to Aretha Franklin, as "a supremely gifted singer who commands R-E-S-P-E-C-T." The Star-Ledger too cites Sangare's "arresting voice ... as strong and lithe as ever," and sees the album as "a series of upbeat, well-produced songs" with melodies that are "something to marvel at."

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, the award-winning film that documents the creation of and response to N'Dour's 2004 Grammy-winning album Egypt, begins its theatrical run in New York tomorrow at the Paris Theatre and IFC Center in Manhattan, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The Senegalese superstar and the film's director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, will make personal appearances at the three New York-area theaters on opening day and the following day, Saturday, taking questions from the audience about the film.

Nonesuch will release a new recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos by Grammy Award–winning Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica orchestra on July 21. Following their performance of the concertos at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart 2006, the New York Times praised Kremer's "ability to make a work, however familiar, entirely his own, dissimilar in most important details from the way other violinists play it, yet fully within both the spirit and letter of the score.” This two-disc set captures their performance of the five concertos at the Salzburg Festival two days later.

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is out today. The album receives a Paste rating of 90 and is described in the review as "gorgeous chamber folk," another step in "the evolution of folk music ... following the path cleared by Nick Drake and Tim Buckley." Paste concludes: "[T]hese 12 songs are exquisite." The Boston Phoenix hears ties to Tom Waits's Mule Variations in this "excellent" new record, "moving gently among sepia-toned arrangements of pump organs and clarinets and gruff barnyard blues."

Oumou Sangare, the Malian singer/songwriter known as the "Songbird," has released Seya, her first international release in six years. Toronto's Globe and Mail says the album's title, meaning "joy," is certainly reflected in the music, calling it "modern Malian music at its finest: sophisticated, subtle, beautifully produced ... Its cross-rhythms and flowing, hypnotic instrumental lines underpin all she does, and all she does on Seya, whether crooning, chanting, chuckling or singing with majestic power, is excellent."

Amadou & Mariam performed for a frenzied, sold-out crowd last night at New York's Webster Hall. They also stopped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to perform "Africa" off their new album, Welcome to Mali, on last night's episode, with The Roots' Black Thought. Last Saturday, the couple performed for a sold-out crowd in Boston. Reports the Boston Globe: "[I]f Amadou and Mariam each shone individually, they practically glowed when they performed together." Previewing tomorrow's show outside DC, the Washington City Paper describes the new album as "wonderful" and says it's "Amadou’s rhythms that drive their songs forward, and his joyous-feeling choruses that make the tunes transcendent."

The Low Anthem's Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, is set for release tomorrow. The album's first track, "Charlie Darwin," opens this week's episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. "If you listen to just one song today," insists the show's host, Bob Boilen, "make it this opening track to the new CD by The Low Anthem. It all starts off with a sound that at times feels Gospel and then at the very same time feels agnostic. Those two ideas seem at odds with one another, but then the title of the record's called Oh My God, Charlie Darwin."

David Byrne will perform a very special free concert at Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Bark Bandhsell tonight as part of the Opening Night events of the  Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series. Byrne will offer music from his ongoing Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno tour, featuring material from his collaborations with Eno, including 1981’s groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. "One of the city's coolest summer concert series," says the Village Voice, "opens its 2009 season with a free show by one of the city's coolest art-rock deities, David Byrne."

Nonesuch releases Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony on July 28, 2009. A purely instrumental work, the piece is drawn from Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic. David Robertson conducts the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra on this recording. Said the New York Times: "[T]he score invites you to hear the music—driving passages with pounding timpani, quizzically restrained lyrical flights, bursts of skittish fanfares—on its own terms, apart from its dramatic context." Also on the album is Adams’ 2001 piece, Guide to Strange Places.

Amadou & Mariam have made their way to NYC after playing a sold-out set at Boston's Paradise Rock Club on Saturday. While in New York to perform at Webster Hall tonight, the Malian couple will stop by the set of NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where they'll be joined by members of The Roots in performing a song off Welcome to Mali. The show airs tonight starting at 12:35 AM ET. The tour heads next to Philly, and then outside DC. The Washington Post Express calls the new album "the type of record that is so joyous and positive that it feels like it could bring together warring factions ... but it's really more of a sonic Evite to explore the diverse country in Northwest Africa."

Steve Reich is set to join famed German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk as the special guest in a sold-out show marking the Opening Night of the 2009 Manchester International Festival on July 2. The concert will feature the world premiere of Reich’s 2x5, led by the composer and performed by Bang on a Can. The Festival has teamed up with Boosey & Hawkes, Steve Reich's publisher, for a unique opportunity to win a pair of tickets to the sold-out event and accommodations through a contest on Twitter @SteveReich.