David Byrne will open the 2009 season of Celebrate Brooklyn!, one of New York City's longest running, free, outdoor concert series, with a free concert ($3 suggested donation) in Brooklyn's Prospect Park Bandshell the night of Monday, June 8, its organizers have announced. The series, which has offered free concerts in the Park since 1979, launches its first-ever Opening Night Green Gala, preceding the concert, to support the festival's programs and its efforts to present more environmentally responsible events, including the first-ever large-scale bike parking area at a cultural event in New York.

To mark the start of National Poetry Month, Steve Reich will join a diverse array of noteworthy public figures, including musicians, actors, and writers, among others, at Lincoln Center's newly remodeled Avery Fisher Hall tonight to read their favorite poems by some of America's best-loved poets. Among those scheduled to read along with Reich are Joan Baez, Mia Farrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chip Kidd, Wynton Marsalis, and Zadie Smith. Proceeds from the event, titled Poetry & The Creative Mind, benefit the Academy of American Poets and will help provide free classroom materials to more than 200,000 schools across the US this month.

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce the signing of Rhode Island–based trio The Low Anthem. Later this spring, the label will release an updated version of the band’s album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, which had a limited but critically praised independent release late last year. Rolling Stone says the music on Charlie Darwin feels “homemade” and “solemnly beautiful,” and NPR Music called the song “To Ohio” a “tender stunner” in choosing it as a Song of the Day, saying, “At times languid and haunting, but with detours into Tom Waits-esque stomping and hollering, The Low Anthem’s music seems equally informed by Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, The Band and a late-night ride home in Joni Mitchell’s car.”

Laurie Anderson presented the award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition at the Cinema Eye Honors this past Sunday night. Last fall, while on tour with her new performance piece, Homeland, Laurie participated in the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley. As part of the event, Laurie joined the series curator, Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg, for an hourlong discussion, the audio portion of which is now available online at the Berkeley Art Museum's site. The Museum says Homeland "includes songs and stories that create a poetic and political portrait of contemporary American culture."

k.d. lang joins fellow Canadians Feist, Diana Krall, and (by marriage) Elvis Costello in presenting at Canada's Juno Awards this Sunday. k.d. has also been nominated as both the Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Also this weekend, k.d.'s North American tour takes her to California and Nevada. Her recent Portland, Oregon, performance led The Oregonian to exclaim: "There are a lot of good singers out there. kd lang is a great one." London's National Portrait Gallery might agree, having named k.d. among the Gay Icons in its exhibit of that name, opening this summer, which also includes David Hockney, Harvey Milk, Walt Whitman, Tchaikovsky, and Nelson Mandela.

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."