Laurie Anderson performs at Other Voices NYC: A Celebration of Music and Literature benefit concert ... Björk continues Biophilia residency in Reykjavik ... Carolina Chocolate Drops' Dom Flemons performs solo in Chicago ... Richard Goode joins the LA Philharmonic for Mozart ... Wanda Jackson tours Switzerland ... Gidon Kremer joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Schumann ... Audra McDonald performs two NY benefit concerts ... Pat Metheny Trio is in Budapest, as is Steve Reich ... Stephen Sondheim talks in Costa Mesa ... Rokia Traoré performs Desdemona in Berkeley ... and more ... 

Nonesuch Records releases jazz pianist Brad Mehldau’s Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996–2001 on December 6, 2011. The set includes the five original Art of the Trio albums (the fifth volume includes two CDs), released over a prolific four year period from 1997 to 2001; a seventh disc of previously unreleased material from shows at the Village Vanguard completes the box. These recordings feature Mehldau’s longtime trio with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy. New liner notes by Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson include interviews with all three trio members.

As Björk's fully sold-out Biophilia residency in Reykjavik continues, we are happy to announce that one lucky fan has won a trip for two to the closing-night performance on November 7. Congratulations to Justin Allan from Seattle! The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, reviewing the show, says Björk "gave a commanding performance ... sharing the joy of a magical evening." The Onion's A.V. Club says that "the mix of concert and performance art was easily summarized: stunning." The New York Times calls the larger Biophilia project "among the most creative, innovative and important new projects in popular culture."

Randy Newman will play three UK concerts as part of a European tour in February and March 2012 to coincide with the release of the CD/DVD album package Randy Newman: Live in London in November. The tour includes dates in Gateshead, Glasgow, and London, as well as cities in Belgium, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland.

As you may have heard, The Black Keys’ new album El Camino will be released December 6 on Nonesuch Records. But no need to wait till then to hear some brand new music off the album. You can listen to “Lonely Boy,” the first single off of El Camino, today! Get a first listen of "Lonely Boy" in the video here. And be sure to pre-order the album from the Nonesuch Store now to get an instant download of the song.

Malian duo Amadou & Mariam are featured in the first installment of a video interview series from difrent.org, a new website dedicated to promoting music and culture as a means for social change. They talk with the site's founder, musician/activist Stephan Said, about the roots of social change in Malian music and how the universal language of music can break down barriers all over the world. "We have always sung for social change," says Amadou. Watch the interview here.

Alarm Will Sound will be the Artists-in-Residence at the third annual Mizzou New Music Summer Music Festival, held in July at the University of Missouri. Eight composers from around the world will be selected through a portfolio application process to compose a work to be performed by Alarm Will Sound. The application deadline is November 1. Donnacha Dennehy will be a guest composer, participating in discussions and master classes.

Laurie Anderson's new exhibition, Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo, made its debut at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia last month. The exhibition, which runs through November 19, uses the structure of a diary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead to explore the themes of love and death, the many levels of dreaming, and illusion. Anderson gave a talk at the museum titled "Animal Stories," an excerpt of which you can watch here, along with a video in which she walks viewers through the exhibition.

Rokia Traoré joins forces with director Peter Sellars and Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison to create a new theater piece titled Desdemona, which receive its US premiere at the Zellerbach Playhouse at the University of California in Berkeley this week. It receives its New York premiere next week at Lincoln Center as part of the White Light Festival. The Associated Press says: "Traoré's stage presence is magnetic."

Gidon Kremer returned to Lincoln Center in New York on Saturday for the second-annual White Light Festival, "an exploration of music’s power to illuminate our interior lives," to present a program titled Homage to J.S. Bach. The program centered around Bach's Chaconne for solo violin and included the US premiere of Silvestrov's Dedication to J.S. Bach. The New York Times calls the Bach piece "as transcendent a work as you will find." Kremer joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra this week at Boston's Symphony Hall for works by Schumann and Strauss.

The line-up for the 2012 Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, Scotland, was announced today and among the artists on this year's line-up are the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Punch Brothers. The Nonesuch Records label mates are playing a double header show together at O2 ABC 1 Glasgow on January 20. Both bands are playing their own headliner shows in London that week; Punch Brothers also join Amos Lee for several shows in Europe then.

Audra McDonald brought her US tour to a place where the four-time Tony Award winner is quite at home—the New York City stage—when she performed at Carnegie Hall Saturday night. The New York Times' Stephen Holden calls McDonald "a one-of-a-kind musical super-talent" who received "an unbroken wave of adoration" from the Carnegie Hall crowd. This echoes the Los Angeles Times' recent concert review, which says: "Audra McDonald is amazing ... one in a million."