Music

James Brown, "The Singles Volume Four: 1966-1967" (Hip-O Select.com)
The hardest-screaming man in show biz delivered something for everybody during the period represented on this remarkable 42-track double album. In addition to many smoking R&B hits with his Famous Flames, James Brown also released big-band instrumentals, Floyd Cramer-influenced Christmas songs, his own simmering organ grooves, and Nat King Cole-like crossover bids such as "I Loves You Porgy." And then there's "Cold Sweat," the loose-limbed rhythm explosion that turned soul music on its ear and introduced the phrase "Give the drummer some" into the funk lexicon.

Levon Helm, "Dirt Farmer" (Dirt Farmer Music/Vanguard)
Following a long battle with throat cancer, and a serious studio fire, The Band's former drummer-vocalist survives to sing about miners, train robbers, farmers, and farmers' daughters, on his first solo album in 25 years. Concentrating on traditional tunes, such as "False Hearted Lover Blues" and "Poor Old Dirt Farmer," which 67-year-old Levon Helm learned growing up in Arkansas, "Dirt Farmer" also includes twangy takes on Steve Earle's "The Mountain" and Julie and Buddy Miller's "Wide River to Cross."

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette, "My Foolish Heart" (ECM)
According to his liner notes, this 2001 Montreux Jazz Festival concert marks the apex of pianist Keith Jarrett's 25-year involvement with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette—at least in terms of "swinging, energy, and personal ecstasy." From Miles Davis's "Four" to the "Only the Lonely" encore, these two CDs overflow with invention while offering a crash course in jazz history.

Youssou N'Dour, "Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take)" (Nonesuch)
In addition to adding tinges of blues, reggae, and Cuba to his primary regional style, mbalax, Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour draws from other parts of Senegal on a record that combines virtuosic singing with complex skittering rhythms and jazzy improvisations. His Super Etoile band is nothing short of dazzling, and Youssou himself marvelously displays the strength and resilience of African culture to the world at large.

Everything changed for jazz giant John Coltrane when he sobered up and kicked heroin in May 1957. Having been fired by Miles Davis for unprofessional behavior in April, the saxophonist turned his life around and joined Thelonious Monk's quartet that summer. (Blue Note has sold more than 370,000 copies of the thoroughly enchanting "Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall" since its 2005 release.) Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for The New York Times, offers his own sober assessment of Coltrane's sound, style, and influence in "Coltrane: The Story of a Sound," a two-part tale. Part one is a fairly standard biography concentrating on Coltrane the working musician. Part two, however, focuses first on Coltrane as a musical sponge, soaking up the influences around him. He distilled them into the most influential sonic essence of his generation up to and following his premature death in 1967 at age 40.

Coltrane evolved from a lucid bebopper and cool swinger into a pop experimentalist (with "My Favorite Things") before cutting a thoroughly original path into the spiritual beyond in records such as "A Love Supreme." Coltrane, according to Ratliff, was driven to express the sounds he heard in his head, no matter what the consequences or cost. Fortunately, Coltrane found the band to execute those sounds. He may have been obsessed, not to mention a little depressed, but he left an apparently unalterable signature of fleeting notes on the way jazz is heard and performed today.

I'm getting a kick out of Coltrane, the sideman, as heard on "Interplay," a five-CD box set of under-rehearsed sessions he recorded for Prestige between 1956 and 1958 with the so-called Prestige All-Stars, pianist Mal Waldron and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Coltrane's famous recovery took place between discs three and four, so compare and contrast.

If visuals were enabled around here, you'd be seeing a groovy '60s poster, or maybe even an afghan embossed with an image from the same era. There has long been a brisk market in vintage poster art from its San Francisco heyday, and both Wolfgang's Vault and RockPop Gallery offer plenty of it for sale. Originally issued as one-shot giveaways for shows at venues such as the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms, the best gig posters have appreciated immensely in value over the years, and first printings can now command tens of thousands of dollars. "The Art of the Fillmore: The Poster Series 1966-1971" is a copiously illustrated coffee-table-sized introduction to the method and madness behind this unique form of high commercial art.

The art of the rock poster didn't die with the '60s, of course. Artists such as Frank Kozik and Jim Pollack continue to do colorfully inventive work. But I was knocked out recently by a site selling gig posters by Julie McLaughlin among many, many other fairly underground and mostly young artists. McLaughln's work (which reminds me of beautiful old Golden Book covers) suggests that there's something really important going on musically and artistically in her Calgary, Canada, hometown. Rambling around the literally thousands of designers selling their (immensely affordable) work at Gigposters.com is definitely an eye opener. There's a huge, vibrant, and mostly unseen world of contemporary poster art out there deserving of wider exposure.

Ravi Shankar was delighted to be playing Carnegie Hall last Saturday night. But at age 87, having suffered from both double pneumonia and a shoulder injury during the past year, he's undoubtedly quite happy, as the old joke has it, to be playing anywhere. Shankar was joined by his daughter, Anoushka, the 26-year-old sitarist (and half-sister of Norah Jones) who has been performing alongside her father at venues such as this for more than a decade. Ravi Shankar introduced the sitar and Indian classical music to Western audiences during the late sixties through his association with Beatle George Harrison, whom he taught for a while, and appearances such as this thrilling moment from the 1967 Monterey Pop festival.

Anoushka has been making her own crossover appeal recently via electronic music (as on "Breathing Under Water," a collaboration with Karsh Kale), but made no appeal for Western approval on Saturday, where she performed an hour-long raga with Tanmoy Bose on tabla and Ravichandra Kulur on flute. Raviji appeared frail as he walked out for the second half of the evening but broke into a big smile as soon as he began performing his own evening raga, Jogeshwari. Although it's no secret that his virtuosity has been diminished by age, Raviji's more somber sitar tones contrasted notably with the brighter, sharper riffs played by Anoushka, who sat at his feet. Raviji followed his formal raga with a ragmala, or string of melodies, that's basically a genial jam session. Even legends need to cut loose.

Ravi and Anoushka Shankar's tour continues tomorrow night in Germantown, Tenn.

Saxophonist Dexter Gordon saunters off a Holland street and onto a small club's stage, where he wryly introduces and then performs a sizzling "Night in Tunisia." Gordon's is just one of the mesmerizing performances captured on the second series of seriously wonderful Jazz Icons DVDs released by Reelin' in the Years Productions and Naxos Records. The seven new volumes are devoted to John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Wes Montgomery, in addition to Gordon, and were filmed in Europe between 1958 and 1966. Much of this footage has never been seen before; most of the albums include a few different dates, sometimes filmed years apart; and all were shot in vintage black and white. Even the liner notes are better than average. Who wouldn't want to read Pat Metheny on Wes Montgomery? Or Darius Brubeck on his father, Dave?

Every volume suggests historical import. In Germany in 1960, Coltrane was playing, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, with Miles Davis's quintet sans Miles; a year later, Coltrane returned with his own band and genius in full flight. From the "Black and Tan Fantasy" that opens Duke Ellington's 80-minute 1958 Copenhagen concert to the 11-minute "Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue" that closes it, both audience and band seem tuned into the same exuberant vibe (stick around after the credits and watch the band members pack up their instruments at show's end). And Wes Montgomery comes off as an immensely patient leader as he banters genially and teaches his material to three different, fresh rhythm sections in 1965. It's long been a cliché that American jazz stars received more love in Europe than at home. The Jazz Icons series almost proves it.

Shooter Jennings, "The Wolf" (Universal Records South)
He may be the son of Waylon, but there's not a lot of outlaw to be heard on Shooter Jennings's third album. Which isn't to say it disappoints. Shooter's 357s band is a hard-rocking vehicle for rollicking road songs ("Higher"), cosmic country balladry ("Tangled Up in Roses," "Blood From a Stone"), and celebrations of Shooter's pedigree.

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss, "Raising Sand" (Rounder)
Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and bluegrass-pop star Alison Krauss, along with producer T-Bone Burnett, have together fashioned a fairly brilliant blend of country, blues, gospel, and vintage rock that at its best could almost be an unheard American genre unto itself. Their music is dark, dusty, and full of grief, yet glorious all the same.

Taraf de Haidouks, "Maskarada" (Crammed)
Romania's most sophisticated Gypsy ensemble reclaims East-European folk melodies borrowed by classical composers on this clever carnival of an album. Since Taraf's members don't read music, they had to learn such works as Bela Bartok's "Romanian Folk Dances" and Albert Keitelby's "In a Persian Market" by ear, making them sound as fresh as the group's zesty originals.

Dwight Yoakam, "Dwight Sings Buck" (New West)
Having drawn idol Buck Owens out of retirement for "The Streets of Bakersfield" in 1988, Dwight Yoakam eases the pain of the California country star's 2006 passing on "Dwight Sings Buck." "Cryin' Time" and "Close Up the Honky Tonks" are among the highlights of one of the classier single-artist tributes in years.

In January, Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten took acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell into Washington's Metro to find out how large an audience Bell would draw while performing incognito on his priceless Stradivarius. The results were disappointing, to say the least. Only a single person recognized Bell during his busking experiment, and he was ignored totally by thousands. Weingarten wrote: "If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that—then what else are we missing?"

Commuters and passersby have been given a second chance. On June 9, violinist David Juritz, London Mozart Players concertmaster and guest leader of the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, began an international busking experiment of his own. Juritz has been performing on the streets of cities on all five continents to raise money for Musequality, the charity he founded to offer music education to some of the world's poorest children. He has raised more than $13,000 busking for Musequality during his "Around the World and Bach" tour. But it hasn't been easy, and he'll soon shift his attention to more lucrative corporate sponsors. The New York Times caught up with him:

"Busking is really time-consuming and it feels chaotic," he said, adding, "You have days where you feel shattered." During a brief stop in London at the end of June, after the European leg of his tour, he said, the prospect of going back out on the road for almost four months seemed "pretty grim."

Watch Juritz perform Bach's Prelude in E Major, in Madrid, here.

Mickey Hart and Zakir Hussain began the Global Drum Project show Wednesday night at Manhattan's Highland Ballroom by beating on a squid and twin dolphins. The former Grateful Dead drummer and the Indian percussion guru thumped and slapped the sea creatures— in reality two miked pieces of evocatively shaped old-growth redwood from Sonoma County, Calif.—with fingers, hands, sticks, and a broom. The duo, who have been drumming together on various Hart projects since 1974, were here as members of Hart's latest world-class drum ensemble alongside Latin percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, from Puerto Rico, "talking" drummer Sikiru Adepoju, from Nigeria, and electronics wizard Jonah Sharp, from Scotland. Rather than highlighting the drummers' various styles through extended soloing, the Global Drum Project seeks common rhythmic ground onstage, and on their languorous new album.

No, there was nary a drum solo to be heard during the course of an evening that often resembled a Grateful Dead parking-lot drum circle—only with really good drummers. Ambient electronics usually established a continually shifting pulse the four drummers multiplied and divided as a group or in genially jousting pairs. Hussain maintained a flow of complex new patterns on his tablas, Hidalgo added dramatic accents on congas, and Adepoju provided constant commentary through the shifting pitches of his talking drum. The sounds of a Papua, New Guinea rainforest, a New York City salsa session, an Indian raga, or a Nigerian dance party all became part of a glorious, percussive polyglot. And it was pretty cool. The Global Drum Project tour continues Saturday night at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts in East Lansing, Mich.

Alex Ross's hefty and wonderful new book, "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," begins with an almost literal cliff-hanger: Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler visiting a waterfall and enjoying lunch prior to Strauss conducting his opera "Salome" that evening in the Austrian city of Granz. That bucolic scene sets the stage for a wild, densely plotted ride through a century's worth of creative jousting among the (gotta say it) exclusively white and male titans of classical music. The New Yorker magazine's music critic has a brilliant knack for distilling entire careers into elegant portraits, which he etches into the epic context of a world descending into war and fascism before reemerging into something new and strange and yet to be resolved. This passage about Béla Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra" (1942-45) offers a nice example of how Ross illuminates a specific work within a much larger exhibition:

The Concerto might be a tribute to the pluralism that Roosevelt's America in its ideal form embodied. There are folk melodies of the Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech peasant traditions, Gypsy dances, North African rhythms, echoes of both the impressionism of Debussy and the expressionism of Schoenberg (they are unified in the Elegy movement), Stravinsky's Rite, and, riding high above, pealing fanfares of all-American brass. Ridicule aside, the Shostakovich quotation adds to the polyglot diversity of the piece. Almost every instrument in the orchestra has a solo role, even as the collective emotion swells. Bartók's parting gift to his adopted country—he died on September 26, 1945—is a portrait of democracy in action.

Ross also has a nice piece in this week's New Yorker about blogging and the online world of classical music. "Some recent articles have asked whether the Internet can save classical music," he writes in "The Well-Tempered Web," a piece linking to loads of interesting sites. He continues, "Classical music is, in fact, saving itself; Internet activity is merely the most immediately visible evidence of its refusal to fade away."

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, "Best of the 'Flatt & Scruggs' TV Show, Volumes 3 and 4" (Shanachie DVDs)
Performing on a set resembling a cracker-barrel country store, Flatt & Scruggs sing country classics and turn-of-the-century gospel, entertain guests such as seven-year-old mandolin prodigy Ricky Skaggs, and play straightmen to their band's corny comedy on four shows (two per volume) from 1961 and '62. Sponsor Martha White's live commercials for self-rising flour are no less entertaining.

Aretha Franklin, "Rare and Unreleased Recordings From the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul" (Atlantic/Rhino)
There's hardly a less-than-impressive track on this double-CD set of demos and outtakes from Aretha Franklin's fertile late-'60s stint at Atlantic Records. Label co-founder Jerry Wexler serves as guide for this tour through the two-year creative whirlwind during which Aretha cut four studio albums and a live disc. The combination of Franklin's powerful gospel-trained voice, the top-notch material, and finely crafted arrangements makes for an unbeatable journey into soul music's golden era.

Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Exodus (30th Anniversary Edition)" (Island/Tuff Gong/Universal); "Exodus—Live at the Rainbow (30th Anniversary Edition)" (Universal Music Group DVD)
Reggae star Bob Marley's first international hit album was recorded while he resided in London in self-imposed exile after being shot in Jamaica in 1976. Exodus brilliantly balances the romantic beauty of "One Love" and "Three Little Birds" with the political condemnation and consciousness-raising fervor of "Guiltiness," "Exodus," and "The Heathen." The London Rainbow concert is a perfect time capsule of an icon and band captured at the height of their career.

Umphrey's McGee, "Live at the Murat" (SCI Fidelity)
This Midwestern sextet is probably the most consistently entertaining and innovative improvisational rock band in the country, at least onstage. Sparked by Miles Davis, the Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, and Chet Atkins, among numerous other influences, Umphrey's members are gifted instrumentalists and consummate listeners who blend progressive-rock smarts with arena-rock muscle, then play the results with an emotional lilt and refreshing sense of humor.

Guitar freaks take heed of the Experience Hendrix Tour, which pays tribute to Jimi via a six-city, seven-show tour that begins Oct. 16 at Washington D.C.'s Constitutional Hall and concludes with the second of two shows at New York's Beacon Theater on Oct. 22. Gibson Guitar is sponsoring the tour, which is curious insofar as Hendrix was a noted Fender Stratocaster man, but whatever.

Though Hendrix, who died in 1970, will obviously be in attendance only in spirit, the rhythm section that performed this version of "Fire" with him at Woodstock, drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox, will be on hand, as will an impressive lineup of guitarists. Chicago's Buddy Guy and Howling Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin will tap Hendrix's blues roots. Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger will represent Hendrix's acid-rocking peer group. Hendrix acolytes will include gospel pedal-steel wizard Robert Randolph and Living Colour's Corey Glover. And bluesmen Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Doyle Bramhall II, and Eric Gales will likely be backed by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble rhythm section of Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon. Gales is a left-handed African-American who, like Hendrix, also plays his guitar upside-down; and he seems directly connected to his source in this take on "Little Wing."

My current Wolfgang's Concert Vault playlist consists of a 1966 Jefferson Airplane jam at San Francisco's Fillmore Ballroom, blues guitarist Rory Gallagher performing "Do You Read Me" at New York's Bottom Line in 1978, the Kinks' celebration of "Alcohol" at Waterbury, Conn.'s Palace Theater in 1972, and the Allman Brothers Band—joined by guests Jerry Garcia and Boz Scaggs—unwinding a long, languid "Mountain Jam" at San Francisco's Cow Palace in 1973. I fashioned the playlist from four concerts added this week to the Vault, a.k.a. the Bill Graham Presents archive, which was purchased by Minnesota businessman William E. Sagan in 2003 for $6 million. Sagan is currently streaming 665 concerts produced by legendary promoter Bill Graham (born Wolfgang Grajonca) between 1965 and 2002 via the Vault, with more being added on a regular basis. Many of these concerts can also be purchased as downloads.

This could all be a temporary arrangement, however. Several of the musicians whose performances and images are on sale at the Vault—including Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, and the Doors—filed a federal lawsuit in December accusing Sagan of copyright infringement and bootlegging, among other charges. As the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We have never given permission for our images and material to be used in this way." Sagan's attorney, however, insists that the rights "were acquired in a series of transactions and can't be challenged." Graham's employees, who purchased his company following Graham's death in a 1991 helicopter accident, sold it to SFX Entertainment in 1998. In 2000, SFX was acquired by Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel subsequently sold Graham's archive to Sagan with the caveat, according to former Bill Graham Presents president Greg Perloff, that much of the licensing was incomplete. Just how incomplete will eventually be determined in court. Until then...

Jazz-rock guitar icon John McLaughlin recently completed his first North American tour (at least with an electric band) in nearly a decade. And John Kelman, along for much of the ride with McLaughlin's quartet 4th Dimension (pushing the envelope here), has published a remarkably detailed seven-part account of the trip for All About Jazz. It includes extensive interviews with McLaughlin, snapshots (both literal and journalistic) from the tour, and more about what a road manager does than you probably need to know. McLaughlin released such excellent albums as Extrapolation in England before relocating to America to work with drummer Tony Williams and Miles Davis, whom he joined for In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On the Corner, Big Fun, and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. After becoming a follower of Indian spiritual guru Sri Chinmoy, McLaughlin formed the very loud and fast original version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which existed in three different incarnations between 1971 and 1987.

Asked for his take on the current jazz scene, McLaughlin told Kelman,

"Over the last 15 years I've been somewhat disenchanted with what's coming out of the jazz world. I know we don't like to make comparisons, but nevertheless I have to, the comparisons are there all the time. When I think of the '60s, I think of the fabulous innovations that came out—those shining, brilliant minds and hearts and souls coming out and expressing themselves in music. If you ask me, pure jazz was crystallized with [Miles Davis's] Kind of Blue."

McLaughlin leads the second and third versions of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in the two radically different concerts of impure jazz captured on the double-disc DVD album Mahavishnu Orchestra: Live at Montreux 1984/1974. The earlier performance features McLaughlin at the height of his devotional phase, dressed in white and wielding his double-necked instrument like a fiery scepter. The 1984 show produces fewer decibels and has influences ranging from Brazilian and Indian styles to flamenco, electronics, and Stevie Wonder's funk-rock. It's smooth yet dynamic.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Mahler 5 (Deutsche Grammophon)
Twenty-six-year-old Gustavo Dudamel was recently selected to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Los Angeles Philharmonic next music director. His assured and sympathetic navigation of this irrepressible Venezuelan Youth Orchestra through the dramatic twists and turns of Mahler's Fifth Symphony justifies his new gig.

Habib Koité & Bamada, Afriki (Cumbancha/Contre Jour)
Bonnie Raitt's just one supporter of guitarist Habib Koité, the Mali neotraditionalist and leader of Bamada, a band that specializes in high yet understated energy and loping grooves. The real magic arrives whenever balafon (wooden xylophone) elder Kélétigui Diabaté raises his musical voice in songs that urge African independence, praise motherhood, and celebrate Malian culture.

Bettye LaVette, The Scene of the Crime (Anti-)
"I was singin' R&B back in '62/ Before you were born and your mama, too," wails Bettye LaVette in the autobiographical "Before the Money Came (Battle of Bettye LaVette)." Sixty-something LaVette, one of the greatest soul singers you've probably never heard, is the real deal. The Scene of the Crime, recorded in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and backed by the brawny alt-rock group Drive-By Truckers, packs a powerful punch with a country twist. This career summation has promise to spare.

The Pizzarelli Boys, Sunday at Pete's (Challenge)
On this charmingly unadorned album of instrumental jazz, guitarist John Pizzarelli, his rhythm-guitarist father Bucky, and his bassist brother Martin recreate family evenings spent picking, singing, and jamming along to the likes of "Sweet Sue," "Alabamy Bound," and "Yes Sir! That's My Baby" at their uncle's dinner table. With music this relaxed and casual, even the mistakes sound good.

If the amazing Young@Heart Chorus has a star, it's probably Steve Martin. No, not that Steve Martin. This Steve Martin is a robust-voiced 80-year-old with the sharp-tongued spirit of a rocker a quarter his age. When Martin complains about being "just tired and bored with myself" in Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," you believe him. And when he sings about heaven (in David Byrne's Talking Heads song "Heaven") as "a place where nothing ever happens," you're convinced he has pondered this idea more than once. Lyrics take on new meanings as they grow up, and the Northampton, Mass.-based Young@Heart Chorus, which ranges in age from 68 to 88, is there to pick up the pieces. Members have arrived and departed (dearly) since the group was formed in 1982. They've toured internationally, too, yet didn't deliver their first full-length New York performance until Sunday afternoon at the Paris Bar in Gramercy Park's National Arts Club. The show was part of the group's Road to Nowhere tour (another Talking Heads reference), as heralded by the 21 singers' stylish matching black T-shirts.

Accompanied by a five-piece band that included a couple of thirtysomethings, and led by chorus founder Bob Cilman, the Young@Hearts bookended their show with the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." They mixed classic-rock hits like the Zombies' "She's Not There" and the Velvet Underground's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" with alternative-rock hits such as Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" and Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees." But unlike Mrs. Elva Miller, these seniors singing rock were way beyond shtick. Their material resonated with experience, loss, and even hope. After joining Steve Martin onstage in the middle of "Heaven," Young@Heart fan David Byrne led the group in a beautiful, possibly new, gospel-tinged song. "Even though a man is made of clay," Byrne sang, sneaking reading glasses up to his face to peak at the lyrics he held in his hand, "everything can change on one fine day."

Many, if not all, roads lead to Rome for immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. But as with immigrants everywhere, a new life guarantees neither acceptance nor happiness. In late 2001, a trio of intrepid local activists in Rome's immigrant-intense Piazza Vittorio community decided to create an ambitious all-immigrant orchestra from among the local residents. Their somewhat comical recruitment process and the often chaotic rehearsals leading up to the orchestra's 2002 debut performance in a rescued theater are captured in The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio, which had its American premiere Thursday night in Manhattan's IFC Film Center. The movie was followed by a live OPV performance; and there are few things more strangely rewarding than the real-life sound of larger-than-life characters one has just met onscreen. (The orchestra's multimedia tour continues tomorrow in San Francisco and Thursday in Los Angeles.)

Directed by Mario Tronco, an Italian of seemingly unlimited energy and patience, the orchestra's 10-member touring combo is half the size of the full Roman version. One of the evening's big surprises was how joyously professional the group has become compared to the ragtag gathering of nervous, tired, and frequently exasperated collaborators portrayed in the movie. Today's OPV is a joyous rhythmic fusion of musicians from Tunisia, Cuba, Senegal, Ecuador, Hungary, and Italy who seamlessly integrate each player's regional prowess into a buoyant whole greater than the sum of its parts. And it turns out that the evening's contagious optimism also translates excellently onto the orchestra's two albums, Suite Ninderli and last year's Sona.

John Fogerty, Revival (Fantasy)
As the title suggests, the John Fogerty solo album fans have been waiting for since Creedence Clearwater Revival's 1972 breakup has arrived. The seething, choogling guitarist celebrates his legacy in the self-explanatory "Creedence Song" and "Summer of Love"; castigates contemporary politics in "Gunslinger," "Long Dark Night," and "I Can't Take It No More"; and dreams of a better future in "Don't You Wish It Was True" on this simple, direct, and deeply affecting rock 'no roll punch to the gut.

Merle Haggard, Bluegrass Sessions (McCoury Music)
The Hag wisely chose to record his first bluegrass album "living-room" style with no frills and everyone singing around a single microphone. The country legend's compellingly world-weary voice anchors a live band picking intimate new versions of hits like "Big City," feisty new tunes like "Holding Things Together," and bluegrass standards like the Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away From Me."

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights (Daptone)
Let's hear it for late bloomers. After years of uncredited studio work, fiftyish Sharon Jones and Brooklyn's Dap-Kings band have become the go-to soul providers for artists ranging from Kanye West to Amy Winehouse. Make the acquaintance of this powerful old-school funk force with her most solid and soulful work to date.

Herbie Hancock, The Joni Letters (Verve); Joni Mitchell, Shine (Hear Music)
Joni Mitchell's cigarette-sanded voice on her first album of new material since 1998's Taming the Tiger turns out to be an apt vehicle for songs bemoaning overpopulation, environmental degradation, warfare, cell-phone abusers, and other contemporary maladies. And while her remake of "Big Yellow Taxi" is sung as an I-told-you-so without the original's concluding giggle, the title track promises a little redemption for everyone under the sun. Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock's wonderful interpretations of Mitchell's music unpacks the emotions underlying the words in wonderful instrumentals and with guest vocalists including Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, and Mitchell herself. (You can hear a stream of Hancock's entire album here.)

Like a family bonded by the death of one of its members, Pink Floyd was for most of its career a band with an absence at its center. That absence would be Syd Barrett, the charismatic singer who wrote most of the band's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which has just been reissued as a three-CD album. The group's longtime art associate, Storm Thorgerson designed the handsome package, which celebrates the album's fortieth anniversary. The first two CDs present Piper in its original mono version and subsequent stereo remix; the third contains all of Pink Floyd's 1967 singles, included non-album tracks "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play." It's still a great and wonderfully weird sounding rock album, and Eric Szulczewski wrote a terrific essay in Inside Pulse about how Piper producer Norman Smith created such a rich sound in mono. Anyone who's only heard Dark Side of the Moon and later Pink Floyd ought to give it a read. And a listen. Syd Barrett's eventual slide into pharmaceutically enhanced instability and eventual seclusion, prior to his death by pancreatic cancer in 2006, is chronicled in The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story DVD.

Barrett's mental dissolution inspired some of Pink Floyd's greatest music, especially the album (and track) Wish You Were Here and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond." Versions of both can be heard on Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's remarkable new concert DVD, Remember That Night: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Gilmour, who was brought into the band in 1968 as Barrett's replacement, gradually evolved into its co-leader, along with Roger Waters; their clashing personalities eventually led to the group's split, although they both continued to play much of the same Floyd material in their solo shows. Gilmour's is a humdinger, too. There's a clear, cool magisterial authority to all his Pink Floyd music. David Crosby and Graham Nash provide sweet backing harmonies on a few songs, and David Bowie makes Dark Side's "Comfortably Numb" and "Arnold Layne" his own. Much of the show consists Gilmour's elegant 2006 solo album On an Island in its entirety. Pink Floyd's reputation for excess is reflected in a second DVD containing hours of extra music and documentary footage. Roger Waters even makes a brief surprise appearance, although no one appears particularly delighted by the encounter. Gilmour discusses the falling out in an interview with Rolling Stone's Rock & Roll Daily and, in this case at least, absence has apparently not made his heart grow fonder.

At a crawfish boil during last years New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, I asked Paul Sanchez of rambunctious local rock group Cowboy Mouth which New Orleans musician he thought was most deserving of attention outside the Crescent City. "John Boutté," he said without a moment's hesitation. "He's the best singer in town." I didn't get a chance to hear Boutté until this year's Jazz Fest, where, backed by a jazz group, he sang tunes like Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothin'" to a big crowd. I was highly impressed, if not overwhelmed, and looked forward to hearing him in a smaller room.

I was overwhelmed Friday night in Central Park's outdoor Delacorte Theater, however. In front of an audience thinned by an earlier shower, accompanied only by a guitarist and occasionally banging a tambourine, John Boutté sang a devastating set of tunes inspired in large part by Katrina and its aftermath. Boutté sings in a rough sweet voice that can take you places no other vocalist can. He sings jazz like a soul singer, and soul, folk, and rock tunes like the jazz virtuoso he is. His impeccable taste helps. Boutté opened his set with Rogers and Hammerstein's ironic antiracist song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" (from South Pacific) and continued with Neil Young's unironic antiracist statement "Southern Man." He also sang Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans," a heartbreaking "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans," and Randy Newman's eerily prophetic "Louisiana 1927" (which you can see him perform with Paul Sanchez here). Somewhere in the middle he lightened up with Allen Toussaint's "Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette)," a hit for r&b singer Lee Dorsey. Mr. Toussaint, who relocated to New York after Katrina and happened to be sitting behind me, beamed his approval.