Rokia Traoré, Toumani Diabaté, and Amadou & Mariam have all been nominated for the inaugural Songlines Music Awards, recognizing outstanding talent in world music. Diabaté and Traoré are each nominated for Best Artist, Amadou & Mariam for Best Group. Winners will be chosen by the Songlines editorial team and announced in May. The WOMAD festival, the Awards' co-presenter, will host a live event with a selection of the nominees at WOMAD Charlton Park in July, where Traoré and label mate Oumou Sangare are scheduled to perform.

Emmylou Harris and Kate and Anna McGarrigle will be among the artists celebrating the legendary singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, in honor of his 90th birthday, at a special Madison Square Garden concert event, Sunday, May 3. All proceeds will go to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the organization Seeger co-founded in 1966 to fight pollution on New York's longest river. Also on stage will be the honoree himself, along with a diverse line-up of artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Ben Harper, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and many more.

In 2004, Ry Cooder commissioned San Antonio artist Vincent Valdez to paint a mural, on a refurbished 1953 Chevy ice cream truck, inspired by the LA Chicano community of Chávez Ravine, whose neighborhood was razed to make way for Dodger Stadium. The community is the subject of Cooder's 2004 album Chávez Ravine. The truck also took the name El Chávez Ravine and is now at the center of a special exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Stephin Merritt has written the music and lyrics for a new stage adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, set to begin its limited-engagement run at New York City's Lucille Lortel Theatre on May 7. The production is a collaboration between Merritt, director Leigh Silverman, and writer/actor David Greenspan. Tickets go on sale this Monday, March 23, with a special discount offer available through the theater's site.

Three Girls and Their Buddy, the popular series of concert featuring Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and Buddy Miller, has just announced a spring and summer leg of its tour and have launched a special pre-sale for tickets that will allow fans to both order early and automatically be entered to win a chance to meet and greet the stars of the artists. Pre-sale customers will also have a chance to purchase a limited-edition tour poster, autographed by the artists.

Steve Reich is the featured composer at this weekend's cycle of the Salzburg Biennale, a new festival for contemporary music. Events begin tonight with a performance of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Fase, featuring four works by Reich, and continue through the weekend with performances of Reich's works by the Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, Synergy Ensemble, Ictus Ensemble, and the composer himself. Interspersed are performances by a traditional Balinese gamelan, to reflect its influence on the composer.

Gerald Finley, the star of John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic, is the subject of a feature profile in the Globe and Mail, which examines Finley's work with "opera's great chronicler of modern history," particularly in a role that "sometimes feels like the nightly equivalent of a triathlon." Violinist Leila Josefowicz tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about performing Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur, which she will do again this weekend, with the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The piece "takes you to a different place," she says, "with total strength vs. vulnerability at the same time."

Laurie Anderson is a featured artist in the Guggenheim Museum's current exhibit The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, which examines the influences of Asian culture on American artists. In addition to the inclusion of her work in the exhibit, the museum presents two live performances by Anderson, titled Transitory Life: Some Stories, in the Guggenheim's theater, tonight and tomorrow night.

Kronos Quartet kicked off the fourth-annual MusicNow Festival last night with its first of two MusicNow performances at Cincinnati's Memorial Hall; the group performs again tonight with a program of music from Africa, Mexico, India, Greece, and the Middle East. Toumani Diabaté, who was scheduled to appear as well, has had to cancel due to an illness. The festival's organizers report that they are working to reschedule his performance for another day.

Amadou & Mariam are gearing up for Nonesuch's March 24 US release of their latest album, Welcome to Mali. They're also preparing for a US tour that will include a number of dates opening for Coldplay. Spinner says the pair will have no trouble rocking out for the arena crowds, citing Amadou's love of rockers like AC/DC and suggesting "this shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed the rise of the couple in recent years from obscurity to international sensations. There was always a broad rock and pop consciousness in even their most straightforward music." "People can get into our music because they can hear the rock in it, the pop in it," Amadou tells Spinner. "People can find things they know in it. Maybe that's why it touches them."

Joshua Redman's new album, Compass, released last month, features pieces for trio, a format he had explored on his previous release, Back East, as well as the bold combination of all five members of its two separate trios into a double trio. In the March issue of JazzTimes magazine, writer Jeff Tamarkin talks to Redman about his taking "the trio concept to another place altogether," as he "ups the ante on the standard trio model" for Compass.

Rokia Traoré is the subject of a feature interview on Pitchfork today, in which the Malian singer-songwriter now living in France discusses her career and describes the inspiration and influences behind her latest Nonesuch release, Tchamantché. "Over 10 years and four incredibly well-received albums," says Pitchfork, "Rokia Traoré has become one of world music's great synthesizers, combining the rhythms and traditions of diverse cultures from Africa and Europe into a complex sound that only she could create."