The definition of diva can range from a woman blessed with great musical talents to one cursed with a difficult or demanding nature. Both ends of that spectrum have been applied to Patti LuPone.The Broadway star drops in at the Palace of Fine Arts on Tuesday for a City Arts & Lectures chat with Steve Winn and possibly a few songs. The subject of the evening — rescheduled from an event canceled last fall — is LuPone and her life and times as chronicled in her recent memoir.
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Back in 1998, Michael Gira, in a unique method, announced the breakup of his cryptic alternative outfit Swans by issuing an anthology of its best live work under the clinical title “Swans Are Dead” — an epitaph if ever there was one. Then he split with his longtime bandmate-partner Jarboe, began signing artists like Lisa Germano, Wooden Wand and Devendra Banhart to his offbeat imprint Young God Records, and carried on for five albums with his next group, Angels of Light.
But only a year ago, Gira’s MySpace page bore an eerie message: “Swans are not dead.”
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Sunny-voiced Bethany Cosentino might be the most in-demand collaborator in modern music. The Best Coast singer’s roster of recent outside assignments includes recordings with Black Iris (“When Will I Feel Love”), Weezer (“Go Away”), Kid Cudi and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij (“All Summer,” tracked for Converse shoes), and Britain’s brilliant Go! Team (“Rolling Blackouts” and “Buy Nothing Day”). But she’s even more famous as indie rock’s reigning Crazy Cat Lady, whose pampered feline Snacks — featured on the cover of Best Coast’s “Crazy for You” — has his own Twitter account.
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San Francisco’s Ensemble Parallele, a contemporary chamber opera company, is up for a new adventure, presenting the local premiere of Philip Glass’ “Orphée” (“Orpheus”) this weekend at Herbst Theatre.Ensemble Parallele music director and conductor Nicole Paiement is at the helm of the production, featuring one of Glass’ more accessible scores, with design and direction by Brian Staufenbiel.
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The past year has been a banner one for Justin Townes Earle.The 29-year-old twangsmith landed a cameo on HBO’s New Orleans-based drama “Treme,” playing guitar behind the troubadour character Harley — played by his real-life father, Steve Earle.GQ Magazine just named him one of 2010’s 25 Best Dressed Men, thanks to his angular Billy Reid-designed suits. And he’s just made the best album of his career, the R&B-meets-Carter-Family-ish new “Harlem River Blues” on Bloodshot. All rock-solid reasons to be cheerful.
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Russell Pollard learned a lot sitting behind the drum kit for alternative acts such as Alaska and Sebadoh. Lessons, he says, about things not to do, like be mean to the crowd or get so drunk that you can’t play. He adds, “Another thing I picked up from being in the background is to have empathy for your bandmates. If you’re always the front guy who’s never known any different, you just don’t have that perspective.” He applies the information to his work as guitarist and vocalist for Everest, the eclectic outfit he formed four years ago.
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Even before his untimely death, Michael Jackson had become one of the most parodied pop stars in history, denigrated for his plastic surgery and infantile eccentricities.But focusing on the music side of Jackson’s artistry, the Bay Area Michael Jackson tribute band Foreverland is making its mark. With more than 70 performances under its belt in 2010, the 14-piece band continues to build momentum in 2011 with a show Friday at Redwood City’s Fox Theatre.
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When Danny O’Reilly and his Irish rock outfit The Coronas won a Grammy-equivalent Meteor Award in their homeland last year for their sophomore album “Tony Was an Ex-Con,” they were up against Celtic supergroups like U2 and Snow Patrol. “We didn’t think we had a chance of winning,” says the singer, the 25-year-old son of folk artist Mary Black. “So when our name was called out, it was complete and utter shock, and the fact that it was a public vote was the thing that really got us. Even [U2’s] Larry Mullen congratulated us on our Meteor, and said it was well-deserved!”
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You can’t go home again, Thomas Wolfe once declared. But Nicole Atkins would respectfully like to disagree. Four years ago, the gossamer-voiced warbler was on a roll with a stunning debut disc, “Neptune City,” meticulously tracked in Sweden with ace producer Tore Johansson, then fine-tuned by her new label honcho himself, Columbia Records’ Rick Rubin. One covers EP later (“Nicole Atkins Digs Other People’s Songs”), and things started going wrong.
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The opera “Nixon in China” boasts wonderful historical and theatrical scenes and images: among them, “Chairman [Mao] Dances,” Richard M. Nixon arriving in Beijing aboard Air Force One, dwarfing the memory of “Miss Saigon’s” helicopter, and “The Red Detachment of Women” ballet choreographed by Mark Morris.John Adams’ fascinating, groundbreaking work from 1987 is taking a quarter century to be seen in The City where it was born.
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