40 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Give that uncommon man a fanfare.

With guest conductor Riccardo Muti ill, Michael Christie gets his big chance to lead the New York Philharmonic.

But he doesn’t have far to travel. Christie is music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

“I’m not sure if we have to put him up in a hotel or not,” joked Eric Latzky, the New York Philharmonic’s spokesman.

Latzky said Sunday that Muti had to cancel because of flu.

“His doctors advised him not to travel,” Latzky said.

Music director in Brooklyn since 2005, Christie, 33, holds similar positions with the Phoenix Symphony and the Colorado Summer Music Festival.

He makes his debut with New York’s bigger Philharmonic on Thursday night, leading a performance of Elgar’s Violin Concerto with soloist Pinchas Zukerman and Copland’s Third Symphony. The program is repeated on Friday and Saturday night.

The symphony’s last movement begins with the theme of the booming brass “Fanfare for the Common Man.”

___

On the Net:

http://www.nyphil.org

http://www.brooklynphilharmonic.org/

25 minutes ago

HOUSTON - Grammy-winning Tejano singer Emilio Navaira (nah-VYE’-rah) is in critical condition after his band’s bus crashed in Houston.

Navaira and his band Rio performed in Houston on Saturday night. Authorities say the band’s bus collided with two other vehicles about 5 a.m. Sunday on an interstate in western Houston.

Memorial Hermann Hospital administrator Lisa Lagrone says Navaira is in critical condition. Several other people also were hurt.

The 45-year-old Navaira and Rio have released more than a dozen albums. “Acuerdate” won the 2003 Grammy for best Tejano album.

17 minutes ago

INDIANOLA, Miss. - B.B. King is the new owner of a juke joint in his Mississippi Delta hometown. Mary Shepard has owned Club Ebony in Indianola for the past three decades. King and other artists have played there throughout the years.

A Mississippi Delta Blues Trail Marker outside Club Ebony says Count Basie, Ray Charles, James Brown, Ike Turner are among the musicians who have played there since 1945.

Shepard says she sold the club to the bluesman because she wants to relax and spend time with her family.

Indianola is about halfway between Jackson and Memphis.

Josh Grossberg Sun Mar 23, 10:39 AM ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Jason Rae, the musician-husband of soul singer Corinne Bailey Rae, was found dead Saturday in a London flat of a suspected drug overdose. 

He was 31.

According to British media reports, police have arrested an unidentified 32-year-old man for allegedly "supplying controlled substances."  He was subsequently released on bail.

Rae, who played the saxophone, was scheduled to perform with his band, Haggis Horns, on Sunday night at the HiFi Club in Leeds.  That gig has subsequently been cancelled.

No word on his famous wife's whereabouts or whether she was with him when he died.  An autopsy was inconclusive and police are currently waiting on the results of toxicology results before making a final determination on the nature of his death.

Corinne Bailey Rae is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist who shot to fame two years ago with her self-titled debut album which spawned the hit, "Put Your Record On."  She shared a Grammy Award this year for Album of the Year with Herbie Hancock for her contributions to his new disc, River: The Joni Letters.  Last year's Best New Artist nominee was also up for a Grammy this year for her single, Like A Star.

The songstress reportedly met Jason Rae when she attended the University of Leeds and worked as a hat check girl at a local jazz club, occasionally sitting in with various groups when business was slow.  The two fell in love and eventually tied the knot in 2001 after which she added his last name to his own.

Per the band's Myspace page, Haggis Horns touts itself as "an eight-piece live funk extravanganza" mixing heavy breakbeat funk, soul, hip-hop and afrobeat "with the virtuosity of trained jazz musicians."

Rae and other members have performed with such acts as Corinne Baily Rae, Cinematic Orchestra, Nightmares on Wax, Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse among others.

No word yet on funeral plans.

By RONALD BLUM, Associated Press Writer 41 minutes ago

NEW YORK - At this rate, the surgeon general could issue a warning that singing at the Metropolitan Opera can be hazardous to one’s health.

Illnesses have knocked out stars at dizzying speed, with six singers making unscheduled debuts in leading roles over 13 days.

Three tenors appeared as Tristan, one of whom stopped the show when a set malfunction sent him tumbling into the prompter’s box. A soprano took over Isolde in mid-performance, and two other sopranos were thrust into Verdi operas on short notice.

Some singers spend years waiting a chance to sing on the Met’s stage, working their way up at regional theaters with the hope they can become the next Luciano Pavarotti or Birgit Nilsson. Various viruses have catapulted those waiting in the wings into the spotlight, usually with not even a single stage rehearsal.

Angela Meade, a 30-year-old soprano still in vocal school, hadn’t sung a single professional performance before her debut Friday night as Elvira in Verdi’s “Ernani.”

A little more than 16 hours later, tenor Robert Dean Smith sang Tristan in a performance simulcast to theaters worldwide. He jetted in from Berlin on Thursday, had a few piano rehearsals Friday and planned to head back to Europe on Sunday. Even Met General Manager Peter Gelb joked that the revival of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” was “cursed.”

Both debuts were warmly received. There’s a distinguished list of singers who made unscheduled Met debuts because of illnesses, including by Placido Domingo, Astrid Varnay, Roberta Peters, Cornell MacNeil, Renee Fleming and Salvatore Licitra.

A winner of the 2007 Met National Council Auditions, Meade replaced Sondra Radvanovsky (viral infection) in “Ernani,” which before this revival had not been performed at the Met since 1985.

“I was a little nervous the first 15 minutes,” Meade said.

No wonder. She enters for the first time to sing her cavatina “Ernani! Ernani, involami,” filled with coloratura trills.

Meade, a student at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, showed a vibrant voice with nice color and an assured technique. She sang like an old pro from start to finish, combining for moving duets with Marcello Giordani (Ernani) — she happens to share the same voice teacher as Giordani, Bill Schuman.

Smith, 52, is a far more accomplished singer, gaining international attention when he filled in for Peter Seiffert as Walther von Stolzing in “Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg” at the 1997 Bayreuth Festival. He is the Tristan of choice at Bayreuth these days.

A former baritone, Smith carefully navigated the most difficult of all tenor roles, saving vocal energy for the third-act monologue. Alongside Deborah Voigt’s huge soprano, his tenor was drowned out a bit during the thickest orchestrations, but he sang with beauty and style throughout, and he benefited from music director James Levine, who adjusts constantly to performers’ preferences.

Smith hadn’t been on the set before Saturday.

“You count on your experience to get you through,” he said.

Born in Kansas and a resident of Switzerland, Smith has performed predominantly in Europe and had been scheduled to make his Met debut in Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” in December 2009. Ben Heppner, who had been set to star alongside Voigt in this highly anticipated revival of “Tristan,” came down with a blood-borne infection that abscessed in his pelvic region. The Met called Smith on March 14 and asked him to take over for the telecast, and the Staatsoper unter der Linden in Berlin released him from “Tannhaueser” rehearsals, allowing him to fly to New York.

John Mac Master, the original understudy, received negative reviews in the March 10 opener, and Gary Lehman sang the following two performances, emerging following his tumble on March 18 to finish after doctors checked him out.

When Voigt left the stage on March 14 in the second act with a stomach ailment, Janice Baird came in from the bullpen for her Met debut. Then on March 15, soprano Ruth Ann Swenson came down with the flu and was replaced by Ermonela Jaho as Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

On Saturday, the only glitch was when the night sky turned white for several seconds in the second act.

With his family in his dressing room, Smith was happy he had made the trip.

“Mr. Gelb took a risk. Mr. Levine took a risk,” he said. “And I took a risk.”

By Christine Kearney 47 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Folksy French-Israeli singer Yael Naim found commercial success after her song "New Soul" played in Apple's MacBook Air laptop ads, pushing the song to No. 7 on U.S. music chart Billboard's Hot 100.

She already had gained fame for what some saw as a comic choice to cover pop singer Britney Spear's "Toxic," singing a soulful, poignant version of the commercial hit while playing piano.

But Naim, 29, whose self-titled new album was just released in the United States two months earlier than originally planned following the success of the Apple ad, says she's not worried about being seen as too commercial.

"It opened a great window for us, for a lot of people to have a chance to hear about our music," she told Reuters in New York. "We had a lot of propositions … but we thought Apple and Macintosh have some connection because today we work with computers to do our music."

The singer-songwriter, who was born in Paris but spent a large part of her childhood in Israel, recorded her new album in her Paris apartment with her music partner, percussionist David Donatien.

"We did not have a label," she said. "We did not have a lot of money so we did it just with a computer."

NAME HALVED

She became disillusioned with the "big studio" experience after her first album "In a Man's Womb" was released in 2001 through EMI, which insisted she keep her name to just Yael.

"It was like they took half of my energy," she said.

Both "Toxic" and "New Soul" appear on her new, second album, which was recorded in English, Hebrew and French and has received warm reviews. Rolling Stone magazine noted: "The way Naim purrs any word with a hard 'ch' will make your loins tingle."

Naim, who spent two years in the Israel Air Force Orchestra, said she was surprised audiences in France had embraced the mixed-language album.

"I did not think anyone would want to listen to ballads in Hebrew," she said. "It is not considered a very sexy language."

She also didn't expect the success of her version of "Toxic," which Rolling Stone described as "a stripped-down, slow-motion, kinda-brilliant cover."

"I don't particularly like her (Spears) as a musician, the voice, but this song is a good song," she said. "I wanted to take something that is completely opposite of the music we do."

Audiences at live shows, such as one last week in Manhattan, react excitedly to "Toxic," as well as to her current hit.

She confided to the crowd of several hundred that she once believed she was an old soul.

"Then my real life began and I figured that maybe I'm not an old soul," she said before launching into "New Soul."

(Additional reporting by Sharon Reich; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Bill Trott)

By Mitchell Peters 8 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Adam Gardner has come a long way since nicknaming his band's tour bus "the Earth Eater." Last October, the Guster guitarist/vocalist, who also co-founded environmental nonprofit organization Reverb, traveled from his home in Portland, Maine, to Capitol Hill to testify in front of Congress about the benefits of biofuel to the music industry.

"I've never been more nervous in my life," Gardner recalls. But after wiping the sweat from his brow, he successfully relayed his Earth-friendly message to curious politicians in Washington, D.C. "I basically said, 'We'd love for Reverb to be out of business, as far as coordinating biodiesel for tours,"' he says. "(Artists) should be able to pull up to any ol' truck stop and get it. It shouldn't be something we have to find for tours."

Since co-founding Reverb in 2004, Gardner, who runs the nonprofit with his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan, has helped turn more than 50 concert tours green, reduce 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide, distribute approximately 250,000 gallons of biodiesel and spread the Earth-conscious message to 4.5 million music fans. And his efforts won't stop there.

"The environment is on the forefront of everybody's mind right now," Gardner says. "Our job is to keep it there until it's no longer a problem." Having already "greened" tours for such acts as the Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Linkin Park, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies and John Mayer, among many others, Gardner says interest continues to rise among musicians and fans who are interested in helping Mother Earth. With a baby on the way and a new Guster album in the works, Gardner found time to speak with Billboard about the benefits of biodiesel, educating concertgoers and affordable ways to green a tour.

Q: How did your invitation come about to speak in front of Congress about the benefits of biofuel?

Adam Gardner: They wanted to hear my perspective as somebody who uses biodiesel and also travels around talking about the challenges in finding it. They were very interested in what Generation Y thinks about biodiesel. So I was able to show all of the stats in how many fans participate on these tours. Originally, I think they were like, "Oh, my God. Here comes some other pseudo-celebrity who wants to show their support." But they learned that my head is really in this and I'm not just here to raise a flag.

Q: One of Reverb's main focuses is outreach to fans via eco-villages at concerts. What progress has been made on that front?

Gardner: Fans have a huge impact on a tour. Eighty-five percent of a carbon footprint (at a concert) is from fans driving to and from it. We have volunteers going out there, and they let fans know to check out all of the stuff that's happening in the eco-village and to talk to the local nonprofit groups. We also encourage them to carpool and offset their drive to and from the show. We receive donations for carbon offsets from fans at the shows. On the Dave Matthews Band's tour last summer, over 1.2 million miles of driving were neutralized by the fans.

Q: You've been playing in Guster for 16 years. When was the turning point to consciously reduce the negative environmental impact of your touring?

Gardner: Before I started thinking about environmental stuff, I remember hearing about Neil Young traveling around the country on biodiesel. That was the first time I heard about biodiesel. Of course, I assumed that biodiesel was only for superstars, because it would be too expensive and too hard to figure out. But after Reverb formed, and we sent out bands like Guster, who are not superstars, we showed that if you have a bus, you can do this.

Q: Some say biodiesel isn't as great as everyone may think. What are your thoughts?

Gardner: There are some recent question marks about biodiesel, but the biodiesel we seek out isn't being imported from the rainforest of Latin America. It's made here in the States. It's domestically produced fuel that not only decreases our dependence on foreign oil, which obviously has political implications, but also is a more environmentally friendly fuel that has way less emissions than petroleum.

There are a number of feedstocks for biodiesel. A lot of it in this country is made from soybeans. But some places — like a biodiesel plant that's about to go into business here in Portland, Maine — collect wasted vegetable oil from restaurants that would otherwise be thrown away. So that's really eco-friendly. Even when you consider soybeans, a recent study from the Department of Energy shows that there's a 74 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from using biodiesel. That takes into account the growing of the soybeans. It's pretty significant.

Q: Using biodiesel can sometimes cost more than petroleum-based diesel. How are artists paying for it?

Gardner: We lay it all out for them. There are a lot of ways it can be paid for. Bonnie Raitt, for example, auctions off 10 seats in the fourth row (of concerts) to go toward green expenses. Sometimes it goes toward the charity of her choice. Serj Tankian (of System of a Down) is doing ticket auctions. He also added something called an eco-fund, where 50 cents of every ticket will be put toward the greening of his tour. The Fray also donated 50 cents of their ticket (sales). And if you sell enough tickets, you can end up doing more than just covering your green costs.

There's a band called Stars, which is a cool band from Montreal with members of Broken Social Scene. Somebody from Stars called, saying, "We'd love to have a tour, but we don't know how to pay for it." So we have a program called the Green Grants Mentoring Program, where if there's overage from another band's tour, we can then put that toward bands that want to tour green on a smaller level. It's musicians helping each other, which is really cool.

Q: Have you worked with bands that have taken a DIY approach to greening a tour?

Gardner: Hot Buttered Rum converted the diesel engine of their van to run on straight vegetable oil, so they go around getting a bunch of grease from restaurants that would normally be thrown away. They basically go dumpster-diving in various Chinese restaurants around the country and fill up their van. The gas mileage is the same as diesel. For smaller bands, that's a really good way. Another band, Oakhurst, bought an old Greyhound bus and converted it to run on grease. There's a bit of an upfront investment to do the conversion, but once it's done you have free fuel. But for bigger bands, they don't own their buses or trucks, so they can't make the modifications to them.

Q: Where is the music business lacking in greening efforts?

Gardner: The things lacking most are knowledge and help. And that's the void Reverb is trying to fill. A lot of people think it's too hard or too expensive. For example, we've done some work with Warner Music Group. We have them looking at energy efficiency in their headquarters in New York City. They're going to save money by taking a closer at their energy and water usage. It's just a matter of getting the information out there and having people facilitate it.

Q: Are greening efforts in the music business a trend, or do you expect environmental awareness to continue?

Gardner: It's not a trend. It's something that has been building momentum for a long time. And now that we're seeing the actual effects, more and more people are becoming aware and want to take action. So we're just trying to help people, whether they're in a band or a fan of the band. It starts with the artist and reverberates out to their fan base.

Reuters/Billboard

49 minutes ago

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Cuban-born bassist, band leader and mambo pioneer Israel "Cachao" Lopez died on Saturday in Miami, media reports said. He was 89.

Lopez, who immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1962, is credited with introducing the mambo musical genre to generations of adoring fans. He died on Saturday after complications from kidney failure, the Miami Herald reported in its online edition.

Known for years by a singular name, Cachao, Lopez was a Grammy Award-winning artist whose work was chronicled in a 1993 documentary by Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia.

Lopez, a classically trained bassist, continued to perform until the final months of his life. He had lived in south Florida for the past three decades and died at Coral Gables Hospital near Miami.

Born in Havana to a musical family in 1918, Lopez took to music early and in his teens had already become an accomplished classical bassist.

His contribution to modern music began in the 1930s. Like many other jazz musicians of his day, Lopez and his brother, Orestes Lopez, improvised with traditional music. He experimented with Afro-Cuban music and developed a new sound that became the mambo.

Though originally rejected, the musical genre took flight in the 1950s and became a jazz staple through much of the next few decades. After a period of obscurity, Lopez regained international attention in the 1990s thanks in part to Garcia's work.

Lopez received a Grammy Award in 2004 for his album "Agora Si!" He also received accolades in 2006, including concerts at the Lincoln Center in New York.

Earlier this month, Lopez traveled to the Dominican Republic to receive a lifetime achievement award, the Herald reported.

Funeral services were scheduled for Wednesday. Hospital officials declined to comment and Lopez' daughter, Maria Elena Lopez, could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Michael Peltier; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

By Leila Cobo 33 minutes ago

MIAMI (Billboard) - The idea was born over lunch and drinks. It was early March, and Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador were on the brink of war after a Colombian anti-guerrilla raid into Ecuador.

For Colombian star Juanes, the notion was incomprehensible. "I'll go to the border with my guitar and sing to fix this," he said.

"No," his manager, Fernan Martinez, replied. "If we do this, we go all out."

Ten days later, on March 16, Juanes — along with fellow Colombian Carlos Vives, Venezuelan Ricardo Montaner, Spaniards Miguel Bose and Alejandro Sanz, Dominican Juan Luis Guerra and Ecuadorean Juan Fernando Velasco — hosted a massive concert for peace. Nearly 100,000 fans gathered around a makeshift stage built in the middle of the bridge that connects Colombia with Venezuela.

The free concert was funded entirely by donations and will not generate a penny in profit; all networks that aired it worldwide could do so only without commercials or sponsorships.

"The objective of this show was utterly noncommercial, and we didn't want anything to distract from that," Juanes says.

But how does one get seven Latin superstars to play gratis, in the middle of nowhere, and at a moment's notice?

The morning of Thursday, March 6, after Juanes' concert at Madison Square Garden, popular morning show "La W" on the station of the same name (heard in Spain and throughout Latin America) announced the Juanes-hosted Concert for Peace in Colombia.

By the time Martinez woke up, he already had 30 messages of support on his cell phone. The concert was officially on.

Also that morning, Juanes sent a text message to his friend Sanz. Would he play, for free, for peace? "I'll be there, bro," Sanz wrote. "Just say where and when."

During a hastily arranged press conference the same day, Martinez got word that the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador had settled their differences, at least in terms of the immediate stand-off. But by then, Guerra and Bose had also confirmed their participation. It would be a celebratory concert, then. And it needed to take place as quickly as possible.

The following Sunday, Martinez flew to Cucuta, a border city that's the gateway between Colombia and Venezuela. For symbolic reasons, the concert had to be in that city, on that bridge. It had to be on a Sunday, the only day the bridge could be closed without affecting commerce, and it had to be during the day to avoid lighting costs.

Looking around, Martinez found a little bridge, sitting in the middle of a garbage dump with hovering vultures. "But I could also see a stage," he says.

The local government lent tractors and clean-up gear, but it was the police and the local 200-man army brigade that rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up the place.

By then, companies had started to call, offering services and cash in exchange for banners, merchandising, advertising and TV rights. No dice, Martinez said. It would be a "white" concert, without any commercial messages whatsoever.

All told, they raised approximately $400,000, which went to pay for side musicians, workers, hotels and production crews. Everything else was donated, including the material to build the stage and the trucks that transported sound equipment and gear, rented in Bogota, Colombia, 16 hours away by car. Colombian flower growers donated 500,000 white carnations. Five private jets were lent to fly in artists.

Each artist would bring three musicians, but the house band was Juanes' guitarist, percussionist, keyboardist and drummer. Three days before the show, each artist e-mailed MP3s with their song selections for the band to learn.

On Saturday, March 15, Juanes played a concert in Puerto Rico, and at 4 a.m. boarded a cargo plane bound for Cucuta. That evening, he and the musicians had their one and only soundcheck.

The next morning, Vives and Montaner arrived. At 1 p.m., minutes before curtain time, Guerra and Sanz landed. There was no rehearsal. There was no plan, really, beyond the order of performances and the notion that everyone should wear white.

"We started to walk to the stage along the bridge," Juanes says. "And all of a sudden, we started to see the people. There were flags from Colombia, from Venezuela, from Ecuador. Everybody was dressed in white. We could have not played a note, and it would have been enough. We were together for music and to send a message of peace."

The next day, the troops cleaned up the area around the bridge. And with money left over from the donations, the former garbage dump will be turned into a public park.

Reuters/Billboard

By Cortney Harding 25 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - A few days before the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, rock musician Serj Tankian is sitting in an Austin hotel room and ruminating on the costs of the endless battle. But Tankian isn't talking about dead soldiers or civilians; he's talking about the cost to the Middle East's environment, an issue that few people have raised.

"The topsoil there has been destroyed," he says, "and who knows what kind of damage all those bombs have caused to the ecosystems in the Middle East?"

Many bands these days are claiming the "green" label, but their concern often starts at the merchandise table and ends at the recycling bin. Not so for the System of a Down frontman-turned-solo artist, who sees beyond silos and realizes that issues like electoral reform, recognition of the Armenian genocide, poverty and the environment are all related.

As South by Southwest, the four-day music industry conference and party, rages below him, Tankian is serious but not humorless; clad in jeans and a T-shirt, he fiddles with his iPhone and shows off pictures of his dog before settling in to ponder weightier issues. Later that night, he brings the seething, schmoozing Stubb's crowd to a halt when he plays three haunting acoustic tracks at a show to celebrate the release of the "Body of War" documentary.

For Tankian, preaching about taking action is not enough. Rather than paying lip service to green issues, he founded a Web site, skyisover.net, to connect his fans to environmental and social justice organizations.

He also founded a nonprofit organization, Axis of Justice, with former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

"The organization has grown and morphed, and we really see the environment as being tied to social justice and human rights causes," Morello says. "We both realize that while people can do things on a person-by-person basis to make the world more green, massive levers need to be thrown to cause any real change."

Tankian is spreading his green message on the road and working with environmental nonprofit Reverb to make sure that his current tour leaves as small a carbon footprint as possible. With the organization, he ensures that all the food served backstage is organic and locally grown, that recycling bins are available throughout the venues and that fans can buy energy credits to offset their travel to the show. Still, Tankian recognizes that it's not enough.

"This is all great," he says, "but it's not going to stop the destruction. Right now the Earth has a fever, and based on the accelerated rate of population growth, the way we live now is completely unsustainable."

Q: Many artists are becoming more active in promoting green issues, but you seem to be one of the few who actually go a step beyond and connect environmental issues to issues of poverty and war. How do you see the relationships between these causes?

Serj Tankian: For me, it all stems from the need to promote justice. I called my organization Axis of Justice because I didn't want to focus on only one issue. The connections can be drawn because they are present in so many places; for instance, poor urban neighborhoods have higher asthma rates. When a city wants to build a dump or get rid of radioactive waste, they don't put it in the nice part of town. Even materials that are supposed to be environmentally friendly can be harmful to poor communities. Biodiesel, for example, uses up farmland that could otherwise be used to grow food for starving people.

Q: How did you first get involved in green issues?

Tankian: I've been a supporter of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club for years. I have a place in New Zealand, and I was really impressed with a Greenpeace action that took place down there recently. Greenpeace folks boarded a Japanese whaling ship to try to shut it down, and in the midst of the conflict, both ships ran out of fuel. When a rescue ship came, the Greenpeace people tried to disconnect the fuel lines to the whaling ship, even though it meant they'd be stuck as well. It was kind of crazy, but sometimes you have to be ballsy and put yourself out.

Q: This is all great, but I'm wondering how you justify being part of an industry that produces so much waste. You've sold more than 10 million CDs, and many of those were in plastic containers that had to be shipped to stores.

Tankian: Basically, we're all hypocrites unless we go out and live off the land. That way of living is a model for me, because I think those people are clued in about climate change and the way we're going to have to alter our lives. I spend a lot of the record talking about the end of civilization, and I don't mean an apocalypse. I think that we are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the way we live now will not exist in 50 years, period.

Q: Along those same lines, you have been touring for this record, and while you have carbon offset programs in place, you are still using a lot of resources and putting a lot of goods out there. How do you reconcile that with your belief system?

Tankian: Again, I realize I am a hypocrite by going on the road and doing this. I've had an idea for a long time, which might sound a little crazy, but I really want to look into holographic touring. I think we could reduce our need to travel if we could project ourselves into meetings and concerts. We have the technology, and we're not using it right now.

For instance, I have a studio next to my house and a live performance room in the studio. I could broadcast a show in real time and could interact with the audience as if we were in the same room. After all, it's not like the audience can touch me, anyway. (laughs) It would open up a whole new world for touring — shows wouldn't have to be limited to bars or clubs. There would be no travel costs, so bands with very little money could play shows, and tickets would cost less.

Q: Well, even though that is still in the future, at least bands right now are starting to become more conscious. Do you worry, though, that being green might just be another trend for musicians and will be forgotten in a few years? After all, how many people do you hear still talking about Tibet?

Tankian: I'm not a big trend follower, so I don't know if this is just another blip. I think that with the ice caps melting and everything changing, bands and everyone else on the planet won't have much of a choice about becoming green. I look at a place like New Zealand, which is ecologically one of the most progressive places on Earth. People down there are unconsciously conscious — they don't get self-congratulatory when they recycle, they just do it as a way of life. I think we need more education to get us to that place.

Q: While bands are also becoming greener, they seem to be less interested in other issues, like electoral politics. Would you agree with that?

Tankian: I think a lot of bands are coming out for this election, many more than the previous few. Howard Dean had some good support and momentum in 2004, but it collapsed quickly. I'm an Obama fan, but I have to say I was disappointed when I found out he wanted to expand the defense budget. Still, he has done a good job getting younger people invested in the process and teaching them about the way party politics work.

Q: You've used your position as a popular musician to spread the word about a number of causes. Have you gotten any backlash or flack from your fans?

Tankian: I wrote an essay called "Understanding Oil" after 9/11 that led to me being called a traitor and stations dropping our songs. The sad thing is, now that the war has been on for five years, people are coming up to me and telling me I was right.

Q: You just performed at a concert for the antiwar movie "Body of War" and have a song on the soundtrack. What other musical plans do you have for the near future?

Tankian: I'm going to continue touring behind the new record, and I'm also working on some music for film. I might be working on a score for a theatrical production, too. My next record will be a jazz orchestral record; I want it to have a whole different vibe than the last one. I want to be able to play Carnegie Hall with the new one. I'm planning on releasing it in 2009. I never studied music; I ran a software company before I did any of this. I've been lucky that I've done so well and been able to make the music I want to make.

Reuters/Billboard