Laurie Anderson's North American fall tour continues as she brings her performance piece Delusion to Montreal for three nights of shows at Usine C, tonight through Thursday. "In Anderson we have a throwback to theatrical storytelling that's at least as old as the troubadours and Beowulf," says the Boston Phoenix in a review of last week's six-night Boston run. "The graceful way she moves about the stage and reacts to the screen images or even presides over a music stand, manipulating sounds, delivering text—all show a complete, and completely satisfying, sense of stage craft ... Anderson really delivers."

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass takes over San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with sets from Punch Brothers, Jessica Lea Mayfield, The Low Anthem, Emmylou Harris ... Laurie Anderson performs Delusion in Boston ... Jon Brion launches three-night NYC run ... Wanda Jackson stops by Grimey's in Nashville ... James Farm close out US tour in California ... k.d. lang tours the mid-Atlantic ... Audra McDonald launches her fall tour ... Pat Metheny sells out in Chicago and Pittsburgh ... Sara Watkins joins the Blind Boys of Alabama in California ... and more ...

Pat Metheny's US tour with bassist Larry Grenadier continues this weekend with sold-out shows in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor. The Kansas City Star, reviewing last night's show, raves: "The idyllic concept of angels plucking on harps in heaven is overdue for an overhaul. One possible update is the image of Pat Metheny bent over a guitar ... Metheny creates extraordinarily celestial sounds, with last night's show "exceptionally rapturous even by his standards." Metheny discusses his new album, What's It All About, on today's episode of PRI's Here & Now.

Audra McDonald, who has wowed Boston-area audiences and critics alike as Bess in the A.R.T. production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess this month, launches her own North American fall concert tour this weekend. The two-month tour includes stops at Boston's Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, and The Kennedy Center, among others. Update: Tomorrow's Kimmel Center performance has been rescheduled to November 30. McDonald and Porgy and Bess head to Broadway in December. She discussed the play and the tour on NPR's Tell Me More.

Laurie Anderson's new exhibition Forty-Nine Days in the Bardo has opened at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. The exhibition uses the structure of a diary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead—also known as The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo—to explore the themes of love and death, the many levels of dreaming, and illusion. This two-floor exhibition include texts as well as drawings, sculptures, projections, and sound and are made from materials including mud, foil, iron, chalk, and ashes. Anderson will perform at the museum on October 13.

Jessica Lea Mayfield is set to support Ryan Adams on his North American tour this December. The tour starts in Philadelphia on December 2 and runs through December 13 in Minneapolis, with stops in Baltimore, New York City, Boston, Toronto, and Chicago. Tickets go on sale Friday, September 30, at 10 AM. Mayfield recently added new headlining tour dates in November and opens for John Prine, the Avett Brothers, and Drive-By Truckers along the way.

Punch Brothers are set to support legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon on his tour of the United States this November. The nearly three-week tour starts in New Orleans on Friday, November 4, and runs through Wednesday, November 23, in Akron, Ohio. Punch Brothers open for Ray LaMontagne in New York City's Central Park tonight and in Pittsburgh tomorrow night before heading to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park this weekend.

The Low Anthem, which is currently on a headlining tour of the United States with music from its latest Nonesuch release, Smart Flesh, will support City and Colour on tour of Canada and the northern US in January and February 2012. The tour starts in Portland, Oregon, on January 16 and ends in St. John, New Brunswick, on February 24. The Low Anthem's current tour makes stops this week in Minneapolis, Denver, and Salt Lake City, before hitting San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival this weekend.

The Low Anthem and Jessica Lea Mayfield almost overlap at Nashville's Soundland festival and Cincinnati's MidPoint Music Festival ... Laurie Anderson performs Transitory Life at the Transart Festival ... The Black Keys play Atlanta's Music Midtown fest ... Carolina Chocolate Drops are in Harrisburg, PA ... Emmylou Harris joins Don Henley in Santa Barbara ... Wanda Jackson headlines SoCal Hellbilly Fest ... James Farm tours the East Coast ... Kronos Quartet conclude BAM run ... k.d. lang is in New England ... Pat Metheny tours California ... Punch Brothers are on NPR's Mountain Stage ... and more ...

Philip Selway will be the guest on WNYC's Soundcheck Friday afternoon. Selway will perform songs from his new digital EP, Running Blind, and his 2010 solo debut album, Familial. Tune in Friday at 2 PM ET on 93.9 FM in New York and at online at wnyc.org. While in NYC, Selway will work in a few gigs with his band, Radiohead, as musical guests on the season opener of Saturday Night Live, featured on The Colbert Report, and performing two shows at Roseland Ballroom.

Kronos Quartet gives the NY premiere of Awakening: A Musical Meditation on the Anniversary of 9/11 for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)'s 2011 Next Wave Festival, with four consecutive nights of performances starting tonight. Congratulations to Kronos fan Ross Burlingame, winner of the Nonesuch ticket giveaway to tonight's show. Kronos Quartet gave a preview of the show when they performed live on WNYC's Soundcheck earlier this week. Listen to the performances and interview here.

Modern Music, a collaboration between pianists Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays and composer/arranger Patrick Zimmerli is out this week. The album features pieces written by each of the three musicians as well as works by Reich, Coleman, and Glass, performed by the two pianists in arrangements by Zimmerli. The New York Times says the pianists bring "a high sheen to some choice material." The Financial Times gives the album a perfect five stars. MusicOMH calls it "another fascinating and technically remarkable addition to Mehldau’s body of work." The Guardian, reviewing Mehldau's live show with Chris Thile in London on Friday, says their "musicality and sympathy for each other's emerging ideas made it an unexpected tour de force."