Congratulations to Ry Cooder, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist by the Americana Music Association (AMA), in a ceremony held earlier this month at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.

In a ceremony held at Manhattan's Hudson Theater last Tuesday, Laurie Anderson was awarded the esteemed Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Named in memory of the early-film era stars, each year, the prize honors “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.” Here is a transcript of Laurie Anderson's acceptance speech from the event.

Now on display at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is Playback, an exhibition exploring the intersection between video art and music videos. The show features video by artists like Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Damien Hirst, Sonic Youth, and Laurie Anderson. "In a time when most video art has become multi-screen installation," says InterAccess, "Playback makes a strong case that single channel video, in the form of the music video, is alive and well, with an audience and a distribution network to rival single channel video’s heyday."

The DownBeat 72nd Annual Readers Poll results are in, including the Best Jazz Album of the Year: Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau's Metheny Mehldau. Metheny was also named Best Guitarist and Mehldau Best Acoustic Pianist. "There was a real exchange and richness of ideas," Metheny tells DownBeat about the making of the album. "We talked about the most complex, simple, detailed, or general idea at will. We moved around within three dimensions, sound-wise or texture-wise, harmonically or rhythmically."

The Criterion Collection has announced that it will release a special four-disc set of the Bernardo Bertolucci masterpiece The Last Emperor on February 26, 2008. The film depicts the tumultuous life of Pu Yi, who came to power in 1908, at the age of three, and became China's last emperor. It garnered nine Academy Awards, winning each of the categories in which it was nominated, including Best Original Score, by Ryuichi Sakomoto, Cong Su, and David Byrne. Among the special-edition DVD's bonus features are audio commentary by Sakamoto and new video interviews with Sakamoto and Byrne.

Best known for his contribution to the soundtrack for the 2003 Italian Job remake starring Mark Wahlberg, Brazilian-born DJ Amon Tobin talks to The Moscow Times about a surprising array of influences, from Ennio Morricone to Grandmaster Flash, and about his latest record, Foley Room, on which he looked to Kronos Quartet to record new tracks he could sample. Moscow readers can listen for the Kronos samples at Tobin's show tonight at Ikra. 

David Byrne's artwork graces the cover of the November issue of Poetry magazine. The issue features works by Heather McHugh, Elfriede Jelinek, and, more unexpectedly, powerhouse vocalist Neko Case. The cover art is called "Chairs," 2004–2006.

As part of its new feature, Source-Outing, Spinner.com asked Caetano Veloso to name five artists and albums that would give readers a better understanding of his own music. Writer Steve Hochman, in his introduction, writes: "In nearly 40 years he's covered so much ground but with so distinct an approach at all stages that trying to characterize any particular phase or album as anything different from any other just seems pointless and wrongheaded. Some have termed his most recent release, Cê, a 'rock' album. But, really, it's simply a Caetano Veloso album, just as Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain isn't a classical-fusion album, it's Davis. Or Rubber Soul isn't a folk-rock album, it's a Beatles album."

Last night, at a special event at New York's Lincoln Center, Youssou N'Dour was named among the 2008–09 mentor artists in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The mentors, from five countries and six different fields in the arts, also include director Martin Scorsese and actress Kate Valk from the US, German artist Rebecca Horn, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, and Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian.

Pianist Philip Bush reports in his blog, Mostly Music in the Midlands, from his weeklong tour through France with the Steve Reich Ensemble and conductor Alan Pierson performing The Cave, Reich's early '90s video-opera collaboration with Beryl Korot.

Gilberto Gil will resign as Brazil's minister of culture next year to seek treatment for a polyp on his vocal cords. The polyp first caused the legendary performer trouble at a concert performance last year. When Gil took on the official political office in 2003, it was an unexpected turn of events for the longtime activist; he was jailed in 1968 along with Caetano Veloso for what the military dictatorship then in power took to be the subversive nature of the Tropicália movement the musicians had founded.

"Clearly one of the most original and most proficient guitarists now playing, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential and exciting jazz guitarists to emerge in the latter half of the 20th century," says All About Jazz in a feature profile of Bill Frisell. "Noted for his unparalleled sensibilities, over the years Frisell has pursued emotional honesty over technical perfection to achieve a specific sound that is both powerful and beautiful. As a solo artist, he has explored various music venues and taken his listeners to a lot of places ... Simply put, you never know what to expect from Frisell."