Concerts

In her first major headlining tour, country upstart Taylor Swift will go straight to one of L.A.'s biggest stages. The teen singer will headline Staples Center on May 22 as part of a 52-date tour. Tickets go on sale Feb. 6 via Ticketmaster. While ticket prices have not been announced for the Los Angeles date, a press release promises that tickets in most markets will sell for $20 (not including applicable service fees). Swift was the top-selling artist of 2008. Combined, her self-titled 2006 debut and her recently released "Fearless" sold more than 4 million copies in 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

I very much enjoyed your article on clapping at concerts. ("It's Time for Applause Police to Call off Concert Hall Duty," Feb. 1) I attend many concerts during the season in L.A. and Orange County and I have to say that I find applauding between movements annoying and intrusive. In some cases it nearly wrecks the experience for me. Only this past week, when the San Francisco Symphony was in town at Disney Hall, it all got so bad that an exasperated Michael Tilson Thomas had to ask the audience to refrain from applauding between movements of the Brahms first symphony, the final work of the second evening.

Sparks concerts: An article in the Feb. 13 Calendar section about the rock group Sparks said the band played all 21 of its albums in a series of concerts last summer at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The concerts took place at the Carling Academy Islington and Shepherd's Bush Empire.

Michael Jackson returned to the stage Thursday after eight years marked by more scandal than music-making and told a crowd of screaming fans that he would play a series of London concerts before retiring from public performance. Wearing his trademark sunglasses and a silver-embroidered black military-style jacket, he said the series of shows in July will be his "final curtain call." Jackson appeared at the O2 Arena -- where the concerts will be staged -- to announce the gigs.

London's Barbican Centre, the largest performing arts center in Europe, has reached agreements with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and four other foreign musical organizations to become its "international associates" -- groups that will have ongoing relationships with the center and that will eventually be in residence there for a time. The others are the Manhattan-based New York Philharmonic and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from Germany.

Tickets for Michael Jackson's 50 London concerts sold out within hours of becoming available, organizers said Friday. The shows are scheduled to kick off in July and stretch into February. The pop singer has said the series, titled This Is It, will be his last in the British capital. After 360,000 advance tickets sold out earlier this week, roughly 500,000 tickets were made available Friday, organizers said. Tickets were priced from $70 to $105 -- but some went for much more on Internet auction sites.

"I'm not a Minimalist," the keyboard performance artist Charlemagne Palestine said last week. "I'm a maximalist. That's the word I like, because it gives me possibilities." Palestine, known in music circles for his marathon all-night concerts in the 1970s (they were often so intense that he bled on the keys) is returning to the Los Angeles stage tonight after an 11-year absence. As part of the Monday Evening Concerts series, he will perform one of his seminal works, "Schlingen-Blangen," on one of the world's largest church pipe organs at the First Congregational Church.

The Greek Theatre and the Gibson Amphitheatre have announced their summer concert series for 2009. Among the notable headliners at the Greek are alt-country siren Neko Case, chamber-folk auteur Andrew Bird and dapper soul man John Legend. The Gibson's lineup includes crooner Frankie Valli and metal stalwarts Judas Priest. The Premiere Marquee Club's broadened perks this year (available to anyone buying advance tickets to a combination of three, five or seven shows) include guaranteed seating, valet parking, special concession lines and advance pre-sales.

To help promote the three new albums he's releasing on March 29, Prince will perform three shows at three different L.A. venues on March 28. He won't need to make special travel arrangements, however: All three are part of the L.A. Live complex downtown. The shows will take place, in order, at the Nokia Theatre, the Conga Room and Club Nokia. Tickets - priced at $77 for each show (plus service charges) -- go on sale Sunday at Ticketmaster.

U2 will bring its massive, Live Nation-produced tour to the Rose Bowl on Oct. 25. Tickets for the in-the-round tour, dubbed "U2 360," will go on sale Monday. A news release promises that 85% of the tickets will be priced at less than $95, not including surcharges (expect about $18 to be added to the price of the ticket, based on Ticketmaster searches of U2 dates that are not sold out). At least 10,000 seats in the 90,000-plus capacity venue will carry an initial price of $30. Opening for U2 will be locals the Black Eyed Peas, who are set to release a new album this summer.