New American Indian film festival in New Mexico debuts with 100 works & other

Report: Michelle Williams Clashing with Heath's Family

According to a report in today's New York Post, not all is well between the family of late actor Heath Ledger and his former live-in love Michelle Williams, so much so that the Dawson's Creek star may boycott the July 14 NYC premiere of his film, The Dark Knight.

The source of the tension is reportedly the Oscar-nominated actor's last will � or rather the fact that he never updated it, even after he fathered a child with Williams. The most recent will on file for the actor was written in 2003, almost two full years before the Oct. 2005 birth of daughter Matilda, and stipulates that his immediate family was to inherit his millions.

And even though it has since been decided that young Matilda will be the beneficiary of her father's estate, the Post's source alleges that Michelle is worried about the ability of Heath's dad, Kim Ledger, to act as executor of the will. According to the report, Kim allegedly mishandled his own inheritance after the passing of his father, losing a large sum of money for himself and his siblings.

Neither the Ledger family nor a rep for Michelle commented on this story to the Post.

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Canaan

Artist: Canaan

   Genre(s):
Metal: Gothic
   Rock: Gothic
   Rock

Discography:

The Unsaid Words

Year: 2006
Tracks: 16

Brand New Babylon

Year: 2000
Tracks: 14

Walk Into My Open Womb CD2

Year: 1998
Tracks: 9

Walk Into My Open Womb CD1

Year: 1998
Tracks: 9

Blue Fire

Year: 1996
Tracks: 14

Online music retailers shift pricing

Madonna - Report - Madonna Seeks Counsel From Mccartneys Lawyer

LATEST: Split rumours swirling around MADONNA and GUY RITCHIE are refusing to go away - a U.S. TV news show claims the pop superstar is seeking legal advice from PAUL MCCARTNEY's divorce lawyer.

Madonna has met with Fiona Shackleton, the attorney who represented Paul MCCartney during his court battle with Heather Mills, according to Access Hollywood reports.

The pop star reportedly approached Shackleton after initial talks with a rival law firm fell through.

The latest divorce story comes just two weeks after a representative for Madonna called news that the singer had hired Mills' lawyer Nicholas Mostyn "completely untrue".

A rep tells Access Hollywood there will be "no comment at this time" concerning the new story, while a spokesperson for Shackleton says, "We have a policy of not speaking with the press."

Guy Ritchie is reportedly being represented by Mayfair law firm Forsters.

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Llewellyn and Leora Lightwoman

Artist: Llewellyn and Leora Lightwoman

   Genre(s):
Other

Discography:

Tantric Sexuality

Year:
Tracks: 1

Labyrinth

Artist: Labyrinth

   Genre(s):
Metal: Doom
   Metal: Power
   Rock
   ROck: Alternative

Discography:

6 Days to Nowhere

Year: 2007
Tracks: 14

Freeman

Year: 2005
Tracks: 10

Sons Of Thunder - Timeless Crime

Year: 2003
Tracks: 15

Labyrinth

Year: 2003
Tracks: 10

Sons Of Thunder

Year: 2000
Tracks: 10

Timeless Crime (Ep)

Year: 1999
Tracks: 4

Return To Heaven Denied

Year: 1998
Tracks: 10

No Limits

Year: 1996
Tracks: 13

Italian big businessman metal band Labyrinth formed in 1991, comprising vocaliser Joe Terry, guitarists Olaf ThÃ¶rsen and Anders Rain, bassist Chris Breeze, keyboardist Ken Taylor, and drummer Frank Andiver at the time of their 1994 debut EP Piece of Time. After cathartic the uncut No Limits early the next year, the deuce-ace of Terry, Taylor, and Andiver all exited the lineup, and with new vocaliser Rob Tyrant, keyboardist Andrew McPauls, and drummer Mat Stancioiu in place, Labyrinth resurfaced in 1998 with Render to Heaven Denied. Tyrant then briefly left the grouping to whistle with the New Trolls; singer Morby was brought in as his successor, simply Tyrant returned to the Labyrinth flock in time for the 1999 mini-LP Timeless Crime. Sons of Thunder was issued deuce years later.

Thomas Ad�s on Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress

My relationship with Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress began when I was around 14 years old. I was completely foxed by it. I had heard The Rite of Spring, but this was a completely different piece, and not only in the way it sounded; it was the only full-scale opera he composed. I loved many parts of it, finding them very beautiful, but there were also parts where I didn't understand what was going on. I had a strong sense that I wasn't equipped to understand The Rake.

Then somebody told me that it's the most moving opera ever written. I thought: really? That hadn't crossed my mind. But now I see they were right, that it's one of the greatest operas there is. I made an effort to understand how much there is in the music; seeing a revival of Glyndebourne's famous 1975 production, designed by David Hockney, was also crucial.

Rehearsing the piece at Covent Garden for a new production, directed by Robert Lepage, has been a real education. Although it's a work I've known intimately for a long time, I haven't actually laid hands on it before, apart from at home on the piano. It has been like peeling a flower: you realise how many layers there are in it. The heart of the piece, the bits that are the most open emotionally, are the final couple of scenes, when Tom - the Rake - is in Bedlam. That's like the inside of the flower, and all the rest of the piece is leading towards it, layer by layer.

This is the climax of Tom's "progress" - an ironic use of the word, of course, because he progresses backwards, in a way. He starts out understanding nothing about his life and simply existing in a state of unknowing bliss; he ends that way, too, but for a different reason - because he has gone mad. Along the way, he has sold his soul to Satan, alias Nick Shadow, without realising it. The story is an education in a way, about regaining an idealised state of balance, even if it comes at a terrible cost.

The most controversial aspect of Stravinsky's music for WH Auden and Chester Kallman's libretto - in my opinion the best that exists in English - is also the most superficial. It's to do with style. In 1951, when the piece was premiered in Venice, Stravinsky, then in his late 60s, must have known that it would be seen by younger modernists as a retrogressive step. After all, this is an opera with arias and recitatives, apparently set in the 18th century; its musical language is not that of the postwar avant garde, and it borrows from operatic conventions and languages from throughout music history. But all that matters only if you look at the piece in narrow stylistic terms. At that time, the 1950s, there was a greater obsession with style than there is now. Saying The Rake is not modern enough is stupid: it's like someone going around choosing things for their kitchen, saying: "That's not modern enough", or "That's too modern."

To see opera simply as a stylistic exercise, as many people do, is entirely wrong. In fact, Stravinsky developed something in The Rake's Progress he had hardly used before: a contrapuntal technique, a linear understanding of harmony that he was able to take forward into the serial, 12-tone music he wrote after The Rake. There's a clue to this change in Stravinsky's compositional direction in Auden's libretto, when Tom sings at the start of the second act: "Vary the song, O London, change!/ Disband your notes and let them range."

Lepage's production sets the piece precisely in the America where Stravinsky lived when he wrote The Rake: the America of the late 1940s and early 50s. In fact, it feels like the Hollywood of that time. I like that very much, because you are forced to look at the piece for what it is: an opera at once absolutely of its period, and yet beautifully removed from it. The piece is like a negative of its time. And yet it is a comment on America, the world, in the 1950s.

I think of it as asking the question: do we choose blissful ignorance, or do we choose power and madness? Or do we just try to get on with it and not make a mess of things? It is also an opera for a time of coming austerity, because it asks which is more important: love or money.

· The Rake's Progress, conducted by Thomas Adès and directed by Robert Lepage, opens at the Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), on July 7. Thomas Adès was talking to Tom Service

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