In his former life, Greenberg was a musician whose self-destruction scuttled an opportunity at success. His return home is an attempt to unmake his bad decisions, wholly tone-deaf to the fact that everyone else involved having moved on with their lives renders that impossible.

Mother plays similar is a gritty policier which also becomes a slapstick comedy, and both a melo- and psycho-drama without ever conceding its whodunit identity.

visual art Having just overthrown a king, America's founding fathers were understandably averse to monarchies, shunning the trappings of royalty while laying the groundwork for

The title of saxophonist/composer Jimmy Heath's new autobiography, I Walked With Giants (Temple University Press), is typically self-effacing, seemingly ranking his achievements somewhere below the jazz legends with whom he's worked.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese's most recent muse, stars as a federal marshal investigating a missing inmate on an isolated, Alcatraz-styled mental institution. He starts the film looking worse off than most action heroes do at the end of this sort of misadventure: sweat-drenched, bandaged and vomiting from seasickness.

The old cliché goes that music is the universal language, but it rings cacophonously true in the case of the Circulasione Totale Orchestra.

The thousand-plus pieces that make up Harris' personal collection have an end built right into them — from nearly every canvas, print, sculpture, carving and Grateful Dead T-shirt stares the hollow eyes of a skull.

Suggesting a refresher on the sounds originally broadcast by the Jazz Messengers, the Jazz Update, Canadian-born saxophonist Jeff Antoniuk's Annapolis-based quartet, is aptly named.

The Inbetweens are a guitar-bass-drums trio of ex-New England Conservatory students who have doubled as the rhythm section for the Brooklyn Qawwali Party and Philly soul singer Candice Manson.

Ken Vandermark has never been shy about trumpeting his influences.