As The Low Anthem's tour transitions from Europe back to the States next week, Lake Fever Sessions has published three performance videos the group recorded during a stop in Nashville earlier this year: "Ticket Taker," "Charlie Darwin," and "This God Damn House." The band's rich and varied influences, says Lake Fever, "create a stark, though strangely lush at times, canvas for their melodic folk tunes."

David Byrne, long a bike enthusiast and proponent of this auto alternative, releases Bicycle Diaries, a new book described by the Los Angeles Times as "a two-wheeled travelogue from a keen cultural observer." He also begins an eight-city panel tour—Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around—to discuss these issues. As New York magazine explains, "If the conventional idea of the artist is as a kind of highly specialized genius, Byrne prefers to be an omnivore."

Chris Thile recently premiered his Mandolin Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and performs it again this weekend with the Oregon Symphony, after which, Thile joins his fellow Punch Brothers for a three-week US tour, including Carnegie Hall. The group’s next record is scheduled for 2010. "The new album is the next step in the natural progression of Punch Brothers," says band member Gabe Witcher, "from a group first assembled to render Thile’s composition, The Blind Leaving the Blind, to a collective compositional entity in its own right."

The Low Anthem closes out its European tour this week with stops in Hamburg, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris, before heading home to the States for Austin City Limits and an extensive US tour with Blind Pilot. And with a performance in Amsterdam this week, it's fitting that The Low Anthem is offering a free copy of its performance of Bob Dylan's "Dignity" recorded in that city when you sign up for the group's mailing list.

Youssou N'Dour talks to BBC Radio 4 ... Kronos premieres Damon Albarn piece in Spain ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica perform Mendelssohn in Germany ... Low Anthem plays in Germany too ... Joshua Redman Trio launches Indy Jazz Fest ... Chris Thile, Colorado Sympohny give encore performances of his "astounding" Mandolin Concerto ... Allen Toussaint plays New York's Joe's Pub ... Laura Veirs tours with The Decemberists ... Sara Watkins plays the Americana Music Festival in Nashville ... and more ...

Chris Thile gave the world premiere of his Mandolin Concerto with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jeffrey Kahane in Denver last night. The Denver Post, rather than view Thile through the lens of his past achievements, sees him "as an up-and-coming classical composer with almost unlimited potential." Even in that context, says the Post, the new piece "is nothing short of astounding."

Bill Frisell's latest Nonesuch release, Disfarmer, is out now. The Christian Science Monitor calls the album "a tour de force of jazz creativity by Bill Frisell," with the guitarist creating "a profoundly eerie merger of old-timey mountain music and jazz."

Chris Thile's first Mandolin Concerto, Ad astra per alas porci, receives its official world premiere this week in three performances with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra under Jeffrey Kahane, following a test run of the piece at Interlochen this summer. "I feel like I've done a lot of examining of the mandolin's possibilities," Thile tells violin.com, "but this is the culmination of my efforts in that direction thus far." In an extensive interview with Sequenza 21, he says, "As long as I have something to play, something to sing, something to write, I'll be happy."

Alarm Will Sound makes its full-length Nonesuch debut today with the release of a/rhythmia, on which the group performs 14 pieces from composers spanning six centuries, all of which explore the concept of “arrhythmia”: “want of rhythm or regularity, specifically of the pulse.” The resulting work upends order and expectation, often taking ideas akin to minimalism and refracting them through a fun-house mirror.

John Adams's recent Nonesuch release features the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson performing the first recordings of Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony and Guide to Strange Places. Jazz.com names the latter today's Song of the Day, saying: "This is the composer at his most mature, and demonstrating an uncanny skill in channeling his personality through a symphony orchestra." The Stranger's Christopher DeLaurenti calls it his "favorite orchestral work of this decade." The Philadelphia Inquirer gives the album 3.5 stars; the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, an A-.

Christina Courtin's California concert schedule continues this week with performances in San Francisco and LA. Pop Matters describes the singer as "fearless, profound, and musically fascinating" and her "impressive" new album as "unlike anything else I have heard this year ... Lyrically precocious, and musically varied, Courtin presents herself as a chameleon, shifting through varied terrain from jazz to folk to country to pop and back again."