The Tokyo String Quartet gave an exceptional display of synchronization and nuance in their concert Sunday at Emma Willard's Kiggins Hall.

For those who know or have seen Frank Vignola perform, it’s all been said. He’s a master: fast, clean, emotional, clever, well-schooled.

Cedric Watson and his band, Bijou Creole, made a valiant effort to get the audience dancing Saturday night at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

After a nearly five-year layoff, Megadeth’s Gigantour is back, and judging from the show Wednesday night at the Civic Center, it was worth the wait.

Albany Pro Musica mesmerized a huge crowd Sunday afternoon at the Cathedral of All Saints in a program that focused on references to light. As such, the music created feelings of serenity, peace and acceptance.

It is said that our music today — rock, pop, rap, country, jazz — all come from the blues, from the plantation porches of the South, most famously the Mississippi Delta. But where did the blues come from?

The love for the local music scene was hugely apparent at WEXT-FM’s fifth Exit Dome fundraising concert Saturday, where five of the area’s finest musicians belted out their tunes for a nearly full house at WMHT Studios, AKA The Exit Dome.

Thrilling, funky, complicated, compelling, the awkwardly named hybrid hyperactive hipster band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber threw down and all around at Proctors GE Theater on Saturday.

Throughout his all-too-short performance Friday night at The Linda, Diego Garcia kept mentioning that this was his first time performing in Albany — or the first that anyone will remember, anyway. There will be no forgetting Garcia after this hour-long performance.

Pianist Charlie Albright galvanized a capacity crowd Friday night at the Massry Center for the Arts not only with a superb technical display but also a level of musicianship that could only be called poetically magical.

Reacting to his complaint that so many Django Reinhardt tributes lacked the organic quality he’d found around Gypsy campfires as he first learned to play, guitarist Stephane Wrembel assembled his own Django A Go Go tribute show. On Thursday at The Egg’s Swyer Theatre, it was organic deluxe, also pure fun.

Hip-hop heavyweight Rick Ross certainly knows how to work his crowd, as he proved once again for Capital Region audiences at the Washington Avenue Armory on Saturday night. But those who stayed the entire evening might have left feeling a bit gypped.

The Schenectady Symphony Orchestra enticed a small crowd Sunday afternoon at Proctors with music that had plenty of ethnic flavor.

The Albany Symphony Orchestra under music director David Alan Miller performed brilliantly at its Saturday night concert at the Palace Theatre.

Entering the mostly empty Times Union Center on Tuesday night to Billy Joel and James Taylor streaming through the sound system may have signaled a relaxing night ahead. But Kelly Clarkson’s show, in support of her fifth album “Stronger,” instead reached for brute pop force and speed, blasting sound and lights with few breaks.