While no major event on the schedule this week trumps all others, there are several concerts that will merit your attention. Three of them are scheduled for Thursday night. If contemporary music was the headliner last week, this week it is early music.

>> Opera Lafayette's bread and butter is in presenting obscure Baroque operas, usually French, sung by exceptional voices and with the help of their fine instrumental ensemble. The group opens its season with a concert performance of Rebel and Francoeur's Zélindor, roi des Sylphes on Thursday (October 4, 8 p.m.). Tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (shown at right) and soprano Heidi Grant Murphy, both singers with international reputations, will sing in the first performance of this opera-ballet since the 18th century. This is the inaugural appearance by Opera Lafayette at the Music Center at Strathmore.

>> The season opener for the Folger Consort is a program of French and Italian cantatas called Groves of Antiquity. The instrumental group is joined by soprano Rosa Lamoreaux and other singers, in the intimate, beautiful venue of the Folger Shakespeare Theater on E. Capitol St. Performances are scheduled for Friday (October 5, 8 p.m.), Saturday (October 6, 5 and 8 p.m.), and Sunday (October 7, 2 p.m.).

>> The Rebel Ensemble comes to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on Sunday (October 7, 7:30 p.m.) to present an all-Vivaldi program featuring L'Estro Armonico.

>> The National Symphony Orchestra opens its season on Thursday, too, pairing the world premiere of Jefferson Friedman's Sacred Heart: Explosion with Beethoven's ninth symphony. There are three chances to hear the program, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, on Thursday (October 4, 7 p.m.), Friday (October 5, 1:30 p.m.), and Saturday (October 6, 8 p.m.).

>> Up in Charm City, John Adams will conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this week, unfortunately with no performance here at Strathmore. The program combines Beethoven's seventh symphony with two works by Adams, on Thursday and Friday (October 4 and 5, 8 p.m.) and a casual concert on Saturday (October 6, 11 a.m.).

Two of our favorite local acts, Le Loup and These United States are taking the main stage of the Black Cat tomorrow night, in celebration of the release of Le Loup's album, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Both bands have graced the pages and stages of DCist in the past, so today we're trying something different. Le Loup's Sam Simkoff and Dan Ryan and TUS' Jesse Elliot and Tom Hnatow have been having an un-moderated email conversation amongst themselves all day. To get you guys ready for tomorrow's show (which also features Thao Nguyen and Get Down Stay Down), take a look at our intimate, meandering, grammar-be-damned, band-on-band interview.

TUS Tom: I have been told that we both had experiences with "lost" dogs on our last tours. Sam/Jesse, care to elaborate?

LL Dan: What up all - today being my last day in my corporate cube, you better believe I just rolled in at 11:15 in a t-shirt. Eff the man!

I think Sam is best suited to handle the lost dog story...

TUS Jesse: it was a dark and stormy night in Providence, Rhode Island. but only because we had our sunglasses on. it was bright out, and daytime. but still Providence. when -- SUDDENLY, FROM OUT OF NOWHERE -- there burst a rabid, fanged animal, criss-crossing the streets in a mad dash for blood! human blood! there were car crashes, pile-ups, screaming children, crying women, fainting men -- in short, Pandemonium! we were eating brunch. needless to say, our brunch was interrupted. our stalwart friend and tour mates Vandaveer and Robby Catholic, whose names sounds like the names of superheroes, leaped into action! no, wait, they lept! no, leapt! frog-like, Vandaveer and Robby the Catholic pounced upon the rabid fanged animal! they subdued it, the savage beast, with a song -- and a dance! their sunglasses were intact. they the rabid fanged beast a can of Alpo from the corner store. the fanged beast refused to eat...

For the continuation of this harrowing tale and more, keep reading after the jump

You waited until the last minute to try to buy tickets for Saturday’s “Hip-Hop Honors” concert, only to discover it sold out. Fear not, because D.C. will be having a number of other noteworthy shows over the next week. First up is Eric Roberson’s Friday night set at the Black Cat.

Who’s Eric Roberson? New Jersey native Roberson began his professional singing and songwriting career while a student in Howard University’s Musical Theatre program in the early 1990s. During his sophomore year, he inked a deal with Warner Brothers Records and released a single, “The Moon,” which received moderate radio play but didn’t parlay Roberson’s career into star status. Instead, he soon lost his recording contract and found himself back in D.C. This seeming defeat actually paid off as he was able to finish his degree and formulate his return to the industry.

The male/female rock duo formula is a time tested tradition. Whether it owes to the simplicity of the setup, the contrasting timbres and harmonies possible, or some sort of subliminal sexual tension is anyone's guess. But from Richard & Linda Thompson to Quasi to the White Stripes to Sonny & Cher, and even, um, Roxette, there's no denying its appeal. The Aquarium popped up in D.C. a full half decade ago, quietly building a following on what started out as the relatively ambient sound of Jason Hutto's electric piano and Laura Harris' drums. Playing at lot of instrumental and somewhat atmospheric material, the music was the perfect complement to the films that were the band's constant onstage accompaniment.

After four years of playing, the band finally found their way into Inner Ear Studios two summers ago to record their self-titled debut album for Dischord records, with the Dismemberment Plan's Jason Caddell behind the boards. The result is easily the catchiest record in the entire Dischord catalog, instantly memorable melodies supported by Hutto's bouncy piano and Hutto's propulsive drumming. Hutto and Harris (the latter of which you may also recognize as the drummer in Benjy Ferree's band, or from her other job working at the Black Cat) may not be as readily recognizable as yesterday's Three Stars band, but what they do share share with Georgie James is a prodigious talent for getting a tune stuck in your head.

Photo by David Holloway.

Say you’re part of that very vocal contingent that is unmoved by, or else just plain hates, Under the Blacklight, the heavily Fleetwood Mac-ified new album from L.A. indie-twangers Rilo Kiley. Maybe you were afraid that the rapturous reception to Rabbit Fur Coat, frontwoman and chief songwriter Jenny Lewis’s solo disc from last year, would spell the end of the band. Or else that Blacklight -- with its not-always-convincing depiction of sexual perversity in Los Angeles, not-always-appropriate melodic sunshine, and a measly two songwriting credits for demoted former co-bandleader Blake Sennett -- would spell the end of the band as we knew it.

Well, take comfort, doomsayers and Blacklight-skeptics: Rilo Kiley’s soulful-if-unexceptional set at the 9:30 Club last night, the first of a sold-out two-night stand, was aimed squarely at you. The 17-song set featured almost as many tunes from 2004’s More Adventurous as from the new record (six and seven, respectively; rock 'n' roll baseball statisticians unite!), and generally kept the Jenny-worship from overwhelming any sense of the band’s chops, which are, for better and worse, more polished than ever. It was Sennett who greeted us after the opening “It’s a Hit,” and who handled most of the song introductions and banter. The cheers that greeted the opening chords of older tunes like “Portions for Foxes” or “I Never” showed that crowd was reacting to something other than just Jenny’s luminous, irreducible Jenny-ness.

As highlighted in this week's Classical Music Agenda, the newly appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maestra Marin Alsop, is the first woman to take the helm of a major American orchestra. Tonight in the Music Center at Strathmore, she will lead the BSO in a program that features Fearful Symmetries by American composer John Adams. Last night, Marin Alsop sat down with John Adams at the quirky alternative venue known as Baltimore Theater Project, to inaugurate Composers in Conversation, a new series that brings living composers to speak to audiences about their music. In an hour-long dialogue, Adams spoke about his admiration for Beethoven, whose seventh symphony he will conduct at the BSO's concerts next week, as well as Mahler, whose Fifth Symphony Marin Alsop will conduct this week.

What Adams hears in Beethoven is the same love of rhythmic drive that is so important in American music, especially jazz, and has had such an influence on his own works. The problem Adams identifies in serial music by the followers of Webern is that "rhythm was atomized" and, although such music "has for some reason become very prestigious," it does not generally appeal to American audiences. Adams and Alsop also spoke about the battle between composition and conducting in Mahler's life. Adams travels a lot to serve as guest conductor with different orchestras, and he finds it difficult to switch gears and come back to a piece abandoned at its midpoint. After eight years of intense composition of exclusively large-scale pieces — two operas (A Flowering Tree and Doctor Atomic), the semi-staged oratorio El Niño, and several major orchestral works — he admits he is exhausted. Seeking to scale back and focus on smaller things to get back his energy, he is presently at work on a second chamber symphony (to be called Son of Chamber Symphony, he joked) and a new piano piece commissioned by Emanuel Ax.

The mercifully brief question period ended with a charming interchange with a young composer in the audience, who wanted to know if Adams has any plans to write music for children. Adams rightly identified the composers who have written the best music for children — Bach, Schumann, Bartók, Britten — all of whom were able to take their greatest ideas and compress them brilliantly into a format that children can play. He sardonically suggested that he could not imagine any of those challenging, serialist composers mentioned earlier being able to do that with their music. It is a telling point, and one wonders equally if Adams will be able to make minimalism relevant to child musicians.

Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform Adams's Fearful Symmetries and Mahler's fifth symphony this weekend, beginning tonight at Strathmore and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore. Next week, John Adams will conduct his own My Father Knew Charles Ives and The Wound-Dresser, with baritone Sanford Sylvan, as well as Beethoven's seventh symphony (October 4 to 6).

We were as surprised as anyone to discover we had never done a Three Stars feature on Georgie James. With a big, heralded entrance onto everyone's radar last year fueled by lots of live shows and an EP that won the hearts of pop lovers throughout the city, they became one of D.C.'s premiere bands. The band is driven by Laura Burhenn and John Davis (formerly of Q and Not U), doing their best take on vocal-driven, 60s- and 70s-inspired pop-rock. They've headlined our own Unbuckled series, the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club, they've opened for international acts like Camera Obscura, and they're fresh off of a tour of the UK and about to embark on an even longer cross-country and international trek, landing home in November for a gig at the Black Cat.

This week, the band released their highly-anticipated full length, Places. Putting some serious, focused time into the album at Inner Ear's Silver Sonya Studio, they re-recorded six of their original seven songs ("Need Your Needs," "Long Week," "Hard Feelings," "Places," "Cheap Champaign," and "More Lights"), and recorded six new tracks. The most notable change from the original recordings is a stark upgrade in production value. You can hear the time and precision that went into each track on Places. Nothing's overpowered by a more prominent element; every instrument and voice is perfectly placed.

We noted awhile ago that the owners of the Birchmere had been in talks to open another venue in Silver Spring — while that has fallen by the wayside, it looks like Live Nation will be moving in instead.

The Clear Channel spinoff, which produces concerts and owns music venues around the country, including Nissan Pavilion, various Fillmores, and the House of Blues chain, signed a letter of intent to build in an old J.C. Penney store across from the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road.

The hall is expected to open in late 2009 or 2010 and will hold 500 people seated or 2,000 standing. For comparison, the 9:30 Club holds 1200. This doesn't spell the end for the Birchmere's plans either however, Free Ride notes that the Alexandria venue is talking to the University of Maryland about a new space. Free Ride also notes the 9:30 Club was looking into the same Silver Spring location as well. And there was also talk of (and opposition to) a House of Blues in Penn Quarter, but we haven't heard much about that in awhile.

The project is expected to cost $10 million, though $8 million of that will come from Montgomery County and the State of Maryland. Seems like a pretty good deal for Live Nation, although the Post notes the venue will be open for public and private events, "local talent nights and community events." They quoted a Live Nation executive rather unsurprisingly saying, "[i]t's not going to be just another rock club," he said, mentioning "rock, folk, blues, jazz, country, comedy and children's entertainment."

We'll reserve judgment on this — maybe the place will be that decent concert hall we're looking for. What do you think? A much-needed venue, or a corporate threat to local music halls?

Photo by Flickr user katmere

England's "Britpop" movement in the mid-1990s has proven to be one of the most enduring music trends of recent memory. Checking the local club listings will reveal all sorts of dance nights aligning themselves with "Cool Britannia," Creation Records and the like. Not many of the bands from that time are still together and making music though. The two stewards of the movement, Blur and Oasis, continue to release records now and then, although the make up of each group has changed somewhat since their respective heyday. If you were asked to name the most prolific artists to come out of the UK during that time period, you'd probably be too busy trying to recall all of Damon Albarn's side projects to perhaps even think of Welsh prog-rockers the Super Furry Animals. But the band has released seven albums since 1996, three other compilations or remix albums, a slew of b-sides and a few E.P.'s for good measure. Gruff Rhys (pronounced Griff Reese), the man responsible for writing a majority of those songs, recently released his second solo album and took the time to answer some of DCist's questions before a gig last week at the Rock and Roll Hotel.

Gruff, you're touring behind your recently released solo record, Candylion, but before we get to that, I want to talk about your "other" musical venture, the Super Furry Animals. The band been together something like 14 years, right?

Yeah. We started doing demos and stuff in 1993.

OK. So if a band has been together that long, is it inevitable that someone from the band is going to do a solo project?

I think so. Sometimes you need to make some solitary work, you know? We’re all pretty busy doing bits and bobs. Because we’ve been together for a long time we’re really strong. We’ve never really stopped touring or recording.

Yeah, you guys are perpetually busy. This year is really no different seeing as how you have a solo record and a group record out now. Candylion has gotten some great reviews. It's a bit different from your first solo record.

My first record took a week to record. It was really spontaneous. I didn’t really know I was making a record. I just went to Gorwell Owen’s house and made a bunch of recordings that ended up being a record. I left in a bunch of mistakes because I wasn’t consciously making a record. I didn’t know it until the final two or three songs that it would be a record. But with Candylion, I knew I was making a record, so I took an extra week to define it a bit more. Musically I wanted to base it all around my acoustic guitar. My plan was to make a really quick record of stripped down songs, but I ended up embellishing it quite a lot, putting drums on it. I kind of got excited while I was making it.

Photo by Kyle Gustafson

Dr. Billy Taylor (pictured with his trio) is a walking history of jazz. He began playing professionally in 1944, and in that capacity he has composed over 350 songs, performed with legends such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and led his own trio for decades. The numerous awards Taylor garnered as a performer and educator include 23 honorary doctoral degrees, two Peabody Awards, an Emmy, a Grammy, and the National Medal of the Arts. Most visibly, Taylor became the arts correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning in the 1980s. Now in his 80s, Taylor has retired from performing and touring regularly but continues to play special events and teach.

Lucky for us, Taylor has also decided to maintain his relationship with The Kennedy Center, which began over a decade ago when he was called to do a radio series. That position eventually led to his being named Artistic Director for the center's jazz series. "The thing I had to do was build a jazz program," he said. "Because I’ve worked with everybody, I would call on the people I worked with over the years."

Nowadays, finding jazz artists to play the Kennedy Center is not a problem, so instead Taylor's focus is on presenting unique programming and artists who deserve wider recognition. "It’s not a secret who the best people are," he said, "but it is a secret about who doesn't t get the recognition they deserve." Taylor cites vocalist Dianne Reeves and pianist Hank Jones as performers who he invited specifically because they are under-recognized. "There is so much to be learned from them," he declares.

While artists such as Reeves and Jones may not have the audience they deserve, Taylor wants to take his programs one step further and also highlight up-and-coming artists. "The whole idea is to bring people who are doing good work and who should get the attention we can bring."

So where does D.C. fit into this series that is mainly comprised of national touring acts? Taylor has plans for that as well. He said, "I hope to focus more on Washington. We’re trying to work with the Millennium Stage and other programs on a way to present Washington."

So without further ado, here is the Fall 2007 Kennedy Center Jazz Season. Later this year, we will tell you about the great shows that are coming to the center in Spring 2008.

Image by Jimmy Katz from Billy Taylor's website

There’s something totally undeniable about the music of Bellman Barker. From the moment they hit the stage, toes start tapping. A verse or two in, heads start bobbing. By the time they hit the chorus, you’ll find yourself wanting to jump up and down like a kid who’s had too much sugary cereal for breakfast. Their recorded output has been compared to late-period Belle & Sebastian and rightfully so — these local lads clearly worship at the same altar of 60s pop. In a live setting, however, the songs take on a life of their own, with the bouncy verses and wide-open choruses adding up to something more power pop than twee. Rest assured, there’s still no shortage of vocal harmonies, a whole lot of hand-claps and more than a few “Oohs” and “Aahs”. DCist caught up with lead singer and guitarist Aaron Estes to talk about the years he spent working as a Blackjack dealer, the unsung heroes of Motown and the secrets of the handlebar mustache. Check out the full interview after the break.

Visit them online at: myspace.com/bellmanbarker

See them next at: The Velvet Lounge, October 27th ("Halloween Spectacular")

Buy their EP at: CDs at MySpace / MP3s at Amie St.

Washington Concert Opera presented the first half of their new season on Sunday night at an admirably full Lisner Auditorium. Rather than a more typical rarity, it was one of the gems of the bel canto repertoire, Vincenzo Bellini's late opera I Puritani, or as bad-girl soprano Anna Netrebko memorably put it, "crap." No one should ever mistake I Puritani for a dramatic masterpiece, but it does have some of the best, most polished, and most demanding music to come from Bellini's pen before his life was cut short. It is an odd choice for WCO, since productions of this opera are hardly rare: last season at the Met, Baltimore Opera in 2004, and even Washington National Opera in 2000.

All of those stagings are not due to the allure of the absurd libretto by Carlo Pepoli, derived from Sir Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality. Seeing the opera staged does little to make the love story of a mentally unstable Puritan girl and a Stuart-royalist cavalier any more plausible, although on a musical basis alone the mad scenes are impossible to distinguish from any other scene in the opera. What has brought listeners back to this opera ever since its premiere, in 1835 at the Théâtre Italien in Paris, is the demanding roles of Elvira and especially Arturo. Once again, conductor Antony Walker, the leader of Australia's adventurous Pinchgut Opera and since 2006 also the music director of Pittsburgh Opera, brought together a cast of powerful and beautiful voices for an extraordinary evening of music.

The outstanding cast not only sang all of Bellini's outrageous high notes and impossibly difficult fioriture, they did so with panache and elegance. Soprano Sarah Coburn was a slender, blonde vision in an amber gown, with a gorgeous coloratura technique, floating pure and piercing high notes over full textures. Her thrilling performance of Qui la voce and the other demanding arias of this role is a reminder of how bel canto arias, especially the cabalette, should be delivered. Unlike Anna Netrebko's visually pleasing but musically sloppy performance at the Met last season, Coburn had the technique to make every note in each run heard clearly, not just a smear of five or six per octave. True, Coburn's Italian vowels crept toward American pronunciation, and her tone could become a little warbly and precious at times, but overall this was a stunning performance.

Photo of soprano Sarah Coburn by Stacy Boge

To cut through all the verbal foreplay and just get right to it, last night, Kings of Leon put on the best concert I've seen all year. Maybe even longer. Not since The Strokes at DAR have I seen a band so well-rehearsed and completely together. And the boys from Tennessee blew Mr. Casablancas and company out of the water.

The set heavily favored older material, mainly bringing in songs from their most recent, Because of the Times, at the very end and encore. Whether they were playing their big rockers or their slower, more soulful numbers, Kings of Leon were absolutely perfect on every track, bounding with energy, hitting every beat and note, and completely owning the crowd.

The most impressive part of the show was the strength of Caleb Followill's voice. It's not a classic one by any stretch, but he didn't waver on the long high bars or crackle on the gravely lyrics once. The other members held their own, too. Even while smacking on gum and blowing bubbles, Nathan Followill kept the booming pace behind the drum kit. The bass and guitar offerings from the other Followills, Jared and Matthew, were on point too. It was a complete sound from a band that didn't screw around, didn't take tiresome tuning breaks, and didn't bother with heavy banter. They played their songs and played them perfectly. Kings of Leon are, to put it simply, pros. Much to the crowd's delight.

Photos by Kyle Gustafson

The morning after seeing Toronto’s Metric, I had a brief water-cooler conversation with a co-worker who had caught the band the last time they rolled through town. “I've always been surprised how quickly that band blew up,” he said. “It seems like they got huge almost overnight.” I nodded in agreement, having seen them fill a 1,200-capacity club the night prior. After giving the matter some thought, however, I realized that Metric’s rise to the top of the indie pops really isn’t that surprising at all. At this point, cynics might be tempted to point to the band’s willingness to license their songs for commercial use (including multiple plays on the post-O.C. tastemaker Grey’s Anatomy) or their close affiliation with other popular Canadian acts (Broken Social Scene, Stars). While there’s no denying that these sorts of tactics have helped expose the band to a wider audience, to accuse Metric of “selling out” is to ignore one fundamental truth: Metric makes—and has always made—extremely accessible pop music. From Emily Haines’ clever yet straightforward lyrics to the band’s catchy, hook-laden arrangements, Metric has always sounded like a band destined for bigger things.

Crystal Castles, on the other hand, seem destined to live out their days in relative, albeit hip, obscurity. The young Canadian duo has everything going for them in terms of credibility—a deal with French electronic imprint Kitsuné, effusive write-ups from Pitchfork and remixes of everyone from Bloc Party to Ed Banger rabble-rouser Uffie—but could stand to work on their performance. Multi-instrumentalist Ethan Fawn was the first to take the stage, building up layers of chirps and beeps until they sounded like a choir of R2 units. This noise eventually gave way to a blunt drum machine beat, some gurgling 8-bit synths and an auxiliary rhythm pounded out on a set of live drums. At this point, single-named vocalist Alice emerged from the side of the stage, grabbed the microphone and started yelling like it was the old 9:30 Club. After the first verse, she started removing her clothing layer-by-layer, until she had stripped down to a T-shirt and skirt. She then proceeded to grab one of the two strobe lights sitting at the front of the stage (the band’s only lighting) and brandished it like a weapon, shining it into the eyes of the front row.

These sorts of theatrics usually draw an audience into a performance, but Alice’s second-rate Karen O posturing only underlined the struggle between her confrontational vocals and the musical backdrop that she often drowned out. While Crystal Castles’ compositions were consistently engaging—think Ladytron but noisier or a more spastic version of the Faint—Alice’s hardcore-style vocals and upstaging antics did little to build upon the band’s arrangements. Crystal Castles certainly have a lot of potential, but for now they’re just putting the “clash” in electroclash.

Photos by Mehan Jayasuriya

MONDAY
>> This ain’t not J-Pop, we swear. If you want good old-fashioned Japanese rock ‘n’ roll (OK, it’s true, we don’t really know what that’s supposed to sound like either), The Captains from some place in Japan (the city name on their MySpace page uses Japanese characters) will drop by The Red & The Black tonight. They will be supported by Sugarcane Crawl, formerly known as Blues Hammer, and D.C.'s The Bourbon Dynasty. 9 p.m. $8.

>> If today's anything like last night was, do whatever it takes to dig up a ticket to the 2nd night of Kings of Leon at the 9:30 Club.

TUESDAY

>> Oooh, baby, we love his way. Peter Frampton will be at The Birchmere both Monday and Tuesday night. 7:30 p.m. Both nights. $75.

>> The Lost Bayou Ramblers, like the Pine Leaf Boys, are showing that Cajun dance music is not just made by over 50 folks for over 50 folks. These young Louisiana guys make accordion, fiddle, acoustic bass, and rhythm guitar led sounds for all ages. Hear ‘em and move to ‘em for free at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.

>> Yeasayer @ Black Cat. Daytrotter.

WEDNESDAY
>> Wednesday night is a good night to break out the dancing shoes (and UFOs and glowsticks and whistles - actually we’ll beat you if you bring the whistles). Five is bringing in the drum and bass talents of LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad from across the pond. Local DJs and artists Bobby Jae, Locks of Intellect and Cakes will also be spinning. 9 p.m. $10.

>> For the dub step fans in the house, head over to Rock and Roll Hotel for a night of local EDM thanks to the talents of Barrios Bros., Mob Barley, Dan Amitai, Lycan and Wicked Sway. 9 p.m. $8.

>> Mixed feelings abound for Rilo Kiley's latest album, Under the Black Light, but their live show should bring back some of their older, better, less live concert series.

Without a doubt, the most important event in classical music this week is the opening of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's season. It will be the occasion of the official installation of Marin Alsop as the group's music director, the first woman to hold that position with a major American symphony orchestra. A celebrated champion of contemporary music, particularly by American composers, Maestra Alsop has come into her new job with a full head of steam, putting together a more exciting program of concerts for this season than we have seen from either of the Washington-Baltimore area's major orchestras in years. Those who attend one of her four opening weekend appearances will be witnessing history in the making.

KEEP IT CONTEMPORARY:
>> Alsop's program this weekend is a daring combination of Gustav Mahler's bombastic yet dancing Fifth Symphony with Fearful Symmetries by neo-Romantic minimalist John Adams (from 1988, with synthesizer and saxophone quartet). The absolute premiere will be on Thursday when the BSO opens the season here at Strathmore (September 27, 8 p.m.), for which a few tickets remain at the time of writing. The group will also give three performances at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, on Friday (September 28, 8 p.m.), Saturday (September 29, 8 p.m.), and Sunday (September 30, 3 p.m.).

>> If you know nothing about Adams or Fearful Symmetries, hear about it directly from the source. John Adams will inaugurate the new Composers in Conversation series sponsored by the BSO, when he appears on Wednesday (September 26, 7:30 p.m.) at Baltimore Theater Project. That means two trips up to Baltimore this week. Tickets: $10.

>> The striking young mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke will give the opening recital of the Young Concert Artists Series on Sunday (September 30, 2 p.m.) in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Judging by her luscious voice and engaging stage presence at Wolf Trap last month, this is a recital not to be missed, especially since the program is an exquisite selection of late 19th- and 20th-century art song. The list of composers includes Barber, Poulenc, Mahler, Debussy, Musto, and Rachmaninoff, and not a chestnut among them. Tickets: $30.

How bad can it be to be Nick Lowe? That shock of fluffy white hair notwithstanding, the guy seems like he doesn’t know what stress is. The onetime Brinsley Schwartz pub-rocker, seminal Stiff Records producer, and punk pioneer releases albums at a glacial pace. He enjoys critical respectability coupled with the kind of low-level semi-fame that comes from being known more for your songwriting and production work than for your singing. In addition to manning the boards for Elvis Costello’s breathless first five albums and penning “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” -- which remains one of the most popular tunes in Costello's catalog -- he produced The Damned’s debut in album in 1977, and The Pretenders debut (with Chris Thomas) in 1980. He also had a minor stateside hit of his own in “Cruel to Be Kind” around the same time. Lowe's own late 70s albums Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust are classics of the New Wave era, introducing listeners to the wry sensibility that Lowe retained even as his musical interests shifted to roots-rock in the 80s and country in the 90s. But for the vast majority of his four-decade career, he's been beloved by music geeks and -- with the exception of the occasional blip here and there -- largely unknown to the general public.

His current phase began with 1994’s The Impossible Bird, the first of four short and seriously soulful albums of pithy and insightful country-pop. When Johnny Cash covered one the songs from that record, “The Beast in Me” for his career-reviving, Grammy-winning 1994 American Recordings LP, it solidified perception of Lowe as a respected elder of songcraft (though he was only in his mid-40s at the time), a persona he acknowledges in the title of his new album, At My Age. (Bruce Springsteen is the same age – 58 – but he’s calling his new album Magic. Whatever you say, Boss.)

Baltimore's Dan Deacon, who plays tonight to a sold-out Black Cat, does things differently. His latest album, the critically acclaimed Spiderman of the Rings, starts with cascading and overlapping samples of Woody Woodpecker's laugh. Usually called an "absurdist composer" rather than solo electronic musician, he packs a crazy sense of humor, samples and loops into a building frenzy on tracks like "Crystal Cat," the 11 minute "Wham City," and "Snake Mistakes."

In concert, Deacon sets up a table on the venue's floor and is surrounded by audience members close enough to touch. The table is covered in mostly older electronic gizmos, keyboards, samplers, drum machines, vocoders, and so on, plus a glowing green skull and a banana iPod for good measure. The high energy music, humor, and close crowd makes for a big dance party and a great show, which some DCists experienced at this year's V Fest. However, the proximity can make for some mishaps, like when the banana iPod and his green skull disappeared at different shows. Thankfully both were later recovered, but again, not something you hear with most musicians.

We interviewed Deacon over email about his music, Baltimore, and playing a show with "Chocolate Rain"'s Tay Zonday. He's playing tonight at the sold out Black Cat with sample crazy Girl Talk, whose V Fest set we also loved, and DIY electro artist White Williams. The interview is after the jump.

>> Tonight, The Alfred Mojica Band, a latin-jazz ensemble, performs at The Bossa Bistro & Lounge. Call 202-667-0088 for details.

>> On Thursday, guitarist Robben Ford (pictured), an alum of Miles Davis' band, takes the stage for a four night stand at Blues Alley. Tickets to the daily 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. sets are available here. $35 + $10 food/drink minimum.

>> HR-57 has some cool things going on this weekend. On Friday, saxophonist Brian Horton brings his quartet to the club for an evening of straight ahead jazz, and Rhythminic Accents performs more of the same on Saturday. 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. $12.

The Millennium Stage, as always, has some cool stuff going on and even though it isn't classified as jazz, you deserve to know about it. All shows are at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public.

>> On Thursday, Ida Lundén is a frequent keyboard and live-electronics player and performer in the fields of improvised music, avant pop, and other experimental music. Her sister, singer and performance artist Sara Lundén, mixes genres like disco, schlager, chanson, and electro in her own unique way. Arturas Bumšteinas premieres a composition for cellos and laptop written for Sonic Circuits, performed by D.C.-area musicians. Part of D.C.’s Sonic Circuits Festival.

>> On Friday, octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson, said to be the last black traditional string band player, exhibits his skills with fellow folk musicians Wayne Martin on fiddle and Bob Carlin, a clawhammer style banjoist.

>> On Saturday, Indo-Canadian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia performs the ghazal form and folk songs of Punjab, her family’s home region, accompanied by tabla, guitar, and harmonium. Both shows are at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Image taken from Robben Ford's MySpace page

Just one night after the Season Opening Night Gala hosted by Washington National Opera, another set of patrons (and the critics of the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post) came together to fill the Kennedy Center Concert Hall to open the National Symphony Orchestra's season on Sunday night. In terms of funds raised, it was the most successful opening ball in the NSO's history, according to Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Blackstone Group billionaire. The nature of the program required some concession to the conventions of the gala concert, with some old favorites, music that high-minded listeners would probably rather eschew.

These popular selections were well played, with warm, suave solo work from principal cellist David Hardy in Suppé's overture to Poet and Peasant and Johann Strauss's Emperor Waltz. Likewise, the oboe solos in the overture to Die Fledermaus (as if it were New Year's Eve) were handled beautifully by Rebecca Henderson, who has been seated as Acting Principal Oboist. Rudolph Vrbsky stepped down from the position, to which he was appointed in 1980, at the beginning of this season to become Assistant Principal. The noticeable improvement in sound from that section, something harped on in recent concerts, is most welcome.

Now that Lang Lang and Yundi Li are old men (25 years old or almost that), China has produced another teenage prodigy, Peng Peng, who lives in New York and attends Juilliard. The choice of Liszt's first piano concerto put the young man into an unfavorable comparison with the recent stellar performances (twice in the Washington area last spring) and recording of this piece by Yundi Li. Not to take away from the remarkable achievement of someone of Peng Peng's age more or less mastering this monstrously difficult piece, but missed details stood out, in the big octaves of the opening bars, minor smudges in the piles of runs, and an inconsistency of tempo for which conductor Leonard Slatkin, embarking on his final season as music director of the NSO, compensated masterfully.

Photo of Renée Fleming at the National Symphony Orchestra Season Opening Ball Concert (September 16, 2007) by Scott Suchman

At the close of last night's concert at the 2007 Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, Executive Producer Charlie Fishman said his friend and mentor, the great Dizzy Gillespie (pictured), who was the focus of this year's proceedings, chose to name his last big band the United Nation (in the singular) Jazz Orchestra to show the oneness of humanity. Fishman went on to say that Dizzy often told his colleagues that human beings all share two characteristics: the color red, because of the blood flowing through our veins, and the beat, because of the beat of our hearts.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes also noted the unifying power of jazz. Just prior to last night's performance, a tribute to Voice of America jazz disc jockey Willis Conover, who in the 1970s was the second most well-known American in the Soviet Union next to Richard Nixon, she cited how Conover's broadcasts brought the true essence of America to people who were on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This uplifting sense of unity and pride in this nation's most democratic art form is the reason that Duke Fest '07 was an unqualified success. We can only hope the powers-that-be were paying attention to this gentle yet powerful message that art and culture can be as effective in diplomacy as guns and bombs.

DCist has already described the artists who played at this year's festival at length, so there is really no purpose in giving a standard reporter's description of this weekend's concerts. To that end, we invite readers who attended the concerts to give us their thoughts of the performances. Though we attended several shows, the music is not the most important thing the audience took away from this year's event, and this is an opportunity to reflect on the broader purpose it might serve.

With musicians from over twenty countries and ranging in age from 12 to 89, the sheer diversity of the talent at this year's festival reflected Dizzy's "One World" ethos. We witnessed jazz's elder statesman Hank Jones, an African American who has played with such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald and even accompanied Marilyn Monroe in her famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," share the stage with Roberta Gambarini, an Italian-born chanteuse whose classic delivery and sense of swing totally mask her roots. Twenty-year old Maryland native Alex Brown, a pianist whose star is on the rise, accompanied the great Paquito D'Rivera, a native of Cuba, in a setting that seamlessly appropriated the musical histories of Europe, the United States, and Latin America.

Image by Herb Ritts from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts website

Outside of Sesame Street and The Cosby Show, there’s only one television program that’s made a substantial impact on me. That show, Yo! MTV Raps, took hip-hop culture from its urban roots and brought it to folks like me living in the nation’s hinterlands. Plus, for those of us pushing or already into our 30s, “Yo!” represents a time when hip-hop music had some semblance of quality and variety. In celebration of a limited edition shoe commemorating this seminal program, Puma held a party Friday night at its Georgetown store in conjunction with Fader Magazine featuring Special Ed.

As one might expect at a free show with complimentary drinks, the store was packed from end to end. A good number of people in the building were sporting Puma sneakers and zip-ups along with a staple of 1990s hip-hop fashion, a backpack. For a second, I had to remind myself it was 2007 because I hadn’t been around hip-hop fashionistas of this sort in at least 10 years.

On Saturday night, Washington National Opera opened its fall season with an oh-so-edgy rendition of a tired old chestnut, Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème. It is the fifth mounting of this opera by WNO since 1984, which works out to a production every four or five years on average. Film director Mariusz Treliński created this new production for the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, which also gave Washington his Butterfly and Andrea Chénier. The aim, laudable if misguided, was to create an image of opera somehow appealing to that infinitely desirable cadre of potential ticket buyers, young adults who have never been to an opera.

If we are to take the world evoked by this Bohème at face value, those mysterious young future opera-goers are slender and reasonably attractive and regularly raid their seemingly endless wardrobes of trendy, tailored clothing before going to neon-lit clubs. They also wear silly costumes, enjoy vaguely smutty, transsexual floor shows, and shoot videos of each other, which all sounds a little too much like the last DCist staff party. Curiously, they bear little resemblance to the desperately poor Bohemians of Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica's libretto. The story is based on episodes from Henry Murger's classic novel Scènes de la vie de bohème, which in fact is not about a loft full of pretty metrosexuals.

Because the singers were chosen more for their tender age and good looks, we are obliged to start there. Tenor Vittorio Grigolo (Rodolfo) and soprano Nicole Cabell (Musetta) have both traded on their striking physiques to sell solo albums of dubious musical worth, and they are beautiful to watch live. It must have been possible, however, to find a Mimi more like a supermodel than Adriana Damato. The closeup headshots and video of the Italian soprano, the latter shot handheld in real time by Rodolfo, were not particularly forgiving. To complete the lead quartet, one could only wonder what Cabell's Musetta saw in the diminutive, nerdy photographer Marcello of Korean baritone Hyung Yun, over whom she towered. If you think this is harsh, read Tim Page's take-down in the Post.

Photo of Adriana Damato and Cast in La Bohème, Washington National Opera, 2007, by Karin Cooper

Monday

>> Ben Harper recorded Lifeline in a studio in Paris, directly after his European tour. As a result he and the Innocent Criminals have put together an album from the heart and at the top of their game that captures his signature modern take on classic soul music. Kick back with them and Piers Faccini tonight at the Warner Theater. $40, 8 p.m.

>> Canadian post-punk instrumental rockers, Do Make Say Think have moved fans and filmmakers alike, with their music featured in several movies including the political epic, Syriana. Tonight they’ll be at the Black Cat with Vandaveer. $12, 8 p.m.

Tuesday

>>Two days, two bands, one album. Akron/Family are the voices behind our Monday night recommendation Do Say Make Think’s latest album, You, You're a History in Rust. The folk-influenced New York-based jam band will be at the Rock and Roll Hotel Tuesday with Greg Davies, Megafaun, and Stamen and Pistils. $12, 8 p.m. doors.

>> Remember the '90s? Local H is taking over the Black Cat's back stage tonight with local glam rockers Death By Sexy (***). $12, 9 p.m.

The classical music season got officially under way this weekend, and there will be more and more choices facing eager listeners. Even if you cannot afford all the concerts you want to attend, since local radio station WETA, at 90.9 FM, went back to a classical format, there is more local music on the airwaves, too. Tune in this evening (September 16, 7 p.m.) to the live broadcast of the National Symphony Orchestra's Season Opening Ball Concert, with soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Peng Peng, from the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. (DCist will have a review on Tuesday.) WETA's other regular programs include a rebroadcast of last year's Madama Butterfly from Washington National Opera on Saturday (September 22, 1:30 p.m.) and a new program called Front Row Washington, featuring a concert performed recently in a local venue (this week, the Eusia String Quartet with pianist James Dick) every Monday at 9 p.m.

OPERA:
>> The most exciting event of the week is the first performance of the Washington Concert Opera, an unstaged rendition of Bellini's bel canto classic I Puritani (September 23, 6 p.m.) at Lisner Auditorium. Staging an opera with such an absurd plot is probably a waste of money, anyway: the reason for its place in the repertory is the demanding and beautiful vocal writing. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee will assay the outrageous high F of Arturo, and soprano Sarah Coburn will sing Elvira's mad scenes, both of them for the first time in their careers. Tickets: $45 to $90 (with a discount for GW students). Some general admission seats, on folding chairs at the back of the auditorium, may be available directly from the WCO office.

>> The Washington National Opera season opened last night with the first performance of Puccini's La Bohème (review forthcoming). The opera is a perennial favorite, perhaps overdone, but some tickets still remain for two of this week's performances (September 19 and 20, 7:30 p.m.). If you cannot find a place this week, there will be a special opportunity next week, through the new Access to Opera Tickets program, to buy $25 tickets to the September 25 and 27 performances (you must go to the Kennedy Center box office on the morning of the performance only). If you want to experience the opera for free, you should go to the live simulcast on the National Mall this Sunday (September 23, 2 p.m.). This opera is a fine introduction to the delights of opera for a neophyte (but, parents, be warned that some details of the production are not exactly child-friendly).

Consider this a warning. The Black Lips, Atlanta's favorite juvenile delinquents, have the capability to turn any live show into a living, breathing OSHA health hazard. Even if managing to avoid the quartet's spit, vomit, blood and urine, one should still expect to exit the club soaked in PBR.

Admittedly, the antics, which have also included on-stage intra-band brawls and makeout sessions, could originally be attributed to both teenage drunkenness and lack of technical ability. However, as the band has improved musically over the past seven years, the flaming drum kit, lit firecrackers, airborne body fluids and errant livestock are no longer a necessary distraction -- but they still remain a powerful draw. No one knows what stunts the Black Lips are going to pull next.

Photo by Daniel Arnold from the band's Myspace.

Betty Rules! is the title of a much-celebrated show for which Amy Ziff, one-third of the long-lived, D.C.-bred pop band Betty, got a Helen Hayes Award nomination last year. I didn’t see it, and I’ve never seen Betty play, so I can’t comment upon its, or their, alleged reign. But I can state with authority the following: Accident, Ziff's one-woman show that opens Theatre J’s new “Incubator Series” of works-in-progress, does not rule.

Oh, it suggests. It probably watches a lot of C-SPAN. Perhaps it even, God help us all, blogs. But rule? ‘Fraid not. It’s too meandering (though it runs only an hour), too smug, too self-congratulatory. It’s meant to be Ziff’s confessional on the precipice of eternity. But alas, she cheats: There isn’t a genuine moment of regret, or even self-doubt, in it. Whenever Ziff supposedly chides herself for a life of rock 'n' roll excess, as when she describes an office visit with an impossibly prudish and judgmental gynecologist, it just comes off as bragging.

It goes down like this: We open on — surprise! — Ziff, regarding her own fresh corpse. Some kind of bathtub mishap, apparently. Or was it? A razor was involved, so there is some ambiguity. The occasion of her demise turns out to be a marvelous opportunity for her to reflect upon her life — as a daughter, as a lover, as a small-time rock star. Projected behind her is a running tally of all the good and bad things she did before shuffling off the old mortal coil. (Good: She was a camp counselor. Bad: She never prayed.) It’s all irresistibly fascinating, especially if your name happens to be Amy Ziff.

Considering that he thrives in paranoia-soaked lyrics, Aesop Rock's live performance felt surprisingly comfortable. He evaded the biting urgency of a Sage Francis or a GZA as he delivered his verbose rhymes with a laid back lope across the stage and frequently distributed high fives. He didn't remind us who he was every ten minutes, nor did he rely on excessive call and response with the audience. Aesop Rock had not come to start a revolution or to throw a party that burned the place down. He didn't need to. Armed with a fresh batch of new tracks, Aesop Rock's taut flow coupled with DJ Big Wiz's dance-inducing beats served as a reminder as to just why he is one of the biggest names in underground hip-hop.

The fact that his new LP, None Shall Pass, has barely been out for two weeks hardly mattered. When he started his set with the album's first two songs, "Keep Off the Lawn" and the title track, a loud and sizable chunk of the audience already knew the chorus and by the end of each song, those who originally hadn't heard the songs also knew what to say. These set the tone for the introduction of his new tracks.

Photo by Laura Foltz

Last week we gave you an overview of all that's going on at the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. This week, we'll tell you a bit more about all the great music happening this weekend as well as our picks for those of you, which is probably all of you, who don't have time to make it out to every show.

>> Tonight's pick is Kurt Rosenwinkel, an inventive guitarist who is not to be missed. He is at Blues Alley along with his stellar band that features saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Ben Street and drummer Rodney Green. Sets are at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets available here. $25 + $10 food/drink minimum.

>> On Thursday, we recommend you check out a very special performance featuring 89-year old piano legend Hank Jones and young Italian vocal sensation Roberta Gambarini (pictured right). Jones has crossed paths with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and is the oldest brother of jazz icons Elvin Jones and Thad Jones. Gambarini is recognized as one of the top jazz vocalists in Europe. The 7:30 p.m. concert takes place at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Tickets are $35 and can be reserved by calling 202-783-7370 or sending an email to reservations@nmwa.org.

>> Also on Thursday night, powerhouse alto sax player Kenny Garrett begins a four night stint at Blues Alley. Sets are at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are available here. $35 + $10 food/drink minimum.

Image of Jones and Gambarini by Rosetti

July 16, 2006 was a very sad day for the D.C. nightlife scene. After one final kick-ass party, the club known as Nation (and before that, The Capital Ballroom), closed its doors to make room for (sniff) more office buildings. Home to the industrial party Alchemy on Thursdays, the electronic party Cubik on Fridays and the gay party Velvet Nation on Saturdays, Nation drew in a very diverse crowd over the course of any given weekend.

Alchemy changed its name to Chronos and moved on over to Five. Velvet Nation decided to quietly fade into the night. Buzzlife Productions, the company behind Cubik, spent the next year throwing occasional parties at various venues including Avenue, the 9:30 Club, Five, RnR Bar & Lounge and Fur.

Although rumblings and rumors had been ongoing for quite sometime, Buzzlife unexpectedly announced last week that it had finally worked out a deal with Fur to once again kick off weekly Friday parties under the moniker “Buzz” starting September 21.

These United States, DCist's favorite local alt-country Unbuckled alums and purveyor of tour diaries, is in the running for a spot in this year's famed CMJ Music Marathon. TUS has been touring relentlessly and doing all the good stuff bands should do, but are still doing all of their booking, promotion, traveling, managing and everything else on their own. Have you seen their tour schedule lately? That's a hell of a lot of stuff to coordinate all by yourself. CMJ is just the type of gig that could introduce this group of dedicated locals to people who could set their career on the right path. Which we all want, right? Right!

So how can you help? First, become a member of Aimie Street, a site that finds the middle ground between iTunes and Facebook. They're holding a contest where members vote to send one of the site's bands to the festival. These United States are facing off against Brooklyn's The Epochs, Massachusetts' Eli Reed & The True Loves, Seattle's Blue Scholars, and New York's Casey Shea.

So, do some locals a solid and head on over to Aimie Street to vote. You've got until Thursday to push TUS into the finals. Now get to clicking!

Photo by Kyle Gustafson

Music can be just as good in another language — just ask, say, Skid Row fans in Moscow. The same is true for Bonde do Role's shows in the States. The trio from Curitiba in southern Brazil sing mostly in Portuguese, and while the meaning of the lyrics doesn't come across, the band's booming beats, goofy samples, and high energy stage antics (dancing, writhing, humping each other) make for a sweaty, ridiculous time.

The group, consisting of MCs Pedro D'Eyrot and Marina Ribatski, and MC/DJ Rodrigo Gorky, is probably the best known member of the baile funk or funk carioca genre, a Brazilian reimagining of hip hop. The band uses obvious clips from American songs and lyrics that Rolling Stone called "comically dirty" and The Guardian called "lascivious to the point of being foul-mouthed." They signed with Philly/Florida DJ Diplo's Mad Decent label, releasing their debut "With Lasers" in June, and we wrote about them when they were in town last year with Diplo and fellow Brazilians CSS.

They're playing at the Black Cat tonight with Philly electro rappers Plastic Little and local experimental audio/visual artist Edie Sedgwick. We interviewed Marina about their hometown, Brazilian versus American crowds, and KFC.

DCist Andrew: Tell me about Curitiba? How's the music scene? It got some press here awhile ago for its city planning, but it's not a very well known city in the U.S.

Marina Ribatski: Well, Curitiba is a really boring city actually, culturally talking, it's more like a business city unfortunately. The musical scene is pretty shit, the only good thing in our city is the Psychobilly scene. There are bands like Six Six Sinners and Ovos Presley that are pretty good. Still there's this Dance music, DJ Vavva, he's really good and we're huge fans of him. But the scene is not really organized, so things tend to end or leave the city like us.

D: How do American audiences compare with Brazilian ones?

MR: For us the mainly difference about playing in U.S. or Brazil is language, it's the best part of playing in Brazil or Portugal. They understand what we sing. The American crowd is really good and collaborative, like they get into the party and interact with us, which is pretty good.

The 2007 edition of The Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, D.C.'s largest music festival, got off to a glowing start with last night's opening gala, held at the Inter-American Development Bank. The show was a bit delayed due to some technical difficulties with the piano, but the organizers wisely chose to hold the curtain in order to fix the problem because, as festival executive producer Charlie Fishman told the audience, "If the musicians be happy, then you be happy."

The musicians were definitely happy and used the opportunity to pay homage to the festival's namesake and to Dizzy Gillespie, whose legacy is the theme of this year's celebration. The invite-only audience of approximately 300 people, which was refreshingly diverse for an event of this nature, was treated to three hours of amazing music that reflected the many faces of jazz, and set the tone for what is sure to be a memorable week of music.

One of the festival's goals is to recognize the city's rich jazz tradition, and so there could be no better opener for the concert than D.C.'s own Davey Yarborough (pictured). Sporting his trademark dreadlocks, Yarborough, jazz director at the Duke Ellington High School for the Perfoming Arts, visited the land of Ellingtonia during his half hour set. With the help of a group of fine local musicians that included drummer Francis Thompson, pianist Jon Ozment, bassist Wes Biles, and trumpeter Chris Will, Yarborough charged through a set of traditional acoustic jazz that included impressive renditions of "Prelude to a Kiss" and a Latin-ized arrangement of "Cottontail." The standout of the group was pianist Ozment, whose playing truly sparkled.

Image of Yarborough by Sharon Farmer; taken from the Washington Jazz Arts Institute website

Since they popped onto the local scene just a few months ago, Le Loup has been making major waves. They were filling local music venues, getting signed to a great label, and setting up tours with big name artists in the time it takes most bands to decide on a name and set up a MySpace page. They've worked their way into our hearts here at DCist too, as a Three Stars band and headlining our most recent Unbuckled show. All this foreplay has built up quite a bit of anticipation for their album, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, which is finally coming out tomorrow.

If you've seen the band live, you'll notice right away that the album seems slightly thinner than what you've heard. That's because you're not hearing the full band on this album: you're just hearing Sam Simkoff. Le Loup was, as most people know by now, his creation. He wrote and recorded the songs himself, long before ever forming the seven person army that currently fills out the band's lineup. Hardly Art was so impressed with the original recordings, they didn't see a need to re-record anything. So rather than hearing four guitars surging at once, and a chorus of varied voices, you're hearing Sam manning everything at once. Which isn't as exciting as the full band, but is still something very special.

2001 was a good year for Radiohead clones. Muse released their second album, Origin of Symmetry, to the fanfare of British rock critics. Coldplay finally attained mainstream success in the United States. And Travis cemented their international popularity with the Nigel Godrich-produced The Invisible Band. Meanwhile, in Denton, Texas (about as far away from Oxford as you can get), five jazz students at the University of North Texas released an EP under the name Midlake. Drawing heavily from Radiohead and the U.K. scene that followed in their wake, Midlake was quickly signed to British indie label Bella Union and a series of high-profile performances at major European festivals followed.

Fast-forward six years to the present. Muse is headlining Lollapalooza and Madison Square Garden. Chris Martin is trotting the globe with wife Gwyneth Paltrow and making guest appearances on Jay-Z and Kanye West records. Meanwhile, Midlake is still little more than a promising buzz band. Despite having achieved modest success in Europe, the band remains relatively unknown in the States outside of critical circles. That fact is particularly depressing when you consider that unlike their aforementioned peers—most of whom have since become synonyms for radio-friendly, middle-of-the-road soft rock—Midlake have managed to create a sound all their own. On last year’s excellent The Trials of Van Occupanther, the band explored the sonics of 70s folk rock, garnering favorable comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and Jackson Browne and a “classic” designation from British tastemaker mag NME. Even though Van Occupanther appeared in a number of year-end lists on both sides of the pond, popularity has continued to elude the band. “We just make this album and if it doesn’t do very well, we’ll make another one,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Tim Smith said, summing up the band’s plight in a particularly mopey interview with Express last week.

Given Midlake’s relative lack of visibility stateside, it should come as no surprise that the band failed to draw much of a crowd to the Black Cat on Thursday night. By the time opening act Dawn Landes took the stage at 9, only a handful of folks had collected at the foot of the stage. That’s a shame, because the eclectic Landes turned out to be the most consistently rewarding performer of the night. The New York-by-way-of-Louisville songwriter was joined on stage by only a cellist and a drummer manning a trap set—all three wore matching blue jumpsuits and looked slightly out of place, as if they had wandered on stage while looking for the janitor’s closet. This initial awkwardness quickly dissipated, however, as the band drew in the few onlookers present with a set of rollicking, folk-inspired tunes. While the drummer occasionally switched to a harmonica or synthesizer, the cellist sporadically reached for a flute; Landes, however, stuck to the guitar, focusing mostly on keeping the songs grounded with her voice—an enchanting mix of Leslie Feist’s confidence and Jenny Lewis’ girl-next-door charm.

Photos by Mehan Jayasuriya

MONDAY
>> They put it pretty well themselves, and since it's all about them anyway, we're just going to repeat what the Black Cat had to say about their anniversary party tonight: "After 14 years of pouring you guys drinks, then picking up the glasses, working the doors, and sweeping the floors, we've decided that it's time to dedicate a night to ourselves. Black Cat staff bands, staff DJs, and staffers will be hanging out and reflecting on 14 years well spent. You can come too." Free, backstage, 8 p.m.

>> Indie rap's man of the moment, Aesop Rock, is taking over the 9:30 Club this evening, brining his dense verbosity and slick beats right along with him. $20

>> D.C.'s Stewart Lupton and his band, The Child Ballads, are sharing the Rock & Roll Hotel's stage tonight with psychedelic rockers Silver Apples and The Moon Upstairs. $10, 8:30 p.m.

>> The Velvet Lounge is hosting Not Bullshit, "the DJ night for people who hate DJ nights, curated by mem. of The Points and Kohoutek." Judging by the comments on last week's WMA, that describes several of you out there.

>> Lil' Brian and the Travelers used to be known as Lil’ Brian and the Zydeco Travelers but since these Texans blend funk with zydeco they’ve decided to shorten the name. Their music will make you move no matter what they call themselves. At Iota, $10, 8:30 p.m.

TUESDAY
>> What we've heard of her new album hasn't really convinced us of anything in the way of musical maturity, but we can't help it. We love Mandy Moore. The actress, the spokesperson, the celebrity, the singer, the reality TV star, we love it all. Apparently, we're not alone, because her show at the Birchmere is sold out.

>> The Noisettes at the Rock & Roll Hotel this week has been canceled. Check out their website for refund information.

>> DC9's got a great indie rock lineup tonight, with locals The Daybreak Line and The Beanstalk Library, who we recently profiled in a Three Stars piece, and Athens, GA's The Winter Sounds. $8

>> Brazilian college kids Bonde de Role’s blend of baile funk, schlock metal guitar riffs, techno and rap with sleezy Portuguese lyrics over top has some folks raving that they’re fun and others sneering that they’re a bad gimmick. Love ‘em or hate ‘em at the Black Cat. With the uncategorizable local wonder that is Edie Sedgewick. $12, 8 p.m.

Classical music has come back from summer vacation, and that means you actually have a choice of concerts this week. Most importantly, many of the city's leading groups are opening the season with glittering events. Look for reviews next week.

>> Washington National Opera is opening its fall season with one of the most popular operas in the repertoire, Puccini's La Bohème (September 15 to 30). For all its audience-pleasing qualities, this opera is a tired old warhorse, but it is an excellent choice as an introduction for a neophyte. Already, five of the nine performances have sold out. The company has some initiatives to help you attend, if price is an issue. You should join Generation O if you are 18 to 35 years old. There will also be two performances (September 25 and 27) in the new Access to Opera Tickets offer. Last-minute tickets will be sold for $25, only at the box office and only on the day of the performance, starting at 10 a.m.

If you still cannot get yourself into the Kennedy Center Opera House, wait for the the live simulcast (September 23, 2 pm), which can be viewed on the large outdoor screen on the National Mall or in Silver Spring's AFI Silver Theatre and Alexandria's Old Town Theater, all free. You can even spend your Saturday afternoon (September 15, 1:30 p.m.) listening to one of last year's performances of Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice on WETA (90.9 FM). You can read my review while you listen.

>> After Saturday night's opening gala at the opera, it is ironic that the most famous opera singer of the weekend will appear with the National Symphony Orchestra, on its Season Opening Ball Concert (September 16, 7 p.m.) in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Solo performances will be offered by soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Peng Peng, a billing which has caused the concert to sell out already. If you cannot find a way in, you can listen to the concert live on the radio (again, WETA 90.9 FM). Champagne and ball gowns not provided.

>> Another important opening is the first concert (September 15, 6 p.m.) in the Emerson Quartet's Smithsonian Resident Associates concert series at the National Museum of Natural History. The program has Haydn and Beethoven, but the real draw is the chance to hear Kaija Saariaho's Terra Memoria.

Photo of Renée Fleming by Andrew Eccles, courtesy of Decca Classics

The thing about mellow bands is no matter how good they are on record, they can be less than ideal to watch live. Unfortunately that was the case with Au Revoir Simone last night at the Rock and Roll Hotel.

The three woman, three keyboard band from Brooklyn (none of whom are named Simone), play poppy, sweet indie that's light on vocals. They're busy these days, touring Japan in December and writing about it for our sister site Gothamist, and they're off to Europe with Air soon.

Their drum machine-backed songs are gentle, subtle, mid-tempo, and great to listen to when reading or relaxing or sitting out on a sunny day — but that's not the Rock and Roll Hotel. Which is a shame, because the band is fun and likable, switching vocal duties and adding the occasional melodica in concert. And they're definitely cute — just see their music videos, where they're making cookies and hanging around in treehouses. We didn't expect to get our faces rocked off at the show, but a dark club at 11 p.m. on Wednesday was just too late to see quiet music. They'd be great to see earlier in the day, or maybe sitting somewhere like a grassy amphitheater.

Au Revoir Simone photo from their Myspace

Plan your naps accordingly, set your alarms, and stock up on your Red Bull, folks. The DCist, Blisspop and Brightest Young Things super duper 9:30 Club extravaganza is finally upon us! At the ripe old age of 3, we're wondering if we can still muster the energy for a show that starts at 11 p.m., but with the talents of DJ Will Eastman, Georgie James, The Dance Party and Soft Complex luring us towards 815 V Street, we think we can manage.

All of the aforementioned artists have graced DCist's pages in the past. Georgie James has played Unbuckled, DJ'd Unbuckled, and been discussed at length around these parts. Their full length Saddle Creek release, Places, is dropping on 9/25 and has found all sorts of praise around the internets, and from people who've ridden in my car recently. We've yet to see the lovely Ms. Burhenn and the wonderful Mr. Davis find a live crowd they couldn't make smile, and we're looking forward to more of the same.

Today’s kids probably think rappers have always been purveyors of commercial goods. 50 Cent has Vitamin Water. Diddy and Burger King are partners. Common probably even folds every shirt at The Gap. However, there was a time when rappers weren’t viable salespeople because their music wasn’t reaching a broad segment of the population. In 1990, a Bay Area entertainer who went by the moniker MC Hammer helped set rap on track to be a cultural juggernaut.

His second major label album, Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, went Diamond in sales due to the ubiquitous “U Can’t Touch This.” The catchy Rick James’ “Super Freak” looped track along with the infamous “Typewriter” dance propelled Hammer into the economic stratosphere. Pepsi came knocking. The British Knights shoe company signed him to a $138 million deal. There was a Hammer doll. And how can we forget the cartoon?

The next calendar year saw Hammer release an album with the title track “Too Legit To Quit.” While it sold three million copies and its own hand signs, Legit couldn’t match Please in terms of impact. Shortly thereafter came the unraveling of MC Hammer's empire. Subsequent recordings drew more criticism than listeners. Excesses such as a bloated payroll, cars, race horses, and an immaculate mansion helped push him into bankruptcy. Throw in a stint with Suge Knight’s Death Row Records and all the elements for a made-for-TV movie were present.

But as they say, the show must go on. Hammer appeared on the “Surreal Life” reality program. He’s still putting out albums and videos in addition to blogging. The commercial endorsements haven’t completely dried up yet but they’re more likely to bring up the fact that he lost just about everything he owned, as he did in a recent Nationwide insurance spot. Whatever one might think about MC Hammer, a tip-of-the-hat is due for his efforts to make rap music more acceptable, and thus more marketable, to the general public. A lot of rappers are wealthier for it.

Image from Yahoo! TV website

MC Hammer performs at the Woodrow Wilson Plaza at the Ronald Reagan Building tonight at 7 p.m. Admission is free. This event is part of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' "D.C. Grooves" concert series.

This Friday marks the start of D.C.'s Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, which will run through September 29 at venues around the city. The festival traces its roots back to 1993, when the American Composer's Forum (ACF) curated a traveling program that was hosted by ACF chapters across the country and offered to any venue interested in presenting music based on electronic technology. The D.C. chapter of ACF first hosted the festival in 2000, and while the national chapter stopped its program in 2004, D.C. has continued to mount the annual event. Last year's festival featured just four nights worth of performances, but this year the event has grown to seventeen performances over three weeks that feature over seventy artists from around the globe.

"Experimental music is an easy classifier for music which can't be pigeon holed into popular genres," said Jeff Surak, Executive Director of the festival. Instead of using the term as a label for the music, he chooses to look at the music from the audience's point of view. "Some of the sounds are seductive, and some are harsh, but in the end it's all beautiful music and a celebration of audio extremes."

Image from the Sonic Circuits website

We'll have a full preview tomorrow, but here's a friendly video reminder about the show we're co-sponsoring with BrightestYoungThings and Blisspop at 9:30 Club, featuring Georgie James, Soft Complex, The Dance Party and a set by DJ Will Eastman. This Saturday at 11 p.m. for a late show, $10.

>> The Classical Music Agenda will return this Sunday, after hibernating all summer, but there are already a few developments to note this week in local classical news. Robert Shafer is a legend in the local choral music scene, as the long-standing director of the Oratorio Society of Washington, known in recent years as the Washington Chorus. Shafer's particular gift is to inspire a huge group — some 200 singers, none (or few) of them professionals — and draw from them as memorable and unified a performance as he can. After leading the group in a Grammy award-winning recording of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, Shafer was as surprised as anyone when, after asking for a sabbatical, he was pushed out of his position. The group will be led this season by three different guest conductors.

Not ready to retire, Shafer has embarked on a new venture, muddying the already overpopulated choral waters of Washington with yet another volunteer chorus, the City Choir of Washington. The move to a smaller group, described as 90 voices, has apparently been liberating in terms of Shafer's choice of repertory for his first season. It is all Baroque and none of it the chestnuts that are the bread and butter of his former group: Handel's Solomon (November 16) and Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, especially. We can all be thankful that there will not be yet another Messiah this December, at least not this season.

>> In the immediate future, the following concerts this weekend are of particular interest. The first recommendation of the season goes to the revival of American Opera Theater's Ground (September 7 to 9), which will inaugurate the company's residency at Davis Performing Arts Center, on the campus of Georgetown University. When the experimental opera troupe from Baltimore (formerly known as Ignoti Dei Opera), presented Ground at Baltimore Theater Project last summer, it received a stellar review from a certain local critic. For its musical score, Ground patches together a series of unrelated vocal and instrumental pieces from 17th century Italy. Most of the music is built over repeating bass patterns (known in English as ground bass), a compositional process that is static harmonically but that pulsates with rhythmic variation and invites visual diversion.

Photo of Brian Cummings in Ground by Greg McLeskey, courtesy of American Opera Theater

It's been almost two years since VHS or Beta brought their explosive electronic rock to a non-DJ show in D.C., which is too long for us. On Saturday the Kentuckians came to the Rock and Roll Hotel, bringing buzz band Walter Meego and local faves The Vita Ruins.

Unfortunately we missed The Vita Ruins' opening set, but judging by our past experience, the atmospheric Three Stars and Unbuckled alums put on a good show.

Walter Meego, which sounds like the name of a German guy but is actually a duo from Chicago, play more traditional electronic-focused indie dance music. The name comes from band member Justin Sconza's joking alter ego, Walter Meego. Joined by a third musician on stage, you may not get a particularly innovative sound from them, but it's good dance music and gets booties moving, which is the whole idea anyway. "Girls," for example, starts out sounding like "Homework" era Daft Punk and ends like "Discovery" era Daft Punk, while other songs had Ratatat-style guitars or Hot Chip-style funk. "Through a Keyhole" was a highlight, with the potential to be an indie dance party fave. The band just signed to Almost Gold and are working on finishing their first album.

VHS or Beta are consistently great or better in concert, and this show didn't disappoint. The band plays expansive dance rock with big hooks and a minimum of keyboards and samples. Touring in support of their new album, "Bring on the Comets," which is more straight-forward than the overlooked "Night on Fire," the band fills the space with echoing guitars, booming bass guitar, and precise drumming. Singer Craig Pfunder sounds like Robert Smith of The Cure, and the band builds energy until nearly everybody in the packed room was dancing. Pfunder told the crowd the band loved playing D.C., but unfortunately both Walter Meego's and VHS or Beta's sets seemed a little short. But that's a minor quibble judging by the sweaty mass at the end of the show.

Walter Meego photo from their Myspace

Though it is not yet recognized as such by the jazz audience at large, the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival's organizers have achieved their goals of mounting a world class festival by assembling a roster of top flight talent, which includes Latin jazz legend and festival artistic adviser Paquito D'Rivera (pictured). These jazz greats will grace stages across the city over the course of the nine day festival, which begins on September 9 with a Taiko drumming performance on the Millennium Stage.

This year marks the annual event's third installment and the festival's theme is a celebration of the 90th anniversary of jazz icon John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie's birth. Dizzy's legacy makes an especially appropriate theme for a jazz festival held in D.C. because of his unique stature as the first true jazz ambassador. In 1956, Diz was the first jazz musician to serve as a cultural ambassador for the United States State Department and in that capacity he toured Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece, Turkey, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. His musical genius and public service led to numerous awards including the National Medal of the Arts, a Grammy lifetime achievement award and the Kennedy Center Honors.

The driving force behind the festival is its executive producer, Charlie Fishman. A veteran jazz producer, he was Gillespie's personal manager and producer from 1985 until Gillespie’s death in 1993. His experience in the music business is a large part of why such a young festival can attract such an impressive level of talent. "As far as the artists," said Mr. Fishman, "I’ve been lucky because I’ve worked with all of them, so we have access that other festivals in our position might not have."

Image courtesy of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival

TUESDAY

>>If you like your rock hard, Rock and Roll Hotel is the place to be tonight. Burning Brides, who've been building a fanbase for nearly a decade now on solid riffing and opening slots with big names like A Perfect Circle and Queens of the Stone Age. Locals Wooly Mammoth (pictured) open, along with The Exponentials 8 p.m., $10 advance, $12 door.

>> Classic '80s college radio staples Hoodoo Gurus reunited back in 2004, and just kept on going. They'll be playing tunes from a career spanning over 25 years tonight at the Black Cat with The Fake Accents and Julie Ocean. 8 p.m., $20.

WEDNESDAY

>> Gimme indie rock! Everyone loves The National. One of indie rock's biggest acts at the moment brings their acclaimed show to the 9:30 Club. Joining the boys from Brooklyn are Raleigh's The Rosebuds & Doveman. The entire show will be terribly heartfelt, heartachey, and heartstring-tugging, and all that touchy-feely stuff the indie kids love. If you miss it Wednesday, the program will repeat itself on Thursday. $18

>> He only wants to be with you. He said so, I remember. That may have been over a decade ago, but Darius Rucker hasn't changed his tune, and Hootie & the Blowfish are still around, and not just on a VH1 '90s retrospective show. In fact, they play out in Vienna every year these days. If this was your pleasure, guilty or otherwise, Wolftrap has the nostalgia trip you ordered up. Patrick Davis opens. And all snark aside, for those who are headed to the show, the band requests you bring school supplies from the list on Wolf Trap's website, which will be redistributed to students in need at area schools. 8 p.m., $28-$40

Photo and story by DCist contributor Valerie Paschall

Leave it to Travis Morrison to throw a CD release party, but forget to order CDs. Morrison shrugged it off, offering up several suggestions of places online (including a half-kidding nod to Napster) from where the audience could pick up his latest release, All Y’all. It’s this quirky charm that makes his live show so engaging; Saturday night’s show at Iota would’ve been worth the ticket price for the banter alone. However, Morrison’s complete ownership of the stage also brought life to his otherwise hit-or-miss studio material.

In one of his first shows with his new band, The Hellfighters, Morrison had the opportunity to show and perhaps lift the albatross of the poorly received Travistan off of his back. The Hellfighters complemented Morrison well, backing him with reggae-inspired percussion and funky bass lines, but this was clearly Morrison’s moment to remind the packed house at Iota that he still had stage presence to spare.

At any club other than Iota, The Caribbean’s set would not have gone over as well. On account of the great sound, the audience could still hear singer Michael Kentoff’s low, soothing vocals. The Caribbean’s low-key set had hints of Yo La Tengo (without the spastic guitars) and Stephen Malkmus’ solo material but up until the finale where they really let loose with their effects pedals, wasn’t terribly interesting to watch.

Gist, on the other hand, rose to the occasion. Even during some of their uncharacteristically slower songs, the trio brought the rock with unbridled intensity. In their final show of 2007, Gist previewed songs from next year’s still untitled follow up to Diesel City, showing some more streamlined, albeit still high-octane rockers. They finished with crowd favorites “Eclipse” and “Asunder.”

If you were traveling over the holiday weekend, you would have easily missed the announcement that popular local NPR affiliate WAMU 88.5 FM will be making big changes to their broadcast schedule -- most notably moving the entirety of their popular weekend bluegrass programming to an HD Radio channel, leaving many listeners upset and confused as to how the station could abandon their signature music programs on the regular FM dial. Here's what's going to happen come Sept. 17 (or check out the entire programming scheme here):

WAMU 88.5 FM, as well HD Radio's 88.5-1 and the live stream at wamu.org, will switch to solely news, talk, and information, all the time. This includes the addition of public radio staples like Speaking of Faith and Bob Edwards Weekend, and a few new shows including The State We're In, a collaboration between WAMU 88.5 and Radio Netherlands. The Saturday schedule, including A Prairie Home Companion and This American Life, will stay the same. Sundays, however, will no longer carry any music, and instead focus on programming like Car Talk and repeats of The Diane Rehm Show.

In order to listen to any bluegrass, you'll need either to purchase an HD Radio or be one of the 1,000 individual subscribers selected by WAMU to win a free one. The Sunday bluegrass content, currently airing from 1 a.m. to 4 p.m., will move to HD at 88.5-2, where it will join the prerecorded automated music service Bluegrass Country currently heard in HD at 88.5-3, to turn HD 88.5-2 into an all-bluegrass station with live programming.

We got more than a handful of emails from disappointed and upset bluegrass fans, as well as from adherents to the AAA-public station WTMD at 89.7, which has been partnering with WAMU to broadcast independent rock and folk music but will now be relegated to HD 88.5-3 weekdays from midnight to 5 a.m. and 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. What do you think about the change? For those of you who look forward to bluegrass on Sundays every week, will you consider buying an HD Radio? Keep in mind, popular brands retail starting at around $200.

By DCist contributor Valerie Paschall

The members of Syracuse chamber pop act Ra Ra Riot are no strangers to high profile performances. In fact, it was their impressive showings at the two music industry behemoth festivals, CMJ and SXSW, which put them on the map as a band to watch. They have since opened for Bow Wow Wow, Art Brut and actually came through D.C. last month with Tokyo Police Club. They should be well-prepared for their first time at 9:30 Club tonight, as an opener for The Editors (who we reviewed here.

Saying that Ra Ra Riot has been through a whirlwind over the past year and a half would be one of those understatements that would put me up for nomination for a Captain Obvious Award. Ra Ra Riot has only had that long to generate hype as they just formed in January of 2006. Since then, they’ve released their self-titled EP twice, once on their own and again in July through The Rebel Group. In between these two releases, Ra Ra Riot drummer John Pike was found dead in Buzzard’s Bay, Mass., yet, at the wishes of Pike’s family, Ra Ra Riot has continued their relentless touring schedule.

Spoon front man and friend of DCist Britt Daniel has left us another update regarding their upcoming performances in the area. Yes, that's right, we said "performances." Plural. As he hinted at in his last comment, the band is keeping their 10/23 date at the 9:30 Club with The Ponys following the 10/22 gig with The Shins at Merriweather. Here's what Britt had to say:

Hi again. We did finally figure out a way to do a smaller show in DC: Spoon and the Ponys will be playing the 9:30 club on Tuesday Oct 23rd, the day after the Shins / Merriweather show. For those who bought tickets to either of the original 9:30 shows, admittance is guaranteed and is free. After that, admittance is free on a first-come basis to anyone who has a Merriweather ticket. The details get a bit thick, so I'll just fw what I've been told. Thanks, Britt

Below the jump, the official announcement with more details than you ever thought possible.

Photo by Flickr user krnhotwings, under Creative Commons license

Photo and review by DCist contributor Valerie Paschall

Atlanta psych-noise rockers Deerhunter may have built a reputation over the past year for shocking their live audiences, but last week the band seemed visibly shaken. The previous night, guitarist Colin Mee departed the group, making Thursday their first show in several years as a quartet. This shift in the band’s chemistry was the latest in a string of personal and public relations disasters in the past two months which resulted in a more subdued show and, at least for the night, a tamer Deerhunter.

Deerhunter had started the year on an overwhelmingly positive note. They released their second album, Cryptograms, to intense critical praise and everyone from Pitchfork to MTV had these ATLiens under their spotlight. At first this spotlight just served to amplify the band’s eccentricities, such as Cox’s penchant for wearing dresses and smearing blood on his face during live performances.

However, since mid-July, this spotlight has turned harsh, especially after the band started keeping their own controversial blog, including their infamous posts on defecation and eerie Dennis Cooper-esque sexual fantasies. The latest black mark has been a publicized e-mail fight with L.A. blogger Jeff Weiss, which Cox credits (in the band’s blog, deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com) with the dissolution of his gimmicky stage costumes.

[Updated]: So much music, so little time. While tomorrow's This Week In Jazz column will preview this year's fantastic Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, there is even more jazz to be had for those who can't wait that long. This Saturday, September 8, the 17th Annual Rosslyn Jazz Festival will take place at Gateway Park from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. On the same day, D.C.'s Maryland suburbs get their own jazz celebration in the form of the 4th Annual Silver Spring Jazz Festival, which runs from 2 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. at downtown Silver Spring's Veterans Field. Both festivals, which are free and open to all, will feature an impressive lineup of world class artists.

The headliner is of Rosslyn's festival is violinist Regina Carter (pictured), one of the most respected jazz instrumentalists in the country. Other performers include vocalist Kevin Mahogany, legendary vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and saxophonist Red Holloway. For more information, visit the festival website or call the festival hotline at (703) 228-1850.

Silver Spring's festival has a slightly more varied roster of artists. The headliner is fiery latin jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval. The rest of the lineup includes vocalist Ethel Ennis, an alum of Benny Goodman's big band, smooth jazz pianist Marcus Johnson, versatile harmonica player Frederic Yonnet, and guitarist Dani Cortaza. The first set of the afternoon will be a special treat, as it features three of the area's best high school big bands. For more information visit the festival's website.

So whether you live north or south of the Potomac, you have no excuse for missing out on the weekend's great music. Just grab a blanket, picnic basket, and enjoy.

Image from Regina Carter's MySpace page