Concerts

It is not without a twang of envy that I watch the film community react to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's announcement that the 40-year-old film program would go the way of the even older Monday Evening Concerts, which was thrown out on the cold street three years ago. The music community protested. Even prominent collectors protested. Betty Freeman told me that Hockney's famous painting of her -- "Beverly Hills Housewife" -- would hang in LACMA over her dead body. She made sure not even that happened.

Gustavo Dudamel, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, may be the hottest conductor on the classical scene, but box-office figures from Walt Disney Concert Hall show that even the young Venezuelan isn't entirely recession-proof. Subscription tickets, which went on sale in February and account for a significant portion of total sales, have fallen 7% from last year, the final year of Esa-Pekka Salonen's tenure with the orchestra. That was at least partly offset by an uptick in the sale of single tickets.

At the Bard College Music Festival last weekend in New York, the college's president and festival director, Leon Botstein, made a striking remark about Richard Wagner and his cronies. "If we used our standards of normalcy on the 19th century," he said during a panel discussion about Wagner and the Jewish question, "historians wouldn't be left with much worth remembering." I thought about that Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl. Yo-Yo Ma played Dvorak's Cello Concerto and my guest was another cellist, Nathaniel Ayers, whose story Steve Lopez has told meaningfully in this newspaper and in his book "The Soloist."

At first, fans politely applauded the Roma performers sharing a stage in Bucharest with Madonna. Then the pop star condemned widespread discrimination against Roma, or Gypsies -- and the cheers gave way to jeers. The sharp mood change that swept the crowd of 60,000, who had packed a park for Wednesday night's concert on the singer's "Sticky and Sweet" tour, underscores how prejudice against Gypsies remains deeply entrenched across Eastern Europe. Madonna did not react to the crowd and carried on with her concert.

A Russian trio performing Gypsy music with Madonna said Friday they were "pained" to see the pop star booed during her Bucharest, Hungary, concert for criticizing widespread discrimination against Gypsies. Thousands of people applauded the trio's performance with Madonna on Wednesday night during her worldwide "Sticky and Sweet" tour. But minutes later they booed and jeered the pop star when she said discrimination should end against Eastern Europe's Gypsies, also known as Roma. In a press conference Friday in Bucharest, Vadim Kolpakov, the youngest member of Kolpakov Trio, said the public reaction was unexpected.

Good article on Willie Nelson ["Willie Nelson's in Jazz Country," Aug. 23]. I have a CD of Willie doing reggae and another he did with Wynton Marsalis. He sounds like a natural doing jazz. I have worked with him a number of times and I can tell you that he is a sweetheart to work with. I have always marveled at the diversity of people in the audience at his concerts. There are young and old, country bumpkins and city slickers all sitting together enjoying one of America's greatest and most versatile talents.

Apologies have been accepted and talk shows received their ratings boosts. Now everyone appears ready to go back to making money. Concert promoter Live Nation officially unveiled the tour dates Friday for Kanye West's co-headlining trek with Lady Gaga, which will include two Los Angeles-area appearances. Dubbed the "Fame Kills" tour, the trek will hit the Honda Center in Anaheim on Nov. 15 and Staples Center downtown on Nov. 16. The tour dates were unveiled on the website for industry trade Pollstar earlier this week, but in the wake of West's controversial appearance with Taylor Swift on the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday -- after which he told Jay Leno he was going to take some time off and "analyze how I'm going to make it through the rest of this life" -- reps for both artists and tour promoter Live Nation refused to confirm the tour's existence.

Eight years after trading in his Stetson and pop music superstardom for domestic life raising his three young daughters, Garth Brooks, the biggest-selling solo performer of all time, has decided to dust off that hat and come out of retirement -- but only on weekends. Brooks announced Thursday afternoon that he'll start a series of solo acoustic concerts in the 1,500-seat Encore Theater at the Wynn casino and resort in Las Vegas as part of a multimillion-dollar deal with Steve Wynn, the hotel's billionaire developer.

Feeling bad that you missed U2 at the Rose Bowl concert Sunday? The band has extended its 360 Tour and will be back in Southern California on June 6, performing at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Ticket information has not yet been released. You can still see the Pasadena performance, of course. The live broadcast Sunday night generated 10 million streams across seven continents and, since being archived on YouTube on Monday, has tallied more than 1 million streams, a spokesman for the site reports.

Not long into his show Thursday night at the Nokia Theatre, R. Kelly found himself needing some assistance from the technical crew. A long red carpet, positioned onstage between two cordoned-off areas in which a group of female fans played the part of a group of female fans, had begun to bunch up, endangering the R&B star's not-so-fancy footwork. "Move this rug," he sang extemporaneously, his band vamping smoothly beneath him. "I almost tripped three . . . times." Kelly repeated the phrase, obviously enjoying the sound of his off-the-cuff creation; he added a bit of melisma as the band's playing thickened into a proper groove.