Pianists Mark Robson and Steven Vanhauwaert at Le Salon de Musiques

With the season finale of Le Salon de Musiques along at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s chamber-music friendly fifth floor on Sunday, artistic director and pianist Each Others Way Tabi No Tochuu Francois Chouchan programmed two masterpieces on the two-piano genre: Mozart’s Sonata in D Major and Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 1 (“Fantaisie-tableaux”). Chouchan himself decided on joining Steven Vanhauwaert since the partner of the duo, but when children emergency summoned him returning to Paris, he chose Mark Robson to exchange him. Robson, a founding person in Piano Spheres, happens to be in Liszt mode, using a free recital of song transcriptions scheduled for June 5 in the New york County Museum of Art. And Vanhauwaert, a normal guest performer for that Jacaranda series, recently released a remarkable disc including functions by Schubert, Schumann and Liszt. Still, it absolutely was remarkable that whenever only four rehearsals, Vanhauwaert and Robson could give such exuberant and sensitive accounts of both scores. Mozart’s robust, inventive Sonata became a great vehicle for these superb pianists, whose resonant ensemble playing sounded just like a mini-orchestra. They conveyed a galloping energy inside work’s outer movements. For some reason, one piano involved one yard longer compared to other, so inside a spirit of equality, Vanhauwaert took the bigger Steinway within the Mozart, switching with Robson for that Rachmaninoff. “Size matters,” as Vanhauwaert quipped in a lively champagne-fueled post-concert discussion, a signature event at Le Salon, plus a Patina-catered sandwich and dessert buffet. The pianists gave an uninhibited, richly sonorous reading of Rachmaninoff’s enjoyably florid neo-Romantic early Suite. In the Byronic Adagio, “A Nights Love,” Robson about the first (larger) piano led a Liszt-sized love duet that rose to a triple forte climax. And in the operatic Largo di molto “Tears,” the duo conveyed a new man’s concept of romantic despair. The performance was capped off by their joyously pealing bell effects inside the "Russian Easter" finale. Since its tentative begin in October, Le Salon de Musiques is continuing to grow in stature. I've sampled two previous offerings, both excellent. But Sunday's piano-duo recital really was buzzing. A German consul was there. The crowd Q&A was lively and intelligent, kids were within the audience -- some attending their first classical music performance -- and the young scholar chosen to introduce the background music, Julius Reder Carlson, was focused and insightful. He involved to protect his dissertation for any PhD immediately at UCLA, and told me "this was sound practice." I also overheard several budding musicians asking Vanhauwaert and Robson questions such as "How can you communicate to one another across two concert grands as long as you're performing?" Le Salon just announced its second season of monthly concerts. It looks like the series has come into its own.

Lady Gaga ditched the music and switched to the media on Monday

LONDON (Reuters) – Flamboyant pop star Lady Gaga ditched the music and switched to the media on Monday with a stint as a guest editor at the London headquarters of the global free newspaper network Metro.

Widely regarded as the world's biggest pop star, the 25-year-old New Yorker has also been busy promoting her second full-length studio album "Born This Way" which is available in stores from May 23.

Gaga arrived at Metro's offices wearing pink hair in a beehive style, black high heels, fishnet stockings and a black brassiere-like top.

"I'm sorry if my business attire is a little different" she joked as she shook hands with staff.

Gaga took charge of the morning editorial meeting, offering her opinion on a range of topics from bullying to the Japan earthquake to who her heroes are.

She immediately set out her vision for the paper in her role as guest editor for the day, touching on themes she has already mentioned as part of her mission as an entertainer.

"I feel so privileged I get to make music every day," she told staff. "If you have revolutionary potential you have a moral obligation to make the world a better place."

Her new record is the follow-up to her 2008 debut album "The Fame," which went on to sell more than 12 million copies and topped the charts. An extended play release "The Fame Monster" came out the following year.

Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, has a huge and famously devoted fanbase around the world whom she calls her "little monsters."

In turn she refers to herself as "Mother Monster" whose every public appearance is a piece of performance art and outlandish fashion statement rolled into one, turning her into a cultural phenomenon as much as a musician.

"I really appreciate the opportunity and it's a wonderful chance for me to show the world that little monsters are not just a fan thing, but exist outside the music world altogether," Gaga said of her editing activities at Metro.

Gaga's more notorious outfits to date have included a raw meat dress she wore to the MTV Video Music Awards last year and her arrival at the Grammy Awards in February encased in a giant egg.

"I'm half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times," the "Just Dance" and "Poker Face" singer recently told the Guardian newspaper. "It's best not to ask questions and just enjoy."

It is not all just about enjoyment, however, and music writers and commentators who have interviewed the singer note a messianic dimension to her ambition which appears to go beyond merely selling records.

Her own online biography concludes: "And, now, I'm just trying to change the world one sequin at a time," albeit with "a wink in her eye."

It is not all plain sailing for the multi-Grammy Award winner, however.

The huge impact of The Fame means the pressure is on for Born This Way to match that commercial and critical success.

Religious groups accuse her of blasphemy, there was dissent in the ranks of her legions of fans over the cover art to Born This Way and she has reacted angrily to suggestions that the first single from the new record was copied from Madonna's 1989 hit "Express Yourself."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

“#jetsgo” - Curren$y Above is the video for the new...

“#jetsgo” - Curren$y

Above is the video for the new Curren$y joint (get it?) #jetsgo. The video and song are stellar and prove to me why this dude has become one of my favorite rappers over the past year. Hard working, consistent and the man does it all while being completely stoned out of his mind at all times. I’m excited for his new record Weekend at Burnies as well as the next installment of Pilot Talk. Jet life.

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UK Library Makes Archived World Music Available for Free!

See, this is why I have Google alerts set for about four dozen phrases. This bright morning, I woke up and checked the alert email for "world music." What I got was an article by the Telegraph, a Britain paper, announcing that British Library defer 2,000 a long time of world music recordings online, with free and afford access to anyone who prefer to* hear them. These transcriptions are not polished; they are all funky old field recordings (and pub recordings - there are dozens of drinking songs uncommitted, sung in the most reliable way possible). That's just fine with me, though, and I plan on disbursal a perfectly fair summer day pawing through them. And I'm in among those moods where the more graceless, the better, so I'm attending start in on the Ethnographic Wax Cylinders accumulation... the old binge, some of which is even from the belated 1800s. So go there (as you clog sec... I can accept that some people may not prefer to forego a sunny day for the sake of ethnomusicology) and entrench! By the very act of applying accumulations like these, you're abiding the creation of more of it.

Music Review: Huun Huur Tu & Carmen Rizzo - perpetual

It's no mystery around here that I am mad about Tuvan Throat Singing. I believe there are very few genres of music left in this world that so perfectly capture the burden of the place it sprung by... the terroir, if you'll. I think the echoic nature of the genre has something commotion last - the singers and musicians actually mimic singing winds, chirping birds, hoofbeats, even calling camels and grumbling yaks, and for some reason make it musical and beautiful, also as composite - it's not primitive, it's just finisher to the earth. In the earlier cave-dwelling and desert-roaming a long time of humanity, all music was established on nature sounds, and maybe as art is a reflection of culture, so too is the awfulness of modern pop music chewing over how far we've broken loose from nature. Note that I've zero interest in sleeping in a cave, treehouse, or even out a yurt (um, hi, I won't even live in a tent), and that I beloved my coffeemaker and blowdryer, I have killed a record sextet cacti in my life (let alone my perpetually dying "vegetable patch" - a running family antic), and the thing I've been looking advancing to most this week is the season close of True Blood, so feel free to cut center any time when I start to climb poetic almost the globe and nature, because I'm definitely entirely too comfortable in the present time. Luckily, though, I've inclined a bit bit of hope that pure nature and the present time can be reconciled. Tuvan corps de ballet Huun Huur Tu and producer Carmen Rizzo have teamed up to make Eternal, a CD that blendings traditional partial singing and Tuvan instruments with electronic components. It's among those things that totally coulded - it coulded bad, in point of fact, if done improperly - just, by golly, it acts! I mean, it really acts! The end result of the marriage of 2 worlds is frequenting, intelligent, and just a really concerning listen (and re-listen - I've played it a dozen about times already, and I'm nowhere near disgusted it - it's a keeper, for sure!)... I think I am crazy. Now, it might be pushing it a bit to presume that the clean consolidation of the earthly and the hyper-modern on Eternal is some kind of parable for people like me, who prefer to believe that we can have fantasy shoes and iPhones and still associate with nature and the earth, just a girl can dream, right? And I'll be acting my dreaming with Eternal because my soundtrack, thank you a good deal.

BBC Worldwide Music

BBC Worldwide Music, part of the commercial arm of U.K. broadcaster the BBC, has unveiled two major new U2 shows that it's making available purchasable to international broadcasters.
The programs include the Irish band's roof-top carrying into action on top of BBC Broadcasting House in British capital in Feb 2009.
"U2=BBC: The History" and "U2=BBC" feature undivided material from the BBC archives and a series of extensive audiences with the band.
About 5,000 people delineated the nearby streets to watch the U2 performance, appropriated by aerial and rooftop camera shots, which will boast on both shows but form the base of "U2=BBC." That show - uncommitted as a 30-minute or 50-minute output - also boasts their live set for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, hosted by Jo Whiley also as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the banding.
"U2=BBC: The History" follows the banding career from their earliest a long time live in Belfast in 1981 to the Broadcasting House set in 2009. It draws on nearly thirty yrs of BBC live performances, letting in "Top of the Pops" and "Whistle Test."
"We're very excited to be able to draw together a collection music of some authentically unique BBC performances from the biggest banding on the planet," said Jon Mansfield, head of content developing at BBC Worldwide Music, in a statement. "It's comprised a brilliant opportunity to act with U2 and Universal Music to utilise the durabilities of the BBC Worldwide multi-platform base and reach global consultations with their better BBC performances. This bears on BBC Worldwide's music article strategy, building an telling portfolio of exclusive and singular performances from a lot of the world's greatest artists."
The U2 appearances follow late BBC Worldwide music specials on Oasis and Pet Shop Boys by the BBC archives.

Music Fest early crowds sparse

It's been a slow start to the fledgling 1000 Islands Music Festival.

The crowd for Thursday's acts was in the hundreds and the numbers were similar through the early part of Friday's performances.

There is a historic precedent. Forty years ago in northern New York State, the largest crowds to the Woodstock Festival on the same weekend didn't really coalesce at the beginning.

The comparison draws a laugh from Zoltan Varadi, spokesman for Watson Entertainment, during an interview behind the main stage early Friday afternoon.

He counters with a joke of his own: "But we're hoping a couple of babies are born here," says Varadi, referring to the famous (then infamous) birth of a child - on Max Yasgur's farm 40 years ago.

The same thing isn't likely to take place on the Dingman Farm minutes north of the County Road 32 turnoff from Highway 401.

And if it did, there would be paramedics to assist. Similarly, private and OPP security is pervasive. A lot of other things that happened in Woodstock won't be on the agenda in Gananoque.

Still, the music festival is drawing media attention if not the immediate spectator numbers in the range of 20,000 originally anticipated by organizers.

Varadi said a Rolling Stone reporter is expected to arrive Saturday and write a piece for the magazine. And a feature about the Thousand Islands area using the musicfest as the anchor event has been promised by a Toronto-based daily, he added.

Meanwhile, he was hoping for crowds to increase throughout the day Friday until the evening's feature acts Faber Drive and Simple Plan. And, indeed, the audience was building slowly into the early evening and had grown to nearly 1,000 by the time the up-and-comer Stereos hit the main stage about 5:30 p.m.

Varadi said promoters are hoping for the biggest crowds today when music starts at 11 a.m. and builds to a crescendo with successive performances by Kardinal Offishall, Akon and Snoop Dogg.

A special effort was made to advertise in northern New York urban centres to attract a larger audience for the hip-hop acts, he noted.

He said the plan for the first year is to establish the festival on the local entertainment calendar and build on it for the long term.

Friday's all-Canadian lineup seemed to strike a chord with local music fans. Spectators who spoke with The Recorder and Times were largely from the Kingston-to-Cornwall corridor and ranging north to Perth and Smiths Falls.

A group of four friends from Prescott arrived mid-day Friday with an open mind about the unfamiliar artists and a zeal to see their favourites, Simple Plan and Faber Drive.

Amanda Campbell said they saw Faber Drive before in Ottawa and were eager to catch another performance by the B.C.-based act.

Montreal's Simple Plan made it an even better plan to attend the festival, said Campbell, who was accompanied by Carrie Patterson, Angie Bernier and Rodney Mazur.

Kingston's Andrew Peterson was looking forward to a full day of entertainment. His Stereos T-shirt gave away one of his preferences while he showed another seeking an autograph from Gianni Luminati of Walk Off the Earth.

Peterson was pleased to see the reggae-hip-hop fusion band from Burlington perform and even happier after getting his copies of the band's CDs signed by Luminati.

The good mood of the crowd was evident by the absence of problems on site over the first two days, according to Ontario Provincial Police officers maintaining a presence on the festival grounds.

"There have been no issues. It's been good so far," said Rideau Lakes OPP Const. Doug Owen.

Early Friday evening, OPP conducted an impaired-driving checkpoint on County Road 32 near the junction with Hwy. 401. Results weren't immediately available.

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