All About Jazz — Playing along with the Mozart effect. If you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, you need to be a participant, not just a listener. Five months after we are conceived, music begins t... more info

Detroit Free Press — With Michigan's economy still sputtering, Michigan Opera Theatre is hedging its bets for 2010-11 by loading up on repertory staples to boost ticket sales -- Puccini's "La Bohème," Mozart's "The Magic Flute" and Verdi's "Rig... more info

Guardian Music — The debut album by this aspiring soul diva sounds like Laura Nyro and Carole King ... blaring out of two separate stereosHometown: New York.The lineup: Diane Birch (vocals, piano, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, guitar).The background: Diane Birch has been... more info

Guardian Music — Trading Tuscany for Texas, Jonathan Miller's drive-thru Donizetti works a treat, writes Fiona MaddocksPicasso's stage inventions were memorable but as he himself said, it's best to keep things vague. He was not one to get cornered by a concept. Often... more info

The Vinyl Villain — From July 24th 2008BETTER THAN W.B. YEATS AS A POET?Tony Wilson once made the claim that Shaun Ryder was a better poet than William Butler Yeats, and that in the fullness of time, he'd come to be regarded every much as talented a genius as Mozart.I'... more info

Metalsucks — If you don’t know East of the Wall, you should learn about them right quick. For one thing, the share a member with The Binary Code – that would be bassist Brett Bamberger -and for another thing, well, they rock. If The Binary Code are too tech-y... more info

The Telegraph — WNO's The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart at the Wales Millennium Centre is beautifully sung, though the updating is puzzling. Rating: * * * more info

The Riverside Symphony performed on Friday night in Alice Tully Hall. more info

All About Jazz — Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin, 474 pages, $30) A good biography of a musician makes the reader want to listen. Alexander Wheelock Thayer triggered that compulsion with his life of Beethoven, Marion Hildesheimer wi... more info

Guardian Music — Wales Millennium Centre, CardiffIn a field somewhere, there must be a car-boot sale where ­hard-up ­opera ­companies offer old ­productions for sale, no questions asked. It's ­presumably where Welsh National ­Opera picked up its "ne... more info