Big Musical

Even before its local premiere on Tuesday night, "big" had brought a playpen of activity to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. By noon Tuesday, 50 stagehands in Levi's and tool belts had crowded Segerstrom Hall's cavernous backstage with the touring show's 275 lights and 500-plus props and set pieces, including Zoltar, the glowering mechanical fortuneteller who turns the musical's 12-year-old protagonist, Josh, into a grown-up.

No one's ever called music impresario April Williams lazy. She began booking and producing music in the upstairs room at Vitello's restaurant in Studio City at the end of 2009. It's now one of the most coveted jazz spots - for musicians and listeners alike - in Southern California. On April 18, she breaks new ground with a spring music series at the Federal, in the heart of the NoHo Arts District near a Metro Rail station. She could hardly inaugurate her new enterprise more auspiciously: Williams has tapped Bob Sheppard, one of the preeminent West Coast jazz saxophonist stylists and busiest recording session players in the Hollywood studios.

When composer David Shire and his co-authors were asked if they wanted to rework their 1996 musical "Big" for a touring production, he recalls, "We had two impulses: Yes, we'd like to change a great deal. And second, we'd rather have root canals for a straight week." After all, he, lyricist Richard Maltby Jr.

LA JOLLA -- The story of early rock 'n' roll is a truly American tale. The music probably wouldn't have been possible if not for the proximity of people from diverse backgrounds, overhearing each other and appropriating what they liked. Yet if America in the late 1940s and early '50s was beginning to come together in music, the country, in most other ways, remained deeply divided. "Memphis" -- a musical being given an exuberant, high-gloss staging at La Jolla Playhouse -- looks back on this time and finds a message at once chilling and full of hope.

Mahler's Eighth is a glorious, life-affirming, nature-savoring, heaven-directed symphony. Written for hordes of vocal soloists and choristers, along with a very large orchestra, it is as big as a symphony gets without becoming nutty. Even in these days, when performances of Mahler's other symphonies are common, it requires a special occasion, and much expense, to hear.

As they fight in court to clamp down on piracy, the major record labels have also tried to coax music fans to switch from free downloading to paid services. But when music fans go shopping for hit albums online, their money buys them something less than what they get on most CDs. The music is the same, and the sound quality is hard to distinguish. But there is a wide gap between what buyers can do with a CD and what they are allowed to do with a legal download.

Words can hardly convey how vicious, how over the top, Mexico's drug war has become. So they invented some. The Mexican media now has a special expression for being lined up and shot, and another for being dumped in the trunk of a car (we'll get to these). There are also terms for mafia kidnappings, for drug-gang spies and for the hand-scrawled notes hit men leave with the bodies of their victims. The lingo is grim, but how else to portray such savagery as beheadings and bodies cut up and cooked in acid?

The founders of the Shortlist Music Awards, to be announced Tuesday night at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, know what they're up against in the vastly overcrowded awards-show field, but they are optimistic that they can be noticed. It helps that they have a relatively modest goal. They're not out to top the ratings of the MTV Video Music Awards or other televised awards specials; they just want to let fans know about records that probably won't be honored at all those other ceremonies.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art kicks off its latest film series, "All Singing! All Dancing! All New York!," Friday evening with two of the greatest musicals set in the Big Apple: 1949's "On the Town" and 1960's "Bells Are Ringing," which was Judy Holliday's last film. Both musicals, which were also Broadway hits, were written by the enormously prolific, award-winning team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

D o you want a CD with that Big Mac? McDonald's customers are probably going to be hearing questions like that soon, because the fast-food giant is adding recordings to its menu. As part of a special promotion, CDs and tapes by top artists--including Garth Brooks, Elton John and Roxette--will be sold at bargain prices (probably around $6) with a minimum purchase. For pop fans, it's a happy meal indeed. But some record retailers are anything but happy.

The executives behind a new music service called Qtrax wanted to get the industry talking. They did -- for the wrong reasons. Brilliant Technologies Corp., the publicly traded parent company of Qtrax, said Sunday that it had opened the first Napster-like network to feature free music from the four major record labels with their permission.

Pity the poor Republican party planner in a town filled with Democratic entertainers. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may have a list of singers lined up to croon people into opening their wallets at fundraisers (James Blunt and Alicia Keys have been approached, among other A-listers, to sing for Clinton at her megawatt soiree in Beverly Hills on Saturday). But don't expect the same treatment when former Massachusetts Gov.

Los Angeles Opera regularly comes up with new opera for children. Saturday afternoon, it came up with another and much else for its world premiere of Lee Holdridge's "Concierto Para Mendez" in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Based on the life of the Mexican trumpeter Rafael Mendez -- who was first chair in the MGM Orchestra in the early '40s and went on to have a popular solo career in the '50s -- this work nicely dovetails into National Hispanic Heritage Month and L.A.

The gothic allure of the opening images hooks you immediately. Here's Jonathan Pryce, somberly attired, flipping through yellowed photos of conjoined fetuses as a car delivers him to some remote, wind-swept edge of England. Stepping out of the car, he sinks in the mire and is startled by a squawking crow. The clapboard and "Cut!" come as a surprise, as does the shift to director Ken Russell, sitting in a study somewhere, talking about his never-finished biopic, "Two-Way Romeo."

As they fight in court to clamp down on piracy, the major record labels have also tried to coax music fans to switch from free downloading to paid services. But when music fans go shopping for hit albums online, their money buys them something less than what they get on most CDs. The music is the same, and the sound quality is hard to distinguish. But there is a wide gap between what buyers can do with a CD and what they are allowed to do with a legal download.

The founders of the Shortlist Music Awards, to be announced Tuesday night at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, know what they're up against in the vastly overcrowded awards-show field, but they are optimistic that they can be noticed. It helps that they have a relatively modest goal. They're not out to top the ratings of the MTV Video Music Awards or other televised awards specials; they just want to let fans know about records that probably won't be honored at all those other ceremonies.

Are scalpers the only people making fortunes on "Phantom of the Opera" tickets? Not exactly. Every sell-out week at the Ahmanson Theatre, where the show opens May 31, will mean $170,000 more in profits for producers Cameron Mackintosh and the Really Useful Theatre Company. Mackintosh is the 42-year-old British producer who already helped turn both "Cats" and "Les Miserables" into musical gold mines. Los Angeles is but one outpost of the Mackintosh empire. In just two years, "Les Miserables' " four U.S. companies have already returned $18.5-million profit on receipts of $140 million; according to general manager Alan Wasser, that profit number goes up $600,000 every week.

Rapper M. C. Hammer today got seven American Music Award nominations, including top nods in pop-rock, soul-rhythm & blues and rap categories. Janet Jackson was nominated five times, and Madonna, Vanilla Ice and Bell Biv DeVoe got four nominations apiece. Aerosmith, George Strait and Mariah Carey were each nominated three times. Twenty-seven awards will be presented Jan. 28 during the 18th annual American Music Awards ceremony, which will be televised on ABC.

Forty years ago this December, Canadian-born Robert Goulet made his Broadway debut asSir Lancelot opposite Julie Andrews and Richard Burton in the Lerner-Loewe musical "Camelot." His moving renditions of the Lerner and Loewe standards "C'est Moi" and "If Ever I Would Leave You" have rarely been matched. Since "Camelot," Goulet has headlined numerous musicals including "Man of La Mancha," "Happy Time," for which he won the Tony, "South Pacific" and "Kiss Me Kate."

Like many public radio stations operating out of college campuses, Cal State Northridge's KCSN-FM (88.5) features programming mostly appealing to a, well, postgraduate demographic. So it's probably a good thing that the station is adding a show with proven appeal to a younger audience. What's joining the station's lineup of National Public Radio news, classical music and weekend Americana sounds?