#BostonStrong shows their strength once again – 5/30 concert @tdgarden to benefit #TheOneFund sold out in 5 mins! THANK YOU for support!

— TD Garden (@tdgarden) May 6, 2013

The event’s lightning-fast sellout had TD Garden in good spirits, said Tricia McCorkle, the venue’s director of public relations.

“We’re very excited about this, very proud that there was such a huge show of support for Boston Strong,” she said. “We think it’ll be a great night.”

The event, announced by promoters on Friday, brings together top-notch musical acts and comedians from around the country to support victims of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. The lineup includes Aerosmith, New Kids on the Block, James Taylor, Dane Cook and Steven Wright, among others. Additional artists and performers are expected to be announced as the event date nears.

TD Garden has said it will cover rent and all expenses for the concert — a commitment McCorkle called “a first of its kind” for the venue. To that same end, TD Garden will also rely on digital-only tickets to prevent scalping.

“It’s a way to make sure that all the net proceeds go directly to The One Fund,” McCorkle said. “It’s to keep it out of the secondary market and to make sure the direct proceeds from every fan looking to buy a ticket goes directly to the fund.”

As of this post, The One Fund has collected nearly $29 million since it launched just two days after the marathon bombings. On Monday, the first of two town hall meetings will determine how the money will be distributed to the victims.

Stephen Randall, who watches the race each year from near his street in Wellesley, has written a song for the bombing victims. The lyrics were inspired by President Obama’s speech at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross the week after the bombings.

And through the magic of digital editing, the song is designed to keep adding additional voices as people anywhere record themselves singing the chorus and submit those vocals.

WBUR’s All Things Considered host Sacha Pfeiffer spoke with Randall about how this works.

Sacha Pfeiffer: Would you first tell us how you got this idea?

Stephen Randall: I was so inspired when I heard the president say, “You will stand, you will walk, you will run again,” and as a songwriter I immediately got those words in my head and picked up a guitar and started writing.

And it’s your voice we hear in the lead vocals of the song?

It is, indeed. I wouldn’t claim to be a singer, but it is my voice on the lead vocals.

Right now, how many other voices are mixed into this song?

The song was posted on SoundCloud just over a week ago. There’s approximately 25 tracks of different voices with voices coming in from seven different people so far from all corners of the world.

You mentioned that it was Obama’s words at that interfaith healing service that made you want to do this. Let’s hear how you’ve blended his words in:

President Obama: Your commonwealth is with you, your country is with you. We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk, and yes, run again.

So is your goal that this song will keep growing and growing and growing as more people sing the chorus and send those digital vocals to you?

Several goals. A few decades ago, to do something like this you’d need to be Quincy Jones and need to get Michael Jackson and all sorts of people into a studio, and these days you can just open up your laptop, write a song, post it and then invite people to contribute. So I really think that one way in which we can express ourselves is to invite people to sing the chorus.

But I really ultimately do want hundreds, if not thousands, of people to sing it. But more than that, the goal is that there’s a message that remains after the headlines subside — that is a message of hope and courage and strength.

This song, or maybe the idea for this song, makes me think of “We Are the World” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” these celebrity songs from the ’80s that were for charity, ultimately. Is that the idea? That approach, for a different event?

I think it’s a contemporary version of that, that people can come together. There’s a link to the OneFund on the page where the song is on SoundCloud. People need to do whatever they need to do to express themselves and to feel like there’s a more positive side to this.

The community is strong and we’ve had messages from people in, for example, South Africa, where somebody was saying he just thought it was a headline and it was unfortunate but hearing a song and putting a face to it made it more poignant to him, and I thought that was a very good thing.

You’ve brought in an example of what just some of the raw vocals sound like. I want us to hear some of that, too:

Scarlet Randall singing:

We will stand, yeah 

We will walk, yeah

We will run

Now, Stephen, that woman’s voice happens to be your daughter?

She’s a very talented 16-year-old who actually had the idea of putting the chorus at the beginning of the song. When she first heard it, she said, “The song’s good, Dad, but the chorus needs to be at the front,” and I said, “I think you’re right.”

Let’s listen to when you begin to combine your daughter’s voice with other voices:

Chorus of voices:

We will stand.

We will walk.

We will run again.

Do you have a goal of how many voices you would like to add to this chorus, or is it unlimited?

It is unlimited in theory. I’d love to be swamped by them. If people can download the track and add their vocal and then send me the vocal on its own, I will drop them into the track.

You’re a former professional songwriter from London, where you grew up. Did that make you feel that somehow the way you wanted to express whatever feelings you were feeling after the bombings was through music, through a song?

It happened automatically. My passion is for writing songs, and I find that sometimes it’s easier to express myself that way.

And there is something about music that can be powerful on any occasion and particularly powerful in situations like this. What do you think it is that makes that have even more impact sometimes than just talking or writing or thinking?

I’m discovering that it’s border-less, that people sometimes relate to music or to lyrics in a way that wasn’t intended and sometimes in a more powerful way. There’s a message from somebody on the track that it brought them to tears. I’m sure I couldn’t just speak to them and say, “This was a terrible event,” and they’d start crying. But if the music or the lyrics can touch people, then that’s a wonderful thing, as well.

In the lyrics you’ve written, they are very local in a very intimate way. I mean, it literally follows part of the race route. Let’s hear part of that, as well:

Stephen Randall singing:

We waved them on

From Hopkinton

Through Wellesley Hills

Then Newton straight to Boston.

As they reached Heartbreak Hill

They didn’t know that they’d face

A greater heartbreak still

Is your idea that this becomes some kind of anthem for the marathon?

I’d love that from a personal perspective, as well as the ability to make people come together in some sort of a chant. It would be a wonderful thing as a writer to imagine thousands of people singing, “We will run again,” and know that you’ve had something to do with that.

Where do you envision that happening? Is it a crowded Fenway Park breaking out in song? “We will run again”?

That would be nice. I’d love that. I know there’s a benefit concert at the TD Garden and it would be great to get the local high schools singing the song there. I’d love to think that there’s a possibility that people sing this at every marathon. That it’s just a way of cheering on people who are running and a way of paying respects but also encouraging people.

This song starts with Obama’s words and voice and it ends that way, too:

President Obama: Because that’s what the people of Boston are made of.

So it really comes full circle there.

Yeah, I think the people of Boston and the people around Boston — Wellesley, etc. — all feel this way and if we can show what we’re made of and stand together, it’s a pretty cool thing.

The show, at the TD Garden, will benefit One Fund — the collection of donations that will be distributed to the survivors of the April 15 bombings and the families of those killed in the attack.

Other confirmed acts include Jason Aldean, Boston, Extreme, Godsmack, The J. Geils Band, Carole King and New Kids on the Block. Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block said that like other native Bostonians, he and his bandmates are honored to do their part.

Comedians Dane Cook and Steven Wright also are included in the lineup.

Tickets range from $35 to $285. They go on sale Monday.

Bob Maloney, a 43-year-old bassist, has been playing around Boston since he was a teen, most recently in the hard rock band Cult 45. For him, being mentioned in the Phoenix was the Holy Grail, and last January, Cult 45′s new CD made it into its hallowed pages. The musician admits he was shocked when the alternative newsweekly announced it was shutting down.

“You look on every corner and there was a red Phoenix box. I mean, it really was the source,” Maloney recalled. “Over the years there were a lot of zines, magazines and newspapers that would come and go, but the Phoenix was always there — it was the measuring stick. You know if you made it into the Phoenix people would pay attention.”

In its last full month on the streets, the Phoenix highlighted the local band Kingsley Flood, but frontman Naseem Khuri says a turning point for his group was in 2010 when it was voted Best Roots Act in a Boston Phoenix poll.

“It said to us, you know, we’re a part of this thing now, we’re a part of this great Boston music scene and we know there’s this support system underneath, which I think was led by the Phoenix,” Khuri said.

The exposure gave Kingsley Flood a major boost, inspiring national attention. Khuri, who grew up in Westwood, said the paper’s coverage of bands like The Lemonheads and Morphine in the 1980s and ’90s was formative as he was finding his musical feet in the suburbs.

“It also, to me, represented this other side of the city. And it represented total freedom of press. It was the idea that here’s a paper that can actually swear,” he explained with a laugh. “And here’s one where they take their bands really seriously, and they treat music really seriously, and they are telling you that you should treat music seriously and you should consider this a vital part of the city.”

Khuri is concerned about where new bands coming up today will find support and exposure. That’s one reason why he wrote a lament on his band’s website about what the paper’s end means for the local music scene.

‘A Loss Of Localism’

“It’s such a changing landscape — journalism and media in general — that I don’t really see who is going to step up. And there’s a real loss of localism in all of this,” said Joyce Linehan, a publicist for local arts organizations and a music industry veteran. She has booked clubs, managed bands and runs a record label in Boston.

“Blogs are great and Twitter is great and Facebook is great — and I spend a lot of time in all those places — but the information seems very scattered,” she said.

And while smaller alternative publications like The Noise and DigBoston highlight bands and show listings, Linehan is worried about the loss of the type of comprehensive arts coverage the Phoenix was known for.

“I just kind of miss the writers and the journalism, with the big personalities that were able to really put things in cultural and social and political context — and I feel like that’s slipping away,” Linehan said.

Nate Albert, the original guitarist for the successful American ska-core band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, feels the same way.

“I think the way they covered the scene felt much more personal and human,” Albert said.

Back in the 1980s, when the Bosstones formed, Albert said Phoenix writers were deeply embedded in the local club scene. That position informed their features and reviews.

“They articulated these stories and revealed the stuff about us that we maybe didn’t know or wouldn’t really have thought of — and almost like mirrored back to us, ‘Hey guys, this is what you could be,’ ” Albert recalled. Eventually the Bosstones went platinum in 1997 with their hit single “The Impression That I Get.”

Today Albert is vice president of artists and repertoire for Republic Records in New York. And, without too much remorse, he said that he now relies on streaming sites like Spotify and blogs to discover new music — not so much on radio, magazines or newspapers.

“I don’t think that’s something to mourn because I think that all of the people involved in the Phoenix will end up going on and doing great stuff,” Albert predicted. “But I think that physical goods as we knew them are kind of moving into this different place — and I think that’s kind of just OK.”

Still, Albert said he’s undeniably sad to see The Boston Phoenix go the way of other music media, like radio stations WFNX-FM and WBCN-FM.

Looking Ahead

Local concert booking agent Ryan Vogel mused that “whoever can figure out how to replace some of these older filters will become, I think, a millionaire.”

Vangel, VP for talent booking at Crossroads Presents (a company owned by entertainment mogul Don Law), believes the important thing right now is replacing older media with “newer versions that people trust.”

Vangel has trusted the Phoenix for two decades. He handles about 300 shows a year at local venues including the Orpheum, Brighton Music Hall and the Bank of American Pavilion. This means he’s spent a lot of money on advertising concerts in the Phoenix. Now, Vangel said Crossroads will beef up its budget for digital and social media marketing.

While all of these players figure out their post-Phoenix strategies, local musician Bob Maloney is trying to remain hopeful.

“Maybe there’s a silver lining somehow,” Maloney said. “Maybe there’s opportunity — a new venue for some of these writers and editors to really come together and rise from the ashes of the Phoenix.”

It’s clear that Maloney is not alone in his wish. The Boston Phoenix will be sorely missed by many of us, including this arts and culture reporter.

Correction: An earlier version of this report called DigBoston by its old name, The Weekly Dig. We regret the error.

They won’t be performing Ives this weekend at Jordan Hall, Hahn on Friday and Denk Saturday, but their recent recordings not only speak to their commitment to 20th and 21st Century music, but reflect a welcome trend toward soloists not getting mired in 18th and 19th century and rarely poking their heads into the modern, never mind contemporary, world.

In that regard we seem to be in the midst of a golden age of violinists, with Gidon Kremer, Lisa Batiashvili, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Hahn turning out one distinguished CD after another of modern music. Hahn, in fact, has commissioned a set of encores from contemporary composers, several of which she’ll be performing Friday night before recording them all for Deutsche Grammophon.

Hahn wanted to create new favorites as well as play old chestnuts for the inevitable encores to her concerts, she said in an interview. “I had to do it on my own. I only knew a couple of the composers so I made 30-something cold calls, and I thought “This is what it feels like to call people up and ask them out. I wasn’t expecting so much enthiusiasm. It was really fantastic, really encouraging.”

There is a kind of innocence to Hahn. I’m thinking, if I’m a classical composer and Hilary Hahn calls me up and wants to know if she can commission a piece from me I’d be pretty enthusiastic. But if Hahn was once known for just the sweetness of her tone that’s changed.

The melodiousness remains, which is part of the reason she makes the thorniness of Ives and Schoenberg seem so accessible. But it’s not at the price of sophistication. Her performances display a pretty complete understanding of what the composers she’s championing are about, which of course adds to their accessibility.

It’s also admirable the way she mixes composers across the centuries on her Sony and DG recordings: Beethoven and Bernstein, Barber and Meyer, Brahms and Stravinsky, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, Schoenberg and Sibelius, Higdon and Tchaikovsky. (While classical music is an international calling these days, you can see – and more importantly, hear – a greater appreciation of American music in her playing.

Denk does something similar on last year’s excellent Nonesuch CD sandwiching Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in between Ligeti solo piano pieces. Beethoven’s late chamber works have a kind of modern dash to them anyway, but on this CD you actually have to listen to where Beethoven ends and Ligeti begins. He’ll be performing the Beethoven piece this weekend, but with more sedate company – Bach and Liszt, though Bartok is also on the program.

And if there’s a more entertainingly provocative blogger among musicians, I don’t know who it is. Take a look at Think Denk.

Hahn continues to chart an adventurous course for herself. Her improvisational recording and performance with avant-garde pianist Hauschka were sublime, particularly at the ICA with its harbor vista.

“I just thought it would be interesting to create something from scratch. So we tried different ways of working together and the one that spoke to both of us was improvising. Just for ourselves for a while, we just worked on stuff together and saw where that led. Then we went into the studio and made the record … I’ve always looked at the things I’ve done maybe outside of classical music as something that would enhance my performance. It’s making music from instinct and creativity and making something out of no references whatsoever. It’s helped me a lot with my own playing and own projects.” So Friday night she’ll be playing Fauré, Corelli and Bach before settling into the contemporary groove of her new project, titled “In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores.” One of the commissions is from Nico Muhly, whose music graces the American Repertory Theater’s great new production of “The Glass Menagerie.”

The Muhly piece won’t be on the program, but — accompanied by Cory Smythe — she will be playing:

Anton Garcia Abril – “First Sigh”
Anton Garcia Abril – “Third Sigh”
Kala Ramnath – “Aalap and Tarana”
Mason Bates – “Ford’s Farm”
Du Yun – “When a Tiger Meets a Rosa Rugosa”
David Lang – “Light Moving”
Jeff Myers – “The Angry Birds of Kauai”
James Newton Howard – “133…At Least”
Elliott Sharp – “Storm of the Eye”

“I did want to find a range of styles and composers who represent the variety of classical music today. Since it was a project I’d be doing for a long time, it had to be something that spoke to me. I didn’t want to do just stuff I knew, but explore the different ways that people are creating music these days.”

So far, through her recordings and performances, Hilary Hahn has been a great 21st century guide. She and Denk have distinguished themselves on CD; there’s no reason to think their performances this weekend will be any less illuminating.

At the 10 annual recital of Berklee harpists at Berk Recital Hall (1140 Boylston St., Boston) at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25 the instrument isn’t rare, but comes to the forefront. Last year’s program included a Michael Jackson medley and the Billy Strayhorn standard for Duke Ellington’s orchestra, “Take the ‘A’ Train” (see videos).

This Monday’s free program includes a Claude Debussy harp sonata and music by Israeli composer Ami Ma’Ayami.

The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.

McCready had attempted suicide at least three times since 2005, as she struggled to cope amid a series of tumultuous public events that marked much of her adult life.

Speaking to The Associated Press in 2010, McCready smiled wryly while talking about the string of issues she’d dealt with over the last half-decade.

“It is a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time,” she said of her life. “I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It’s just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that’s really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality.”

This time it seems the whirlwind overwhelmed McCready.

Her death comes a month after that of David Wilson, her longtime boyfriend and the father of her youngest son. He is believed to have shot himself on the same porch of the home they shared in Heber Springs, a small vacation community of large lakefront houses about 65 miles north of Little Rock. His death also was investigated as a suicide.

It was the most difficult moment in a life full of them. McCready issued a statement last month lamenting his death. And she called him her soul mate and a caregiver to her sons in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

“I just keep telling myself that the more suffering that I go through, the greater character I’ll have,” she said, according to a transcript of the interview.

Like so many times before, McCready showed a little toughness in the midst of a personal storm, again endearing herself to her fans. But as usual, the brave face for the camera hid a much more complicated internal struggle that surfaced publicly time and again over the last 10 years.

This time, along with her remembrances of finding Wilson as he lay dying, she also answered questions about whether they’d argued earlier that evening about an affair and if she’d shot him.

“Oh, my God,” the “Today” transcript reads. “No. Oh, my God. No. He was my life. We were each other`s life.”

It’s unclear what circumstances led to McCready taking her own life, but it appears she was struggling again with twin issues that have persisted for years – substance abuse and the custody of her children. She checked into court-ordered rehab and gave her children up to foster care earlier this month after her father asked a judge to intervene, saying she’d stopped taking care of herself and her sons and was abusing alcohol and prescription drugs.

It’s not clear where her sons, 6-year-old Zander and infant Zayne, were Sunday.

A deputy stationed outside McCready’s home Sunday night referred questions to the Cleburne County sheriff, who was unavailable. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the front yard and a dark-colored pickup truck sat in the driveway.

News of McCready’s death spread quickly Sunday night on Twitter, with major country stars paying their respects to the onetime Nashville darling.

“Too much tragedy to overcome. R.I.P Mindy McCready,” wrote Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks.

And Carrie Underwood added: “I grew up listening to Mindy McCready…so sad for her family tonight. Many prayers are going out to them… .”

On Monday, neighbors who never met McCready but knew well of her very public struggles expressed grief.

Jim Jones, 58, said police had already blocked off McCready’s house Sunday evening when he and his wife pulled up to their weekend home down the street. People knew McCready lived in town, but many homeowners live only part-time in Heber Springs, particularly in the warmer months for the boating, fishing and golfing.

“I never met anybody. That’s the thing about up here. So many of them are summer lake houses that you don’t know your neighbors.”

Melinda Gayle McCready arrived in Nashville in 1994 still in her teens with tapes of her karaoke vocals and earned a recording contract with BNA Records. She had a few memorable moments professionally, scoring her first No. 1 hit almost immediately.

“Guys Do It All the Time,” a self-assured dig at male chauvinism, endeared her to female fans in 1996. She also scored a hit with “Ten Thousand Angels,” and her album of that title sold 2 million copies.

Beyond that, though, she’s mostly remembered for a string of dramatic moments as she spent the next 15 years chasing another huge hit. Her problems included a custody battle with her mother over one of her sons, arrests, overdoses and discord in her love life.

She made headlines in April 2008 when she claimed a longtime relationship with baseball great Roger Clemens. Published reports at the time said she met the pitcher at a Florida karaoke bar when she was 15 and he was 28 and married. Clemens denied the relationship. A decade earlier she was engaged to actor Dean Cain, but the two never married.

She also had a turbulent relationship with Billy McKnight, a country singer who is the father of her oldest son. McKnight was arrested in 2005 on charges of attempted murder after authorities say he beat and choked her.

During this period she also pleaded guilty to obtaining the painkiller OxyContin fraudulently at a pharmacy and got probation. She violated the probation with a drunken driving arrest in May 2005, a few days before McKnight was arrested. And in July 2007, she was arrested in her hometown of Fort Myers, Fla., on misdemeanor charges of scratching her mother, Gayle Inge, on the face during a scuffle and resisting sheriff’s deputies.

Less than a year later, McCready was arrested and charged with violating her probation by falsifying her community service records relating to the 2004 drug charge. A month later, she entered an extended care facility for undisclosed treatment, and followed that with a 60-day jail sentence. Inge took custody of Zander.

There were at least three suicide attempts between July 2005 and December 2008.

She tried to get help in an unusual way, joining the cast of “Celebrity Rehab 3″ with Dr. Drew Pinsky. McCready came off as a sympathetic figure during the show’s run. Pinsky called her an “angel” and in an interview in 2010 said it appeared McCready was doing “rather well.”

Pinsky helped treat McCready for love addiction on the show and said he’d referred her to professionals who could continue to help her afterward.

“A love addict basically is somebody that really didn’t have a good model for intimacy in their childhood, often times traumatized in one way or another, thereby intimacy becomes a risk place, becomes an intolerable place,” Pinsky said. “And so what they tend to do is attach themselves to idealized, bigger than life, unavailable others, specifically go after some public figure that’s married or go after some rock star who is himself a sex addict and not interested in a relationship, and then idealize that person and actively pursue them to the point of obsession.”

McCready suffered a seizure in one of the show’s scarier moments. Tests showed she has suffered brain damage, something she attributed to her abusive relationship with McKnight.

McCready is the fifth celebrity to pass away since appearing on Pinsky’s show and the third from Season 3. Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr and “Real World” participant Joey Kovar both died of overdoses.

In the months after her stint, McCready said she found some peace, telling The Associated Press in early 2010 that she hoped to get her career restarted, write a book about her experiences and begin production on a reality show with her brothers. She’d just met Wilson and talked openly about their relationship, although the producer and musician declined to speak on the record.

With a publicist, reporters, cameras, makeup artists and musicians swirling around her during a press day for her last album, “I’m Still Here,” McCready fended off questions about a sex tape and said she and Wilson started out as friends.

“And I’ve never had a relationship like that before where we started completely as friends,” she said. “It turned into friends really caring about each other and then it turned into love and I’ve never had that happen before.”

At the time, Pinsky thought the relationship was on the right track: “She’s an easy person to like and to care about and we hope she does well,” Pinsky said. “So far so good as far as I can tell.”

McCready said her main goal in 2010 was to pull her family back together: “I would like my son back with me and for my brothers and I and he to be able to go and do this (TV reality show), and I think after that I will be a pretty happy girl.”

The new album debuted at No. 71 and failed to gain radio airplay. McCready’s plans never materialized and she soon was in legal trouble again, this time fighting for custody.

McCready took her older son from her mother, the boy’s legal guardian, in late 2011. She fled to Arkansas without permission over what she called child abuse fears. Authorities eventually found McCready hiding in a home without permission and took the boy into custody.

She and Wilson had their son in April 2012.

Now it could become the official rock song of Massachusetts.

At a time of drug-infused lyrics and bloated orchestration, the Modern Lovers — led by Bay State native Jonathan Richman — crafted a deceptively simple anthem about listening to AM radio, cruising along the turnpike, driving by the Stop & Shop and listening to “the modern sounds of modern Massachusetts.”

Now Boston state Rep. Martin Walsh has filed a bill to make “Roadrunner” the official rock song of the commonwealth.

Although the two-chord wonder is an unabashed celebration of driving alone at night on highways and suburban streets, it would be embraced by the punk rock explosion that followed a few years later.

But greatness isn’t all in the past. Future generations, I’m sure, will think the same thoughts about Branford Marsalis.

Don’t take my word for it. From Feb. 8 to 10, Scullers Jazz Club will be presenting “An Evening with Branford Marsalis.” Marsalis will be playing with his quartet (Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and Justin Faulkner on drums), who recently released the CD “Four MF’s Playin Tunes.” They are a loyal group of extremely talented musicians and have something all jazz ensembles strive for — an “implicit trust” as Revis describes it. In their hands, a staple of good jazz is realized and explored in expert, satisfying ways. The artists make that sometimes elusive but all important dialogue between instruments seem effortless. They have a conversation when they play, bouncing musical ideas around, immediately responding to each other, building art in the moment.

They’ve built that trust over the years. Calderazzo’s musical relationship started with Marsalis in 1990 and Revis has been part of the quartet since 1997. Faulkner joined the group more recently in 2009, but is already an integral part of the ensemble.

Faulkner has done more than just settle into the groove. He brings a vibrant and youthful energy to the band. A Jazz Times review of “Four MF’s Playin Tunes” by Thomas Conrad stated “The extremely talented young drummer adds a certain spark that raises the quality of the music from the category of excellent to the rarefied air of the extraordinary.” In “Whiplash” (a track from the recent CD) Faulkner displays his ability to swing while keeping things interesting. He drives Marsalis’s and Calderazzo’s solos and then launches into his own engaging solo. See for yourself:

“Four MF’s Playin Tunes” is as fresh, exciting, and intense an album as I’ve heard in a while, featuring extended solos on a combination of original compositions and handpicked standards. What’s the secret? “We recorded the way they recorded 60 years ago.” Marsalis says in a promotional video, “They just brought those tunes in and played them…I wanna be like them!”

And why will people revere Marsalis? Few jazz saxophone players have achieved the recognition and played the range of genres that he has. Wynton often gets the lion’s share of attention but you don’t hear him “getting very post-Coltrane” as Ben Ratliff of the New York Times says of Branford. Just listen to “Endymion,” a track from the recent CD that Branford wrote. A melody without an apparent tempo or beat inspires a solo from Branford where key signature and form seem to be lost but vigor and buoyancy is not. As talented as Wynton may be, he’s earned his notoriety talking about jazz while Branford just plays the music.

Marsalis’s recent accomplishments are impressive: performing at the Democratic National Convention, receiving the NEA Jazz Masters award and an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree from the University of North Carolina. But with all the honors and as great as the CD is, the best way to experience his talent is with a small group in an intimate setting. Like the jazz greats before him, just playin tunes.

Claire Dickson is a 16-year-old jazz vocalist. She has received five Downbeat Student Music awards and is a 2013 National YoungArts Foundation honorable mention winner. You can see her at Ryles Jazz Club on Feb. 12. Her website is clairedicksonmusic.com

The band’s bassist Peter Hook recounts his version in his new biography of the band, “Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division.” He speaks about the book with Scott Heim at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, and with NPR critic Tim Riley at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge, at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8. (Update: Hook’s Feb. 8 appearance at Porter Square Books has been canceled by the store “due to the impending blizzard.”)

Joy Division emerged in Manchester, England, inspired by punk, but pressing on into something new and epic behind Curtis’s austere baritone—looming shadows, desolate, cursed. At first a cult favorite, they seemed to tap both into adolescent gloom and (at the time) Cold War doom. Their sound anticipated goth and alternative music of the 1980s and ‘90s, and influenced U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., and Radiohead. Curtis’s death only added to their dark allure.

Hook and the other remaining members of the band went on to critical and commercial success (and recent feuds) with the much more bright, dancey band New Order.

He argues that Joy Division wasn’t all darkness, recently telling Rolling Stone that in others’ accounts of the band, “There is something, from my point of view, lacking, which was the humanity and the humor. I always felt that making Ian out to be this deep, dark genius was sort of committing the same sin as the musical dinosaurs used to commit – whereas Johnny Rotten and the punk movement were all about demystification and that anybody can do it. I felt that the story that I had – that we went through – was much more entertaining.”