Music

Singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook makes her third appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. Cook's first appearance on the show took place nearly 10 years ago, and since then her star has risen slowly and steadily.

Singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle makes his second appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. Backed by his own band — which includes Paul Niehaus on pedal steel, Vince Ilagan on upright bass and Jon Radford on drums — Earle plays songs from his new album, Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now.

As the 1970s punk scene was turning the corner into a new decade, Joe Jackson showed them the way with a pair of essential new wave albums, Look Sharp! and I'm the Man.

But as soon as fans thought they knew the angry young Brit with the sharp suits and even sharper commentary, Jackson changed. His Gershwin-esque piano music became huge hits in the '80s, but then he changed again.

Sid Griffin is an "alt" kind of guy: In the 1980s, he got in on the ground floor of the alt-country music scene in Los Angeles with his band the Long Ryders.

Reviews of the new film The Master have ranged from acclaim to disdain. Almost all the critics, though, seem to admire the film's music, composed by Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood's story begins in the early 1990s, when he was playing the viola at Oxford University and not making much of an impression — even on himself.

"I was headed for the back of the viola section in some orchestra," Greenwood says. "If I practiced hard enough."

For a metro area of only about 3.5 million people, the Twin Cities region is unusual in the way it supports not one, but two world-class orchestras. Now, with looming deficits on the horizon and musicians' contracts at both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra expiring Sept. 30, the Twin Cities may have two orchestras on strike.