Heaven

Jazz Heaven on Earth Heaven on Earth Half Note ESSENTIAL “Diminishing’’ You might want to dismiss the all-star jazz collective calling itself Heaven on Earth as a shameless attempt to jump on the Soulive bandwagon. Don’t. This was a natural next step for a few members of this quintet, which plays groove-jam-jazz better than most predecessors. And think about it: Saxophonist James Carter has been leading his own organ trio for a few years now. John Medeski - who sticks to Hammond B-3 organ here - made jam-based jazz respectable via his trio Medeski Martin & Wood.

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens By Andrea Wulf (Knopf, $26.95) Unlikely saga traces the harrowing adventures of an 18th century global team tracking Venus Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama By Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22) Private diary made public in the form of a graphic novel. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power By Steve Coll (Penguin, $36) An investigatory book that...

‘Five Minutes of Heaven’’ reduces Northern Ireland’s troubles to a gimmick, but it’s an interesting gimmick, and the two men hoisted on its petard work at vivid cross-purposes. If nothing else, the film’s worth seeing as a demonstration of opposing acting techniques. In this corner, we have Liam Neeson as Alistair Little, a real-life Irish Protestant who joined the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Forces as a teenager and has since renounced his violent ways. On the other side of the ring is James Nesbitt (“Bloody Sunday’’)

SANTA FE – It seems almost inevitable that Tabla de Los Santos restaurant in the Hotel St. Francis would be run by chef Estevan Garcia. Like the rest of the property, the "table of the saints" has an austere Spanish Colonial decor that suggests a monastery — and Garcia is a former Franciscan friar. Garcia grew up in New Mexico's upper Rio Grande valley, watching his mother cook for a family of 11. Before entering the religious order, he honed his skills as a line cook in Santa Fe restaurants.

It turns out that the five people you meet in heaven are going to bore you to death all over again. They'll yammer on and on about family and sacrifice and forgiveness, and before you know it, you'll be all passed out in the card aisle of eternity, motionless underneath the Hallmark display. "Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is an easy target, and not just because of its pretentious title, which implies that Albom is a full-fledged franchise of the magnitude of Stephen King, or, like, William Shakespeare.

CAMBRIDGE -- Bono famously referred to the Harlem Gospel Choir as "Angels in Harlem. " And, as is often the case lately, the U2 frontman and social activist has a really good point. The Harlem Gospel Choir, which played a polished, inspiring, sold-out show at the Regattabar on Thursday, recalled all that is heavenly about one of the oldest instruments of expression: the human voice. Few voices have proved as resonant in shaping modern culture than those of Africa: creating the blues, jazz, gospel, soul, and so on through their offspring rock, pop, and hip-hop.

Rhino ESSENTIAL "Bible Black" Proving itself to be more than a reunion cash-in, Heaven & Hell - the re-brand for Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals - has a batch of new material that is every bit as menacingly delightful as 2007's concert tour that revived the lineup after 15 years. "The Devil You Know" is a labyrinth of macabre, escapist fantasy, with Dio serving as the guide. His trademark vocal bravado intact, Dio ably goes off without a lick of shame about deadly angels, Satanic daughters, and books of evil secrets; coming from another singer, this...

Jon Bon Jovi wants duped fans to know he's not dead, and he has posted a photo proving it. False reports of the New Jersey-born musician's death spread online after a fake news release surfaced on social media sites. Bon Jovi is shown in a picture on his Facebook page holding a sign that reads, "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey. " Below that is scrawled Monday's date. Bon Jovi was performing at a charity concert that night at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank. His publicist confirmed Bon Jovi was alive and well and playing the show.

As titles go, "I Love You, It's Cool" sharply (and unintentionally) captures the passive passion that propels the songs on Bear in Heaven's third album. The problem with the Brooklyn, N.Y., trio has never been a scarcity of ideas. The way they shrink wrap their futurist prog-scapes into fun-size pop parcels on "Reflection of You" and "Sinful Nature" effectively splits the difference between dense and dancey. It's just hard not to wish they sounded hungrier. Jon Philpot's croon lightens the landscape on "Cool Light" (an otherwise pleasantly whirring drone)

BECKET - At one point in Ulysses Dove’s “Red Angels,’’ the four dancers perform solos that are so beautiful, so daringly precise, so much a celebration of what the dancer’s body is, that you think your heart will burst. When each dancer finishes, however, he or she coolly walks away, giving a look that suggests you really should pull yourself together. What’s especially fun about that cheekiness is that, emotionally, it’s a world-and-a-half away from “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven,’’ which opens the all-Dove program that the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet is...

Peering into the skies might open the vastness of the universe and spark leaps of imagination, but astronomy, like writing, is a sedentary pursuit. It might even be considered a bit dull. A late 18th century job description for an assistant astronomer at Britain's Royal Observatory suggested that candidates be "obedient drudges": those with sloth-like dispositions, no doubt, were given special consideration. But the 18th century stargazers whom Andrea Wulf chronicles in "Chasing Venus" proved themselves a different sort.

Having never seen the Brooklyn trio Bear In Heaven in a live setting before, one might reasonably have expected their show at Brighton Music Hall on Thursday night to have been a more contemplative affair. That's particularly true considering the sounds on their 2009 breakout album, "Beast Rest Forth Mouth," by and large a dream-space of heady synth enigmas. On the contrary, the band created an impromptu dance club setting, with an extraordinarily visceral onslaught of pounding kick drums and distorted bass lines that had much of the room, and frontman...

RE "Chuck Colson: A life fully redeemed" (Editorial, April 24): The late Watergate conspirator Charles W. Colson may or may not be in heaven right now, but wherever he is, I'm certain he would be surprised to learn that somebody has given The Boston Globe authority over the all-important question of who has been redeemed. Martin Spigoli Westwood

1 Owner Flip Meyer bought this bell, now installed just behind the pond, to commemorate a dear friend. 2 A ram statue and another like it stand just inside the garden gate. 3 Shrub roses are among the front yard's plentiful blooms. 4 When Meyer moved to Maine from Connecticut, she brought this maiden statue with her. 5 Japanese maple surrounds a concrete replica of a terra-cotta warrior. 6 A grassy path leads to the island garden. 7 From her relocated master suite, Meyer has a view of the pond and its three waterfalls.Photogaphs by James R. Salomon The former parsonage of the...

As titles go, "I Love You, It's Cool" sharply (and unintentionally) captures the passive passion that propels the songs on Bear in Heaven's third album. The problem with the Brooklyn, N.Y., trio has never been a scarcity of ideas. The way they shrink wrap their futurist prog-scapes into fun-size pop parcels on "Reflection of You" and "Sinful Nature" effectively splits the difference between dense and dancey. It's just hard not to wish they sounded hungrier. Jon Philpot's croon lightens the landscape on "Cool Light" (an otherwise pleasantly whirring drone)

Jon Bon Jovi wants duped fans to know he's not dead, and he has posted a photo proving it. False reports of the New Jersey-born musician's death spread online after a fake news release surfaced on social media sites. Bon Jovi is shown in a picture on his Facebook page holding a sign that reads, "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey. " Below that is scrawled Monday's date. Bon Jovi was performing at a charity concert that night at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank. His publicist confirmed Bon Jovi was alive and well and playing the show.

RE "Chuck Colson: A life fully redeemed" (Editorial, April 24): The late Watergate conspirator Charles W. Colson may or may not be in heaven right now, but wherever he is, I'm certain he would be surprised to learn that somebody has given The Boston Globe authority over the all-important question of who has been redeemed. Martin Spigoli Westwood

BOSTON - Legal pressure forced Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ronnie James Dio, and Vinny Appice to call their band Heaven & Hell instead of Black Sabbath, but in every way this sporadically operational lineup of the long-running Sabbath brand has become its own entity. On Friday at Bank of America Pavilion, Heaven & Hell demonstrated how much more in sync these guys are compared with their initial return two years ago. Not that the Dio and Appice reunion with Iommi and Butler - who still perform as Black Sabbath with Ozzie Osbourne and drummer Bill Ward - was ever rusty or musty.

One was waiting tables at a Times Square seafood restaurant. Another was in Disney films and on tour with the Jonas Brothers. A third had performed at Carnegie Hall, but wondered when she'd land theater's biggest prize. All three — George Salazar, Anna Maria Perez de Tagle and Celisse Henderson — are overjoyed to be making their Broadway debuts this month in a revival of Stephen Schwartz's "Godspell. " "For me, it's a dream come true," says Perez de Tagle while the others nod. The trio is part of a 10-person cast that stars Hunter Parish, whose credits include...

ITHACA, N.Y. - A cyclist pauses mid-ride for a snack at a freestanding yellow building marked with the cartoon face of a pig. "Are the carnitas pork?" asks local resident Marc Rockmore, still wearing his bike helmet inside the Piggery Deli. "Pretty much everything here is pork," answers his server. The deli is a front for the Piggery farm in nearby Trumansburg, where Brad Marshall and Heather Sandford, who are married and both 36, have been raising heirloom breeds of pigs for charcuterie since 2007.