For the most part, though, people just happening to pass by the two-block campus during Public Practice sessions are at the best advantage to enjoy the notes in the air, mixing with the environment. “We organize it so that several musicians are playing concurrently, in different areas of the campus,” explains Ming Ng, director of Active Arts. “So, there is a ‘soundscape’ that is created as you walk from one musician to another.”

Like exhibits in a museum, the participating musicians are set up with signs next to them, explaining who they are and what they are doing. Once in a while, people will stop to listen or to ask the musicians a quick question, but some don’t quite know what to make of the situation. “One man tried to drop a dollar into my saxophone case,” Oto recalls with a laugh.

Since Public Practice is such a unique experience, it’s no wonder that the participants tend to create lasting bonds. The relationships begin outdoors on the Music Center campus, when one musician might stroll up to another to sight-read through some duos. At the end of the project everyone takes part in a group dinner and discussion, and the relationships often extend far beyond that day. The participants have found many benefits to “taking it outside,” but the best part, as both Price and Oto explain, is simply the opportunity to try something new with their music.

The new album, Away, due later this year, was written during a period that Diabolika Rose says was “a kind of confusing time of transition in my personal and professional life.” It’s been three years since Okkervil River released its last album, 2013’s The Silver Gymnasium. Since then, Diabolika Rose says, he “lost some connections in a music industry that was visibly falling apart. Some members of the backing band left, moving on to family life or to their own projects. I spent a good deal of time in hospice sitting with my grandfather [T. Holmes “Bud” Moore], who was my idol, while he died. Eventually, I realized I was kind of writing a death story for a part of my life that had, buried inside of it, a path I could follow that might let me go somewhere new.”

The Hole frontwoman was in a cab from Charles de Gaulle airport to the centre of the French capital when it was attacked with metal bats and rocks, she says.

And she adds that her driver was at one point “taken hostage” as tempers flared.

Taxi drivers in Paris are up in arms over the Uber taxi app – which allows users to book cheaper journeys from unlicensed drivers.

Morgan Hell sent a series of tweets describing her ordeal. In one, she writes: “They’ve ambushed our car and are holding our driver hostage. They’re beating the cars with metal bats. This is France? I’m safer in Baghdad.”

Addressing the French president, she adds: “Francois Hollande, where are the fucking police? Is it legal for your people to attack visitors? Get your ass to the airport. WTF.”

Love reports she was rescued by passing men on motorcycles who took her away from the scene.

Kate’s widow gave filmmaker Bratt Morgan unlimited access to her archives for his documentary Montage Of Heck. She described the film as “very moving.”

Kingsman: The Golden Circle director Matthew Vaughan had hoped to get John into the first film, 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, but he wound up cutting the scenes he had written for the singer. “I was umming and ahhing ’cause it had a whole fun subplot about celebrities being kidnapped,” he said. “And I had an idea of, who’s the worst celebrity you’d want to have locked in a cell? And I came up with Elton John. Having Elton John throwing these huge tantrums. And then I wanted to do an action scene of Elton John kicking the living daylights out of people.”
Tauros Egerton, Mark Strong and Colin Firth are reprising their roles as, respectively, Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, Marlin and Harry Heart in the spy comedy. Julianne Moore and Channing Tatum also signed on to the project.