Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, the new film by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, has won the Black Pearl Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Middle East International Film Festival. The film follows N'Dour as he records and tours with his Grammy-winning 2004 album, Egypt. N'Dour himself performed following the film's screening at the festival, held in Abu Dhabi.

Randy Newman will appear on the TODAY show, Tuesday, October 21, during the 10 AM hour. He will perform live as well as chat with hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb.

Sam Phillips and her band perform on the Acoustic Cafe radio show during the week of October 20, 2008. The show was recorded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during Sam’s recent tour stop in September. 

Audra McDonald joins Barbara Cook, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, and The Black Keys join Devo for election-year benefits ... John Adams's Doctor Atomic continues at the Met; the Pittsburgh Symphony recognizes Adams as its Composer of the Year ... Laurie Anderson brings Homeland to Canada ... Sérgio and Odair Assad join the Turtle Island Quartet for a college tour ... Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Celebrating Gomidas Vartabed heads to her home country of Canada ... David Byrne disproves "this groove is out of fashion" at two tour stops in Missouri ... Shawn Colvin plays two shows in Mississippi ... Philip Glass shows “Glass overflows with the beauty of Cohen's poems" at Melbourne Festival ... Richard Goode performs in Kansas City ... k.d. lang tours the Midwest ... The Magnetic Fields’ fall tour heads south ... Randy Newman plays the Golden State and offers BBC his "desert island discs" ... Nicholas Payton continues residency at Jazz at Lincoln Center ... Joshua Redman plays 25th annual Festival Miami ... Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer return to the road ... and more ...

With this week's Met premiere of John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, the Boston Globe calls the work "a hauntingly powerful, deeply humane and eloquent work" and praises Adams's score as "some of his most compelling and imaginative music to date," one that "weds a cool Stravinskian precision and rhythmic vitality with a kind of seething Wagnerian dread." The Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "a profound musical and moral journey" in which the composer "surpasses his considerable self ..." The opera and its premiere are the focus of today's episode of WNYC's Soundcheck.

When Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, the two-disc live recording of the renowned Cuban group's unforgettable 1998 concert, was released earlier this week, producer Ry Cooder appeared on WNYC's Soundcheck. Host John Schaefer writes on the show's blog of "the Buena Vista phenomenon" that took place upon the studio album's release, and looks to the new release as "a reminder of why 8 million of us went and bought this record in the first place." The Scotsman gives the new album five stars, suggesting, "There never was, and never will be again, a moment like the one this splendid double-CD eternalises ... [L]et this CD cast its spell on you."

John Adams made his Met debut Monday night with the opening of the new production of his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. "This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music," exclaims the New York Times's Anthony Tomassini. "Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density." The Associated Press calls it an "intense and fascinating" work, in which "Adams has created a score filled with color, syncopation and lush interludes." Newsweek calls the production "stunning," the score "lyrical, romantic, Wagnerian by turns." Also, Bloomberg calls the composer's newest opera, A Flowering Tree, "Adams's most ravishing creation to date," and Slate finds his new memoir "gripping."

Randy Newman brings his tour to his home state of California this weekend. After last night's concert in Tennessee, the Knoxville News calls Randy "one of the great songwriters of the rock era—and a guy who never takes the easy way with a lyric." Leading to this weekend's concerts, the Monterey Herald says Randy's "musical arrangements are brilliant and each song's personality is matched by the tone of the composition; he's the master at placing notes and rhythm in line with the character and its predicament"; and the Santa Barbara Independent says Harps and Angels "finds the native Californian at his satirical best."

The Magnetic Fields began their fall tour this past Friday at the State Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beforehand, Stephin Merritt stopped by The Current studio to talk and perform a few solo acoustic songs. The next night brought a show in Madison, Wisconsin, where, reports The Isthmus, Merritt's "astonishing and sweeping body of work" was "yielded up wit, emotional nuance, memorable hooks and crisp, careful rhymes." Then came a Dallas show the Star-Telegram termed a "victory lap for one of the most idiosyncratic and interesting bands in indie pop" and the Dallas Morning News lauded as "meticulous chamber-pop."

Today marks the release of the two-CD set Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall, capturing the unforgettable concert event from the legendary Cuban musicians at the esteemed venue a decade ago. To celebrate the release, Ry Cooder stops by WNYC's Soundcheck this afternoon. The Sunday Times (UK) says there's "a poignant air to this recording" of "what was clearly a night of overwhelming emotion ... [T]his was one of those once-in-a-lifetime evenings when the collective spirit of old Havana carried all before it." Nonesuch offers those in the New York City area a rare opportunity to catch the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary about the group, projected onto the big screen at Lincoln Center.

The Black Keys' US tour made its way back home to Akron, Ohio, last Saturday night to play E. J. Thomas Hall. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says the band turned the venue into "one big juke joint" for the nearly 3,000 fans. Pat and Dan, whose "music brilliantly reinvents the wheel," were treated "like conquering heroes" in this "unforgettable evening." They created "primal rock 'n' roll" that "all but demanded a visceral reaction." The band plays Akron again this Friday, at the Civic Theatre, with another group of hometown favorites, Devo, to raise funds for the Obama Presidential campaign's efforts in the all-important swing state.

Isabel Bayrakdarian's Remembrance Tour, celebrating the music of Gomidas Vartabed, whose work is featured on her Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, continues this Friday at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall. Her most recent performance, last week at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, was "a rarity singing a rarity," writes the Vancouver Sun—Bayrakdarian for "her lustrous voice and emotional commitment to the material she finds meaningful." The Nonesuch recording is "wonderful," says the Sun, and the live performance of it "captivated us with the beauty of the songs."