Musicians

The Champagne Bar at the Hotel Bel-Air is dark as a lair. Ice clinks as men and women on caramel-colored leather chairs and forest-green couches imbibe, converse and laugh. A roaring fire blasts light and warmth, which is welcome, despite the heat of a late-summer evening, because the air-conditioned room feels like an ice bucket. Against a wall, under giant paintings of swans, Antonio Castillo de la Gala -- dapper in a dark suit, striped tie and crisp shirt -- surveys his domain from his perch at a Yamaha baby grand piano.

The jokes came quickly at Royce Hall on Thursday night as UCLA Live director David Sefton introduced the trio of virtuoso musicians about to take the stage. With Béla Fleck on banjo, Edgar Meyer on double-bass and tabla master Zakir Hussain, where exactly does one categorize such a seemingly bizarre mix of bluegrass, classical and Indian music? Despite each musician's diverse background, this wasn't an evening defined by jarring, chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter genre mash-ups. In fact, what left the biggest impression was how seamlessly the three principals' seemingly disparate sounds meshed.

Chemistry textbooks, calculators and instrument cases littered the stage at Caltech's Ramo Auditorium early one warm autumn evening. Squawks and blats from the assembled musicians filled the air, and as Bill Bing raised his baton to start the music, a stray trumpeter rushed onstage. "Sorry I'm late," said Les Deutsch. "If you name an asteroid after me, you can be late," said Bing. It might seem an odd dialogue between musicians, but the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band is filled with uncommon musicians.

If seen on the street, Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski might be mistaken for a couple of aging hipsters. Actually, that wouldn't be a mistake. The American anti-establishment composer-pianists are aging hipsters, who both turned 70 last year. But they are such important and exceptional musicians that at this point in their careers, it is no easy matter keeping the establishment at bay. They remain best known for the work they create for themselves -- Rzewski for his exhilarating, politically engaged piano pieces and Curran for his piano scores and electronic soundscapes.

John Martyn, 60, a British singer-songwriter whose soulful songs were covered by Eric Clapton and others, died Thursday, according to a statement on Martyn's official website. It did not give a cause of death for the musician, who lived in Ireland. A skilled guitarist and earthy vocalist influenced by folk, blues and jazz, Martyn performed with -- and was admired by -- musicians including Clapton, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, and Phil Collins. Martyn was born Iain David McGeachy near London in 1948 and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland.

The auditions are over. The first YouTube Symphony Orchestra -- selected by viewers of the website -- will consist of more than 90 musicians from about 30 countries. More than 3,000 videos were submitted by amateur and professional musicians from 70-plus countries. Musicians from professional orchestras including the London and San Francisco symphonies and the Berlin, Hong Kong and New York philharmonic orchestras picked 200 finalists. The winners were then selected by voters on YouTube.

In her first major appearance following her pregnant performance at the 2009 Grammy Awards, globe-trotting electronic artist M.I.A. has been booked for the second night of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. M.I.A. will take the April 18 spot of Amy Winehouse, who dropped out earlier this month. M.I.A. is a Coachella veteran, having played the fest in 2005 and again last year. Reports of retirement followed M.I.A. after her last major festival performance. In June of last year, she declared her appearance at Tennessee's Bonnaroo Festival as her "last gig ever."

Those in the audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall last Sunday afternoon at Esa-Pekka Salonen's conducting farewell with the Los Angeles Philharmonic weren't the only ones a bit startled at a raucous fanfare played by the brass and timpani that came after the performance was over. The normally unflappable Salonen, returning from the wings for a solo bow, seemed caught off guard; he jumped about a foot in the air as the blast hit him. When it ended, he had regained his composure and placed his hands over his heart and bowed to the musicians responsible for the cacophony.

I couldn't care less that the Jazz Bakery is moving ["Jazz Bakery in Play," by Chris Barton, May 30]. I used to visit the place regularly when they featured mainstream musicians like Scott Hamilton, Ken Peplowski and Bob Wilber who played melodious songs written by qualified professional composers like Gershwin, Porter, Ellington, Arlen and Rodgers and Hart. I stopped going to the Jazz Bakery when its featured musicians spent practically the entire evening playing their "original compositions," usually an irritating array of tuneless, cacophonous numbers created to show the audience how many notes they can play in less than a minute.

Book review: A review in Thursday's Calendar of Dorothy Lamb Crawford's "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Emigres and Exiles in Southern California" quoted a number of exiled musicians who had come to live in America. Among those quoted was Otto Klemperer, who fled Germany first for Switzerland and then for Los Angeles after being dismissed as director of the Berlin State Opera because of his Jewish ancestry. His name was given incorrectly as Werner Klemperer. Werner was Otto's son.