Music

Fall is here, and schools are back in session. The über trendy teens of "90210's" West Beverly High, the Upper East Siders on "Gossip Girl" and the chorus line on "Glee" are all just getting going. But a group of foreign-exchange TV students has been hard at work since summer. Meet "Isa TKM." Across Latin America, the Venezuelan-teen telenovela has spawned legions of shrieking adolescent disciples. The show, from Nickelodeon Latin America and Sony Pictures Television, premiered in more than 22 countries last fall and quickly became the No.1 show among pay-TV viewers ages 12 to 17 in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, according to IBOPE Media.

Walking between rows of DVDs at the Best Buy store in West Hollywood, Brandy Moore admits that she doesn't always buy the shiny discs anymore since she started downloading movies and TV shows from Apple's iTunes Store. There's just one problem: She hasn't figured out how to watch them on her TV. "I have a friend who's going to come over and set that up for me," the 34-year-old Los Feliz resident says. "I'm not a computer nerd." Moore and legions of the technologically challenged like her represent the next frontier for Best Buy, which is not only the nation's largest electronics retail chain but also the second-biggest seller of DVDs, behind Wal-Mart.

The piece on the Knux ["Rap's Rebels" by Chris Lee, Dec. 28] is the latest to pass as an article about music but is really just about how "kooky" it is that these MCs wear skinny clothes. Wait, no I'm wrong, it's about how hard it is not to be a "gangsta" if you're black. No wait, I was right the first time, it's about their jeans. Putting Relentless 7 at an "intersection of rock and soul . . . like TV on the Radio" ["Faces to Watch" by Ann Powers, Dec. 28] is like saying Radiohead is at an intersection between folk and pop. Thanks for showing us music criticism is not dead -- it's just not about the music anymore.

Robert Francis Brunner, 70, a staff composer for Walt Disney Studios who scored such films as "That Darn Cat!" and "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes," died Jan. 5 in his sleep at his Moorpark home, said Barbara Singleterry, his niece. A cause of death was not disclosed. While working for Disney from 1963 to 1980, Brunner also composed the scores for "Blackbeard's Ghost," "The Boatniks," "The Barefoot Executive" and about 15 other movies. He also wrote music for dozens of episodes of the "Walt Disney" TV anthology series.

Gary Kurfirst, 61, a pop music manager, promoter and record executive who played a key role in the success of the bands Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones, died Jan. 13 while on vacation in the Bahamas, the New York Times reported. The cause of death has not been determined, the paper said. A figure in pop music for more than four decades, Kurfirst opened the Village Theater in Manhattan in 1967. The venue later became the Fillmore East. In 1968, he staged the New York Rock Festival in Flushing Meadows Park, which featured Janis Joplin and the Doors.

Starting today, thousands of people are expected to gather in Clear Lake, Iowa, to note the 50th anniversary of what songwriter Don McLean famously called "the day the music died": the plane crash that claimed the lives of 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 28-year-old J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson and 17-year-old Ritchie Valens. They'll come to the Surf Ballroom for symposiums with the musicians' relatives, sold-out concerts and a ceremony as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame designates the building as its ninth national landmark.

Gabriela Montero says she and the other members of the Obama inauguration quartet were not trying to fool anybody by having recorded music played in the biting cold. Shaken by comparisons to lip-syncers Milli Vanilli, the pianist insists she and fellow musicians Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and Anthony McGill "did the right thing." "We decided that it would have been a disaster if we went out there with that cold, with the wind, and played our instruments out of tune," the Venezuelan American pianist said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Boston.

Oscar protest: Oscar-nominated singer Peter Gabriel says he won't be performing at the Feb. 22 ceremony to protest an apparently revamped presentation of best original song contenders. Gabriel says in a video on his website that he objects to the songs being shortened and made part of a medley. Gabriel is nominated alongside Thomas Newman for "Down to Earth" from "Wall-E."

Singer and DJ Henry Rollins, whose over-the-air radio gig at Indie 103 ended last month when the rock station changed to a Spanish-language format, has landed a job at KCRW-FM (89.9). His new show will air Saturdays from 6 to 8 p.m., starting March 7. "I feel Henry's tastes and perspectives are a good fit because he has a strong point of view and there are ideas behind all of his music selections," says KCRW music director Jason Bentley, who is also the host of the station's signature "Morning Becomes Eclectic" show.