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The moon is shining bright over the Hollywood Bowl and Joni Mitchell lets out a laugh.

It’s the first of two sold-out Joni Jam concerts at the outdoor venue, her first headlining concert in Los Angeles in over 24 years; a couple years since Mitchell returned to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, a year after her first ticketed concert in two decades at the Gorge — and about nine years after a brain aneurysm nearly killed her and sent her to the hospital. But for close to three hours on Saturday night,...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Prince’s classic film Purple Rain and its accompanying soundtrack album. To celebrate the occasion, members of his backing band The Revolution have listed the newly restored home from the movie on Airbnb.

The Purple Rain house, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will be open for 25 total one-night stays from October 26th to December 14th. Up to four guests will be allowed at a time, with each stay priced at just $7 per person in a nod to Prince’s favorite number. Try your luck with booking it here starting on October 2nd at 6:00 a.m. Pt through October 6th at 11:59 p.m. Pt.

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of The Revolution curated the space with exclusive pieces and memorabilia from the Purple One’s personal collection, including unreleased tracks. Besides a spa decorated as a tribute to the “When Doves Cry” video,...

The highly acclaimed book "The Singers Talk" by Jason Thomas Gordon, which topped charts globally, has now evolved into an engaging podcast series. Produced in collaboration with Double Elvis Productions and Volume.com, this podcast delves into intimate conversations with some of the most iconic voices in the music industry.

The Singers Talk celebrates the raw passion and dedication of artists who step up to the microphone, pouring their hearts into every note. Sometimes it’s bloody, and sometimes it’s bloody hilarious.

Season One of “The Singers Talk” features exclusive interviews with legendary vocalists like Thom Yorke, Roger Daltrey, Norah Jones, Bryan Adams, Emmylou Harris, Geddy Lee, Sammy Hagar, LeAnn Rimes, Joe Elliott, Simon Le Bon, Patty Griffin, Jim James, Michael McDonald, Belinda Carlisle, Chris Robinson, and John Lydon, among others. Additionally, listeners can look forward to special features including Wendy Melvoin's reflections on Prince, Tom Morello's tribute to Chris Cornell,...

Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Fantasia Barrino and Jon Batiste helped pay tribute to late musical icons during Sunday’s 2024 Grammys.

Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Sinead O’Connor and Clarence Avant were remembered in emotional performances by the group of singers, each performing a hit song from each of the artists.

Wonder kicked off the tribute to Bennett onstage with a mash-up performance of “For Once In My Life” and “The Best Is Yet To Come.”

Sinead O’Connor was honored by Lennox with a performance of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” who was also joined by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, the Grammy-and-Emmy-winning musicians who played in Prince’s band The Revolution. (Prince also wrote the song.) At the end of her performance, Lennox called for a ceasefire and peace in the world.

Batiste honored music executive Clarence Avant with a performance introduced by Lenny Kravitz. Batiste performed a medley of “Ain’t No Sunshine,...

Music icons who died in the last year — from Tina Turner to Tony Bennett — will be honored at Sunday’s 2024 Grammys with performances by Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Fantasia Barrino and Jon Batiste.

A source close to the situation tells The Hollywood Reporter that Barrino, on the heels of her success in The Color Purple, will honor Turner with a performance, which will be introduced by Color Purple producer Oprah Winfrey, who was announced as a Grammy presenter earlier this week. Wonder will pay tribute to Bennett onstage, while Batiste will remember music executive Clarence Avant with a performance to be introduced by Lenny Kravitz.

Lennox will honor Sinead O’Connor and will be joined by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, the Grammy- and Emmy-winning musicians who played in Prince’s band The Revolution (Prince also wrote O’Connor’s biggest hit “Nothing Compares 2 U.”)

The performances will take place during...

Thurston Moore and Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan have teamed up for a new cover of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” Watch the performance below.

For the latest entry in Fender’s “Best of the Decades” ad series, the artists deliver a guitar-led version of the 1973 track, with Jordan’s chorused Vintera II ‘60s Stratocaster carrying the progression, and Moore’s Vintera II ‘70s Jaguar providing colorful accents over the top. Both clad in Reed-esque sunglasses, Jordan sings the majority of the tune, with Moore helping out for the “Harry, Mark, and John” lines.

For her part, Jordan keeps her performance rooted in the raw coolness of Reed’s usual vocal delivery, mostly hanging out around the bottom of her range. By the song’s outro (where Reed’s original presents a soundscape of backing vocals from David Bowie), Jordan opens up and lets out a few soaring melodic lines,...

If Joni Mitchell’s Joni Jam at the Gorge Amphitheater Saturday were to become a scene in the upcoming Cameron Crowe biopic on the iconic troubadour, Mitchell just taking the stage to a standing ovation eight years after she nearly died of an aneurysm would have been a glorious Hollywood ending.

Mitchell simply being back on stage was already the triumph of the human spirit we all desperately craved as fans of her music and tougher than nails image. At one point during the show, Brandi Carlile, who acted as host/interviewer for the night,...

The Guild of Music Supervisors held its 12th annual awards ceremony virtually on March 20.

Recognizing those who excel at the craft of music supervision in film, television, documentaries, games, advertising and trailers, the night’s big winners included HBO’s “The White Lotus,” supervised by Janet Lopez, who gave an impassioned acceptance speech, thanking the music makers of Hawaii for taking her call, and Liza Richardson for “Lovecraft Country” season 1. The Netflix film “Tick, Tick… Boom!,” supervised by Steven Gizicki, took home the prize for film budgeted over $25 million. Mandi Collier won twice for her work on “Sylie’s Love & Zola,” and “Dos Oruguitas” from “Encanto,” by Lin-Manuel Miranda and sung by Sebastian Yatra (and nominated for an Academy Award), won for best song written and/or recorded for a film.

Receiving special honors were Diane Warren (the Icon Award), for her numerous songs to soundtrack major films, and Mitchell Leib...

Javier Bardem, Jessica Chastain, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kristen Wiig and Ryan Tedder have been named as some of the presenters for the 12th annual Guild Of Music Supervisors Awards.

Additional presenters include Annie Mumolo, Marlon Wayans, Dave Burd (aka Lil Dicky), Rafael Casual, Rickey Minor, Rufus Wainwright, Wendy Melvoin & Lisa Coleman, Laura Karpman, Glen Hansard and Steve Burns.

Aloe Blacc, Goapele and Bahari will be performing.

The ceremony will be held virtually on March 20 and is open to nominees, presenters, special guests and Gms members. The Gms Awards Ceremony will be immediately followed by an official after-party featuring live-streamed DJ sets by Paul Oakenfold, Thomas Golubić, and Moonbaby. Tickets are on sale March 14. An additional after-party ticket is required.

Among the film nominees for the 2022 edition of the Gms Awards are “Encanto,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “Being the Ricardos,” each of which also scored Oscar nominations this week. Television...

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman do not have as much on-camera time as they did during their time as the focal points of Prince’s group, the Revolution. But, in the 35 years since the disbanding of the Revolution, Melvoin and Coleman have stealthily worked three-quarters of their way to an Egot.

They snagged their Academy Award with “Purple Rain” and multiple Grammys in the mid-‘80s with Prince. Their work on “Nurse Jackie” garnered them the Emmy for outstanding original main title theme music in 2010. This year, with their multi-dimensional score for Freeform’s teen psychological thriller, “Cruel Summer,” they could be headed to the Emmy podium once again.

“Cruel Summer” follows the lives of two main characters, Kate (Olivia Holt) and Jeanette on the same days over the course of three consecutive summers in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Kate, beautiful and popular on the outside but troubled and isolated on the inside,...

Singer-songwriter Gretchen Lieberum, who co-founded the Prince cover band Princess with Maya Rudolph, has released a rendition of “Come Rain or Come Shine” from her upcoming collection of standards, This May Only Be a Dream, out May 7th.

Lieberum’s take on “Come Rain Or Come Shine” — penned in 1946 by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer — opens with an experimental flourish, as if an old recording of the song had been shot through a wormhole. While the song settles into a slightly more traditional swoon about halfway through, Lieberum deftly balances...

Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), Jewel, Colin Stetson, DJ Shadow, Pos (De La Soul), Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are a few of the artists set to make virtual appearances at the 6th Annual ‘State of Music in Media’ Conference, taking place on Feb. 19 and 20.

The virtual event is free to all members of the Guild of Music Supervisors. The conference grants participants the opportunity to network with some of the industry’s top leaders, plus attend a variety of informative panels on subjects covering music in film, television, advertising, games, trailers and more.

Gms President Joel C. High and Vice President Madonna Wade Reed will open the conference, which announced its lineup today. Beyond the panels, Lainey Wilson and Ashley Nicole Greene will be performing.

Program highlights include:

Navigating Unions in Music Supervision

Panelists: Janee Lynch (Business representative for Music at SAG-AFTRA), Casey Bocobo (Business representative for Music at SAG-AFTRA...

In the new book This Thing Called Life, journalist Neal Karlen tells the story not just of Prince’s life, but of a rare, decades-long friendship between a writer and an iconic artist. Karlen knew Prince growing up in Minneapolis and was his only confidant in the press for more than a decade at the height of his fame, a partnership that yielded three Rolling Stone cover stories. In this chapter from the book, entitled “Last Call,” Karlen looks back on the last time he ever talked to Prince. This...

As part of our newly updated survey of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, we’re publishing a series of pieces on the making and impact of key records from the list. Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain came in at number eight. The following piece was originally published in 2016, following Prince’s death.

It didn’t make any sense. He was a young artist with just a couple of pop hits and not much mainstream recognition beyond the kids who watched MTV, which was only two years old.

Prince’s unheard work-in-progress version of “Forever in My Life” is the latest preview from the upcoming Sign O’ the Times reissue.

The “early” in “Forever in My Life (Early Vocal Studio Run-Through)” refers not to when the version was recorded — August 8th, 1986 in Prince’s Galpin Boulevard home studio — but what time of day the vocal track was first laid down.

“He had been up all night and he came upstairs. It was like 7:00 in the morning and he grabbed my hand and said ‘follow me’, and so I followed him downstairs,...

Eric Clapton and B.B. King’s 2000 collaborative album Riding With the King will be reissued for its 20th anniversary with two previously unreleased tracks on June 26th via Reprise Records.

One of those rarities was shared along with the album announcement, a rendition of the blues standard, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.” The song was arguably made most famous by Muddy Waters in 1950, although it’s been interpreted by an array of artists, including Clapton and his band Cream on their 1966 debut, Fresh Cream. The version Clapton recorded with King decades later...

The Prince estate will stream Prince and the Revolution: Live across three days on YouTube, starting Thursday, May 14th, at 8 p.m. Et.

The concert took place on March 30th, 1985, at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York. It marks the first concert footage Prince released, on home video that same year. It will stream digitally for the first time May 15th.

The performance features members of the Revolution, including drummer Bobby Z, guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink, and others. Bobby Z will partake in...

Vanity

Denise Katrina Matthews was a model and actress redubbed Vanity by Prince, who encouraged her to become a musician.

Wendy and Lisa

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were members of The Revolution who went on to great success as a solo act.

Apollonia

Model-actress-singer Apollonia Kotero landed the lead role opposite Prince in “Purple Rain” after Vanity dropped out, propelling her own music career.

Kim Basinger

The actress dated the Purple One after they met while working on “Batman.”

Sheila E.

Sheila Escovedo was an accomplished percussionist in her own right when she met Prince, to whom she was engaged in the 1980s.

Bria Valente

Valente was a model, dancer and singer who came under Prince’s tutelage, eventually dating the singer in 2010.

Sheena Easton

Easton and Prince collaborated on several hit songs, including Easton’s “Sugar Walls,” which Prince wrote for the Scottish singer.

Misty Copeland

The celebrated...

Prince’s death in 2016 spurred a global outpouring of sobering grief coupled with an attempt to celebrate his legacy via musical tributes. Four years later, fans and musicians continue to look for ways to properly send off the legendary musician. On Tuesday night at the Los Angeles Convention Center, modern guitar heroes and the Hall of Famer’s past collaborators coalesced for Let’s Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince, an all-star memorial featuring H.E.R., Chris Martin, Foo Fighters, Earth, Wind & Fire and John Legend.

Befitting for...

Hearing Mac Miller wrestle with dark thoughts from beyond the grave is a gut-punch. It’s also beautiful. That’s the duality of “Good News,” the first single from the rapper’s new posthumous album, Circles. Over a gently chugging groove sprinkled with pizzicato strings, Miller, who died in 2018 of an accidental overdose, unspools his internal monologue in an impossibly weary, just-woke-up-but-kind-of-wish-i-hadn’t drawl. Co-produced by Miller and Jon Brion (and featuring both Wendy Melvoin of Prince’s backing band, the Revolution, and veteran rock drummer Matt Chamberlain), the music...

Keyboardist Lisa Coleman, who joined Prince’s band in 1980 for the Dirty Mind tour and was a member of his backing band the Revolution, has put out her first solo album. Collage contains 11 mostly short, sometimes ethereal, sometimes jammy instrumental piano improvisations with titles like “Piano Improv 77” and “Unused1” that she recorded over the past few years at home and in the studio she shares with her partner, Wendy Melvoin.

“Collage is a collection of improvs done over the last few years of high contrast living,” Coleman said in a statement.

Purple reigned on Tuesday as black-ish devoted its 100th episode to honoring Prince and his music. The hits-heavy half hour saw a bunch of the Johnsons recreating some of the artist’s iconic videos and talking about his legacy, all in an effort to convince Jack and Diane of Prince’s majesty.

The milestone installment opened with Jack eagerly awaiting a call from Tiffany, a girl in his class who was planning to come over and study. He and Diane were interrupted by a ruckus in the kitchen, where nearly the entire family was rocking out to “Let’s Go Crazy.

Tony Sokol Oct 30, 2018

Prince’s estate chooses Ava DuVernay to direct multi-part documentary on the late artist.

"Man, I hate makin' movies," Prince sang on "Movie Star" off his twentieth album Crystal Ball. But he lived his life more cinematically than most musicians or stars of the silver screen. He was also one of the most documented. He has thousands of hours of unreleased songs in a vault, and recorded many with video footage. Ava DuVernay will go through the archives to direct a multi-part Prince documentary on for Netflix, according to Variety. The documentary will cover Prince’s entire life.

DuVernay, who directed Netflix's 2016 private prison exposé 13th, which was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, as well as Selma , Queen Sugar and the upcoming Central Park Five series, has the full cooperation of Prince’s estate, which provided interviews, archival footage, and photos for the project.

Updated: Producer/director Ava DuVernay is working with Netflix on a Prince documentary, two sources have confirmed to Variety. The project has the full cooperation of the late artist’s estate, which is providing with interviews, archival footage, photos and archive access. The multiple-part documentary will cover the artist’s entire life.

“Prince was a genius and a joy and a jolt to the senses,” she tweeted after the news had broken Monday night. “The only way I know how to make this film is with love. And with great care. I’m honored to do so and grateful for the opportunity entrusted to me by the estate.” The Oscar-nominated filmmaker has been at work on the project for several months.

While renowned for her work on “Selma,” “Queen Sugar” and others, DuVernay made her big-screen debut in 2008 with “This Is the Life,” which chronicled the alternative hip-hop scene in Los Angeles in the 1990s.

Paramount Players has picked up the right to a story from the Daily Beast titled "When Prince Made a Chambermaid His Queen for a Day". Elizabeth is set to star in and produce the film, which tells the story of a Wyoming hotel maid that won a dream date with Prince in 1986. Here's the story of how that went down and what the story will focus on:

The studio staged Win A Date With Prince, an MTV contest in which the 10,000th caller won a date with the rock star. Actually, more than a date: the studio would stage a premiere of Prince’s film in the winner’s hometown, followed by a concert toplined by Prince and The Revolution. The winner was Lisa Barber, a young lady in Sheridan, Wyoming who cleaned hotels and was a big Motley Crue fan. The movie is inspired by an article about the Cinderella story date,...

Kendrick Lamar, Questlove, Chuck D and Melissa Etheridge are among the record-setting 928 members invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that oversees the Oscars.

Other new members from the music world include Prince & The Revolution's Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, Sufjan Stevens, German pianist Hauschka, French composer Eric Serra and singer Ester Dean.

Of the 928 new members, 49 percent are women, pushing the Academy's total female membership to 31 percent. Thirty-eight percent of the new members are people of color, improving the Academy's overall percentage to 16 percent.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Monday a record-breaking number of new member invitees that puts the organization on track to reach its 2016 goals of doubling the number of non-white and female members.

Some of the 928 invitees were quite curious, either because it was surprising they weren’t already members — or that the Academy would even think to induct them.

Consider French-born filmmaker Michel Gondry, who won an Oscar for co-writing his 2004 film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” but somehow never snagged an invite from the Academy until now.

Also Read: Oscars Academy Has Doubled Non-White Members Since 2016, on Track to Double Women Too

Or Jonathan Nolan, who earned a nomination with his brother Christopher for 2000’s “Memento,” but has been passed over all these years despite his acclaimed scripts for “The Dark Knight,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Interstellar.”

Then there’s “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling.

Forty-four were invited to join the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, including Kendrick Lamar, whose contributions to the “Black Panther” soundtrack are riding high on the album charts; songwriter Melissa Etheridge, who won an Oscar for her song for “An Inconvenient Truth”; and recent Oscar nominees Dustin O’Halloran and Hauschka (“Lion”), Sufjan Stevens (“Call Me By Your Name”), Carlinhos Brown (“Rio”) and Benoit Charest (“The Triplets of Belleville”).

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, whose work with Prince catapulted them into the limelight and who have gone on to do films (“Dangerous Minds”) and considerable television, were also invited, as were composers Jeff Beal, Fil Eisler and Sharon Farber, whose best-known feature-film credits are in the documentary arena.

Classical composers Osvaldo Golijov and Joanna Bruzdowicz are on the list, as are other composers from England and the Continent: Daniel Pemberton (“Steve Jobs”), Eric Serra (“The Fifth Element...

What kind of additions Neil Finn and Mike Campbell will make to Fleetwood Mac lineup is a question that will have to wait till the newly reconfigured lineup goes on tour in October. But at Largo Thursday night (May 3), some 280 fans got a partial glimpse as a pop-up show by father-and-son partners Neil and Liam Finn found Campbell as a surprise guest on two songs, one of them a deeper-than-deep Mac track.

“Playing at Largo is really about having wonderful surprises occur,” said the elder Finn, “and I’d like to welcome to the stage now a wonderful guitar player I’ve just had the extreme pleasure of learning how to play with — and there’s still more to learn, but for now let’s welcome Mike Campbell!” They then proceeded to perform a short but sweet version of Fleetwood Mac’s 1969 single “Man of the World,” a Peter Green...

Prince and The Revolution were pop culture gods in the ’80s when they collaborated to make some of the best-known music of the era — including the iconic album Purple Rain, featuring classics including “When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy.”

Now, a year after Prince’s shocking death, the band is reuniting for a cross-country tour, and opening up about the devastating loss of their beloved “maestro.”

“He was a master chef, he was the black hat chef and we were his crack kitchen team,” Wendy Melvoin recently told Chicago’s Wgn-tv while sitting alongside her bandmates. “But he...

Vanity Denise Katrina Matthews was a model and actress redubbed Vanity by Prince, who encouraged her to become a musician. Wendy and Lisa Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were members of The Revolution who went on to great success as a solo act. Apollonia Model-actress-singer Apollonia Kotero landed the lead role opposite Prince in “Purple Rain” after Vanity dropped out, propelling her own music career. Kim Basinger The actress dated the Purple One after they met while working on “Batman.” Sheila E. Sheila Escovedo was an accomplished percussionist in her own right when she met Prince, to whom she was engaged in the 1980s.

2017-04-12T11:05:02-07:00'Purple Rain' Bandmates to Speak at Prince Tribute Event

Musicians who played on stage with Prince will speak at a four-day celebration of the "Purple Rain" superstar at Paisley Park.

Organizers of "Celebration 2017" announced speakers for the event on Tuesday. It's scheduled to run April 20-23, being held during the anniversary of Prince's death.

Among the speakers are Lisa Coleman, Wendy Melvoin, drummer Bobby Z, keyboardist Matt Fink and bassist BrownMark from Prince's 1980s band, The Revolution.

Other speakers include Levi Seacer from Prince's 1990s band, New Power Generation, keyboardist Morris Hayes, costume designer Stacia Lang and singer Shelby J.

Read the rest of this article at The Hollywood Reporter.

Prince has gotten the old band back together, albeit under tragic circumstances. Months after “Little Red Corvette” singer Prince’s death at age 57, his former group, The Revolution, performed a tribute show for the singer on Thursday. The show took place at famed Minneapolis club First Avenue, where much of Prince’s 1984 film “Purple Rain” was filmed. Also Read: Prince's Paisley Park to Open for Tours in October “I encourage every one of you to take every one of these songs and make them your own,” guitarist Wendy Melvoin told the crowd at the show’s start. Among Prince...

Music is an integral part of filmmaking, moving the story and touching the audience. Where would iconic movies such as Star Wars, Avatar, The Godfather, or Gone with the Wind be without its music? Would Downton Abbey, Dexter, or House of Cards be the same and have audiences glued to their TVs without music? Would gamers immerse into Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda if they were silent? Movie music has moved us all to cheer, cry, and fall in love for more than 100 years. Yet the vast majority of composers hired to create this vital part of Hollywood’s cultural landscape have been men. Well, that musical glass ceiling is about to crack!

Grand Performances, the “Best Free Outdoor Summer Concert Series” in Los Angeles and the Alliance for Women Film Composers team up celebrate the music of women composers in film, television, video games and interactive media at...

Prince may be gone forever but his former band, The Revolution, may soon be back on the road. The rock band, which was formed in Minneapolis in 1979 by Prince and disbanded 1986, announced that they plan to do a reunion tour in honor the “Little Red Corvette” singer, who died Thursday at age 57. Original members Bobby Z., Matt Funk, Brown Mark, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman will all be involved. “We have decided, after spending three or four days together now grieving over the loss of Prince, that we would like to come out and do some shows,” Melvoin said in...

Prince’s close collaborators, including Sheila E., Revolution band members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman and ex-wife Mayte Garcia secretly gathered in Minneapolis on Sunday night to mourn the passing of the artist. Several dozen of the musician’s former inner circle, including the original members of The Revolution, his engineer, sound mixers and tour manager, gathered at the bar of a downtown Minneapolis hotel to share their grief, according to an individual with knowledge of the gathering. No music was played. Instead, one Prince devotee after another went to the microphone to share funny, sad or touching stories about the musician,...

[[tmz:video id="0_rxv3ki4t"]] Prince's former band members, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, are speaking out for the first time about his death. Wendy (guitar) and Lisa (keyboards) -- the most prominent members of The Revolution -- were at Lax Sunday morning, on their way to Minnesota ... and revealed plans for the band to get back together to honor their friend and bandleader. If, like most people, you watched "Purple Rain" this weekend ... you saw how close Prince was to Wendy and Lisa,...

Prince didn't give a fuck what anybody thought about him.

You could say that's just what he wanted us to think, but his actions back up my assessment. Over and over he made choices that went against conventional wisdom. In the process, he built a counterintuitive career that made him a superstar, loved by the masses but also respected by such unimpeachable icons as Miles Davis (who compared Prince to Duke Ellington).

Saxophonist, composer, and musicologist Allen Lowe wrote yesterday, "As we pay tribute to Prince and others like him who have died recently, it's just a little too easy to repeat the clichés that describe them as expressing our generation, our history, our current world. In truth, as Richard Gilman said many years ago, what makes an artist great is not so much that he or she is of their time or a part of history but rather that...

What do you say about Purple Rain that hasn't already been said? Not only is it one of the greatest music films of all time, but it's one of the defining films of the 1980s and earned Prince an Oscar. The soundtrack spent nearly a full half-year at Number One on the Billboard charts, sold 20 million copies worldwide and won two Grammys. But as with all things Prince, that's not the full story. A number of truly excellent books and articles have been written about the making of Purple Rain, and we're here to share some of the best bits of them with you.

It's entirely possible to be a massive Prince fan — to recognize him as the most influential musician since James Brown and the most dexterous since Stevie Wonder — and still admit that he never quite cracked his ambition to be a movie star. His three fictional films — the iconic Purple Rain and the forgotten Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge — never enraptured the way his albums did, partly because there was always something otherworldly and ephemeral about Prince Rogers Nelson that never translated to the screen. Like his fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan,...

In 2014, in advance of 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, Warner Brothers announced a "new partnership" with Prince — one that promised remastered and unreleased music from his vaults in exchange for returning ownership of the master recordings to all of his albums to him. Broadly, the announcement felt like a harmonious and happy end to the very public battle he fought with the label in the 1990s. At the time, you either thought that he was rightfully standing up for the rights of musicians, or merely indulging in the increasingly odd...

Prince, iconic singer-songwriter and seven-time Grammy winner, has died. He was 57. In the mid '80s, just as his career hit an all-time high following the release of his hit single "Purple Rain", Prince sat down with People to discuss his life and rique music. Read the 1984 cover story below:He glittered in a white sequined cape, ornately futuristic atop a bank of speakers in the darkened hall. Eerie synthesizer chords echoed through the arena, laser lights dappled the crowd and a garbled heavenly voice rumbled, "I'm confused." And as confetti rained down, 19,000 fans at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena saw the...

Prince, iconic singer-songwriter and seven-time Grammy winner, has died. He was 57. In the mid '80s, just as his career hit an all-time high following the release of his hit single "Purple Rain", Prince sat down with People to discuss his life and rique music. Read the 1984 cover story below:He glittered in a white sequined cape, ornately futuristic atop a bank of speakers in the darkened hall. Eerie synthesizer chords echoed through the arena, laser lights dappled the crowd and a garbled heavenly voice rumbled, "I'm confused." And as confetti rained down, 19,000 fans at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena saw the...

Dennis Nishi The TV Theme Music panel at WonderCon

One of the most interesting events on WonderCon’s first day in Anaheim, Calif. was the “Famous TV Theme Music” panel. Moderated by Anne Cecere, director of film and TV relations at Bmi, and Chandler Poling, founder of White Bear PR, five prolific composers talked about their work, influences and how much television music has changed over the years.

A list of the panel’s favorite theme songs set a nostalgic...

I probably listen to more scores than most people (or even most film fans) do and I realized that while the various scores filling my iTunes range from action (Loud Noises!) to drama (sad guitars) to comedy (funny guitars!) one fact remains consist across the board – the majority of these scores are composed by men. In a time where the ladies are starting to make their presence more and more known in film (which, let’s be honest, has been a veritable boy’s club up until the past few decades) with Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director for 2008’s The Hurt Locker to the ladies of Bridesmaids taking some of the raunchy comedy heat from the boys, it surprised me to see such a lack of a female presence when it came to who creates the music for these films. I am a lady and I (clearly) have a...

Tune in alert for Uh Huh Her, Camila Grey and Leisha Hailey, set to perform this coming Monday night, January 9, on ABC-tv.s .Jimmy Kimmel Live,. marking the electro-pop group.s first-ever national late-night TV performance. Tune in on Monday at 12:05 am Et/Ct/Pt to watch Uh Huh Her perform the electrifying new single .Marstorm. from their sophomore release Nocturnes (Plaid). The show will also be available for viewing online the following day at: http://abc.go.com/shows/jimmy-kimmel-live. Produced by Camila and Wendy Melvoin (Prince & the Revolution, Wendy & Lisa), Nocturnes (Plaid Records, Tunecore/Topspin) is the follow-up to their debut album Common Reaction and was recorded at Wendy.s personal studio inside the famed Henson Studios compound in Los Angeles. The...

Prince is notoriously tight with press access, disallowing interviewers from recording or even taking notes. Full-scale biographies of him have typically relied on the same bunch of stories and quotes found in a couple of places—usually, Per Nilsen’s definitive ’80s sessionography, Dance, Music, Sex, Romance, for which Nilsen spoke with a large number of old bandmates and associates. Ronin Ro’s Prince: Inside The Music And The Masks features a handful of new quotes from some of the same folks (Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin, former tour manager Alan Leeds), but is otherwise little different from any number of ...

Electro-pop duo Uh Huh Her--Leisha Hailey (keyboards, bass) and Camila Grey (keyboards, guitar).are marking the release of their second album, Nocturnes, this week by rolling out a brand new video for the track .Another Case.. Created by director Justin Coloma, who collaborated with them on their previous video for .Black and Blue,. the clip features the duo in various cinematic setups. View the video for .Another Case.: Produced by Camila and Wendy Melvoin (Prince & the Revolution, Wendy & Lisa), Nocturnes (Plaid Records, Tunecore/Topspin), is the follow-up to their debut album Common Reaction and was recorded at Wendy.s personal studio inside the famed Henson Studios compound in Los Angeles. The track .Debris. was produced by Leisha...

Wendy & Lisa are scoring the upcoming NBC police procedural drama Prime Suspect. The show is based on the BBC series with the same title starring Helen Mirren. Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) directed the pilot and is also executive producing the project. Alexandra Cunningham (Desperate Housewives) has written the pilot’s script and will also be producing the project. The series stars Maria Bello as as Jane Timoney, a female detective struggling to make her bones in a tough New York precinct dominated by men. Aidan Quinn, Kirk Acevedo, Joe Nieves and Brian O’Byrne. The show is produced by Universal Media Studio, for which the composer duo of Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman have previously scored such shows as Heroes, Bionic Woman and Mercy. Prime Suspect is set to premiere on September 22, 2011 and will be airing every Thursday night on NBC. For updates on the project, visit the official show website.

Finding the soundtrack to your favorite summer movie on iTunes is never too difficult -- few will deny Hans Zimmer his right to resell you the Gladiator soundtrack under a new Pirates of the Caribbean title -- but rarely do we get some of the smaller, genre films or TV shows that have as much sweat and blood in them as their bigger budget contemporaries. Well, today we can rejoice for some justice in the cinematic music world!

At last year's San Diego Comic-Con, I was honored to attend a panel with some of the biggest names in film and TV music: John Ottman (Superman Returns, X2), Nathan Barr (Grindhouse, True Blood), Michael Giacchino (Star Trek, Lost), Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman (Heroes), to name a few. Also on hand was Jeremy Zuckerman, composer for the popular, insanely good Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. During the panel, the composers...