Musicians and friends of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra have joined together for two chamber-style concerts this weekend. These concerts will directly benefit the VSO and help meet financial goals and needs to hopefully carry the organization through the summer and into the 2011-2012 season.
The concerts will be performed Friday, June 10 at 7 pm & Sunday, June 12 at 8 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church, 309 W 39th St. in Vancouver.

Half concert flick, half historical documentary, Rejoice and Shout is an unabashed celebration of glorious Gospel music. The picture traces the genre's roots all the way back to when slaves first began mixing Christianity with African culture and their desire for salvation from their plight.

Legendary 11 time Grammy winning CeCe Winans is making her first appearance in Portland  for the Freedom Day Celebration in honor of Juneteenth.

CHICAGO (AP) -- The violin isn't pretty, but its scratched frame has been well-loved by the girl who cradles it now, and those who played it before her. Her mother calls it her daughter's "soul mate."
The instrument doesn't belong to Nidalis Burgos. It is on loan from her school, where the seventh-grader packs it up each weekday to bring it home.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Donasia Gray likes to lose herself in the soothing sound of classical violin music, not a typical escape for a child growing up in the inner city.
And Donasia, 11, not only listens to the music, she makes it.
Donasia is one of 51 city students who participate in Music Haven, a nonprofit that gives at-risk kids stringed instruments and teaches them to play -- all for free.

SEATTLE (AP) -- A music and popular culture museum in Seattle is banking on fans of the Oscar-winning film "Avatar" to take in a new exhibit on how director James Cameron brought Pandora and its inhabitants to the big screen.
The exhibit at the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame opens at noon Saturday after a Friday event featuring Cameron, some of the movie actors and Richie Baneham, who won the Academy Award for best visual effects.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rihanna is defending her latest music video, which opens with a man being shot in the head.

MIAMI (AP) -- A publicist for Sean Kingston is offering the latest on the hip-hop singer who's been hospitalized since crashing his watercraft into a Miami Beach bridge over the weekend.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A coalition of musicians is demanding the Recording Academy restore more than 30 categories cut from the Grammy Awards, alleging the reductions unfairly target ethnic music and were done without the input of its thousands of members.
A protest was planned Thursday in Beverly Hills, California, at an academy board meeting. It is part of a campaign by those upset by last month's decision to reduce the Grammy fields, which this year totaled 109, to 78.

With the Lady Gaga-market reaching oversaturation, it's easy to get a sense of fatigue when listening to her latest effort, "Born This Way."
Delivering her third studio album in just a 3-year span after a nonstop juggernaut that included a seemingly endless tour, hit after hit, countless magazine covers and even social activism, another Gaga offering is a little bit tiring to those who aren't part of her army of "little monsters."