This year marked my 10th trip to the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW), the Austin festival’s 25th edition, held this year from March 11 to 20. Syracuse was represented well in Texas.

For veteran saxophonist and composer David Liebman, his upcoming weekend date with the Central New York Jazz Orchestra might seem like just another stop on a very busy schedule, were it not for the special opportunity that awaits him.

“I don’t feel that bad for breaking down,” he says about Dean, who passed away at age 65 on April 4, 2009 after a long battle with cancer. “It just shows I’m human and the impact that the guy had on me. If I can break down, you know that he had that wonderful place in my life and that wonderful place in so many people’s lives.

House on a Spring debuts their long-awaited album …We Gonna Break Free at several upcoming shows

Formed at SU in 2006, Ra Ra Riot returns to play the Westcott on Thursday

The Lights Out, a Boston band with Salt City connections, performs at this weekend’s Relay for Life fundraiser

The sound technicians took the stage in a normal fashion, tuning the instruments that looked as if they were etched by jagged knives. The stage appeared fairly clean of props except for the drum set raised on stilts. Everyone from the sound guys to the photographers prepared for the bloody massacre as flashlights flickered, thereby starting the show.

It’s not surprising that a guy who helped create some of the most memorable and mellow pop recordings of the 1970s is supremely comfortable in his own skin. But John Ford Coley (born John Edward Colley), says that hasn’t always been the case.

Percussionist Benny Jones, the founder and leader of the Treme Brass Band, has been performing in New Orleans for most of his life. His band, a celebrated vestige of authentic Americana, has toured extensively in the United States, Europe and Japan, exposing other cultures to traditional New Orleans band music.

Although Ed Kowalczyk is best known as the powerful lead singer for the 1990s rock band Live, when he comes through Syracuse on Saturday, March 5, he’ll be showing a very different side.