David Byrne, Wilco, Allen Toussaint, and Toumani Diabaté (sharing the stage with Béla Fleck) will be among the scores of incredible performers at the 2009 Bonnaroo festival. This year's incarnation of the event will be held June 11–14 in Manchester, Tennessee. In other festival news, Coachella, in Indio, California, has also announced its lineup for 2009. The Black Keys are among the headliners for the festival's opening night, April 17, as are such legendary performer/songwriters as Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney.

The Magnetic Fields and k.d. lang have both been nominated as Outstanding Music Artist in the 20th annual GLAAD Media Awards for their 2008 Nonesuch releases, Distortion and Watershed, respectively. The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and the issues that affect their lives.

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer George Perle died on Friday, January 23, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. He was 93. Perle, often considered one of the most lyrical of a new generation of atonal composers, wrote prolifically, including symphonic, chamber, vocal, and piano works. Perle often referred to his style of writing as "12-tone tonality." Richard Goode, in his liner notes to a Nonesuch recording of Perle works, wrote of the composer's music: "In its sobriety and playfulness, its rhythmic unpredictability, its delicate balance of harmonic and contrapuntal energies, it often brings Haydn to mind ... Whatever the emotional intensities expressed, one feels a language has been found that is exactly suited to its expressive requirements."

John Adams's String Quartet will receive its world premiere tonight in a performance by the St. Lawrence String Quartet at The Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. The concert is part of Juilliard's annual FOCUS! festival. The new piece is Adams’s second full-length work for string quartet, after 1994's John’s Book of Alleged Dances. The composer will participate in a pre-concert talk beginning at 6 PM. He leads the Juilliard Opera Center in a semi-staged production of The Death of Klinghoffer this Saturday night.

Steve Reich is a featured composer at this year's Modfest, an annual festival at Vassar College celebrating the music, art, poetry, and film of the 20th and 21st centuries. Modfest 2009 began late last week and runs through February 13, with a total of 18 events, including two all-Reich concerts, a conversation with the composer, a dance performance of works set to his music, a film screening and discussion, and a lecture about Reich's music.

Nonesuch Records is pleased to announce the release of The Bright Mississippi, Allen Toussaint’s first solo album in more than a decade, on April 21, 2009. Produced by friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, the record includes songs by jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton, Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn. Toussaint and Henry created a band of highly regarded musicians for the sessions: clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, and percussionist Jay Bellerose; Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman each join Toussaint for a track as well.

John Adams has been named the first-ever Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, beginning next season, the orchestra's first with Music Director Designate Gustavo Dudamel. "John’s work, vision and big knowledge of all music, especially new music, is so deep," says Dudamel. The 2009/10 season gets under way with an Opening Night Gala concert, pairing Mahler's First Symphony with the world premiere of Adams's City Noir. As Creative Chair, the composer curates the West Coast: Left Coast festival, beginning late November, with a residency by Kronos Quartet; a new work by Thomas Newman; a jazz trio with Joshua Redman; and concerts led by Adams.

Kronos Quartet has been named the sole Perspectives artist in Carnegie Hall 2009/10 concert season. Perspectives: Kronos Quartet will feature five concerts over the course of the season, and the Quartet will lead a Professional Training Workshop through The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. Kronos has also been made the ensemble-in-residency for next season's West Coast: Left Coast festival at Disney Hall, curated by John Adams as the LA Philharmonic's first creative director. This season, Kronos has been added to the roster for the MusicNOW festival, premiering a piece by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry.

Pat Metheny has composed and performed new music for The New Group's revival of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, directed by Scott Elliott and starring Lili Taylor and Jena Malone. Previews begin tomorrow night, with the official opening night on February 19. The play will run at New York's New Group @ Theatre Row on 42nd Street through April 18. Pat recorded his solo guitar score on an 1860s instrument contemporary to the play's Civil War-era setting.

Rokia Traoré's Tchamantché has been nominated for the Victoires de la Musique award as Best World Music Album of the Year. The award, similar to the Grammys in the United States, recognizes the best in music from France. Rokia, the daughter of a Malian diplomat, has lived everywhere from North Africa to the Middle East to Europe, as well as in the Malian capital, Bamako, and now calls Paris home.

Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed wonders what the inclusion of composer John Williams's new Copland-inspired piece in yesterday's official inauguration proceedings might promise for the place of classical music in the new Obama administration. He suggests a number of artists whom the President might invite to the White House to signal his commitment to the arts. On the list of these "rich, wise, inclusive original voices" are many Nonesuch artists and others who have collaborated with them. "Mr. President," Swed asserts, "I guarantee your life will be richer and the tone of America will rise if you listen to them."

Laurie Anderson will lead a special concert tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, New York, to launch BAM's Next Stage Campaign. Curated by Laurie and titled Laurie & Friends, the show features a diverse group of artists—from the experimental rock of Dirty Projectors to the Latin sounds of jazz master Arturo O'Farrill—who share the common goal of making new and original art. BAM is looking to break ground this fall on an intimate black-box performance space behind the main Opera House.