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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

Pat Metheny, fresh off his US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier, launches a 30-city European tour this weekend with Grenadier and fellow Pat Metheny Trio member Bill Stewart, on drums. This is the first time in nearly a dozen years that the Trio behind the albums Pat Metheny Trio 99>00 and Trio Live will have toured Europe. MPR, reviewing Metheny's new solo album, What's It All About, says: "Metheny has redefined how jazz is played on the guitar." The forthcoming reissue of his 1999 duo album with Jim Hall, announced in yesterday's Nonesuch Journal, is available to pre-order.

As part of Record Store Day's "Back to Black" Friday on November 25, 2011, The Black Keys will release a limited-edition vinyl 12-inch of their new single, "Lonely Boy," to participating indie music retailers. Both the lead track and the B-side, "Run Right Back," are featured on the band's forthcoming album, El Camino, which hits stores on December 6.

The acclaimed 1999 album Jim Hall & Pat Metheny will be reissued for the first time on Nonesuch Records on November 8 and is available to pre-order now. Metheny's duo collaboration with Hall, whom he has called the "father of modern guitar playing," features 17 tracks: original tunes from each guitarist, several improvisations captured in the studio, plus six tunes recorded live in concert, including Gershwin's "Summertime." "The excellence of the playing is the heart of the matter," says the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's a privilege to listen in." The Los Angeles Times calls it "extraordinary."

In the title piece of his latest album, WTC 9/11, Steve Reich reflects on the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Clash magazine talks to the composer about the piece and the very personal story behind it. "Steve Reich has composed one of his greatest works to date," says Clash. "It is a tale of protest, frustration and artistic mastery ... a staggering work for many reasons." The San Jose Mercury News, reviewing Kronos Quartet's recent Bay Area premiere of WTC 9/11, calls it "immersive and moving."

Björk continues to celebrate the release of her new album, Biophilia, with the latest show in her Reykjavik residency tonight. New York magazine found her "pitch-perfect" at Sunday's show. She is the subject of a Q&A with Mashable and a feature article in the Los Angeles Times, which says that, with Biophilia, Björk "has reinvented the album into a transformative transmedia experience." The San Francisco Chronicle says she "has come up with her most compelling work in eons"; "the results are extraordinarily sumptuous and seductive." The Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "eerily beautiful."