Carolina Chocolate Drops give the world premiere of Keep a Song in Your Soul, a special program celebrating the black roots of vaudeville, at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, tonight with additional performances through the weekend. The group will be joined by jazz tap virtuoso Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin and ragtime piano ace Reginald Robinson, all of whom will participate in a Q&A after each show. Watch a preview video and a performance on Chicago's ABC7 here.

Joshua Redman and Brad Mehldau, who recently concluded a US duo tour and will be bringing the show to Europe next week, are now slated to perform together for three duo shows in Australia in January. Redman and Mehldau will perform two shows in Sydney—at the Concourse Chatswood Concert Hall and City Recital Hall Angel Place—as part of the 2012 Sydney Festival and one at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The US duo tour resumes in the spring.

Sara Watkins and her brother Sean launch a three-week tour in support of the Blind Boys of Alabama tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The tour will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, and, of course, the Blind Boys' home state of Alabama. In mid-December, the Watkins join the Blind Boys out West for the group's Christmas show in California and Nevada. 

Ry Cooder was featured on AirTalk from Southern California public radio station KPCC this morning. He spoke with host Larry Mantle about his music, his new album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, and his new book, Los Angeles Stories. "With a musician’s ear for language," says the show of the book, "Cooder’s stories and the characters who people them—drifters, trolley drivers, disc jockeys, salesmen, jazz musicians and of course, cops and robbers—take us on a journey into a Los Angeles that has long gone the way of Chavéz Ravine and the red cars."

New York's Lincoln Center is the place to be to take in two groundbreaking works by composer Philip Glass this week: Koyaanisqatsi, performed by the New York Philharmonic and the Philip Glass Ensemble in Avery Fisher Hall, and the return of Satyagraha to the Metropolitan Opera in the first revival of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s 2008 production. The November 8 Satyagraha performance includes a pre-concert talk by Nico Muhly and will stream live online. On November 19, the opera will be transmitted worldwide as part of The Met: Live in HD series.

Nonesuch Records wishes k.d. lang a very happy 50th birthday today. She and her band the Siss Boom Bang perform in Singapore tonight in advance of their Australia tour featuring music from their new album, Sing it Loud. The two-week tour kicks off in Western Australia this Saturday and includes six nights at Sydney's State Theatre. "It's nice to be able to sing this material because it engages the band," lang tells the West Australian, "and translates to the audience in a really fun way."

Jessica Lea Mayfield launches a three-week headlining US tour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tonight. From there, the tour makes stops throughout the South, with shows in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia. Following her headlining tour, Mayfield will join the Drive-By Truckers for a few shows up North. She'll also play two additional headlining dates in Brooklyn and Annapolis. She supports Ryan Adams on tour in December.

Desdemona, Rokia Traoré's theatrical collaboration with director Peter Sellars and novelist Toni Morrison, receives its NY premiere at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater tonight and tomorrow as part of the White Light Festival. The New York Times describes it as "an interactive narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeare’s doomed heroine, who speaks to the audience from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war—and the transformative power of love." The Los Angeles Times calls it "astonishing ... a great, challenging, haunting and lasting work."

Stephen Sondheim is due to receive the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest award for achievement in the arts, from Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a ceremony for the Mayor's Awards for Arts & Culture held this evening at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. Sondheim is due to receive the 2011 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement in an event at the Chicago Humanities Festival this weekend. His second book of collected lyrics, Look, I Made a Hat, is due out later this month.

The line-up for the 2012 American Songbook series from Lincoln Center has been announced, and among the artists performing are mandolinist Chris Thile and guitarist Michael Daves. The duo will perform songs from their debut album, Sleep with One Eye Open, at The Allen Room in Frederick P. Rose Hall, overlooking New York's Central Park, on Thursday, January 12. Tickets are go on sale to the general public on November 14. Friends of Lincoln Center will be given early access on November 3. 

The results of the 76th annual DownBeat Readers Poll have been announced, and topping the list for Jazz Album of the Year is Brad Mehldau's solo CD/DVD Live in Marciac. Mehldau was also named the year's Best Pianist. Joining him among DownBeat readers' favorites are two Nonesuch artists with whom Mehldau has collaborated: Pat Metheny, named Best Guitarist, and Joshua Redman, named Best Tenor Saxophone. “There is no recording more befitting the title of Jazz Album of the Year than Brad Mehldau’s Live in Marciac," says DownBeat. "He is setting a new standard.”

Perhaps you've heard The Black Keys' new single, "Lonely Boy," off their forthcoming album, El Camino? Perhaps you'd like to hear it again? Why not? Listen again here. Rolling Stone, which gives the song four stars, calls it "a swift, sturdy hunk of all-American cool.” Stereogum says it's “a fired-up rager with a surf-inflected central riff and a jumpy, restless organ … It’s a seriously catchy, energetic song.” VH1 says it's "as raw and infectious as anything the Black Keys have ever produced, possessing that rare, uncanny quality that crawls under your skin, breathing life into otherwise inert parts of your body, making you move in ways that are both spectacular and completely organic."