Composer Nico Muhly leads a program entitled Archives, Friends, Patterns to the Theatre at Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles tonight. Muhly is joined by Thomas Bartlett to perform songs from their 2018 Nonesuch album, Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music, and then presents arrangements of works by Philip Glass and a cycle of his own drone-based compositions for violin, viola, and piano. In addition to Bartlett, Muhly is joined for the evening by a group of musicians including vocalist/violinist Caroline Shaw, whose own album, Orange, was released on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records last month.

Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music comprises nine songs written by Muhly and Bartlett plus three gamelan transcriptions by ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee that inspired the songs. The Irish Times gives the album four stars, noting its “slow-burning beauty,” while France’s Télérama praises its “unique and addictive dreamlike quality.”

Shaw’s album Orange, on which Attacca Quartet performs six of her pieces for string quartet, has received widespread critical acclaim, with Pitchfork calling it “a wild and free-ranging collection of chamber pieces … The music of Orange exudes joy and a sense of wildness.”

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Sam Amidon plays re-imagined versions of songs from Harry Smith’s The Anthology of American Folk Music at AB Club in Brussels tonight.

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Pianist Jeremy Denk concludes his tour with violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on Sunday. The program includes works by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel. The Mercury News, in previewing Sunday's concert, writes that “the synergistic effect of their performances as a threesome is something to behold.”

Denk’s new album, c. 1300–c. 2000, is “a thoughtfully curated, beautifully played, brilliantly annotated recital,” raves BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. The Sunday Times calls it “thrilling and deft.”

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The Brad Mehldau Trio—Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums—continues its two-week European tour with concerts at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, Netherlands, tonight, Philharmonie Luxembourg in Luxembourg on Saturday, and Nikolaisaal in Potsdam, Germany, on Sunday.

Brad Mehldau’s new album, Finding Gabriel, out next week on Nonesuch, is streaming in full until then as an NPR First Listen. The album “feels both impeccably crafted and wildly out on a limb," says NPR’s Nate Chinen, "rooted in both breath and spirit, and a force that moves in mysterious ways.”

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Gaby Moreno continues to tour as part of A Bowie Celebration: The David Bowie Alumni Tour with a concert at Palais Theatre in St Kilda, Australia, on Saturday. Moreno joins several of Bowie’s past collaborators for the concerts, which continue in Hawaii and Mississippi.

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Yola begins a three-week tour of Ireland and the UK with a sold-out show at Whelan’s in Dublin on Saturday, followed by a set at The Black Box in Belfast on Sunday afternoon, as part of Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. She performs songs from her debut solo album, Walk Through Fire, out now on Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label. The Wall Street Journal declares it “a stunning achievement,” calling Yola “a major vocalist that stands to be remembered as a breakthrough.”