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Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are an 11 piece music collective from Los Angeles.
After winning over fans around the world with their single Home, they’ve just released their debut album Up From Below.

With their massive line-up, hippy appearance and old-school folk-rock sounds they’ve been drawing comparisons to acts like The Polyphonic Spree. And as band leader Alex Ebert explained to triple j’s Richard Kingsmill some people are claiming they’re a little cult-like.

“I feel like the closest we came to anything like that was someone writing in the Birmingham paper that someone should blow our bus up, they’d be doing the world a favour. I don’t know what that means exactly. No one in the band is taking the concept of a cult seriously. There’s no guiding ethos apart from really basic principles that are just beneficial for all of mankind. There’s no drink blood at 7am every Wednesday or some bullshit like that. There’s nothing that we do that’s particularly cultish.”

Listening to the tightly knit harmonies, soaring fiddle and complex string arrangements of The Lovell Sisters, it might surprise some people to learn that these siblings are each well under 30. With the much-anticipated release of their second studio album this past April, enthusiasm for the trio is growing internationally. All three sisters are classically trained on the violin and piano; after seeing a live bluegrass show in Chattanooga in 2003, they were inspired to explore the music.

Since then, the excitement of critics and fans has only grown. The Lovell Sisters’ second studio album, Time to Grow, further showcases thee group’s beautiful harmonies and virtuoso instrumentals.

Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” is packed from start to finish with music of unearthly beauty, wit and grace. Yet a good performance always seems to drive toward the opera’s final moments (cocaine detox treatment and cocaine detox kit for people), when the abandoned Carthaginian queen goes sorrowfully but serenely to her death.

Thursday’s performance in Herbst Theatre by Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra was no exception. Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, making her first appearance with the period ensemble, sang Dido eloquently and with a masterful command of style.

None of it, though, compared with the depth and directness of the final lament, “When I am laid in Earth.” Here Graham mustered all of her tonal splendor and dramatic focus to provide an arresting picture of a woman - and queen - at the end of her tether.

Melodic phrases began in silence and made their presence felt gradually, in a slow upwelling of emotion. The final cry, “Remember me,” was delivered with a controlled fervor that tallied with Dido’s overarching stateliness, and McGegan brought tenderness to the elegiac final measures, with their aching, bittersweet harmonies.

The rest of the performance captured a similar air of probing tragedy. As Aeneas (a comparatively minor role, despite the work’s title), baritone William Berger combined robust tone and impeccable diction for a persuasively heroic portrait.
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African artists have always been particularly open to outside influences, but this concert was remarkable both for the extraordinary array of styles and the skill with which they were blended together.

Richard Bona is a distinguished jazz player who has worked with the likes of Pat Metheny and Joe Zawinul, but here the Cameroonian bassist was out to show that jazz and blues are just part of his range. He and his band constantly changed direction, from African songs to funk, flamenco, Brazilian and Caribbean influences, mixed in with quirky demonstrations of his musicianship that veered towards good-humoured cabaret. This musical kaleidoscope was held together by light bass runs that provided the foundation for guitar, keyboard and horn solos from his impressive band. Bona’s gently exquisite vocal work was equally notable.

He looked like a pop star, sporting dreadlocks and jeans, but opened with a drifting song dominated by his high, delicate voice, before showing off the band’s dynamic range with a switch to jazz funk. From then on, the changes kept coming, from the mellow African tune M’Bemba Mama to the excursion into brassy Indian styles on Shiva Mantra, and a dazzling display of musicianship and technology in which he sampled his own solo vocals, adding layers of overdubs.
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The Recording Academy has added songs by James Brown, Bob Marley, the Beach Boys, Louis Armstrong and others to its Grammy Hall of Fame, bringing the total number of titles in the collection to 851.

The latest batch of 25 recordings added to the list includes Brown’s 1966 “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” and Marley’s 1973 album “Catch a Fire,” which the Jamaican reggae great recorded with his band The Wailers, the academy said.

Also on the list was the Beach Boys’ 1965 song “California Girls,” jazz master Louis Armstrong’s 1931 “Lazy River” and the 1972 comedy album “Class Clown” from George Carlin, who died last year.

The 25 recordings added to the Grammy Hall of Fame will be displayed along with the rest of the collection at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles.