Kronos Quartet’s fourth-annual hometown festival, Kronos Festival 2018, began at SFJAZZ Center last night and continues over the weekend. “Kronos Quartet has spent some four decades on the cutting edge of new music, forging a vast international network of collaborators,” says the San Francisco Chronicle, “but the San Francisco string quartet’s global vision has rarely seemed as timely and urgent.”

Tonight, Kronos joins The Pogues’ David Coulter—this year’s artist-in-residence—and singer Jolie Holland for the premiere of a program of two Holland originals and Randy Newman’s “Louisiana, 1927” arranged for quartet. The evening also features works by Philip Glass and the premiere of a new piece from the quartet’s Fifty for the Future commissioning project, plus a collaborative performance with the Malian ensemble Trio Da Kali.

There’s a full day of music Saturday, including a Kronos family concert, Amaranth Quartet performing pieces commissioned through Fifty for the Future, and a program of works from David Coulter and others. The festival culminates with a Kronos concert that night: the group is joined by Coulter, Vân-Ánh Võ, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus for the world premieres of new works from Kronos and Võ, a suite by Coulter, and more.

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Sam Amidon rounds out his North American spring tour, bringing music from his latest album, The Following Mountain, to Cincinnati for MusicNOW, playing the festival’s Opening Night Concert at the Cincinnati Masonic Center Auditorium tonight and the MusicNOW Homecoming at Smale Park on Saturday. The tour concludes with a performance at Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago on Sunday.

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Timo Andres joins fellow pianist David Kaplan at Milton Court Concert Hall in London tonight, performing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. The two pianists can be heard performing together on Andres’s Nonesuch Records debut album, Shy and Mighty.

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David Byrne continues the US leg of his American Utopia world tour in Texas this weekend, playing a sold-out show at Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio tonight, followed by a concert at White Oak Music Hall in Houston on Saturday. From there, he and the band head to New Orleans for a set at Jazz Fest on Sunday.

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Jeremy Denk is in California this weekend, with concerts at Fresno State’s Concert Hall tonight and Sunset Center in Carmel on Sunday afternoon, performing works by Mozart, Prokofiev, Beethoven, and Schubert.

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Rhiannon Giddens swings through the Carolinas this weekend, performing at McCelvey Center in York, South Carolina, tonight, and at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on Saturday, as part of MerleFest.

Giddens was on NPR's All Things Considered last weekend, discussing her MacArthur Fellowship, the role of the banjo in her work, and her critically acclaimed 2017 album, Freedom Highway, from which she performed two songs. You can listen to the conversation and performance here.

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Audra McDonald performs at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton on Saturday, as part of the theatre’s 2018 Gala benefitting its education, artistic, and engagement programs.

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Chris Thile hosts his public radio show Live From Here at The Town Hall in New York City on Saturday, with special guests Calexico, Meshell Ndegeocello, and comedian Mike Yard. Sarah Jarosz, who can be heard as a guest vocalist on Thile’s new album, Thanks for Listening, joins him as his duet partner on the show. Folks in the US can tune in on their favorite public radio station this weekend, and fans around the world can watch live online at livefromhere.org starting at 5:45 PM ET.