Jeremy Denk is the guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. Denk discusses his new album, Ligeti/Beethoven, which pairs Ligeti’s Piano Études, Books One and Two, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111. "Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before, and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before," Denk tells Gross. "But all of it is derived from ideas from earlier piano etudes and his love of the great piano repertoire." He goes on to say: "The last Beethoven sonata seems to me [to be] one of the most profound musical journeys to infinity ever made ... The whole piece seems to want to bring us from a present moment into this timeless space where everything is continuous and endless."

The Sara Watkins–penned tune "You and Me," off her new album, Sun Midnight Sun, has been chosen as Today's Top Tune by KCRW in LA. The song, which Watkins recently performed on The Tonight Show, features harmony vocals by Jackson Browne, with whom she tours later this summer. Watkins, one of the most frequent guest artists on A Prairie Home Companion, will join host Garrison Keillor and fellow guest Shawn Colvin for a live broadcast of the show from Wolf Trap's Filene Center outside DC this weekend.

Punch Brothers pick up their US tour again at Appalachian Uprising in Ohio on June 2, one of a number of festival dates ahead in the US and Europe, in addition to their own headline shows. In duo news, Noam Pikenly performs at the Brooklyn Folk Fest tonight with guitarist Michael Daves, who joins Chris Thile at the Ryman next month. During a recent stop in Nashville, Punch Brothers performed two songs off their new album, Who's Feeling Young Now? at Lightning 100: "Patchwork Girlfriend" and "Movement and Location." Watch both here.

Audra McDonald will be the guest on today's episode of NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She talks about her performance as Bess in the Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, for which she has been nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award and has won the Outer Critics Circle Award. She is also the subject of a feature article in the New York Times. McDonald is the winner of four Tonys has recorded four solo albums for Nonesuch.

Billy Bragg has been featured across the BBC airwaves to celebrate the release of Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, on which Bragg and Wilco set Woody Guthrie's words to music. The Sunday Times and Details both dub it a "must-have." BBC Music says that "nobody has picked up on Woody as effectively—or unexpectedly—as this transatlantic get-together." The Mermaid Avenue project "was always an interesting idea," says a four-star Q review. "That it produced such a wealth of quality material is remarkable." Pitchfork too says: "What's remarkable is the wealth of material available to these artists and the number of gems these sessions produced." Drowned in Sound rates this "wonderful reissue" a nine out of ten. "Even for those who already have both of the previous volumes," says DiS, "Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions is a fascinating look at one of America’s greatest writers."

Punch Brothers make their headlining debut at NYC's Town Hall in a sold-out show tonight. "They are an all-star bluegrass band, five virtuosos led by Chris Thile, the mercurial mandolin player, but their songs smash the three-chord harmonies and blazing march rhythm of bluegrass," says the New York Times. "It is restless music, by musicians so preternaturally talented they get bored easily with fiddle tunes." The New York Daily News says they "have not only turned a rural sound urban, they’ve achieved that most rare of musical feats—to create something genuinely new." Listen to their complete performance on WNYC's Soundcheck here and watch them perform three songs from the show.

Punch Brothers are guests on today's episode of Soundcheck from WNYC. Today's special edition of the show will take place before a sold-out audience in the Greene Space in downtown Manhattan and broadcast live on 93.9 FM and online at wnyc.org, where you can also watch a live webcast, all starting at 2 PM ET. Also on today's show is guitarist/composer Kaki King. Punch Brothers perform at New York's Town Hall tomorrow night as part of their US headlining tour.

Randy Newman will join Larry Mantle, host of KPCC's AirTalk, for a live broadcast event from The Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena, California, this evening at 6:30 PM PST. The event is an in-depth discussion about the state of contemporary film music and how the business is changing. Joining the discussion are fellow composers Michael Giacchino, David Newman, and Trevor Rabin. Watch it streaming live at scpr.org. Randy Newman's film work has garnered two Academy Awards and 20 Oscar nominations.

Dr. John is the guest on this week's Jamie Cullum show from BBC Radio 2. Dr. John, whom Cullum calls one of his "true musical heroes" and “the coolest guy in the universe,” discusses his life and career and his new album, Locked Down, which the Boston Herald names Album of the Week. "It’s voodoo rock, dense, strange, tangled, beautiful in its darkness," says the Herald. "It also adds wild, welcome new flavors to the gumbo. West African highlife grooves Fela would flip for are everywhere. ’60s Stax soul sneak in during select choruses and bridges. Shaft-style funk drops in for a few druggy intros and outros." The A.V. Club calls it "an inspired collaboration ... at once classic and modern."

James Farm—a collaborative band featuring Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks, Matt Penman, and Eric Harland—released its self-titled debut album on Nonesuch almost exactly one year ago, on April 26, 2011. Last September, the band performed in the Opening Night concert of the BeanTown Jazz Festival at Boston's Berklee Performance Center. Now, on this week's episode of NPR's JazzSet, host Dee Dee Bridgewater broadcasts that performance, recorded by NPR member station WGBH in Boston.

Timothy Andres is featured in Q2 Music's "Composer Portals" series, which aims to capture "the insights and wisdom of today's composers" through exclusive audio introductions to their own pieces. In "The Witty and Reverent Musical World of Timothy Andres," the composer introduces several pieces from his debut album, Shy and Mighty. "Andres is doing contemporary classical music a service by forswearing the old-school composer’s aura—that of a tortured mystic laboring at his work," says Q2 Music. "He’s witty, conversational and seemingly secure enough in his talents to trust that we won’t mistake his good humor for a lack of seriousness."

Folila, Amadou & Mariam's first studio album since 2009's acclaimed Welcome to Mali, is due out in the US next week, and is streaming in full all this week as an NPR First Listen. The album features contributions by Santigold, TV on the Radio, Nick Zinner, Theophilus London, Bassekou Kouyate, and others. "The result is richly textured," says NPR. The Daily Telegraph gives the album five stars. The Independent says the album shows "how adeptly Amadou & Mariam straddle both local and global, with a truly 'world' music." The Sunday Times of London says the collaborations "all serve the song and all are there only to enhance the unfathomably brilliant guitar work of Amadou and the effortlessly beautiful voice of Mariam."