Music & Culture

Next weekend, Los Angeles will host a massive festival dedicated to alternative comedy, featuring acts Eric Idle of Monty Python, Sarah Silverman, Adam Sandler and dozens of others. Host Arun Rath speaks with the organizers (as well as one of the marquee acts): Jack Black and Kyle Gass, better known as the outrageous acoustic-metal band Tenacious D.

In the new film CBGB, Rickman plays Hilly Kristal, the New Yorker who opened the dive bar he hoped would be a space for country, bluegrass and blues. CBGB instead turned into a hub for punk rock in the '70s. Rickman talks about preparing for the role and the challenges of playing a real person.

Morton Subotnick has been a pioneer in the creation, composition and popularization of electronic music since the 1960s. Now 80, he recently unveiled his latest creation: an iPad app that allows children (and everyone else) to create their own electronic compositions.

At 27, bandleader Trombone Shorty is already an icon in his hometown. So he's giving back: Through his own foundation, the "supafunkrock" brass player is nurturing even younger talent in local schools.

On Three Chords and the Truth, bluegrass musician James King picks from the canon of country music to rearrange its songs as bluegrass. On The Bluegrass Album, country star Alan Jackson has recorded his first collection of bluegrass music — some classics, some originals.

The genre has some of the most creative, politically savvy, intelligent female personalities in the industry, made by artists as different as Chile's Ana Tijoux, who melts and reworks the Spanish language like a blacksmith, and Dominican-Spanish Arianna Puello, she of the machine gun delivery.

This coming week will mark Italian opera giant Giuseppe Verdi's bicentennial. NPR's Arun Rath isn't just a fan of the composer's adaptation of Othello — he says it just might have the edge on the Bard's original.

The jazz pianist uses his new record to recall works of yesteryear and simultaneously illustrate his new sense of direction. Jamal isn't playing the way he did 60 years ago, now that he's finished warming up.

The duo incorporates many genre influences to fit its hard-edged pop sound. Critic Will Hermes says the formula still works on Bitter Rivals, which finds the two musicians trying to expand their boundaries even further.