Brad Mehldau is set to launch his Highway Rider tour with the world premiere of the piece due at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis on November 5 and 6, followed by the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 9. The latter is the first event of Mehldau's tenure as holder of the Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall. As such, he has published the first in a series of blog posts on the Carnegie Hall website, offering insight on composition and improvisation.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops have been named to The Root 100, the "list of young achievers and pace setters for 2010" from The Root, which says of the performers on the list: "We like them because they lift black music out of the box into which some critics try to shove it." The Boston Phoenix describes the band's recent Boston show as "a beauty ... The crowd were standing and packed, and hooting and hollering from the beginning." They conclude their US tour this weekend, then head to Europe.

Punch Brothers have returned to New York City for two shows. First up is T Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Revue at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre tonight. The Boston Globe said the performances at Saturday's Revue debut "were uniformly inspired," with Punch Brothers "in fine rhythmic form"; the Boston Herald includes their set among the night's "stellar moments." On Thursday, the quintet joins Dierks Bentley on Live! With Regis and Kelly and at Brooklyn's Southpaw.

With just a week to go before The Black Keys launch their European tour, the band has released an iTunes Session. Recorded in Toronto last August during the band's North American summer tour, the ten-song album includes songs from the duo’s latest album, Brothers, as well as “Your Touch” from their 2006 Nonesuch debut album, Magic Potion, and “Chop and Change,” which was featured on the soundtrack of film Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Watch the band's interview with SPIN, from the Austin City Limits festival, here.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby follow last week's New York City appearances with a PEN/Faulkner event at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC. Hornby will read from his latest novel, Juliet, Naked; Folds will perform songs from their album, Lonely Avenue. The Washington Post Express calls them "a match made in heaven." Folds has just added a New York City date to his fall tour, with tickets now available to fans, and will return to DC in December to present his photography at National Geographic.

Stephen Sondheim: Finishing the Hat, the composer's first-ever collection of his lyrics, is out now in the UK and is due out in the US next week. The collection includes the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981 along with personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes photos. Variety declares London "smitten with Sondheim." Financial Times says "Sondheim has brought unprecedented depth to musicals"; one sees a Sondheim show "for the exhilaration of seeing a popular art form stretched to its limits." Sondheim's Evening Primrose will receive a one-night-only reading next week, the night before the original TV production is out on DVD. Bernadette Peters will receive the the Signature Theatre's 2011 Sondheim Award.

Laurie Anderson heads to California for a weeklong tour that includes performances of Delusion in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles and of Transitory Life at Yoshi's in San Francisco. "I'm trying to represent what I think of as mental drift," Anderson says of Delusion in the Los Angeles Times, "just the way your mind can move from thing to thing." The Santa Barbara Independent recognizes the piece as the latest in "her untouchable performance-art career."

Carolina Chocolate Drops follow a Nor'easter to the Northeast ... Laurie Anderson does Delusion in upstate NY ... Rhys Chatham returns to NYC's The Kitchen ... Wanda Jackson hits Texas ... Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica tour Germany ... Magnetic Fields doc screens at London Film Fest ... Natalie Merchant continues orchestra tour ... Pat Metheny continues Orchestrion tour ... Punch Brothers join T Bone Burnett in Boston ... Joshua Redman Trio plays DC ... and more ...

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night, with Folds performing "Saskia Hamilton," off their album Lonely Avenue. Watch the episode here. The two will be in Washington, DC, next week for a PEN/Faulkner event. Following Folds own US tour, he returns to DC for a National Geographic Live! event in December featuring his photos, which he discusses on National Geographic Weekend, now online.

Punch Brothers perform at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium tonight; the San Francisco Chronicle says the band performs "with a sense of adventure that's hard to resist." This closes out the band's run of shows in California that included Wednesday's show at LA's El Rey Theater with Jon Brion, at which, says the Los Angeles Times, Punch Brothers "flexed the kind of instrumental chops that even a non-player can admire." They head next to the East Coast to join T Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Revue benefit for music and arts education programming in public schools.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby's week of events in New York City culminates with an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight. That follows a free event at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square—conversation, performance, and signing of their new album, Lonely Avenue—that leads Daily Candy's Weekend Guide of things to do in the city. You can listen to Folds and Hornby's guest spot on WNYC's Soundcheck from yesterday here.

Rhys Chatham, whose Lincoln Center Out of Doors performance of A Crimson Grail was released last month on Nonesuch, returns to New York and to the cutting-edge cultural space he once curated: The Kitchen. Chatham and artist Angie Eng perform the a multimedia piece, Echodes, there Friday and Saturday. Time Out New York recommends it as Top Live Show and calls A Crimson Grail "gorgeous." Hear selections from A Crimson Grail in a short film at nonesuch.com/media.