InisdeBayArea.com examines the many ways in which Kronos Quartet has gone well beyond the confines of the traditional string quartet. "We haven't called ourselves a string quartet, I think, in the last 34 years," Kronos violinist David Harrington says. "I remember as a kid looking at the map—and at that point I had only played Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—and thinking, 'God, what does the rest of the world sound like? I'm going to find out.'"

The Washington Post's Going Out Gurus recommend the best spots in DC for taking in some art after the Smithsonian museums close for the night. The best bet for tomorrow night, November 3, is the opening of Furnishing the Self: Upholstering the Soul, featuring works by David Byrne in homage to the common chair. The multimedia exhibit includes "Macaroni," an embroidered piece on upholstery fabric, pictured at right, and runs through December 22 at the Hemphill Fine Arts gallery, 1515 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. The opening reception will be held Saturday, November 3, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.

All Songs Considered has announced the next show in NPR's Live Concert Series: bluegrass masters Nickel Creek—Sean Watkins, Sara Watkins, and Chris Thile—live from their farewell tour, November 2, at the 9:30 Club in Washington. Boilen calls Thile, whose band Punch Brothers recently signed to Nonesuch, "one of the most amazing mandolin players I've ever heard."

While reports continue to pour in about the show-stealing set by Kronos Quartet and Tom Waits at last weekend's Bridge School Benefit, the group sent in a special backstage photo from the event. Here they are with Tyler, the Bridge School student whose artwork lined the walls of their dressing room to provide some inspiration before the show.

Richard Goode begins his artist residency as Associate Artist at London's Southbank Centre for the 2007-08 season in a November 7 concert with Dawn Upshaw. On the program is Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens; Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1; and songs by Debussy and Wolf. Goode describes working with Dawn as "one of the purest pleasures of my musical life." The two collaborated, notably, on a Nonesuch recording of Goethe Lieder in 1994.

With the song "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," Randy Newman puts the current state of the union into context, as only he can do. He published the lyrics from the song in a New York Times op-ed piece earlier this year in response to the George Bush's own State of the Union address. Watch Randy perform "A Few Words" here.

A new list of the world's 100 greatest living geniuses features an eclectic group, with Philip Glass, in the top ten, joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, and, yes, Simpsons creator Matt Groening. According to The Guardian, an international consulting firm compiled the list after polling 4,000 Brits, and ranked the winners based on how much their work "turned conventional thinking on its head, the popular acclaim they received, their intellectual power, their achievements, and their cultural importance."

Nonesuch Records is happy to announce that the new album by The Magnetic Fields, Distortion, will be released on January 15, 2008. The band will perform a small
number of US tour dates in February and March. Specific details regarding venues and ticket pre-sales will be announced shortly.

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."

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.

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."