Musicians

The turf war between the world's top ticketing company and the world's top concert promoter just got bloodier. Ticketmaster Inc. announced Thursday that it had acquired a controlling stake in Front Line Management Group Inc., the artist management company that's home to legacy acts such as the Eagles and Journey along with divas and divos such as Christina Aguilera and Guns N' Roses.

For Tom Gabel, the singer and guitarist of the Gainesville, Fla., punk band Against Me!, voicing dissent is less a means of changing the political tide than trying to find his own place in it. His band's 2007 LP, "New Wave," was a pop-savvy punch in the eye to not only America's foreign misadventures but also to the efficacy of protest music and the cynicism of both lovers and the music business. However, Gabel's new solo record, "Heart Burns," due out Tuesday, saves its sharpest knives for Sen.

He didn't have to cobble together a show when he decided to turn his shoe repair shop into an art gallery. All Greg Papazian had to do was reach into the shoe box that for 35 years held a one-of-a-kind photographic record of Los Angeles in its glittery rock 'n' roll heyday. He was a high school junior when he turned a visit to an Allman Brothers concert at the Sunset Strip's Whisky a Go Go into a gig of his own -- as club photographer for the legendary hub of Los Angeles' rock scene.

TYCOONS trying to impress will pay millions for a Picasso or Pollock, so why not splurge on a living, breathing Jagger? Or hire rapper 50 Cent to drop by the mansion and perform "Get Rich or Die Tryin' "? Now \o7that \f7will get them talking down at the country club. That's the loud and lavish sensibility behind the hottest party accessory around -- the rentable rock star.

Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich is being treated at a Moscow clinic specializing in cancer treatment, two Russian newspapers reported Thursday. The Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing unidentified hospital officials, reported that his condition "is very worrying for doctors. Only the closest people are now being allowed to the great musician."

A confessional letter from the widower of little-known British pianist Joyce Hatto would seem to confirm that multiple recordings credited to Hatto, who died last year at age 77, were plagiarized. Gramophone Online broke the news earlier this month that at least some of Hatto's more than 100 discs had borrowed from performances by other pianists.

EVE and Don Cohen spent last week gearing up for the 20th annual all-day party at their Cheviot Hills home. The preparations meant scheduling more than 80 amateur chamber musicians to play in five rooms Saturday -- changing partners every 45 minutes plus grazing on a potluck dinner, sampling wines and watching a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta unfold in the backyard, complete with live orchestra.

Feeble but clearly pleased, Mstislav Rostropovich came to the Kremlin on Tuesday evening for a gala celebration marking the 80th birthday of a man renowned for his music and his human rights work. Rostropovich, who had been hospitalized in February for an undisclosed illness, walked slowly into the celebration on the arms of his wife, Galina Vishnyevsakaya, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The walls on the entryway of Bill Tapia's Westminster home are covered with photographs documenting a career that found him playing with such jazz greats as Charlie Barnet, Joe Pass and Barney Kessel. The photos weave a path to his studio, where a ukulele sits on a stand. Atop a varnished chest, fliers announce performances by the 99-year-old musician -- at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center last week, and at the Huntington Beach Library today.

While imprisoned in Dachau in 1938, Herbert Zipper spent 12 mind-numbing hours a day pushing a cart loaded with heavy stones. To buoy his spirits and those of other inmates, the Viennese intellectual composed a militant anti-Nazi anthem and secretly conducted a small orchestra in an unused latrine. Even amid the soul-depleting humiliation and misery of the notorious German concentration camp, he realized that music could bring life-affirming joy.