Music

EYEWITNESS NEWS anchor Susan Barnett is leaving CBS 3 and the CW Philly. Barnett has been at CBS since 2006, anchoring the evening newscasts since 2008. She anchored the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. broadcasts on CBS, and the 10 p.m. broadcast at the CW Philly, along with co-anchor Chris May . Her contract expired in March. "I have decided to not renew my contract with the stations at this time. I am incredibly thankful for having been a part of the CBS Philly family, but I feel that this is the right decision at this time," Barnett said in a statement yesterday.

There's a jazz man's adage, attributed variously to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, that goes something like this: "There are two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind. " Don Was, the bass player, producer, bandleader, songwriter, and now president of the storied jazz label Blue Note Records, divides the world differently. "There are two kinds of music," Was says. "Generous music and selfish music. " Was was talking from his home in Los Angeles as he got ready to head to Philadelphia to for the Non-Commvention, the national gathering of mostly public radio non-commercial music stations, hosted annually by WXPN (88.5 FM)

Even before it had a transmitter, Pan Asia Radio had a philosophy that set it apart from other radio stations: "Let us build a bridge to preserve our culture and traditions for the next generations. . . . " The ellipsis at the end was deliberate, meant to indicate a mission that was open-ended, said Grace Calvelo-Rustia, who founded the station with her husband in late 1996. The couple, both immigrants from the Philippines, weren't out to make money or score high on the Arbitron rating system.

It was almost like a real concert at a real concert hall, with dozens of fans lingering out front and scalpers playing the crowd like pickpockets in Rome. Welcome to the Chestnut Cabaret, the legendary nightclub with the misleading address of 3801 Chestnut St. The brick building is really on a street with no sign, between Chestnut and Market. And as for the name, the cavernous room hardly confirms the coffehouse image of a cabaret, what with its prominent stage lights and its dozen color TV monitors overhead.

"Father" John D'Amico - the former Philadelphia priest turned jazz performer - said it best. "I like the idea of the collaboration of the arts, not a separation," said the electric piano player following a performance at Quincy's at the Gaslight Inn in Mount Holly last Thursday. And representational artist Tom Williams, whose paintings will adorn Quincy's walls for the next month, said, "It's a good melding of jazz and paintings about jazz. It shows a love for music and the art within the music.

Sister Mary McNulty is taking inventory of a sort, ticking off a list of frailty, desultory home life, and human ruin. One girl, a sixth grader, has a father who works in a deli until midnight, so it's her job to make sure her little sister finishes homework before putting her to bed. There's the boy who sits in the public library until closing every night because no one is at home, and another who wasn't doing homework because the electricity had...

No wonder the title has an exclamation point! Loud and colorful and wildly energetic, the bio-musical Fela! , about the Nigerian revolutionary and musician, has electrified audiences all over the world. With a sensational band onstage playing Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's music, direction and choreography by Bill T. Jones (who won a 2009 Tony Award for this show), and a big cast of dancers spectacularly costumed, it's a vigorous reinvention of musical theater, inspired by Stephen Hendel.

MY HUSBAND and I were recently treated to a trip to Philadelphia by our children for our 30th anniversary. We stayed at the Sofitel. We took walks and went to Rittenhouse Square. I live in a suburb of Baltimore, Md., and was so impressed by this park. How wonderful it was. very diverse and lovely. We especially enjoyed the music. We enjoyed it so much that we stayed for over an hour to listen. We were told there was a clamor to get the music stopped. Please don't let them do this.

The often-fruitful marriage between music and poetry hits potentially fascinating snags with Philip Levine. The so-called working man's poet - whose expansive verses are filled with visions of Detroit in the snow and the sounds of Charlie Parker - is the focal point of The Crossing's Month of Moderns festival, which begins Sunday. The choir's ultra-literate founder/director Donald Nally seeks out combustible pairings of words and composer. Few poems, however, are as sturdy and self-sufficient as Levine's, which have won the Pulitzer Prize and any number of other awards.

"August Rush" is a would-be fairy tale about an orphan who follows his own drummer, his own cellist, and his own guitarist to a reunion with his musician parents. It has a clunky tone that teeters between musical mysticism and a much grittier account of life on the New York streets, where the boy goes to find his folks. It's directed by Kristen Sheridan, Jamey's kid, and she no doubt got this job for her role in blending the magical with the real in the wonderful immigrant saga "In America.

The Hatboro Summer Fun Festival and Carnival continues at Miller Meadow through Memorial Day, where families can have fun while supporting a good cause. There will be rides, games, musical performances, and other activities. Gates open Friday at 6 p.m. and the evening will culminate with a fireworks show. Saturday through Memorial Day, carnival gates open at 2 p.m. On Sunday at 6, a Hatboro's Got Talent showcase is open to all ages, with prizes or cash awards. Proceeds from the carnival will benefit the Enterprise Fire Company of Hatboro and the revitalization project of Elm Street Hatboro.

Theater A Little Night Music Award-winning Sondheim musical. Closes 6/30. Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2d St.; 215-922-1122. $36-$48; $15 children 12-18. American Sligo Regional debut, written by Adam Rapp. Closes 6/23. Adrienne Theatre, 2030 Sansom St.; 215-563-7500. www.newcitystage.org . Pay what you can. Barcelona Late night in Barcelona. An American woman leaves her own party with a tall, dark stranger, an older Spanish man. Is it a carefree one-night stand or an invitation to danger?

The Guarneri Quartet is no more, and yet there it was (plus one), closing the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society season Friday night. You couldn't fool the audience at the American Philosophical Society, which greeted the four former members of the quartet with love obviously rooted in the years between 1964 and 2009, when the Guarneri was a real force. They met at Marlboro Music, the Vermont school and festival that is PCMS' sister organization, and the clubbiness surrounding both groups cuts both ways.

Any other conductor would test an audience's loyalty with a Philadelphia Orchestra program featuring particularly bizarre modern music. But Simon Rattle knows his people. And though he programmed György Ligeti (as might Christoph Eschenbach), and, at one point, swiveled around and yelled toward the audience (as did Riccardo Muti), there was no loss of good will and, in fact, a standing ovation on Thursday for Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre . A significant ingredient was Barbara Hannigan, the Canadian new-music diva whose charisma, voice and unreserved sense of showmanship were put to great use in a scene from the Ligeti opera Le Grand Macabre , in which she plays a police chief hysterically, nonsensically warning that the end of the world is near.

There's a jazz man's adage, attributed variously to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, that goes something like this: "There are two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind. " Don Was, the bass player, producer, bandleader, songwriter, and now president of the storied jazz label Blue Note Records, divides the world differently. "There are two kinds of music," Was says. "Generous music and selfish music. " Was was talking from his home in Los Angeles as he got ready to head to Philadelphia to for the Non-Commvention, the national gathering of mostly public radio non-commercial music stations, hosted annually by WXPN (88.5 FM)

With the possible exception of some Broad Street neighbors who wanted to open windows in the condos that border the NovaCare Complex practice fields, everyone was pretty happy with the Chip Kelly Sound Experience on Monday. This was the first Kelly practice attended by the media - the NFL made him - and it can be reliably reported that if listening to Iron Maiden, Ratt and Judas Priest at very high volume makes a winning football team, then the Eagles are already on their way. The practice was loud and fast for the most part.

FIVE BALLS in the air, music everywhere. Five receivers running different routes simultaneously, each somehow managing to find one of those balls from the clutter in the air and catching it . . . And not one crash. Amazing. "You zero in on running your route and keep your head up," Eagles receiver Jeremy Maclin was explaining after yesterday's OTA at NovaCare. "And whatever ball comes your way, you catch it. We don't really know what quarterback is throwing to what route.

If ever our town could pull together enough ambition to stage a string-quartet festival, it would be like striking a vein of artistic gold. Were any presenter visionary enough to host visits from the world's most charismatic pianists, aficionados would rush in. And if you blended these prospects - along with a singer or two - into a single series, what you would have is the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, which, clocking an impressive one score...

By the time he was 18, Adrian Younge had had enough of hip-hop. It was 1997, and Younge, who will perform at the Blockley in West Philadelphia Sunday night with his band Venice Dawn backing Wu Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah, was already growing weary of modern music. "There was a time when hip-hop was a little more novel, unique, and groundbreaking," remembers the 34-year-old producer and songwriter, who is the name-above-the-title force behind two of 2013's most compelling albums.