Stephin Merritt has joined Rufus Wainwright, Imogen Heap, Brian Eno, and others in contributing tracks to Plague Songs, a UK compilation that pays homage, in song, to the Biblical plagues. He's written a little ditty about lice, or more precisely, "The Meaning of Lice," and Pitchfork says: "Only one man could successfully write and record a wistful, feel-good, disco-danceable, three-minute ode to parasites and pestilence—with a chorus that includes the word 'subcutaneous'—and that man is Stephin Merritt."

Tomorrow night, Itzhak Perlman joins members of the Perlman Music Program for gifted young musicians in concert at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Included on the program is Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, along with Mozart's G Minor Quintet for Viola and Strings and Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. Nonesuch released the world premiere recording of the Reich piece, performed by Kronos Quartet, in 2001.

The first national tour of John Doyle's Tony Award–winning Sweeney Todd reinvention kicked off at Boston's Colonial Theatre on Tuesday night, to rave reviews. The Boston Globe says the production "reveals Stephen Sondheim's dark brilliance in all its cold-blooded glory. It is marvelous and terrible to behold." Sweeney Todd will play in Boston through November 4, when it will travel to Toronto, then on to more than a dozen cities across the US

Boston Now joins the critical mass in praising this week's kick-off of the Sweeney Todd national tour at Boston's Colonial Theatre, saying "It works gloriously." Entertainment Editor John Black offers high praise indeed when he writes: "On a night when it seemed that the entire city was staying at home to watch the Red Sox in the World Series, a few lucky thousand were seated at the Colonial Theatre watching a thrilling tale of revenge, romance, murder, and meat pies." Citing the recent Tony-winning Broadway production, Black writes, "The play obviously has a pedigree. Thirty minutes into the show at the Colonial, you will know why."

On November 14 in New York City, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present An Evening with Tim Burton, featuring a conversation with the director and a sneak peek at clips from his film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. The special event will also include clips from a number of films from throughout Burton's illustrious 35-year career, including some from his previous five collaborations with Depp. But the evening's highlight will surely be the "first look" at scenes from Sweeney, which doesn't hit theaters until December. 

Time Out New York, in honor of its special ticket issue, asks readers to send in pictures of their most prized ticket stubs from those unforgettable moments in life—"from the first baseball game you attended with your dad to that magical performance by Patti LuPone in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd." A prize will go to the ticket with the most compelling backstory out there.

Rolling Stone Brazil has released its list of the 100 Best Brazilian Records of all time, and Caetano Veloso, with four records on the list, is among the artists garnering the most mentions. Earning the No. 2 slot on the album list is Tropicália or Panis et Circencis, the seminal 1968 album that introduced Veloso and Gilberto Gil as "artists searching for a universal language" to the world outside Brazil. Transa, which Caetano recorded during his exile in England in 1972, closes out the top 10. Veloso kicks off a North American tour in Boston on November 2.

The New Yorker says that Sérgio and Odair Assad's new album, Jardim Abandonado, includes works by Antônio Carlos Jobim ("exquisite miniatures of ardent desire and ineffable regret"), Milhaud, Debussy, Sérgio Assad, his daughter Clarice, and Adam Guettel, and the album's "pièce de résistance ... a transcription of 'Rhapsody in Blue.'" The Assads' arrangements "give all the pieces, whether popular or classical, an intimate sense of tonal richness and a new range of scintillating colors."

Singer/songwriter Nellie McKay has made a name for herself setting witty, politically savvy lyrics, tongue firmly in cheek, to catchy music reminiscent of Brill Building tunesmiths. (Evidence of this can be found on Audra McDonald's 2006 album Build a Bridge, on which she sings McKay's "I Wanna Get Married.") Nellie tells HARP magazine that she modeled her new album after "proletarian anthems and the fact that I was hoping to become the Ry Cooder of the ukulele."