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."

Steve Reich, Glenn Kotche and Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Alarm Will Sound help celebrate the opening of Lincoln Center's spectacularly revamped Alice Tully Hall Starr Theater with a marathon evening of performances titled New York, New Music, New Hall tonight. Kotche and Bang on a Can give the New York premiere of his piece Mobile, and Steve Reich & Musicians with Synergy Vocals perform Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. It's all part of the Center's two-week Opening Nights Festival to inaugurate the new space.

Pat Carney, The Black Keys drummer, has teamed up with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Art Spiegelman, for an animated short video showcasing Spiegelman's latest book, Be a Nose! Carney has created what Pitchfork calls "a mordant psych-groove instrumental" for Spiegelman's animated drawings. "Vintage-sounding breakbeats you might expect to find sampled on some lost trip-hop or abstract hip-hop record help soak up guitar fuzz, heavy bass, and droning organ."

Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe have announced an intimate, three-week tour of Europe to begin with three nights at Dublin's Olympia Theatre in mid-June. Cooder and Lowe’s working relationship began in the late 1980s, and following two benefit performances together at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco last year—featuring a selection of work from both their celebrated careers—the pair have decided to take their show on the road. They will be joined by Flaco Jimenez on accordion, Joachim Cooder on drums, and vocalist Juliette Commagere.

Félicitations à Rokia Traoré. Tchamantché, her latest Tama/Nonesuch release, received the Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammy Award, for Best World Album. The ceremony was held this past Saturday night at the Zenith in Paris and was broadcast live on French national television.

John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic receives its UK premiere tonight in the English National Opera production at the London Coliseum. The production, based on the Metropolitan Opera's New York premiere last fall, is directed by Penny Woolcock and stars Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and Sasha Cooke as his wife, Kitty Oppenheimer. Conductor Lawrence Renes leads the ENO Orchestra and Chorus in the performances, which run through March 20.