Grammys 2008 Tonight

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L.A. Times: Grammys at 50: Bring the magic back:

IF the academy and Ehrlich are smart, they’ll use this year’s ceremony to reassert the pleasure of believing music can be magical. The Grammy Awards are 50 this year, and organizers have dubbed this a celebration of “Grammy moments.” Highlights from past shows will frame the evening. Grammy history is full of moments that defy cynicism—big, sentimental ones that critics tend to hate. But that spirit might be just what the show needs now.

L.A. Times: Grammy Awards ceremony tries to stay on balance

Speculation has raged for weeks around whether Winehouse would show up or if hip-hop superstar Kanye West, this year’s leading Grammy nominee with eight possible awards, would come out of self-imposed exile after the death of his mother to attend. (It was announced Friday that he will, in fact, perform on the show with a surprise guest.) Yet the show’s producers seemed most conspicuously excited by a nod to music past.

Classical piano phenom Lang Lang and jazz piano great Herbie Hancock—nominated for instrumental soloist performance with orchestra and album of the year, respectively—met on the arena floor late one afternoon this week, hugging and mugging like a pair of old fraternity brothers. They soon took the stage to perform a duet of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” accompanied by a full orchestra.

Around the third run-through, Ehrlich became animated discussing how the piece fit into the milestone anniversary of an award meant to acknowledge prestigious pop.

“Gershwin represents so much of what is great about American music,” he said. “We wanted to acknowledge that music didn’t begin with us. It won’t end with us. Here’s this man acknowledged as one of the great American composers. . . . ”

Toronto Star: Canada Storms the Grammys:

Feist isn’t the only Canuck infiltrating the nominees’ list for this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony.

Indeed, 15 Canadians are in the running for a total of 20 trophies tomorrow night – a mere drop in the bucket considering the hundreds of Grammy categories, true, but perhaps still an excuse for some typically timid flag waving.

Macworld: Backstage at the Grammy Awards, Macs run the show:

It takes a lot to put on a production on the scale of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards. To present the annual music industry honors to the attendees at Los Angeles’ Staples Center and to home viewers on CBS, show organizers use more than 450 microphones, 155 tons of lighting, 13,000 amps of power, 19 video screens, 94 speaker cabinets—and an endless amount of Macs.

You may have assumed that Macs played a large role in putting on what has become the largest audio production on television. But until you sit in on a rehearsal for the telecast, as audio engineers are hard at work mixing the 35 songs that will be performed during Sunday’s ceremony, and see how extensively Macs are involved in the process, it’s hard to fathom just how central the Mac has become to the Grammys.

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