Bernadette Peters

Bernadette Peters has appeared in classic movies such as The Jerk, Annie, Pink Cadillac, and Pennies from Heaven, as well as innumerable TV shows including Ally McBeal, for which she received an Emmy nod. But musical theater obviously still runs in the veins of this 60-year-old, Queens-born actress and singer…

Bayonics

Judging by Bayonics’ mix of hip-hop, reggae, funk, and salsa sounds, you’d think they were local boys, or maybe an experimental act from some island somewhere. But most of the 10-piece band’s members hail from San Francisco’s Mission District. The group holds a monthly residence at that city’s Elbo Room…

RBD

Imagine that Rachel Bilson, Adam Brody, and the rest of the hot young-adult stars of The O.C. played together in Newport Harbor’s hottest fake band. Then imagine they decided to take the music offscreen and around the world. Translate their songs into Spanish, and you’d have RBD, one of the…

Arturo Sandoval

Miami owes a great deal to Arturo Sandoval. Not only is he a great civic treasure as one of the world’s premier jazz trumpeters, but also he is the man responsible for bringing jazz to South Florida. Prior to the 2006 opening of the Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club in the…

Lang Lang

For every musical prodigy there’s a horde of rabid critics eager to decry and defame. This is certainly true for Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang. His was a troubled career from the start. At nine years old, after winning contests and playing highly regarded public recitals, Lang Lang was invited…

Spanish Empire

In Miami, the central destination for Latin pop stars, concerts by international heartthrobs are held every day. Even so, Thursday’s show by Spanish singer Miguel Bosé at the James L. Knight Center is special, for Bosé is no ordinary Latin artist. After more than three decades in the music business,…

Check the Credits

He boasts production credits for everyone from Lil Wayne, Fat Joe, and Juelz Santana to Smitty and even Junior Reid. He almost strictly uses samples, plus the heaviest percussion sounds this side of ?uestlove and Travis Barker. And he’s only 26 years old, born and raised in South Florida. Yep,…

Del the Funky Homosapien

Del the Funky Homosapien is an outer-space hip-hop trailblazer, helping to pioneer a weird-for-its-own-sake rap style by focusing on absurdist rhymes and sci-fi storytelling. Though a cousin of Ice Cube’s and a onetime member of the Da Lench Mob, the Bay Area-based Del abandoned his mentors’ gangster tropes but maintained…

Gary Louris

Golden Smog and Jayhawks alum Gary Louris has a knack for crafting heartbreaking yet inspiring pop songs. At his best, on Jayhawks tunes like “Save It for a Rainy Day,” “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” and “It’s Up to You” — plus all the incredible tracks he wrote with…

Kronos Quartet and Wu Man

San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet is globally renowned for championing the works of contemporary classical composers. Though Terry Riley’s profile isn’t as high as that of colleagues Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he is one of the key 1960s innovators of minimalism, that classical genre based upon variations on repetition. (In…

Thrash Tales

If you Google Louisville hardcore punk band Coliseum, you’ll find several dozen reviewers tripping over themselves to compare the power trio’s overtly political, vitriolic, venomous speed rock to British thrash pioneers Motörhead and hardcore stalwarts Discharge. And as the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. “Those are probably the…

Rachel Brown

Contemporary R&B quite often seems like it’s become a victim of its own name. So it’s good to see a fresh face adding something different to the sound; the fact that she’s local makes it that much more enjoyable. Singer/songwriter Rachel Brown is keeping things grown-up and respectfully sexy on…

The Kingston Kid

Why is Janice Turner grinning so widely? It’s just after 7 p.m., 10 days before Christmas 2007, and she’s backstage at the Y-100 Jingle Ball show at the BankAtlantic Center. There’s a bunch of performances due to kick off in about a half-hour, but right now, folks are squeezed into…

Since Today’s a Voting Day

…And folks in Ohio, Texas,Vermont, and Rhode Island are headed to the polls, it only makes since to play some election music. Here’s some Obama love from the Lone Star state. — Jonathan Cunningham…

Concert Review: 15th Annual Caribbean Festival at Bayfront Park

Ky-mani Marley rocking in front of thousands of fans. 15th Annual Caribbean Festival AKA The Bob Marley Festival Saturday, March 1, 2008 Bayfront Park Amphitheater Better than: Staying home and listening to Exodus on repeat. Over the weekend, one of Miami’s most treasured music festivals returned to the city for…

Jacob Jeffries Band to Play SXSW

Austin’s mega music festival, South By Southwest (SXSW) is almost here and there’s a bunch of great bands from around the world that should be headed to Texas for it next week. Last year was a special treat as the Good, the Bad, and the Queen seemed to descend on…

Monday Afternoon Music Fix

By ANDY VIHSTADT Casino King For those of you holding out for the follow-up to LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, Stereogum’s got something to hold you over. The song, “Big Ideas,” will appear in 21, the film adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House. The O.S.T. hits stores March…

Gipsy Kings Tonight at Mizner Park

The Gipsy Kings didn’t set out to redefine world music. They didn’t intend to scandalize the world of traditional Flamenco music through their inclusion of pop instrumentation and rock song structures. They just wanted to make pretty girls dance, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The history of the…

Mudhoney presale tickets now available

Chalk another victory up for the super-cool promoter folks at New Art School. Their latest coup? The legendary Mudhoney!! I don’t want to use the “g” word (ok, grunge) here, but they were one of the first rad bands to come out of Seattle in the late Eighties/early Nineties. And…

The U.S. Military Torture Mix Tape

(Via Idolator). Liberal mag Mother Jones did us all the favor of putting together an imeem streaming play list of songs used during military prison interrogations, according to various leaked documents. And I have to say — I, too, would crack pretty quickly if forced to listen to “Babylon” by…