Timothy Andres, whose debut recording, Shy and Mighty, is due out on Nonesuch May 18, is featured in a Wall Street Journal article examining how the young composer, raised on the classical canon, was later introduced to a new world of music that included everything from iconic classic rock to contemporary classical icons like Steve Reich and John Adams, and how this has influenced his own work.

John Adams will host a special screening of the Italian film I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, followed by a Q&A, at The Castro Theatre this Sunday afternoon. Several of Adams's works surge with new life as the score to film, which was directed and produced with Adams's music in mind. Following the film's recent UK theatrical release, the Times of London gave it five stars, noting its "sublime score."

The Black Keys' schedule looked to be pretty well full up following the May 18 release of their latest Nonesuch album, Brothers, opening for Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden, back-to-back spots on late-night TV for Letterman and Fallon, and US and European tours through the summer. Now comes word that the band will open for Kings of Leon throughout September. Also, it seems Frank the Puppet Dinosaur is back with a crass new music video.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops begin a months-long spring and summer North American tour this weekend with a free shows in New York City as part of Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series. The Knoxville News Sentinel says "the trio reclaims string band music with a sense of passion and fun that is infectious ... The members trade banjos, fiddles, guitars, other instruments and vocal duties with ease."

Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman kick off a two-and-a-half-week tour of duo performances in Burlington, Vermont, tonight. At one recent duo date, "the twosome played with an unerring touch," says the Albany Times Union. All About Jazz insists that anyone with "the opportunity to see these two jazz masters should not pass it up." Mehldau spoke with PBS NewsHour about his new album, Highway Rider, which also features Redman.

Audra McDonald performed with the San Francisco Symphony Monday night and brought out "one gem-like number after the next," says the San Jose Mercury News, which describes her voice as "Full and mellow, elegant and sexy, lush, plush, brassy, growling, howling across her gigantic range, or expressing starry-eyed enchantment." This summer, she will reprise her role in 110 in the Shade, for a limited run in Utah; make her Tanglewood debut; and perform at Aspen and at the Ravinia Festival's Sondheim celebration.

Afrobeat legend Tony Allen's new album, Secret Agent, has been featured on NPR's All Songs Considered. The album comes from "the man who helped create Afrobeat with Fela Kuti," says NPR's Robin Hilton. "Tony Allen is easily one of the most gifted and influential percussionists of all time. He turns 70 years old this year, and his new solo album shows that he has no intention of slowing down."

Natalie Merchant and her new album, Leave Your Sleep, were featured on the PBS NewsHour. The Daily Beast chose the album for its Yes List, saying "Merchant’s voice is both soothing and electric on the album." Pop Matters says "this labor of love (so exhaustively researched, so musically collaborative, so many years in the making) is ... just beautiful and special." The LAist says "Merchant's voice was in top form" at a recent tour stop in LA.

Philip Glass is being honored at the Danspace Project Gala tonight in New York City. The organization is celebrating Glass for what it describes as "his significant contributions to American dance and his major impact on international art and culture." Laurie Anderson will give introductory remarks. Now in its 35th season, Danspace aims to offer choreographers a nurturing environment in which to develop and show challenging new works.

Rokia Traoré kicks off a ten-day UK tour in London tonight, with Sweet Billy Pilgrim opening all along the tour. Traoré spoke with The Times, which calls her latest album, Tchamantché, "easily one of the best albums of 2008," and the Evening Standard, which calls it "a wondeful work" that "deserves to belong in every home." Time Out recommends the live show, as does the Guardian, which calls her band "both intricate and melodically accessible, her impressive singing voice pointing the way."

The recent Louis Andriessen-curated concerts at Carnegie Hall show the composer to have "an undiminished capacity for making mischief," says The New Yorker's Alex Ross. Ross looks at other contemporary composers creating outside "a stylistic party line," and calls Timothy Andres’s forthcoming Nonesuch debut, Shy and Mighty, "the kind of sprawling, brazen work that a young composer should write," achieving "an unhurried grandeur that has rarely been felt in American music since John Adams came on the scene."

Caetano Veloso and his latest Nonesuch release, zii e zie, are the subject of a feature profile on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. Veloso "is consistently one of the most literate and beguiling forces in music," says contributor Jacki Lyden. She describes Veloso's songwriting as "always fresh and original and very unfettered," saying simply of an album track: "It's beautiful."