Music

CLEVELAND — The families of three women who spent years in captivity inside a Cleveland home celebrated on Tuesday their remarkable rescue, as questions began emerging about why police were called to the house at least twice in recent years yet never went inside. The women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — vanished separately a decade ago while in their teens and early 20s only blocks from the eight-room house where they were found Monday night. Their rescue came when Berry,...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) introduced a new twist at Thursday's bill-signing ceremony in Annapolis: barn dance music. For much of the two-hour event, a compact disc by The Barn Owl Band was piped into the governor's reception room as he and legislative leaders signed more than 250 bills into law. Aides said that O'Malley, a musician himself, had inquired for some time about having music played at the series of bill signings that follow...

Shorty needed a ride home. She got confused sometimes, the result of some undefined mental condition, and wasn't always sure where she'd wandered. Her family knew this about Michelle "Shorty" Knight, all 4 feet 7 inches of her, and that's why they worried. She got in a car. It begins there, with that simple act, a 21-year-old — in many ways still very much a girl — got in a car. Aug. 22, 2002. If she'd looked up in that last moment of freedom, she would have seen a...

BOSTON — Andris (AHN'-driss) Nelsons has been named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The chairman of the 132-year-old orchestra's trustees made the announcement Thursday. The 34-year-old Nelsons, a native of Latvia, said in a statement that he is "deeply honored and touched" by the appointment and plans to make his first appearance in Boston as the orchestra's 15th music director in June. Trustees Chairman Ted Kelly says Nelsons' "unique creativity and visionary...

"You've arrived a day late," said Khyra, the local singer we befriended outside a bar on our first night in Cape Verde. "Yesterday was the big night here in Praia. " In the capital city of this West African island nation off the coast of Senegal, it appears that Friday is the Sunday of the weekend. When people here want to go out to hear some music, dance and drink grogue, the island's potent sugarcane-based spirit, they do it on Thursday, or sextinha (little Friday, as it's known locally)

Street Address A : A big tan house in North Kingstown, Rhode Island; the corner lot of a woody cul de sac near a bike path populated by joggers in Lululemon. Quiet and country charming, a well-landscaped American achievement. This is the house where Katherine Russell grew up, with her parents and two sisters. Street Address Z : An apartment in a rowhouse in Cambridge, Mass., the most run-down structure on an otherwise cheerful block. A building with cracked window panes on the second...

T here I was, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, looking down at the Colorado River. Animal tracks in the snow made a dotted line beside the water. But where, I wondered, were the bighorn sheep? The black bears? I pressed my nose to the glass and followed the tracks carefully, expecting — any second now — to see wildlife. I was in my 40th hour aboard Amtrak , nearly 2,000 miles into a 3,218-mile cross-country adventure. I'd packed five books, my laptop, several movies and hours of music,...

Most people know how the story ends: "Singer Marvin Gaye shot twice by father on the eve of his 45th birthday. " But not as many know the lifetime of events that culminated on that fatal afternoon in 1984 in a 25-room Hollywood mansion, when Marvin Gay Sr. retrieved a .38-caliber revolver, pointed it at his son and squeezed the trigger, shooting Marvin twice in the torso, once at point-blank range. Among fans of Marvin Gaye — the R&B icon who sang about love, pain, war...

A rmeane M. Choksi acknowledges he's a bit of a "gadget freak" in explaining his need for an uber-connected house. Whether he's sitting in his second-floor home office or vacationing out of the country, Choksi can control just about every major component of his mansion in Northwest Washington by touching the screen of his smartphone or tablet. He can preset his drapes in his dining room, living room and south side area of his family room to open at 4 p.m. and close at 10 a.m. to protect his rugs and furniture...

What emerged instantly from Sunday's Bach Sinfonia program of exuberant Latin American baroque music was the powerful urge to move. It was, after all, Cinco de Mayo, a time to kick up your heels and sing. Conductor Daniel Abraham led his chamber-size group of choristers, vocal soloists and instrumentalists through recently discovered and, as yet rarely heard, music from the New World of Central, Caribbean and South America. Until a few scholars discovered piles of forgotten musical...

Amy Grant, "How Mercy Looks From Here" (Capitol Christian) Few singers probe issues of the spirit and of the heart with the warmth and intimacy of Amy Grant. On "How Mercy Looks From Here," her first album of all-original material in a decade, the 52-year-old doesn't try to sound anything other than her age, and the result poignantly examines life's twists and turns with depth and grace. Ignoring pop culture's reliance on outrageousness and shock value, Grant focuses her songs inward,...

On Feb. 9, 2012, Brian McKnight attended record producer Clive Davis's pre-Grammy party at the Beverly Hilton and ran into his old friend Whitney Houston . Two days later, Houston was dead. "She looked good, and I should have told her that," the R&B singer-songwriter recalls. "I don't like to be saying the same thing to her that everyone else is always saying, but when she passed, I thought maybe I should have said it anyway. "To me, when she was at her best, she was the...

NEW YORK — The CW network is bringing a popular radio music series to television and is going heavy on escapist fare in its new programming for next season. As part of a three-year deal, the iHeartRadio Music Festival will air exclusively on the network and stream on CWTV.com following the broadcasts, the CW said Thursday. Other iHeartRadio events, including a Jingle Ball holiday concert, are coming to CW as part of the agreement with Clear Channel Media and Entertainment. The...

NEW YORK — Duncan Sheik is part of an unusual campaign on Kickstarter: Not to get his musical "American Psycho" up and running. It's to make it killer. The Almeida Theatre in London has already agreed to mount the world stage premiere of Bret Easton Ellis' novel this winter but Sheik wants to give it a $150,000 infusion. The Kickstarter campaign, which ends May 24, will go to fund things like more musicians, better sets and top-notch lights. As of Thursday morning, it had...

CHICAGO — As the guitarist strums and softly sings a lullaby in Spanish, tiny Augustin Morales stops squirming in his hospital crib and closes his eyes. This is therapy in a newborn intensive care unit, and research suggests that music may help those born way too soon adapt to life outside the womb. Some tiny preemies are too small and fragile to be held and comforted by human touch, and many are often fussy and show other signs of stress. Other common...

At Chuck Brown's memorial service last May, city officials spoke lovingly of the Godfather's creation — perhaps unaware that Washington's heartbeat had been exiled to the suburbs years ago. Go-go music has helped define life in Washington for more than three decades, but in a city continuously transformed by spasms of gentrification, dozens of go-go clubs have been closed, shuttered, razed or condo-fied. Now, a year after the his death , the style of...

Water down the gene pool that birthed fiery hip-hop dramas like " 8 Mile " and " Hustle & Flow " and you're left with " Filly Brown . " A routine music business cautionary tale, the film shuffles its decks ever so slightly by casting a Latino actress as its lead, but doesn't do enough to shed the exasperating confines of the star-is-born genre. Gina Rodriguez breaks a sweat trying to rescue "Filly Brown" from mediocrity. A versatile young talent, she's asked to keep a lot of plates spinning in this Sundance Film Festival favorite...

When is a $20 ticket not a $20 ticket? When you buy it online. That convenience of clicking costs you some serious cash. The easy solution? Buy at the box office. No matter the venue, there are serious savings to be had. And that's even if you factor in a few bucks for gas or Metro costs to get you there. -- David Malitz

SAN FRANCISCO — Google used its annual conference for software developers to unveil several new products, services and features. They include enhancements for online games, maps, search, music and photos and are meant to help the company cement its role in people's technological lives. Here's a look at some of the announcements made at Wednesday's keynote at Google I/O. ___ MUSIC STREAMING: All Access will blend songs you have already uploaded to your online libraries with millions of other...