British guitarist Alvin Lee of rock band Ten Years After dies

(Reuters) - British blues-rock guitarist Alvin Lee, who was best known for his performance with rock band Ten Years After at Woodstock in 1969, died on Wednesday at age 68, his family said.

"With great sadness we have to announce that Alvin unexpectedly passed away early this morning after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure," the family said in a statement on the singer's official website.

They did not say what sort of procedure Lee underwent or where the musician died.

Lee and Ten Years After rose to international prominence after a much-lauded performance at the 1969 Woodstock music festival in New York state.

The band's song "I'm Going Home," which featured Lee's singing and extended guitar solos, opened the band to bigger audiences after it was included in the documentary "Woodstock" in 1970.

Ten Years After's biggest hits followed Woodstock, including "Love Like a Man" in 1970 and "I'd Love to Change the World" in 1971.

Lee formed Ten Years After in 1966 but left the band in 1973 to focus on a solo career only to reform the group in 1988.

In a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Lee lamented how after the Woodstock performance audiences wanted more rock-driven songs from the band.

"We had respectful audiences then who would appreciate a jam or a swing," Lee said. "But after Woodstock, the audience got very noisy and only wanted to hear things like 'I'm Going Home.'"

He added: "I've always been much more of a guitar picker but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock and roll guitarist."

Ten Years After released 11 studio albums between 1966 and 2008. Lee put out 14 solo albums, the most recent was "Still on the Road to Freedom" in 2012.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Beech)

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Canadian country singer Stompin' Tom Connors dies

(Reuters) - Canadian country singer and folk icon Stompin' Tom Connors, known for songs "The Hockey Song," and "Sudbury Saturday Night" and his staunch patriotism, has died at age 77, his record company A-C-T Records said.

Connors died at his Ontario home on Wednesday of natural causes, A-C-T said in a statement posted on Connors' website.

Born Thomas Charles Connors in Saint John, New Brunswick, Connors was raised by foster parents on Prince Edward Island and hitchhiked across Canada as a teenager.

Connors, who penned hundreds of songs mostly about Canadian history and traditions, earned his nickname from his habit of stomping the heel of his boot while keeping a song's time.

He rose to prominence in the late 1960s, and released more than 20 albums, including "My Stompin' Grounds" and "Believe in Your Country", over a five-decade career.

Connors retired in 1979 and returned his six Juno Awards for Canadian music in protest over the Americanization of the national music industry. He returned to music in 1988.

Connors thanked his fans in a posthumous statement released by his family.

"It was a long hard bumpy road, but this great country kept me inspired with its beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world," Connors said in the statement posted on his website.

"I must now pass the torch, to all of you, to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be the Patriot Canada needs now and in the future," he added.

He is survived by his wife and four children.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy; and Peter Galloway)

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Actress Demi Moore asks for alimony from Ashton Kutcher

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Demi Moore is seeking alimony from estranged husband Ashton Kutcher, according to divorce documents filed in a Los Angeles court on Thursday.

Kutcher, the star of CBS television comedy "Two and a Half Men," filed for divorce from the "G.I. Jane" actress in December 2012 after more than a year of separation.

Requesting financial support from Kutcher, 35, is an unusual move for Moore, 50, who was one of the top female earners in Hollywood during the 1990s. Her court filing did not specify an amount sought.

Kutcher and Moore both cited irreconcilable differences in their divorce papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. In Kutcher's filing, the actor said he would not seek spousal support but would not deny support to Moore.

Forbes magazine has estimated Kutcher earned $24 million from May 2011 to May 2012, making him the highest-paid TV actor.

Representatives for Moore and Kutcher did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Moore began dating Kutcher a few years after her split from actor-husband Bruce Willis, when Kutcher was a young star on the TV sitcom "That '70s Show."

Their relationship became tabloid fodder due to their 16-year age gap, and the couple married in September 2005 in Los Angeles.

Moore and Kutcher separated in November 2011 following six years of marriage, after a San Diego woman said she had a brief affair with Kutcher.

Kutcher is currently dating his former "That '70s Show" cast-mate Mila Kunis.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Cynthia Osterman)

(This story was refiled to fix typo in the first paragraph)

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Media mogul seeks to build U.S. electronic dance music empire

MIAMI (Reuters) - New York media mogul Robert F.X. Sillerman is the new entertainment king of Miami Beach after taking over almost all of the famous South Florida island-city's glitzy, over-the-top nightclubs in a push to consolidate the fast-growing electronic dance music (EDM) industry.

Two Miami companies, The Opium Group and Miami Marketing Group, which own eight nightclubs, including LIV inside the historic, art deco Fontainebleau Hotel, were recently purchased by Sillerman, according to a spokesman.

The deals, in which terms were not disclosed, are the latest move by Sillerman to corner the EDM market, after saying in June last year that he was willing to spend more than $1 billion buying up EDM promoters and event organizers.

EDM is rapidly growing in popularity in the U.S. and abroad, popularized by nightclub DJs featuring acts by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Pitbull.

Sillerman's stake in the Miami club scene gives him a presence in a major EDM market and home of the Ultra Music Festival, one of the biggest in the world, with eight stages and more than 230,000 attendees last year.

This year's Ultra event in Miami promises to be even bigger, and has expanded to two consecutive 3-day weekends later this month. Sillerman has no ties to the event.

Sillerman's quest echoes his business strategy from the late 1990s when his company, SFX Entertainment, consolidated a large number of concert promoters, producers and venues and was bought by Clear Channel in 2000 for $4.4 billion.

In January, Sillerman's revived SFX Entertainment purchased the North American division of Holland-based ID&T Entertainment, the world's largest dance music concert promoter. ID&T runs a three-day festival in Belgium called Tomorrowland and Sensation White, an EDM concert series held across Europe that made its U.S. debut at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn last October.

Tomorrowland producers plan to hold their first festival outside of Belgium, called Tomorrow World, somewhere in North America in late September.

SFX has also acquired several other EDM assets in recent weeks, including New Orleans-based EDM promoter Donnie Disco Presents and Life in Color, which puts on day-glow-paint-soaked EDM concerts across the U.S. Last week, SFX took over the Denver-based music site Beatport, a major download store for EDM with a catalog of more than one million tracks, the New York Times reported.

"He's the entrepreneurial type, looking for different avenues to bring in his management aggregation strategy," said Mark Fratrik, vice president and chief economist for media consultancy BIA/Kelsey. "I imagine he could do the same thing [now]... it seems like this is another combining of the events with the music."

SFX, LIVE NATION EXPAND EDM REACH

Sillerman first began buying radio stations in the late 1970s and sold a block of 10 stations to Westinghouse Broadcasting for $400 million in 1989. He later launched SFX Broadcasting which went public in 1993 and grew even larger when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted the cap on the number of stations a company could own in a single market. In 1997, the company was sold for $2.1 billion to Capstar Broadcasting Corp, a company formed by the Hicks brothers.

Sillerman then started a new public company called Marquee Group Inc, which bought up agencies that represented professional sports and music stars, and SFX Entertainment through which he acquired concert venues and promoters.

SFX Entertainment was sold to Clear Channel in 2000 for $4.4 billion and was widely recognized as the precursor to the now massive concert promoter and producer Live Nation.

Sillerman went on to form CKX Inc, which bought 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises, including the rock-and-roll legend's Graceland mansion, and 100 percent of Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment, producer of American Idol.

"He's been extremely successful in consolidating fragmented industries which have untapped growth potential that generally have excellent marketing opportunities attached to them," said Mike Principe, a former SFX attorney who is now CEO of The Legacy Agency. "He goes in, acquires en masse, and enjoys a leading position."

Sillerman isn't the only one trying to bring the booming slice of the music industry under one flag. In May 2012, Live Nation purchased Cream Holdings Limited, which produces EDM events in the U.K. and Australia.

Cream Founder and CEO James Barton became head of Live Nation Electronic Music tasked with expanding the company's reach in EDM around the world. Both SFX and Live Nation have been reportedly courting Los Angeles-based Insomniac.

The company's signature event, Electric Daisy Carnival, drew more than 230,000 revelers to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the summer of 2012 and has spawned satellite festivals in cities around the U.S.

(Editing by David Adams, Bernard Orr)

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Star Wars creator George Lucas imagines San Francisco museum

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Filmmaker George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars," has submitted a bid to build a "storytelling museum" in San Francisco to share his vast collection of contemporary paintings, illustrations and digital art.

Lucas has offered to construct the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum on federal land, run it and stock it with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art by the likes of Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish.

"What he finds most fascinating in these artists is their ability to capture an emotion and tell an entire story in one image," Lucas spokesman David Perry told Reuters.

Lucas' proposal was one of 16 bids to create a cultural institution in a former commissary at the San Francisco Presidio, a 1,500-acre national park within the city created after the U.S. Army left the post in 1994.

Other proposals received last week by the Presidio Trust include a New Deal museum, a color museum, a global observatory, a center for the study of cities, an environmental center, a sustainability institute, an innovation center and a center for the history of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"We all know that George Lucas is a creative genius, and we're very pleased that he's one of the contenders," said Craig Middleton, executive director of the Presidio Trust.

He said the trust would examine the proposals and solicit public comment until April, when it would whittle down the competition and hold public hearings on the top bidders.

Lucas, 68, built the Letterman Digital Arts Center as the Presidio's first permanent business. The arts center is the combined home of Industrial Light & Magic, LucasArts and Lucasfilm's marketing, online, and licensing units.

Lucas sold Lucasfilm Ltd., his film-making venture founded in 1971, to The Walt Disney Co. for $4.05 billion in 2012.

Perry estimated the value of the proposed gift at $1 billion, including the artwork and more than $300 million to construct the museum at the Presidio.

STORYTELLING

The semi-retired Lucas described his proposed museum as "a dedication to cultural fantasy" in an interview with CBS This Morning.

"Part of the museum is designed to educate younger people into the idea of storytelling, into the idea of being able to paint your fantasies, which is what 'Star Wars' was," he said.

"'Star Wars' was there to inspire young people to imagine things, to imagine going anywhere in the universe and doing anything you want to do and using your imagination to entertain yourself."

The museum would include five galleries, ranging in size from 4,500 to 8,500 square feet, a 200-seat theater and a 75-seat lecture hall. It would feature breathtaking views of the Bay, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Lucas bought his first work of art, a page from one of Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge comic books, for $25 when he was a University of Southern California film student. Since then, he has amassed a collection of 150 years of what he calls "fantastical" art.

In a letter accompanying his proposal, Lucas described a childhood trip from his home in Modesto to the de Young Museum in San Francisco as life changing.

"I was drawn in by Norman Rockwell's ability to tell a complete story in a single image," he wrote. "It was then that I began to learn the art of visual storytelling."

Perry said Lucas has spent the last two years working on the museum proposal. "This is a gift," Perry said. "We're just hoping the people to whom we offer the gift say, 'thank you' and unwrap it."

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Can Bowie turn acclaim and hype into record sales?

LONDON (Reuters) - He caught the music world napping in January with his first new song in a decade and soon had critics searching for superlatives to describe his new album "The Next Day".

The next big question for David Bowie and his remarkable comeback is whether the element of surprise and subsequent acclaim will turn into record sales.

"The Next Day" is in stores on Monday in Britain, where industry watchers are confident it will top the album charts, and on Tuesday in the United States, where the "Space Oddity" singer has enjoyed more patchy success in the past.

It is already available in other key markets, and the early signs are that the 66-year-old master of reinvention has a hit on his hands.

According to his official website, the deluxe version of the recording went to No. 1 on the digital iTunes album charts in 11 of 12 countries where it was released on Friday, including Australia, Germany and Sweden.

"There has been a lot of interest in both the social and traditional media which will connect not only with the established fan base but also with younger fans," said Gennaro Castaldo, head of press at British music retailer HMV.

"As a campaign, I can't think of many that have been more brilliantly orchestrated," he added.

Ironically, part of that "campaign" has been for Bowie to remain invisible, allowing collaborators like producer Tony Visconti to tell the media about how the star's first studio album since 2003's "Reality" came about.

So rare had sightings of the "Starman" become in New York, where he lives, that articles appeared in the British press late last year speculating the "recluse" had unofficially retired.

"GRETA GARBO OF POP"

Simon Goddard, author of new Bowie book "Ziggyology" published by Random House imprint Ebury, said his mystique was a part of the appeal, and showed that his interest in music far outweighed any appetite for the trappings of celebrity.

"He released two albums in the very early 70s featuring covers of himself in poses inspired by Greta Garbo," Goddard told Reuters.

"Fast forward three or four decades and he becomes a rarely-sighted paparazzi quarry living in New York ... He engages with the media on his strict terms because he's surpassed any desire to engage otherwise. His art is all the engagement he needs."

Bowie, who has shunned the limelight since he suffered a heart attack on tour in 2004, last performed on stage in 2006. It was with a sense of shock that his fans woke up on January 8, his 66th birthday, to the news he had released a new song.

"Where Are We Now?", a melancholic look back to the time Bowie spent in Berlin in the 1970s, was the first single from "The Next Day", followed weeks later by "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)".

Both came with inventive videos which baffled as much as they entertained, affirming that Bowie was still the enigma who wowed the pop world in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s with glam-rock, androgynous alter egos and a radical sense of fashion.

Critics had barely a bad word to say about the 14-track album, with the Independent's Andy Gill calling it possibly "the greatest comeback in rock'n'roll history" in a five-star review.

Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian, said: "Listening to it makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace.

Whether the return will include live performances remains to be seen, although Bowie's guitarist Gerry Leonard whetted appetites when he told Rolling Stone magazine he thought it was "50-50" Bowie would tour again.

Author Goddard attempted to sum up the level of excitement that has accompanied Bowie's return.

"Bowie's appeal has lasted because his influence is fundamental to everything that we in the 21st century understand as pop music," he said. "Remove Bowie and pop's whole house of cards as built up over the last 40 years or so collapses."

Bowie's impact on modern music matched that of The Beatles - and the only contemporary star to combine music and art to the extent he did in the 70s was Lady Gaga, said Goddard.

"The hysteria is justified," he added.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Gabrielle Giffords to receive "Profile in Courage" award

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is set to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her efforts to curb gun violence since she was seriously wounded in a Tucson shooting rampage two years ago.

Gifffords is to receive the award, given annually by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, in recognition of the "political, personal, and physical courage she has demonstrated in her fearless public advocacy for policy reforms aimed at reducing gun violence," the foundation announced on Friday.

The award, named for President Kennedy's 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Profiles in Courage," is to be presented to Giffords by foundation president Caroline Kennedy at a ceremony in Boston on May 5.

Giffords, a Democrat, was shot in the head when a gunman opened fire on a congressional outreach event in Tucson in January 2011, killing six people and wounding a dozen others. She resigned from Congress a year after the shooting to focus on her recovery.

Following the attack that killed 26 people at a Connecticut elementary school in December, Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, founded a lobby group aimed at curbing gun violence and challenging the political clout of the well-funded gun lobby.

"Instead of retreating following the tragic shooting that ended her Congressional career, she has recommitted herself to fighting for a more peaceful society free from hate and violence. She is a true Profile in Courage," Caroline Kennedy said in a statement released by the foundation.

In a Tweet on Friday, Giffords thanked both Caroline Kennedy and the foundation: "Wow! So proud about the Profile in Courage Award. President Kennedy's book is a favorite of mine."

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Gary Hill)

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South Africa's Nelson Mandela discharged from hospital

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been discharged from hospital after routine tests and is well, the government said on Sunday.

"The doctors have completed the tests. He is well and as before, his health remains under the management of the medical team," it said in a statement.

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader was admitted to hospital on Saturday for a scheduled medical check-up. He spent the night in hospital in the capital, Pretoria, and had returned to his Johannesburg home, the statement said.

A spokesman for President Jacob Zuma said doctors treated Mandela for a pre-existing condition consistent with his age.

He spent nearly three weeks in hospital in December with a lung infection and after surgery to remove gallstones. It was his longest stay in hospital since his release from prison in 1990 after serving 27 years for conspiring to overthrow the government under the apartheid regime.

Since his release from that stay in hospital on December 26 he had been receiving treatment at his Johannesburg home.

(Reporting by Sherilee Lakmidas and Peroshni Govender; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Justin Bieber concert in Portugal canceled

LONDON (Reuters) - Canadian singer Justin Bieber has canceled one of two planned concerts in Portugal this week, the venue in Lisbon said on its website on Monday.

A source close to the singer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the cancellation was not linked to Bieber's collapse on-stage in London last week, which forced the teen sensation to take a 20-minute break for oxygen and later to visit a hospital.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances, Justin Bieber was forced to cancel the second performance in Portugal, March 12," a statement said on the website of the Pavilhao Atlantico.

"The Canadian singer is eager to play for the Portuguese fans on March 11," it added. Ticket holders for the canceled gig were entitled to a refund if they claimed it within a month.

The Bieber source did not give a reason for the cancellation, but local media in Portugal reported that tickets sales for the March 12 gig, which was added to his itinerary in February, were lower than organizers had hoped.

Bieber described his visit to London as a "rough week".

As well as the collapse, the 19-year-old was caught on film in an expletive-filled altercation with a photographer, showed up nearly two hours late for a show leading to widespread anger and was labeled a "pop brat" by a leading tabloid.

Discovered on YouTube in 2008, Bieber has built an online following of tens of millions of fans and is one of the pop world's biggest stars. In February, he became the youngest artist to land five chart-topping albums in the key U.S. market.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Additional reporting by Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Actress Harper says she's living remaining days to the fullest

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actress Valerie Harper, who disclosed last week that she has a rare, incurable brain cancer, said in an interview broadcast on Monday that her life expectancy is anywhere from a week to several years.

Harper, 73, who won four Emmy Awards for portraying Rhoda Morgenstern on television, said on NBC's "Today" show that the reality of her illness hit home, "when I heard the word 'incurable.'

"'Incurable' is a tough word, so is 'terminal,'" she said with a laugh.

She said her doctor told her she could live anywhere from a week, if for example she suffered a seizure, to a few months or even for several years, saying he had patients who had lived much longer than the prognosis.

Harper was a staple on U.S. television in the 1970s, first as the brassy Rhoda on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." The character proved so popular that Harper was given her own spinoff show, "Rhoda."

She revealed her cancer diagnosis last week in a People magazine interview.

"A lot of folks are calling (asking), 'Can I come by the house?' 'Are you in a wheelchair?', because they hear it as a death sentence, which it may be," Harper said on "Today." "But I'm not dying until I do. I promise I won't."

As to holding out hope against a seemingly grim fate, Harper, her voice hoarse due to a bout of laryngitis, said that beyond being hopeful "I have an intention to live each day's moments, fully."

Harper recently completed a tour promoting her new autobiography "I, Rhoda" and starred on Broadway as Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped," for which she won a Tony Award nomination.

(Writing by Chris Michaud; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)

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