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Stevie Wonder - one of the most successful musicians in history - announced his long-awaited return to Bay Area stages. The Motown music legend will perform his first local shows in more than 12 years on Aug. 26 at the Sleep Train Pavilion in Concord and Sept. 4 at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.

Tickets [...]

NEW YORK - Jin may have earned his hip-hop stripes on the street, but the rapper spent a recent afternoon copping a brand-new street cred.

With a Barack Obama canvassing team, the buoyant emcee pounded Manhattan’s pavement, registering voters and pushing the Democratic senator for president. Dressed in a [...]

One of jazz’s most consistently rewarding improvisers, Lee Konitz has recorded more than 200 albums since his 1949 debut as a band leader. While many of his albums are out of print or have never been released in the United States, numerous CDs are available. Here are a few favorites:

“Birth of the Cool,” [...]

Linkin Park has broken every rule in the book by mixing aggro-metal bombast with socially aware lyrics, looking like vid-game nerds who improbably appeal to girls, and selling more CDs than the badly hurting record industry has seen in years.

At the same time, the band’s six members, half of [...]

Prince gets a pass because, well, he’s Prince, a fact he likes to remind us of every so often with either a gangbusters tour or a throwdown performance at halftime of the Super Bowl.

But when it comes to his recorded output of late, his means of getting music to the people [...]

After watching the “American Idols Live!” tour Tuesday at HP Pavilion in San Jose, it’s no clearer whether any contestant from Season Six has true star potential.

The concert featured the top 10 finalists - including eventual champ Jordin Sparks and runner-up Blake Lewis - none of whom came across like [...]

For those who say classical music is boring, stuffy, predictable, dated, whatever, I say this: You didn’t see Monday’s sold-out, opening-night performance at Music@Menlo, in which pianist Wu Han, violinist Joseph Swensen and cellist Ralph Kirshbaum lifted their battle axes and went slashing and thrashing through Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, drawing the [...]

After watching the “American Idols Live!” tour Tuesday at HP Pavilion in San Jose, it’s no clearer whether any contestant from season six has true star potential.

The concert featured the top 10 finalists - including eventual champ Jordin Sparks and runner-up Blake Lewis - none of whom came across like a sure [...]

The good news is the Paramount Theatre is still standing, having survived a thunderous dose of three elements over the weekend. Credit that to the way folks built these art deco movie palaces back in the early ’30s.

The bad news is, well - there is no bad news. Readers will only [...]

Even after decades of playing “Maiden Voyage,” the song at hand. It was a moment in which Hancock seemed to be himself. Although, even for his die-hard fans (and I’m one of them), it’s hard getting a sense of who Hancock really is. There are times when he wears so many faces, and seems so [...]