k.d. lang will join fellow Canadians Feist, Diana Krall, and (by marriage anyway) Elvis Costello in celebrating Canada's biggest night of music, the Juno Awards. They'll all be presenting at the awards ceremony, to be held this Sunday night at GM Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, and broadcast live on Canadian Television (CTV) at 9 PM ET.

Not only is k.d. a presenter this year, but she has also been nominated for both the Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year Junos for her 2008 Nonesuch release, Watershed. Over the years, she has won a total of eight Junos, beginning with her win for Most Promising Female Vocalist of the Year back in 1985. This year's Producer of the Year nomination is particularly noteworthy, given that Watershed is k.d.'s first self-produced project. For more information, visit junoawards.ca.

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k.d.'s appearance at Sunday's ceremony comes in the midst of her extensive North American tour with music from Watershed. She'll be at Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Performing Arts Center in Davis, California, tonight, and at Pepper Concert Hall in Wendover, Nevada, Saturday, before heading up to Vancouver for the Junos.

Following her recent performance at Portland, Oregon's Schnitz Cocnert Hall, The Oregonian's Luciana Lopez wrote:

lang is a fantastically talented singer. She was in Portland almost exactly a year ago, a fact she referenced on stage, and she was simply outstanding then and was simply outstanding tonight. She obviously started out with an incredible voice, and just as obviously has worked hard on it over the years; nothing sounded strained or difficult. The richness of emotion she carried, the control over her voice (how beautifully she holds a note!), all testify to her development of her instrument. There are a lot of good singers out there. kd lang is a great one.

Read the review at blog.oregonlive.com. For more upcoming tour dates, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

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And if all that weren't sufficient to signal her iconic status, the National Portrait Gallery in London has announced that k.d. will be included in its forthcoming exhibition titled Gay Icons, opening in July. For the exhibition, ten notable gay and lesbian figures were asked to select their "icons," people who, whether gay or not, influenced or inspired them.

Among the panelists were Elton John, Billie Jean King, Ian McKellen, and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig, who chaired the committee, and selected k.d. herself. As reported in the Guardian, Independent, and Times (UK), Toksvig explained that she chose k.d. "just for being gorgeous." More to the point, says Toksvig, "What I hope this exhibition will do is to give courage to those people who still struggle with their sexuality. It might make people feel better about themselves and it might make other people rethink their perceptions of gay life."

Of the many iconic photos that have been taken of k.d. over the years, the image being used to represent her in the exhibition is a March 1992 print by photographer Jill Furmanovsky. Andy Warhol and Linda McCartney are among the other photographers whose portraits were chosen to represent the selected icons. They include artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney; civil rights pioneer Harvey Milk; writers Quentin Crisp, Daphne Du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, and Walt Whitman; poet Maya Angelou; composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky; singer Bessie Smith; comedian Ellen DeGeneres; and Nelson Mandela and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Gay Icons opens on July 2 at the National Portrait Gallery's Wolfson Gallery and runs through October 18. For more information, visit npg.org.uk.