Saturday, September 30: “Thompson,” the sur- in Teddy Thompson’s name, is not a bad music industry handle – especially if you have any interest whatsoever in the great school of British progressive folk and all of its downhill streams. In that tradition, Teddy’s father Richard Thompson is a royal among royals.

Friday, Sept. 29: He sang with Springsteen. Bono toasted him. Townshend and Lou Reed are among his vocal admirers. A verbal dynamo and complex character in the tradition of Zimmerman, Willie Nile has released no fewer than 11 records. Still, he is NYC’s secret weapon – maybe because that’s just a cool thing to be.

Wednesday, October 4: This is indisputably a supergroup. It finds the great and epochal jazz guitarist John Scofield reuniting with the Jazz Rushmore drummer and Woodstock icon Jack DeJohnette, as well as John Medeski (whose primacy in the reclamation and reinvention of fusion simply cannot be overstated) and Larry Grenadier on bass.

Friday, Sept. 29: Most of the players here, many of whom you’ve heard if not heard of, earned their musical stripes elsewhere but live and work here now, forming a kind of new model collective for the post-industry music world, where you might as well live and play in the Catskills, for all anyone cares. Few, however, take on the Catskills as subject and as inspiration as directly as Koester, the Bard of Pakatakan Mountain.

Friday, Oct. 6: As influential for her funk- and punk-inflected take on singer/songwriter acoustic rock as for her rigorous self-determination and relentlessly energized activism, walking the talk where so many others are content merely to talk it, Ani DiFranco is simply important. She’s a lightning rod for polarized opinion as well, but that just comes with her territory.