Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile's tour with music from their recently released self-titled debut duo disc on Nonesuch, takes a week's hiatus before resuming in Raleigh next Wednesday. In the mean time, Chris will be performing with label mate Brad Mehldau at New York's Poisson Rouge on Friday in a benefit for Obama. Last night in Seattle, Meyer and Thile gave a performance that, says the Seattle Times, "showcased the rigorous yet accessible, and engrossing, experimentation that defines their intermittent partnership ... [T]he boldness of this duo's performance will not be easily forgotten." After their Sunday show in Portland, The Oregonian calls them "masters of their respective instruments unconstrained by considerations of genre."  Chris also found time to talk to the Los Angeles Times about another passion of his: The Cubs.

Audra McDonald will join fellow Tony Award winner and famed Sondheim interpreter Barbara Cook for a very special concert event titled Audra McDonald & Barbara Cook: Broadway Voices for Change, on Sunday, October 19, at 8 PM, at New York's Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Proceeds from the event will benefit America Votes, the largest grassroots voter mobilization effort in the US, supporting a broad economic and social justice agenda.

Tonight at the 92nd Street Y in New York City: The Composer's Voice: John Adams. John Adams will talk with Juilliard dean Ara Guzelimian about his career; his opera Doctor Atomic, which receives its New York premiere at the Met next week; and his new memoir, Hallelujah Junction, just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The program also features "musical illustrations" by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, baritone Jordan Shanahan, and pianist Linda Hall.

T Bone Burnett, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore all convene in San Francisco for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest ... The Black Keys head south to North Carolina and South Carolina ... Isabel Bayrakdarian begins her American tour in San Francisco ... David Byrne's Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno tour continues in California ... Ry Cooder makes his second of two rare live performances in San Francisco ... Randy Newman performs live on Late Late Show ... Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer perform music from their new album in Oregon ... Dawn Upshaw talks with Alex Ross at this weekend's New Yorker Festival ... and more ...

Audra McDonald and Dawn Upshaw will take the stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight for the Opening Night Gala of the Los Angeles Philarmonic's 2008–09 season, the orchestra's last with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at its helm. Audra will sing Sondheim's "There Won't Be Trumpets" and Jule Styne / Sammy Cahn's "10,432 Sheep"; Dawn will perform songs from John Adams's Nixon in China and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. The eclectic program also includes selections from Stravinsky's The Firebird.

David Simon, executive producer, writer, and creator of HBO's The Wire, will present a lecture at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, this afternoon at 4:10 PM in the school's chapel. The lecture, titled "The Audacity of Despair," is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Hamilton College's Dean of Faculty and hosted by the school's American Studies program. Simon's most recent work for HBO, the mini-series Generation Kill, tells the story of an embedded reporter in Iraq during the initial US invasion of Baghdad in 2003.

With just over four weeks left until election day in the United States, November 4, a number of Nonesuch Records artists will be participating in some very special campaign events. This Monday, k.d. lang will perform at an intimate, in-home fund-raising concert for Obama in New York City with Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, Joseph Biden, and renowned chef Alice Waters. The following evening in New York, composer Ricky Ian Gordon and Tony Award–winning actress Victoria Clark perform at a stellar Obama/Biden fund-raiser at the home of television producer Tom Fontana. On October 10, Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile perform works by Bach as well as their own works at an Obama benefit concert at New York's Poisson Rouge.

The Glass Box, the 10-CD Nonesuch retrospective covering 40 years of the works of Philip Glass, hits stores today, just one day after the New York City Opera announced that it has commissioned the composer to create a new opera on the life of another iconic American figure, Walt Disney. The new work for City Opera will be Glass's 24th opera and will honor his 75th birthday when it premieres in 2012–2013. In the nearer future, City Opera has scheduled Glass's Einstein on the Beach for 2009–2010; it will be the company's first production in its newly refurbished home at Lincoln Center.

Ry Cooder, fresh off his recent performance at the San Jose Mariachi Festival, makes two more rare live appearance this Thursday and Friday when he reconnects with former bandmates Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner for two concerts at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall to benefit the Richard deLone Special Housing Fund. The San Jose Mercury News talks with Ry about this atypically packed performance schedule, part of "an explosion of productivity" that includes the recent release of his I, Flathead and the new Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall album.

Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian's Nonesuch debut, Gomidas Songs, was released last week; she launches her North American tour of songs from the album at the end of the week in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle finds Bayrakdarian's "gorgeous, dark-hued tone and communicative power" and the "tender clarity and ripe urgency" of her singing to be well suited to these songs. The Ottawa Citizen gives the album four-and-a-half stars, exclaiming: "Bayrakdarian's voice is a marvel. Songs for children, songs of nature, of love, of humour, of yearning, she finds exactly the right mode of expression for each one. You have to wonder if there's another singer anywhere in the world who could do them equal justice."

Randy Newman's Harps and Angels tour stop at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, on Friday night. The Philadelphia Inquirer previewed the set with a look at the man he places "among the most perversely funny of songwriter-observers who ever hit the charts." Randy had stopped in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier in the week for what the Washington Post calls "jaw-dropping concert" and "a rollicking ride through Randy Newman's psyche." Glide magazine calls Harps and Angels "34 minutes of sharp-witted commentary by one of America’s most original lyricists."