The first national tour of John Doyle's Tony Award–winning Sweeney Todd reinvention kicked off at Boston's Colonial Theatre on Tuesday night, to rave reviews. According to Boston Globe critic Louise Kennedy, the production "reveals Stephen Sondheim's dark brilliance in all its cold-blooded glory. It is marvelous and terrible to behold."

Many members of the Broadway cast—who can be heard on the 2006 Nonesuch recording—return for the tour; and as on Broadway, they play their own instruments on stage. According to Kennedy, this "lets us hear the wonderfully consonant dissonances of Sondheim's score more clearly than ever; stripping the music bare reveals its coolly coherent structure and seemingly effortless flow ... It feels truer to the spirit of the piece."

Joining the cast on tour are David Hass as the demon barber himself and Judy Kaye as his cohort in crime, Mrs. Lovett, whom the Globe review calls "nastily hilarious."

To read the complete review in the Boston Globe, visit www.boston.com.

In the October 18 episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, host Bob Boilen opens the show by recalling the first time he heard David Byrne's Knee Plays on cassette, back in 1985. He remembers driving around in his car listening to it—"I played it constantly"—until giving it away as a thank-you gift. He's been waiting 20-plus years for the CD release to replace the missing cassette, and, he says, "It's such a thrill to hear it again."

Learn more about the Knee Plays, from its earliest days as a collaboration with theater director Robert Wilson to the new CD version, at www.kneeplays.com

Listen to the entire episode of All Songs Considered at www.npr.org.

In the October 19 issue of The Guardian, the London newspaper ran the following editorial honoring Philip Glass on the occasion of his 70th birthday celebration, Glassworks, at London's Barbican Centre. The events included a rare performance—the first in London since 1985—of Glass's entire Music in 12 Parts by the Philip Glass Ensemble:

"Few composers of our time have dismantled the barriers between the music of the people and the music of the elite more consistently and creatively than Philip Glass. So it is appropriate that this weekend's celebration of Mr Glass's 70th birthday at London's Barbican Centre should feature not just Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen—two of the many performers from other traditions with whom he has worked through the years—but the remarkable (and, at three-and-a-half hours, remarkably long) Music in 12 Parts, which the composer created for his own ensemble in the early 1970s. There continues to be a lively debate about whether Mr Glass's determination to rid his music of the trappings of the conservatoire and the past has been a new path or a blind alley for modern art music. But the fact that the debate still rages is proof that the question matters. If the critics have often turned up their noses at Mr Glass's abandonment of development and harmony (as well as disharmony) the public—instinctively sensing that he, like them, was for ever changed by Chuck Berry—has generally embraced his focus on rhythm, repetition, volume and duration. The London stage premiere of Mr Glass's 1980 opera about Gandhi, Satyagraha, was one of the great musical events of 2007. Let us hope Mr Glass's latest opera, Appomattox, about the end of the American civil war, which premiered in San Francisco this month, reaches our stages more quickly. Mr Glass's music may be minimalist, but his achievement is massive."

In the October 12 episode of NPR's All Songs Considered, Robert Christgau, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, calls Youssou N'Dour and Super Étoile "the best band in the world." Before closing the episode with the song "4-4-44" from Youssou's new record, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), Christgau urges listeners to catch one of the live shows on Youssou's upcoming US tour: "It's very simple," he says, "If you're within 150 miles, don't miss them."

The entire All Songs Considered episode is available online at npr.org.

Playbill.com reports that ABC's Private Practice, the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off starring Audra McDonald, has been picked up for a full season. The show, which airs Wednesday nights at 9 PM EST, will add nine new episodes for a total of 22 shows this season.

On Audra was among the performers last night at a gala benefit for the Motion Picture & Television Fund hosted by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Hugh Jackman. The MPTF offers retirement care and social services for people in the entertainment industry.

Reporters Without Borders, an organization established to protect freedom of the press around the world, just announced that Youssou N'Dour was among the first to sign its petition calling for the release of Moussa Kaka, the Niger correspondent for Radio France Internationale and Reporters Without Borders. Kaka was arrested on September 20 for being in contact with members of a minority rebel group in Niger and could face life in prison.

To read the petition, click here.

Steve Reich recently participated in a special event at Manhattan's Aish NY as part of the Daniel Pearl World Music Days—an international music celebration promoting tolerance, inspired by the legacy of journalist Daniel Pearl. At the October 9 event, which included a discussion with Reich, the composer played a recording of Daniel Variations, a piece he wrote in Pearl's memory. The recording is set for release on Nonesuch early next year.

The closing night of New York City Center's 2007 Fall for Dance festival, on October 6, featured the Elisa Monte Dance company's signature work, Treading (1979), set to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. This was the fourth annual festival, which kicks off City Center's season with low-priced tickets to see some of the world's greatest dance companies.

On October 27, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles opens La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels, a special exhibit celebrating the cultural history of lowrider cars in a city synonymous with car culture. A standout in the exhibit is El Chavez Ravine—a custom-built ice cream truck commissioned by Ry Cooder. Built off the foundation of a '53 Chevy, the truck was painted in painstaking detail by artist Vincent Valdez to tell the story, as Cooder does in his 2005 album Chavez Ravine, of the largely Mexican-American Los Angeles neighborhood destroyed to make way for Dodgers Stadium in the 1950s.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Lynell George tells the complete story behind the truck in a recent article. An accompanying slideshow, narrated by Valdez, shows the evolution of the vehicle, from metal parts to finished work of art.

The guys of Punch Brothers celebrate the end of a successful day's photo shoot for their upcoming Nonesuch Records debut. The shoot took place in and around Nashville with photographer Autumn de Wilde, who took this one last pic over dinner at East Nashville's Margot Cafe and Bar.