CONCERTANTE In classical music, there is a time, a place and a score for everything. Just as listening to a full symphony orchestra can be a sumptuous aural banquet, the music of a string quartet - chamber music at its most simple and elegant - is the equivalent of a light lunch: A little here, a little there, not at all heavy on the sauces. Which leads us to Concertante, performing Friday, March 12 for ...

ESPERANZA SPALDING The Spanish word for "hope" is esperanza, and 26-year-old jazz musician Esperanza Spalding is all about giving hope to young people with a passion for music. Most recently, Spalding was invited to perform at President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize reception; she also played at his inauguration in January of 2009. She has released two solo CDs, and collaborated with the likes of Stanley Clarke and Pat Metheney. Spalding, who plays standup bass and ...

Ivan Neville once told a journalist how he named his band. "The guys were playing so nasty and dirty," he explained, "we figured there is nothing funkier than a dumpster."

MUTEMATH The New Orleans quintet has appeared on Letterman, Leno, Ferguson, Kimmel and even Conan. They had a song on the platinum-selling Twilight soundtrack, and won a Grammy in the Best Short Form Music Video category. That was for the song "Typical," and it was one of those extremely rare occasions where the prize was justified: "Typical" is an undeniable, haunting pop/rock song with buzzsaw guitars and relentless drums, and in making the clip, the ...

JOHN BROWN'S BODY Energy remains the key word for this veteran reggae/rock outfit, fronted by dreadlocked vocalist Elliot Martin. Although the New York-based octet has been near the forefront of contemporary, rock and R&B -infused reggae for more than a decade, the music has begun to veer into more experimental arrangements utilizing Dub rhythms, electronic grooves and a bigger world-music vision ("more Massive Attack than Marley," said the New York Daily News). A result of ...

TANNAHILL WEAVERS Named for Robert Tannahill -- Scotland's second best-known poet, after Robert Burns -- this acoustic band is dedicated to preserving the traditional music of Scotland, quite similar in many ways to traditional Irish music, but with notable differences in matters of subject, instrumentation and fierce Tartan pride. There's also the band's legendary onstage energy and presentation. According to a review in the Winnipeg Free Press, "The Tannahill Weavers - properly harnessed - could ...

SONIA LEIGH At five-foot-four and 100 pounds, Atlanta singer/songwriter Sonia Leigh most definitely falls into the "little girl with a big voice" category. But she's no featherweight. Leigh, who'll play the Live Wire Saturday, makes rootsy, country-tinged Americana music that's both poetic and feisty - and she's a formidable guitarist who can sing like a hurricane. Lucinda Williams might be a long-lost relative. Among her influences, the Florida-born Leigh says, were Willie Nelson's seminal Red ...

Thursday's Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra concert in the Lucas Theatre for the Arts is a celebration of - well, duh - Russian composers. The music is vivid, rich and passionate.

  With last week’s appearance by the Hellzapoppin Circus Sideshow, the Wormhole Bar had its best-ever night – it was standing-room-only to see Zamora, the Torture King, Lady Diabla, Penguin Boy and the rest of the self-described “human oddities” to their freaky stuff onstage. They’re ba-a-a-ack. This Saturday, Jan. 23, the Texas-based Hellzapoppin gang will return to the Wormhole. The 10 p.m. show is, you might ...

AFD DOES GNR Welcome to the jungle, 2010-style. Axl Rose may still be floundering around, trying to drum up interest in his latest incarnation of Guns ‘N Roses, but the GNR that exploded into hearts and minds back in '87 with the Appetite For Destruction album, that's the one people are still interested in. Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy and the gang live on in the form of the band called Appetite For Destruction, which bills ...

Together for just over a year, Nighty Night assembled in Carbondale, in Southern Illinois, where the snow falls, heavily, with seasonal predictability. This is, in fact, the band’s first trip south, and it’s as much about getting away from the bitter cold as anything else.

There's probably not too many indoor bluegrass festivals in the United States. Part of the charm of the old-style fests is sitting in your lawn chair, seeing and hearing the various acts come and go on the stage, and sampling whatever wafts by the on the breeze - your neighbor's barbeque, the odd conversation, pickin' around the campfire. Holding a bluegrass festival inside a big concrete building, it could be argued, defeats the purpose. Indoors, you kind of have to pay attention.

Friday's Coastal Jazz Association Christmas concert is a tradition with a hard-won history. Back in the 1950s, Savannah had separate unions for white musicians and black musicians. It was in this period that the Flamingo, a black club on the corner of West Gwinnett Street and Stiles Avenue, would throw a jazz jam every Christmas. Some years, the place - which held more than 300 people - would be packed wall-to-wall with holiday revelers. Among ...

THE MYSTERY THREE HOLIDAY JAM "I have a lot of pedals that'll make the guitar sound like anything but a guitar," says P-Groove stringbender Brock Butler, "and try to combine them in a unique way that doesn't sound cluttered." The decidedly uncluttered Mystery Three consists of Butler, his Perpetual Groove drummer Albert Suttle, and keyboard player Matt McDonald, a former member of Perpetual Groove (he left midway through 2008) and still a pal. That's Butler ...

JONI BISHOP This Nashville-based singer/songwriter has made five CDs, two of them collections of exquisitely arranged Christmas music. Bishop is a vocalist and acoustic guitarist of considerable strength and passion, and her songwriting is deep, and thoughtful - and hopeful, which makes her something of an uncommon delight in this era of mopey and fatalistic musical wordsmithery. Her Steal Away Home album consists of folk arrangements of negro spirituals, gospel tunes and hymns, plus spoken ...