Beautiful Music

APRIL 29-MAY 2 CAPE TOWN Sound on Screen Festival: There comes a point when every music fan starts getting a bit too long in the tooth to stand two hours at a concert, no matter the band. (You have hit this point when you complain that the people in front of you are blocking your view because they’re dancing, or that the music is too loud.) Despite your advancing years, you are still (hypothetically) interested in rocking. The solution is the Sound on Screen festival in South Africa, a collection of rock-related documentaries that will satisfy your thirst for rock while allowing you to stay...

PICK OF THE DAY Closing the house for the season It's not absurd to close the José Mateo Ballet Theatre dance season with "Absurdus. " It's a grand finale program featuring a world premiere set to a Philip Glass violin concerto plus an audience favorite, "House of Ballet. " Friday at 8 p.m. (through May 6). $38. Sanctuary Theatre, 400 Harvard St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. 617-354-7467. www.ballettheatre.org FRIDAY Sonnets to slams in Salem Three days and nights of readings, workshops, performances, and panels are bewitching at Salem's Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Music at Eden’s Edge, a chamber music ensemble based in Essex, opens its 30th anniversary season with “June — Escapes with Three,’’ concerts featuring violin, clarinet, and piano. The season has a vibrant start on Tuesday with “New Music at the Edge,’’ the premiere of Stephen Kleiman’s “Inner Dance,’’ written for the ensemble’s clarinetist, Stephen Bates . Also on the program are “Largo’’ by Charles Ives; romantic pieces for violin and piano by Dvorak; and the “Kegelstatt Trio’’ by Mozart.

God isn't dead, as some theologists have suggested. It's just that He's moved on to St. Louis. At 3:23 p.m. Thursday, Our Old Town Team succumbed. Bob Gibson had shut off the oxygen, and we all faced a re-entry crisis common to those who must go back to the real world. The whole thing, the battle for The Planetary Baseball Championship, had been as kicky as playing the market in 1929. Again there was a Depression. It began in the third inning when a runt named Dallan Maxvill hit a triple for the team called Cardinals and sponsored by Gussie's Brewery in St. Louis.

JACOB FRED JAZZ ODYSSEY At: Lily Pad, tonight at 7:30 and Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $10. 617-395-1393, www.lily-pad.net. SAN FRANCISCO - Tulsa's native sons are on the road, telling a dark and painful story about a long-suppressed chapter of Oklahoma's history. At a performance two weeks ago at the Bay Area's premiere funk venue, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey settled into a rollicking locomotive groove evoking the territory dance bands that crisscrossed the Southwest during Prohibition.

PICK OF THE DAY Closing the house for the season It's not absurd to close the José Mateo Ballet Theatre dance season with "Absurdus. " It's a grand finale program featuring a world premiere set to a Philip Glass violin concerto plus an audience favorite, "House of Ballet. " Friday at 8 p.m. (through May 6). $38. Sanctuary Theatre, 400 Harvard St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. 617-354-7467. www.ballettheatre.org FRIDAY Sonnets to slams in Salem Three days and nights of readings, workshops, performances, and panels are bewitching at Salem's Massachusetts Poetry...

As the overture to Boston Midsummer Opera’s production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte’’ plays, two pairs of lovers pantomime a doubles tennis match, the physical comedy ingeniously revealing both their individual characters and their mingled affection and tension. It’s a terrific beginning, but the rest of the opera abandons that imaginative elegance in favor of teeming slapstick. Director Drew Minter first staged this “Così,’’ the action transplanted to a Connecticut tennis club, in 2000; according to the program, Minter has since “revised, updated and...

Smule, maker of apps such as Glee Karaoke, is hoping to make beautiful music with fellow app creator Khush through an acquisition announced Thursday. In an interview Wednesday, Smule Inc. CEO and co-founder Jeffrey Smith said the goal of combining the two companies is to democratize the creation of musical content and distribution. Smith said it is a cash-and-stock deal, though precise terms are not being disclosed. "Neither side really sees it as an exit, but more of an opportunity to scale faster," he said.

Chicken With Plums , By Marjane Satrapi, Translated, from the French, by Anjali Singh, Pantheon, 84 pp., $16.95 Tehran, 1958 . A middle-age man walks down the street, sees a beautiful woman he thinks he recognizes, and approaches her. "You wouldn't be named Irane ?" he asks. "Yes!" she replies. "How do you know my name?" "You don't remember me?" he asks, surprised. "To tell the truth, not at all," she says. Disappointed, he excuses himself and walks away. The man is Nasser Ali Khan , a famous tar player, and he is on his way to a music shop to...

Like couples with nothing in common who fall madly in love, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss make beautiful music together. Last night the iconic rocker and the bluegrass superstar performed songs from their 2007 album "Raising Sand," a collection of American classics both vintage and contemporary, as well as a handful of tunes from each artist's solo catalog. Where the album is painstakingly subdued - a dusky wash of deep tones and muted percussion with nary a shimmer or an edge within earshot - the live show was endlessly dynamic.

Smule, maker of apps such as Glee Karaoke, is hoping to make beautiful music with fellow app creator Khush through an acquisition announced Thursday. In an interview Wednesday, Smule Inc. CEO and co-founder Jeffrey Smith said the goal of combining the two companies is to democratize the creation of musical content and distribution. Smith said it is a cash-and-stock deal, though precise terms are not being disclosed. "Neither side really sees it as an exit, but more of an opportunity to scale faster," he said.

JACOB FRED JAZZ ODYSSEY At: Lily Pad, tonight at 7:30 and Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $10. 617-395-1393, www.lily-pad.net. SAN FRANCISCO - Tulsa's native sons are on the road, telling a dark and painful story about a long-suppressed chapter of Oklahoma's history. At a performance two weeks ago at the Bay Area's premiere funk venue, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey settled into a rollicking locomotive groove evoking the territory dance bands that crisscrossed the Southwest during Prohibition.

Music at Eden’s Edge, a chamber music ensemble based in Essex, opens its 30th anniversary season with “June — Escapes with Three,’’ concerts featuring violin, clarinet, and piano. The season has a vibrant start on Tuesday with “New Music at the Edge,’’ the premiere of Stephen Kleiman’s “Inner Dance,’’ written for the ensemble’s clarinetist, Stephen Bates . Also on the program are “Largo’’ by Charles Ives; romantic pieces for violin and piano by Dvorak; and the “Kegelstatt Trio’’ by Mozart.

APRIL 29-MAY 2 CAPE TOWN Sound on Screen Festival: There comes a point when every music fan starts getting a bit too long in the tooth to stand two hours at a concert, no matter the band. (You have hit this point when you complain that the people in front of you are blocking your view because they’re dancing, or that the music is too loud.) Despite your advancing years, you are still (hypothetically) interested in rocking. The solution is the Sound on Screen festival in South Africa, a collection of rock-related documentaries that will satisfy your thirst for rock while allowing...

Virgil Thomson once said that his composing colleague Samuel Barber lacked a “sense of the theater.’’ This was amply borne out by the concert production of his first opera, “Vanessa,’’ at Boston University on Tuesday. In the last act, to take just one example, the leading lady, Vanessa, turns to her mother, who has been disapprovingly silent through most of the romantic entanglements of the preceding acts, and sings, “I would not love you, if you weren’t my own mother.’’ It was one of many lines that brought titters from...

NASHVILLE - Mark Linkous, the singer-songwriter who released his music under the band name Sparklehorse, has died after shooting himself in the chest in Tennessee. He was 47. Darrell DeBusk, spokesman for the Knoxville police, said Mr. Linkous shot himself outside a friend’s house about 1:20 p.m. Saturday with his own rifle. DeBusk said Mr. Linkous was staying with friends and became upset after receiving a text message. Mr. Linkous’s most recent work included collaborations with producer Danger Mouse and musician Christian Fennesz.

NASHVILLE - Mark Linkous, the singer-songwriter who released his music under the band name Sparklehorse, has died after shooting himself in the chest in Tennessee. He was 47. Darrell DeBusk, spokesman for the Knoxville police, said Mr. Linkous shot himself outside a friend’s house about 1:20 p.m. Saturday with his own rifle. DeBusk said Mr. Linkous was staying with friends and became upset after receiving a text message. Mr. Linkous’s most recent work included collaborations with producer Danger Mouse and musician Christian Fennesz.

The Boston Conservatory's production of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera "The Turn of the Screw," which opened a four-performance run on Thursday, is so good you want to see it again, right away. That is saying a lot, because this is a nightmarish story with dark Freudian swirls, and a musical score that challenges cast and orchestra to the maximum. Just to do it well would be a magnificent accomplishment, and this is better than that. The singers on the first night - all but one Boston Conservatory students - moved and sang well, and projected the text...

As the overture to Boston Midsummer Opera’s production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte’’ plays, two pairs of lovers pantomime a doubles tennis match, the physical comedy ingeniously revealing both their individual characters and their mingled affection and tension. It’s a terrific beginning, but the rest of the opera abandons that imaginative elegance in favor of teeming slapstick. Director Drew Minter first staged this “Così,’’ the action transplanted to a Connecticut tennis club, in 2000; according to the program, Minter has since “revised, updated and enhanced’’ it, perhaps...

Like couples with nothing in common who fall madly in love, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss make beautiful music together. Last night the iconic rocker and the bluegrass superstar performed songs from their 2007 album "Raising Sand," a collection of American classics both vintage and contemporary, as well as a handful of tunes from each artist's solo catalog. Where the album is painstakingly subdued - a dusky wash of deep tones and muted percussion with nary a shimmer or an edge within earshot - the live show was endlessly dynamic.