Shortly after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed offered a list of "rich, wise, inclusive original voices" he might invite to the White House to signal his commitment to the arts. Others have even suggested the appointment of an arts czar. Given all the demands currently weighing on the President, though, Adams explains, in a Newsweek interview, that music appreciation has to start on a much more basic level. "[T]he one and only way to interest people in classical music is to get them to play it as children," Adams asserts. "I think people should just be exposed all the time to great art. That sounds like a really simple, grandiose statement, but I think it's really true."

Rokia Traoré's two-week US tour with music from her latest Nonesuch release, Tchamantché, continues tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. That city's Star Tribune describes Traoré's work as "fearless, sophisticated, genre-bending music" and says her "gorgeous vocals ... express the nuances of intimacy and emotion with the refinement of a calligrapher." The Washington Post describes Rokia's voice as "dramatic and entrancing" but concludes, "The album's real allure is its blend of traditional and contemporary elements ..."

Grammy week is under way, which means not only the culminating awards ceremony, which will be held this Sunday night, but also various special events, including a conversation with and performance by Allen Toussaint tonight at the Grammy Museum, and an invitation-only ceremony honoring Toussaint and Elliott Carter with the Trustees Award Saturday night. Toussaint will also perform on the live broadcast of Sunday's awards ceremony with an eclectic group of fellow New Orleans artists. Nonesuch artists and albums have been nominated for a total of 13 Grammys this year.

Laurie Anderson performs Burning Leaves, a selection of songs and stories from her various solo shows, in Cleveland, Ohio, this Saturday. She is also a featured artist in the new Guggenheim Museum exhibit The Third Mind, on the influence of Asian among American artists. In the House. In the Fire. Stories 1972–2008, a collection of spoken stories and sounds associated with Laurie's performance work, is included in the exhibit, which runs through April 19. In conjunction with the exhibit, Laurie performs two live solo shows, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the museum next month.

Rokia Traoré's recently released album Tchamantché is lauded as the Malian singer/songwriter's "best and most daring work" in a review for NPR's All Things Considered by Banning Eyre. "Traoré's meld of African and rock aesthetics is understated and as comfortable as it is cool," says Eyre. "The world's less-developed societies have produced many singers who seek to balance musical style and cultural perspective, and to address the larger world. Few manage it with the grace and style of Rokia Traoré."

Fred Hersch will perform two shows in San Francisco this weekend: a free solo concert and conversation at the Community Music Center on Friday and a concert at Herbst Theatre with his new Pocket Orchestra Saturday night. He spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle about his recent triumph over a number of life-threatening illnesses and his return to the stage. "Hersch, who plays jazz with uncommon fluency, feeling and invention," says the Chronicle, "has recovered, regaining his strength through intense physical therapy and getting back to the affirming business of making music."

k.d. lang has been nominated as both Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year in the 2009 JUNO Awards for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Over the years, she has won a total of eight JUNOs, dating all the way back to her 1985 win for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year. This year's Producer of the Year nomination is particularly noteworthy, given that Watershed is k.d.'s first self-produced project.

Philip Glass will lead a diverse line-up of artists for the 19th annual Tibet House Benefit Concert tonight at Carnegie Hall, where the concert has been held since 1993. Scheduled to perform this year, in addition to Glass, the event's artistic director and the vice president of Tibet House, are Antibalas, Steve Earle, Zack Glass (the composer's son), Angelique Kidjo, Keb' Mo', The National, Patti Smith and Jesse Smith (her daughter), Techung & the Lhasa Spirits, Vampire Weekend, and monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India.

The release of Dan Auerbach's solo debut, Keep It Hid, is just a week away now. You may have heard a few of the tracks on the radio or streaming online here on Nonesuch Radio and on Dan's MySpace page. For two days only, today and Wednesday, you can listen to the complete album—all 14 tracks—streaming exclusively on MySpace. Tune in now!

David Byrne, Wilco, Allen Toussaint, and Toumani Diabaté (sharing the stage with Béla Fleck) will be among the scores of incredible performers at the 2009 Bonnaroo festival. This year's incarnation of the event will be held June 11–14 in Manchester, Tennessee. In other festival news, Coachella, in Indio, California, has also announced its lineup for 2009. The Black Keys are among the headliners for the festival's opening night, April 17, as are such legendary performer/songwriters as Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney.

Polish composer Henryk Górecki has been awarded the St. Gregory the Great Medal by Pope Benedict XVI, reports the Polish Radio news service. It states that Cardinal Dziwisz, the Archbishop of Kraków, declared the medal, in his words, "an expression of the gratitude of the universal Church for the composer’s hard work and sacrifice, for his testimony of faith and unbroken spirit, for his wonderful compositions which have a lasting place in the treasure house of sacred music, and also an expression of the church’s anticipation of more pieces that will uplift our hearts to God."

Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and Buddy Miller begin a month-long run of their rollicking Three Girls and Their Buddy tour tonight with the first of two consecutive nights at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. The tour concludes at the end of the month in Boston, where the Boston Globe says the show "brings together four shining talents and close collaborators who straddle the country-folk-pop axis ... on the road en masse to perform as a foursome, four venerated song catalogs in tow."