Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Broken Social Scene and others are to play the 8th Annual Village Voice Siren Music Festival. [Village Voice]

Legendary Scottish pop duo the Vaselines are reforming for their first shows since 1990! First up a gig at Scotland’s Tigerfest on May 16th, then they’ll be playing Sub Pop’s 20th Birthday bash in July. Also newly announced for SP20’s lineup are Eric’s Trip and Les Thugs. [NME/Sub Pop]

The Police will play the last show of their reunion tour in NYC. [NME]

Italian conductor Ricardo Muti named music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. [Sun Times]

Neil Young unveils his Java/Blu-ray multi-media archive. [CNet]

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Beginning with 1983’s New York Second Line, trumpeter Terence Blanchard and saxophonist Donald Harrison released a handful of albums that sprung from their time growing up in New Orleans and as members in drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Bringing to mind the iconic pairing of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, the Harrison/Blanchard albums — 1983’s New York Second Line, 1984’s Discernment, 1986’s Nascence all on Concord and 1987’s Crystal Stair and 1988’s Black Pearl on Columbia — were a mix of acoustic hard bop, standards and some adventurous post-bop originals that often referenced New Orleans themes and rhythms. In that sense, the duo was sometimes compared, both favorably and unfavorably, to their fellow New Orleanian contemporaries and Messenger-alums Wynton and Branford Marsalis. As such, these recordings are often disregarded as well studied, but ultimately derivative neo-bop albums that aped the Marsalis mold of conservative, cerebral, double-breasted suit wearing modal jazz — which is in itself an oft-stated party line dismissal of Wynton’s music, but that’s an argument for another day.

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Journeyman Detroit jazz saxophonist Donald Walden has passed away. [Detroit Free Press]

Pete Doherty is finally headed to jail. [NME.com]

George Strait tops R.E.M. on the charts, marking his fourth Number One on Billboard’s Top 200. [Billboard.com]

The script for High School Musical 4 is apparently in the process of being written. [BBC]
 
 
Singer Toni Braxton has been hospitalized. [Eonline]

Coldplay puts people to sleep. Well, duh! [Contactmusic]

Hanging tough after 22 years, New Kids On The Block appeared on The Today Show this morning to announce an upcoming reunion tour and brand new album. [Today.msnbc.msn.com]

Bobby Brown makes some sensational claims about his ex-wife in his upcoming autobiography, “Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But.” [tv.popcrunch.com]

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Mariah Carey and Madonna both surpassed two of Elvis’ chart records this week. [nytimes.com]

The New York Times has launched Measure for Measure, a songwriting blog with Andrew Bird, Suzanne Vega and Roseanne Cash among its contributors. [nytimes.com]

Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell will play an “Irish murder victim” alongside Samantha Morton and Robert Carlyle in Irvine Welsh’s upcoming film The Meat Trade. [nme.com]

The Velvet Revolver split is getting ugly. [AOL.com]

Mötley Crüe continues to exist; hypes new album. [RollingStone.com]

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What do Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Horace Tapscott, Earth, Wind & Fire, Frank Zappa, Busta Rhymes, Billy Higgins, Chuck Jackson and the lost funk group Chameleon all have in common? Los Angeles saxophonist Azar Lawrence, that’s what.

Released in 1974 on Prestige, Bridge Into The New Age was the first of three albums Lawrence recorded as a leader for Prestige — all before he was 25 (this one when he was a pup of 21). But Lawrence had logged some serious time with Tyner (getting the first notices for his work on the pianist’s classic Enlightenment set from 1973). He had also played on Davis’s freaky live funk date at Carnegie Hall, released in 1974 as Dark Magus. Beatheads and crate-diggers, the true cultural archeologists of our age, God bless them, have been onto this maddeningly out-of-print licorice pizza for years.

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There’s no better way to get geared up for a festive celebration of St. Patrick’s Day than to listen to some excellent Irish singing (although I suppose that there are those who would argue that a few pints of Guinness might also be effective). The group Anúna is about as famous as a choral ensemble can get in popular culture. They received a Grammy for their performance with Riverdance, and their single from that show made it to the Top Ten in the UK. They’ve performed with Elvis Costello, Sinéad O’Conner, Sting, and the Chieftains, and they’re one of the finest groups performing contemporary classical choral music. Their main focus has been 800 years of Irish and Celtic music, much of it arranged or composed by their amazingly gifted conductor, Michael McGlynn. These musical examples give a glimpse of their wonderfully warm tone, sensuous vocal blend, and musical versatility and virtuosity.

Anuna 2002
Fionnghuala:
Crist and St. Marie:
Sí Do Mhaimeo Í;

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Classic film composer Leonard Rosenman died of a heart attack on Monday, March 3, at the age of 83, ending his long battle with Frontotemporal Dementia, a disability that attacks the brain. While Rosenman’s Oscar wins were for films in which he acted as a musical compiler, his signature work was elsewhere, scoring the James Dean features East of Eden (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) in addition to films such as Fantastic Voyage (1966) and the TV adaptation of Flora Rheta Schreiber’s book Sybil (1976) starring Sally Field. The vaunted Hollywood studio system of old was finished by the time Rosenman entered the picture business, and he –- along with his contemporaries Alex North, Earle Hagen and Elmer Bernstein -– represented the first composers in the “New” Hollywood, working on independently produced features supported by the studios, for international productions and in television. Rosenman’s music was uncompromisingly contemporary in style, and was among the first film composers to utilize advanced compositional techniques such as serialism and microtones in major motion pictures. It was an achievement that was rather low-key; however, as even many film score buffs weren’t even aware of Rosenman’s work until the release in 1996 of Nonesuch’s outstanding The Film Music of Leonard Rosenman, conducted by composer John Adams.

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