In search of clues, as you do in times of national crisis, this one brought to near breaking point by the looming election and elimination round of My Kitchen Rules NZ.

NZTrio's Loft concerts have become something of a signature for the group; Aucklanders now know this is where you can experience chamber music up close and personal.

You wait for an album by a prolific Americana/alt-country figurehead with colourful back stories and past wayward lifestyles, and what do you know? Two come along at once.

Remember those heady days when Garden State came out?

Bonamassa - Grammy-nominated, with a back catalogue of at least a dozen albums but hardly a household name - found blues loyalists turned out for him in their legions last Friday.

Although singing a generous number of highly reconfigured Led Zeppelin songs at his 2013 Vector show with this band, Plant continues to distance himself from Led Zep's hard rock-cum-folk catalogue.

Zach Braff's debut feature film, the quirky indie flick Garden State, saw the Scrubs star explore life as a disconnected 20-something.

An eco-terrorism thriller with a hard shell and a heart full of moral imponderables, Reichardt's new movie will please those who enjoyed her lyrical, almost hallucinatory quasi-Western Meek's Cutoff.

The moment USB (which stands for Unique Sonic Broadcast, not a piece of office equipment) opens with Modern Love, you hear a flicker of Swedish electro-pop diva Robyn, a touch of David Bowie, a flash of Kylie Minogue, and also something distinctly Kiwi, w

Italian tenor delivers a crowd-pleasing recital of opera arias and popular love songs.

I felt happy in a sad sort of way on hearing that experiments had once again started to bring back to life that great dinosaur of the television age, the variety show.

The fraudulent world of high finance has furnished plenty of high-stakes drama in recent years.

Four months ago, the New Zealand String Quartet enthralled a town hall audience playing Mozart and Brahms quintets with Canadian clarinetist James Campbell.

It was a quartet with a difference at Chamber Music New Zealand's Rhythm & Resonance concert - two pianists and two percussionists in a programme roving from Mozart to Lutoslawski.

The music theatre of Gian Carlo Menotti fits in well with the strengths of Auckland's Opera Factory, as its new production of The Medium revealed.

A knock at the door sounds like hammering with an anvil in this Silo Theatre production, but clever, compelling Belleville is really only playing dress-up as a thriller.