Pop Concert

Singer Maureen McGovern and musical comedy artist Kaye Ballard will perform Sunday in Northridge. McGovern came to prominence in 1972 when she sang "The Morning After" for the motion picture "The Poseidon Adventure." The song won the Oscar, went gold and was nominated for a Grammy. McGovern has recorded 28 albums, the latest "With a Song in My Heart: The Great Songs of Richard Rodgers." She also has appeared on Broadway, given concerts and been featured in films and on television.

Hit the road, Jack. That may well be the take-away for musicians when reading Calendar's annual Ultimate Top 10 list, a ranking that combines income from recordings as well as the concert box office to show who had the most lucrative years according to numbers reported by Nielsen SoundScan and the concert industry-tracking publication Pollstar. Since the Ultimate Top 10 began in 1998, there's often been a sizable split between the acts that make their nut from touring and those earning most of their money at physical and virtual cash registers from recordings.

What if airlines wooed you with cool music instead of peanuts? JetBlue will be hosting new artists from the CMJ 2012 Music Marathon in New York City who will perform Wednesday at the airline's T5 terminal at JFK International Airport. Icona Pop , JJAMZ , Matt Sucich and Kate Earl will be featured during the 1 to 4:30 p.m. concert, according to an airline statement. It's part of the Live From T5 concert series that takes place post-security for ticketed passengers awaiting their flights.

What if airlines wooed you with cool music instead of peanuts? JetBlue will be hosting new artists from the CMJ 2012 Music Marathon in New York City who will perform Wednesday at the airline's T5 terminal at JFK International Airport. Icona Pop , JJAMZ , Matt Sucich and Kate Earl will be featured during the 1 to 4:30 p.m. concert, according to an airline statement. It's part of the Live From T5 concert series that takes place post-security for ticketed passengers awaiting their flights.

Plans to reopen the former Harlequin Dinner Theatre as a pop concert club moved forward Tuesday night when the Santa Ana City Council approved a conditional-use permit for the facility. According to the permit application, the club would seat about 550 people and feature "national entertainment acts" in rock, comedy, rhythm and blues, jazz and country. The club will include a restaurant and full-service bar.

A bomb exploded under a police car at a pop concert in southern Turkey, injuring at least 14 people, the prime minister's office said. A hospital official said that at least 17 people, including two police officers, were injured in the explosion in the southern city of Mersin. Two of the injured were in serious condition, the official said. Television footage showed a young woman lying on the ground with blood splattered on her pants and on the ground around her.

Iranian authorities have approved a plan for concerts by the Iranian pop group Arian and Irish singer Chris de Burgh in Tehran, the group's manager said. The concerts, set for next year, would be the first time since the 1979 revolution that an Iranian pop band had played alongside a Western singer in Iran, Arian's manager Mohsen Rajabpour said.

Jim Rissmiller seemed at once wistful and agitated as he sat in his West Hollywood office and considered a species he believes is in danger of extinction: concert promoters with a flair for showmanship. "Don King . . . George Steinbrenner . . . those are promoters," he said. It's not coincidence, he noted, that these are names associated with sports--not music. "I think the concert biz is pretty boring. There are really no master showmen anymore.

Pop concert: The 2008 KIIS-FM "Jingle Ball" lineup will be topped by the Pussycat Dolls, Chris Brown and Katy Perry, and will take place Dec. 6 at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Tickets go on sale Friday on the KIIS-FM website, www.kiisfm.com.

Madonna Concert Canceled: A pop concert by Madonna in Rome this week has been abruptly called off. The cancellation came amid criticisms by Catholic officials against Madonna of bad taste in her shows, but organizers said that the July 11 concert was canceled because it coincided with a threatened general strike--which has since been called off. Prominent Roman Catholic bodies had attempted to get the tour canceled.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that Los Angeles arts organizations can't have an awards ceremony or fundraising gala without a featured pop music star. Katy Perry is poised to sing at the Hammer Museum's annual gala on Oct. 6, and Florence and the Machine will help the Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrate at its Art + Film Gala on Oct. 27. Now add Moby and Tom Morello to the list. Morello, who stoked the left wing political broadsides of the rock band Rage Against the Machine with his innovative electric guitar playing, will be both an honoree and the entertainment for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics' annual party and silent auction Oct. 21 at Professional Musicians Local 47 in Hollywood.

Marvin Hamlisch, the stage and film composer who created the memorable songs for "A Chorus Line," has died at 68. The composer died on Monday in Los Angeles after collapsing from a brief illness, his family said in a statement. One of the most decorated composers in entertainment, Hamlisch had won a Tony Award, three Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Hamlisch was still active just weeks ago. In his role as lead conductor of the Pasadena Pops, he conducted a July 21 concert at the Los Angeles Arboretum with Michael Feinstein.

Shortly after being hired about a decade ago to up the ante of musical talent offered at the Orange County Fair's summer concert series in Costa Mesa, veteran talent buyer Ken Phebus rolled out his schedule for the fair's board. But one of the performers on the list was given a thumbs-down. A board member "didn't recognize the name and neither did any of her friends," said Jim Washburn, a writer who covers pop music in Orange County and became friends with Phebus. "It was Norah Jones, and that was right before she took home a boatload of Grammy Awards," Washburn said.

STAGE Ute Lemper brings her reinventions of cabaret for the new century to UCLA's Royce Hall. The German singer-actress skillfully melds the songs of modern writers with an old-fashioned theatricality, and her shows are a blend of pop concert and music-hall performance. She and her backing band offer contemporary takes on some of the Weimar Republic-era songs and French chansons for which she is best known, recasting classics in jazzy arrangements without trivializing them. Royce Hall, UCLA.

A list of upcoming concerts across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses. Hollywood Palladium Tiger Heat, Feb. 10 (Thu.); Fleet Foxes, May 7 (Fri.) Hollywood Bowl Rod Stewart & Stevie Nicks, April 17 (Mon.) Nokia Theatre Katy Perry, Aug. 5-7 (now); Ricky Martin, May 6-7; La Banda El Recodo, May 28 (Sat.) Music Box OMD, March 25 and 29; Architecture in Helsinki, June 1 (now); Yelle, May 21 (Fri.) El Rey Theatre Uh Huh Her, April 1 (now)

Billed as "the largest data set ever assembled describing arts and culture in America," the National Arts Index released Monday by the advocacy group Americans for the Arts aims to capture in a single number how the arts and entertainment sector has been doing -- much as the Dow Jones and S&P indices do for stocks. The news is not good. The index for 2009 is 97.7, the lowest in the 12 years of data on which the index is calculated. Based on 81 separate measures of how Americans spend and donate their money and time, and how artists (broadly defined)

Eight people were killed and about 200 wounded in a hand grenade attack at a packed pop concert in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, police said. Officers blamed the attack on rival youth gangs in the city, where the main football stadium was crammed with more than 100,000 fans for a performance by two singers from neighboring India. "It looks like a hand grenade attack that may have also been linked to a gas container," a police officer said.

Concerts Sept. 18: Phoenix, Grizzly Bear and Girls at the Hollywood Bowl The Bowl is where the hip kids will be living this fall, with this show headlined by France's No. 1 helium-pop band releasing a flood that includes later visits from Vampire Weekend, Sonic Youth, Pavement, No Age, LCD Soundsystem and more. Sept. 25-26: Epicenter Festival at the Auto Club Speedway, Fontana This fest from the folks who brought us the Midwest's Rock on the Range is built around Eminem's only West Coast date this season.