Pat Metheny brings his 20-city US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier to a close with a special week-long engagement at the Blue Note in New York City. Metheny and Grenadier launch a European tour with drummer Bill Stewart next week and reunite as a duo for a week's run at the Blue Note in Tokyo in January. All About Jazz calls Metheny's latest solo album, What's It All About, "an essential record ... [H]e has made a record that can lure the listener into emotional spaces that enchant, seduce and delight."

The celebrations of Steve Reich's 75th birthday head to Paris for Steve Reich: Pulsations, a week-long series of concerts, dance performances, and other events at Cité de la Musique. Pulsations begins with a concert by Ensemble Modern, Synergy Vocals, and the composer himself. The all-Reich program includes the French premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Double Sextet paired with Drumming (Part 1) and Music for 18 Musicians. The concert will be broadcast on France Musique next month.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will bring their unmissable live show back to the UK next year with a date at London’s Cecil Sharp House on January 23. Pre-sales are now open to all who bought tickets for the band’s last UK show and to Nonesuch Journal readers. Tickets go on general sale on October 12. The band is currently working on the follow up to their Grammy-winning Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig. Following its 2010 release, the Chocolate Drops played to sell-out audiences and festival crowds across the UK. As the Times of London remarked in one live review, "In the end, a standing ovation was the only possible response. Anything, you sense, is possible now."

Björk's new album, Biophilia, is out this week. She spoke with NPR's Morning Edition about the new album and its multimedia components, including the App suite also available this week. The AP says "Biophilia's music is vintage Björk." The Financial Times calls it "a triumph," giving it a perfect five stars, as does the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mirror calls it "a thrilling record ... Even in Björk’s catalogue there’s nothing that’s been as spectacularly unconventional and wholly successful as Biophilia." PopMatters says "she’s breaking new ground few others know is out there to begin with."

While touring in support of his 2008 album Harps and Angels, Randy Newman performed a special concert at London’s intimate LSO St. Luke’s accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra led by Robert Ziegler. The program, featuring songs from throughout Newman’s career, was televised by the BBC. Nonesuch Records releases this concert as Randy Newman: Live in London on November 8; the CD/DVD package is available now for preorder in the Nonesuch Store. Time Out London calls it "essential viewing for fans."

Kronos Quartet celebrates Steve Reich's 75th birthday with an all-Reich program and the Bay Area premiere of WTC 9/11 ... Laurie Anderson takes Transitory Life to Kansas City ... Timothy Andres joins the ACME Ensemble in Charleston ... Shawn Colvin helps inaugurate Georgia's Harvest Moon Festival ... Gidon Kremer joins NSO at The Kennedy Center ... k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang play three shows in Florida ... Natalie Merchant performs a sold-out show in NYC ... Pat Metheny, Larry Grenadier take US tour Northeast ... Allen Toussaint concludes Australia tour with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band ... and more ...

Björk's new album, Biophilia, is due out on CD next week. Also available then is the complete Biophilia App suite comprising ten components, one for each track on the album; watch a preview video here. The vinyl album will now release two weeks later, on October 24. The Guardian gives the album four stars, saying it "teems with invention ... big on moments of pure, indulgent pleasure." Daily Express says she's "outdone even herself" with Biophilia. "Eccentric and quite lovely, this is a real artist at work."

Jessica Lea Mayfield is among the artists featured on the new mix streaming from NPR Music and Folk Alley celebrating the recipients and nominees of the Americana Music Association's 10th Annual Honors and Awards. Mayfield has been nominated for the 2011 Americana Music Award for New/Emerging Artist of the Year. NPR Music will webcast live from the awards ceremony at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium next Thursday, and Austin City Limits will air an edited version of the show on PBS in November.

Björk's forthcoming album, Biophilia, is due out in just under a week, on October 11, and is now streaming at NPR Music as an exclusive NPR First Listen. "Biophilia's songs are astounding," raves NPR. "These songs have room to breathe, employing space and silence as much as melody and harmony. The sparse instrumentation and arrangements become gorgeously intricate meditations on which to build ... Vocal melodies unfurl more like transcendent devotionals than typical verses, and become even more stirring when accompanied by a chorus of voices that could fill a cathedral."

Nonesuch Records will release an album of works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and composer/Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood in 2012. The artists’ work was presented side-by-side in two mid-September concerts in Wrocław, which included Penderecki's Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings); the latter inspired the Greenwood piece on the program, 48 Responses to Polymorphia. The works were then recorded for the Nonesuch album in Kraków, along with Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which was inspired by Penderecki’s Threnody.

Laurie Anderson's North American fall tour continues as she brings her performance piece Delusion to Montreal for three nights of shows at Usine C, tonight through Thursday. "In Anderson we have a throwback to theatrical storytelling that's at least as old as the troubadours and Beowulf," says the Boston Phoenix in a review of last week's six-night Boston run. "The graceful way she moves about the stage and reacts to the screen images or even presides over a music stand, manipulating sounds, delivering text—all show a complete, and completely satisfying, sense of stage craft ... Anderson really delivers."

Brad Mehldau will be today's guest on the Jamie Cullum show on BBC Radio 2. Mehldau stopped by the BBC Maida Vale Studios in London to perform songs both from Modern Music, his recently released collaboration with pianist Kevin Hays and composer Patrick Zimmerli, and Live in Marciac, his solo CD/DVD released earlier this year. Brad Mehldau will join label mate Joshua Redman for a US duo tour starting next week.