Laurie Anderson began a week of special performances when she was joined by artist and activist Ai Weiwei, via Skype from Beijing, for the premiere of Greetings to the Motherland at Toronto's Luminato Festival last night; watch it in full here. Anderson leads two free concerts in New York City this week for the annual River to River Festival, featuring stories from United States Parts 1-4 with special guests Steve Buscemi and Young Jean Lee on Tuesday and a night of improvisation with longtime musical collaborators on Wednesday.

Bombino, Fatoumata Diawara, Amadou & Mariam, Björk perform at Bonnaroo ... Amadou & Mariam, Bombino, Laurie Anderson give free performances at Luminato ... Alarm Will Sound kicks off Bang on a Can Marathon, previews Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite at the Guggenheim with the composer on hand ... Sam Amidon plays Philadelphia ... Carolina Chocolate Drops are in Virginia ... Jeremy Denk performs at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival ... Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell kick off North American tour in Santa Fe ... Audra McDonald performs in the Berkshires ... Randy Newman celebrates film music in New Jersey ... and more ...

Fatoumata Diawara returns to North America for a summer-long tour of the US and Canada. This leg of her tour begins in New Hampshire tonight, then heads to Bonnaroo on Friday. The two-month tour takes Diawara and her band to cities throughout California, into Canada, the US Midwest, and the East Coast, including headline shows, summer festivals sets, and a concert in New York's Central Park for SummerStage. 

Bombino, who is currently touring the US with his "electrifying" show (A.V. Club), has made NPR Music's list of its 25 Favorite Albums of the Year (So Far) for his Nonesuch debut album, Nomad. "Full of undeniably hypnotic trance-guitar music, and produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Nomad rocks like no other record this year," writes NPR Music's Bob Boilen. "Hearing Bombino in any American nightclub, the reaction is ecstasy and complete connection ... It's blues, it's trance and it's psychedelic in its repetition. Oh, and did I mention it rocks?" Bombino tells New York magazine: "There are two kinds of music in the desert. If it makes you want to listen to it, it’s the blues. If it makes you want to move, it’s rock.”

Amadou & Mariam release the digital EP Mali Meets Latin America in the US today as the Malian duo prepares to kick off a North American summer tour at Bonnaroo this weekend. The EP features remixes of four tracks from their 2012 album Folila by artists from Buenos Aires (Frikstailers and King Coya, aka Gaby Kerpel) and Bogotá (Bomba Estéreo and Sidestepper) and was inspired by the couple’s first visit to perform in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina in 2012, when they met several of the producers featured on this collection.

Pat Metheny Unity Band, James Farm, and Brad Mehldau Trio headline the BMW Jazz Festival in Brazil ... Sam Amidon plays in LA ... Devendra Banhart tours East Coast ... Björk concludes LA Biophilia residency ... Bombino tours Midwest .. Jeremy Denk performs in Slovenia ... Adam Guettel tours Australia ... Emmylou Harris hosts Woofstock benefit in Nashville ... Gidon Kremer concludes China tour ... Audra McDonald performs in Michigan, presents at the Tony Awards ... and more ...

Joshua Redman performed songs from his new album, Walking Shadows, at New York's Town Hall on Tuesday with the album's core ensemble—Brad Mehldau, Larry Grenadier, Brian Blade—and the chamber orchestra The Knights. The New York Times' Nate Chinen says the event "was, objectively speaking, a special night," exclaiming: "Mr. Redman has always been a fluid technician, but the inner glow in his tone throughout the night, along with the grace and clarity of his ideas, suggested new levels of prowess." 

Joshua Redman performs music from his new album, Walking Shadows, with its core ensemble, Brad Mehldau, Larry Grenadier, and Brian Blade, along with the orchestra The Knights, at The Town Hall in NYC on Tuesday. "Melody is always paramount for the saxophonist Joshua Redman, to a degree that sets him apart from his postbop peers," says the New York Times. "Still, there hasn’t been a more sublimely lyrical gesture in his 20-year recording career than Walking Shadows, an album that sets his tenor and soprano against a string orchestra, in tremulous but thoughtful new arrangements." London's Wigmore Hall has announced the 2013-14 season of its jazz series curated by Redman, who performs in two of the four concerts. 

Sam Amidon kicks off a three-week tour of the US featuring music from his recently released Nonesuch debut album, Bright Sunny South. The tour begins at the Sunset Tavern in Seattle tonight and continues on the West Coast with performances in Portland, San Francisco, and LA, followed by stops along the East Coast including Philadelphia, Cambridge, and Portland (Maine), as well as his home town of Brattleboro and a set at the Solid Sound Festival curated by Wilco at MASS MoCA. Amidon was recently listed atop NPR's list of Five Musicians Who Make Borrowing Sound Original.

Devendra Banhart, who is currently touring North America performing songs from his recently released Nonesuch Records debut album, Mala, was featured on Morning Becomes Eclectic out of KCRW in Santa Monica, CA, last Friday. The session, which was recording during the California leg of the tour earlier in May, includes intimate in-studio performances by Banhart and his band of a number of songs from the new album. Watch the set here. The tour continues into Montreal, Toronto, Boston, DC, and Philadelphia, before concluding at The Town Hall in New York City on June 12.

Devendra Banhart continues the Midwestern leg of his tour with shows in Chicago and Detroit and performs on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic ... John Adams conducts the NSO and Jeremy Denk at The Kennedy Center ... Björk brings Biophilia to LA ... Bombino plays two sets at Wakarusa Festival ... Carolina Chocolate Drops play festivals in Ohio and Virginia ... Richard Goode plays Beethoven in London ... Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell close out European tour in Hamburg ... Iron and Wine continues its European tour ... Gidon Kremer tours China ... Natalie Merchant headlines benefit concert for victims of domestic violence in upstate NY ... and more ...

Audra McDonald, who is featured on NPR's Tell Me More today, has announced a number of new tour dates across the US for this summer and fall featuring music from her new album, Go Back Home. The tour includes performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, San Francisco Symphony's Opening Night, shows in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Kansas City, and much more. In a new video, McDonald says of Go Back Home: "If there were a Broadway show that were written about my life, especially the last seven years," she says of the album in the video, "this would be the soundtrack." Watch the video here.