Although the 17th edition of the Syracuse Area Music Awards (Sammys) had come and gone by December 2011, local artists have been kept on the edge of their seats awaiting the announcement of the next event, now set for Friday, March 8.

Anyone under the false impression that jazz music is inaccessible or only performed by stuffy players obviously isn’t familiar with Marco Benevento. This 35-year-old keyboard king is technically talented and creatively rich, but in no way personality-deprived. Just as his music is layered and varied, so is the man behind it.

People get it wrong about the music industry today: Beneath that superficial layer of so-called Top 40 “hits” on the radio (Taylor Swift’s songs about her exes, Ke$ha’s garbage about getting wasted at age 17), it’s not all crap. Hundreds of bands are bubbling under the radar, presenting music lovers with new reasons to believe that rock’n’roll will never die.

An instrument is a work of art. When Tom Hosmer holds up a violin and starts explaining the curve, the wood, the seams, the thickness, the weight, the...

It’s impossible to sit still when the first track of Blackberry Smoke’s latest album Whippoorwill (Southern Ground) comes on. On “Six Days to Sunday,” guitar rips like Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top and keys pound like Adam MacDougall of the Black Crowes, but in this combo it’s Charlie Starr slaying the guitar and vocals, Brandon Still sliding up and down the black and whites, Paul Jackson on guitar, Richard Turner on bass and Brit Turner on drums.

Radio is all about connection. When listeners wake up and turn it on every day, they’re inviting a personality into their home, their car, their workplace and their life. There are no visual judgments to get in the way. It’s left to the listener’s imagination and to the personality’s voice. Listeners become familiar with that personality’s beliefs, family, life and attitudes and learn about the world through their words. The listener trusts him or her.

The Flashcubes were together for a relatively short period, from 1977 to 1980, yet the power pop-punk group endures with its pulsating legacy, almost as big and loud as their sound. They’ve p

It’s been nearly 16 years since the Salt City trio of singer, songwriter and guitarist Jamie Notarthomas, bassist Scott Schimpf and drummer Tony Carbone shared a stage.

Songwriters draw inspiration from all parts of life: the mundane and the spectacular, love and hate, pain and forgiveness, life and death. For Bryan Weinsztok, the singer, songwriter and guitarist for Soul Risin’, those latter themes supplied him the motivation to write the 11 songs on the band’s new independent album Rise & Fall. The CD was released on Tuesday, Oct. 16, a day connected to those inspirational ideas of life and death: Oct. 16 also marked the one-year anniversary that Weinsztok lost his father, Alejandro (Alex) Gabriel Weinsztok, to cancer.

The One World Concert held at the Carrier Dome on Tuesday, Oct. 9, had musical highlights and lowlights that jumped among styles and artists of different generations. There were golden moments, like when Iranian singer Andy Maladian and Isreali singer Liel Kolet shared the stage for a duet, a first in history; odd moments, when a glacial Engelbert Humperdinck lulled a pumped-up audience; and empty moments, when hip-hopper Nas failed to show up. The message emphasizing the importance of peace hit home hard as artists like Emmanuel Jal reminded audiences of the war and violence in countries like his home of Sudan, and he and Swizz Beatz asked listeners to show their peace signs. An audience of 24,000 responded to the request.