Grammy Awards

With Los Angeles steadily filling with music royalty for this weekend's Grammy Awards and the many parties and performances in its orbit, Wayne Shorter led a show that served as a celebration of its own at Disney Hall on Saturday night. Featuring the same quartet behind Shorter's justly lauded new live album "Without a Net" (his first recording for Blue Note Records in 43 years), the show partly felt like a curtain call for a man who's become the biggest story in jazz this year.

Music's big night kicks off Sunday during the 55th Grammy Awards, and the winners, losers and general highs and lows from the show will be all over social media. For music aficionados following the ceremony on a second screen, you can get access from the scene during the awards by following tweets from the Los Angeles Times music writers below. Relative unknowns including Frank Ocean and Fun. are the front-runners in the 2013 Grammy race, picking up six nominations apiece in the academy's weightier categories during the nominations concert last December.

"Once," the intimate, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical that is based on the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, won a Grammy Award on Sunday. The Broadway cast recording for "Once: A New Musical" won for musical theater album at a pre-show ceremony held at the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The other nominees in the category were Disney's "Newsies, "Follies," "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It. "  GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage | Winners and nominees | Ballot | Nomination snubs & surprises | Timeline "Once" opened on Broadway in March and received eight Tonys, including the prize for best musical.

Awards handed out Sunday before the evening Grammy Awards telecast sometimes set the stage for what happens during the national TV broadcast. This year, the Black Keys got the momentum rolling by having a hand in three awards early on, including rock album for “El Camino” and rock song for “Lonely Boy.” In a broader sense, since instituting the ceremony in 2004 to salute the vast majority of musicians not featured on prime-time TV, the...

Can the biggest Grammy news in jazz come from outside of its own category? While the 55th Grammy Awards stuck to something of a familiar script with some of its honorees, jazz pianist Robert Glasper made the biggest headlines by taking home a surprise win in the R&B category, besting albums by R. Kelly, Anthony Hamilton, Tamia and Tyrese. Backed by his band the Experiment, Glasper freely drew from multiple genres outside of jazz on the Grammy-winning "Black Radio," which featured guest turns from Erykah Badu, King and Lupe Fiasco.

Country voters recognized the Zac Brown Band's something-for-almost-everyone approach on its third studio album, “Uncaged,” which generated mostly positive if not exactly glowing reviews upon its release last year.  It scored a 72 out of a possible 100 on Metacritic.com's aggregate of reactions in various publications. The Georgia-based group brings a good-time spirit to most of what it plays, with often-predictable odes to short- or long-term escape from the drudgery of workaday life occasionally elevated by Brown's earnest vocals and the band's sharp instrumental interplay.

The phrase “and friends” rises to a whole new level when it's attached to the names of Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, who turned their joint appearance Saturday night at the Troubadour into an all-star Grammy Awards eve celebration of the overlapping worlds of Americana music, traditional folk and progressive country. “We're going to win a Grammy just for this night,” Crowell said with a broad smile midway through the show at which he and longtime friend and connoisseur of great songwriting, Harris, were joined by Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, the Zac Brown Band, J.D. Souther, Damien Rice, Joan Osborne, Shannon McNally, John Fullbright and Shawn Camp.

The Grammy Awards gave their top honor to British roots music band Mumford & Sons for their album “Babel” on Sunday at the 55 th awards ceremony on a night that distributed honors broadly to an array of younger generation acts including New York indie trio Fun., Australian electronic pop artist Gotye, rapper-R&B singer Frank Ocean and Akron, Ohio rock group the Black Keys. “We figured we weren't going to win because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day - and deservedly so,” Mumford & Sons front man Marcus Mumford said after he and his band members strode to the stage at Staples Center in Los Angeles to collect the award from last year's winner, R&B-soul singer Adele.

Of the many fashion moments that had backstage buzzing -- Kelly Rowland and Jennifer Lopez's flesh-baring, Dr. John's kooky costume, Carrie Underwood's projection-flashing gown -- it was a hat that got the most chatter backstage, and online. When winning for rap/sung collaboration for "No Church in the Wild," from Kanye West and Jay-Z's “Watch the Throne,” Frank Ocean and The-Dream offered typical awards show thank-yous. But Jay-Z, who was collecting his 17th trophy, wanted only to thank producer The-Dream's choice of ballcap.

Frank Ocean cut a sharp figure in crisp jeans, a butterscotch tuxedo jacket and his signature multicolored headband while rehearsing at Staples Center for the Grammy Awards ceremony. But as the R&B singer conferred with Grammy executive producer Ken Ehrlich following a run-through of his performance Thursday, another wardrobe item came into view: a wrist splint on Ocean's left arm. It was the result, presumably, of his alleged brawl last month with Chris Brown in the parking lot of a West Hollywood recording studio.