Also this issue: Nashville's Back Lot The Folk Alliance Showcase reveals the gears of the music-licensing machine. -Mary Armstrong Keep Moving The Secession Movement is a band with a plan. -Paul Burress Old Gods Alive Again The Choral Arts Society exhumes our musical lineage. -Peter Burwasser Aereogramme -John Vettese The Aislers Set -Sam Adams Lo-Hi -M.J. Fine TV Smith -Sam Adams Mary Timony -M.J. Fine

March 27-April 2, 2003

musicpicks

Michael Brecker Quartet/Peter Cincotti

Spring is here, and love is in the air. At least, that's the message floating around the Annenberg Center this weekend. First Penn Presents is hosting tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, whose last record, Nearness of You: The Ballad Book (Verve), was a love-fest of refreshing understatement and taste. Then the organization offers the first Philadelphia appearance by 19-year-old Connick-clone Peter Cincotti, whose polished romanticism seems much more contrived. (But not unappealing. His self-titled Concord Records debut opened at No. 2 on Billboard's jazz chart, behind Diana Krall.) Both nights should hit all the right notes. It's just that Brecker will hit many more of them.

Brecker: Fri., March 28, 8 p.m., $26-$39; Cincotti: Sat., March 29, 8 p.m., $24-$32, Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., 215-898-3900.

—Kyle Parker