The 2008 Tanglewood season has been announced, and Kronos Quartet is among the Guest Artists taking the stage at the Lenox, Massachusetts, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Kronos' Thursday, August 14, program will include John Zorn's Dead Man, Flugufrelsarinn by Sigur Rós, and Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, which the composer wrote for the Quartet in 1998. Tickets go on sale to the public February 17. 

Making its world premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival will be the TV adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, starring the leads of the 2004 Broadway revival, Audra McDonald, Sean Combs, and Phylicia Rashad. The New York Post says the film will be "the cultural high point" of the TV season when it airs on ABC February 25.

Good news for fans of The Magnetic Fields unable to make one of their three sold-out shows at New York City's Town Hall in February: a fourth show has been added! On Sunday, February 24, 2008, the group will play one more night in NYC before heading to San Francisco for their next tour dates. Tickets for the newly added show will be available beginning today at 12 PM EST.

When you've signed on to play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, chances are good you'll be wielding razor blades every now and then. And when you've played Edward Scissorhands, one would expect you'd be comfortable with that sort of thing. But in an interview with the Glasgow Daily Record, Johnny Depp admits to having some trepidation when it came to lathering up his co-star in the film version of Sweeney Todd, Alan Rickman.

Condé Nast's Portfolio magazine gives an in-depth look at Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, There Will Be Blood—from the writer/director's initial decision to adapt Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! for the screen right down to the "bravura camera moves" he chose for the finished creation. In the article, Portfolio's Fred Schruers lauds the "genius" in the performance of the film's star, Daniel Day-Lewis, and points to "Jonny Greenwood's smartly intrusive score that riddles ominous tones with industrial-strength percussion."

After kicking off the California leg his of US tour last night in Santa Cruz, Youssou N'Dour will make two more stops in northern California before heading down to Los Angeles this Saturday. Gearing up for the concert at UCLA's Royce Hall, the Los Angeles Times praises Youssou's "inimitable vocals, with their seductive timbral span" and argues that "a pretty convincing case could be made for N'Dour as one of the world's most visible and successful international artists."

Wired magazine's pop-culture blog, Underwire, reports on, well, The Wire. For those not yet wired in, writer Erik Malinowski previews the soon-to-be-released official series soundtrack from Nonesuch Records that "fans have been clamoring for years for." He recognizes the praise the series has gotten, saying that "few people will argue that The Wire is the best show on television. By far."

The New Music Collective out of Charleston, South Carolina, begins its season this Sunday with a program called New Music, New Charleston, which will include a performance of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint by area guitarist David Linaburg, along with two world premieres of works by local composers. 

Ballet Theatre Afrikan begins its latest Hooked on Classics series tonight with choreographer Christopher Kindo's Sollopa, featuring the music of Giya Kancheli's Night Prayers by Kronos Quartet, at the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre. According to joburg.org.za, the official site of the city of Johannesburg, Sollopa uses the "mesmerising music" of Night Prayers to tell a tale of magic and passion in a mythical kingdom, through both classical and contemporary dance movement. Ballet Theatre Afrikan premiered the piece in 2004. 

The Sweeney Todd film site has now been fully updated to include all the latest information on the upcoming release—production notes, cast and crew bios, trailers, behind-the-scenes video, a photo gallery, and all sorts of downloads featuring the film's stars. The site also features streaming audio of songs off the soundtrack, which will be available from Nonesuch December 18.

On the same day that Nonesuch Radio has added to its playlist two tracks from Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood score, The Playlist, a website dedicated to all things movie music, is streaming two additional songs from the soundtrack: "Proven Lands" and "There Will Be Blood." The film—"pretty much at the top of everyone's most anticipated list," says the site—will be in limited release December 26, and the soundtrack will be available December 18 from Nonesuch.

Youssou N'Dour resumes his North American tour tonight at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, California. On Friday, he makes his way to San Francisco for the season finale of 25th Annual SF Jazz Festival. "N'Dour shows that he has lost neither charm nor youthful energy," says SF Weekly of his new album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take). "The rhythmically rich music works like a frame around his high-pitched voice, and the music is able to captivate even the most jaded listener, world music fan or otherwise."