Herb Alpert donates $15M to music school

Herb Alpert donates $15M to music school

LOS ANGELES — California Institute of the Arts is naming its music school after Herb Alpert following a new $15 million donation from the Grammy-winning trumpeter. The grant will pay for three faculty chairs, student scholarships and music programs — including a student-run record label — at the newly minted Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts, school President Steven D. Lavine said Wednesday

Alpert and his wife, vocalist Lani Hall, pledged the money through his Herb Alpert Foundation, which has already donated some $9 million to the school. The 73-year-old musician said CalArts impressed him from his first visit to the campus.

“Here was this place to take great leaps, to prepare artists to reach beyond what they know,” he said.

Alpert became an overnight star when the Tijuana Brass released the trumpet-drive instrumental “The Lonely Bull” in the early 1960s. He and business partner Jerry Moss later formed A M Records.

Alpert donated $30 million to fund a new music school at the University of California, Los Angeles last year.

Gossip blogger to get own radio minishow

LOS ANGELES — Gossip maven Perez Hilton will soon be dishing it up on the airwaves as well as in the blogosphere. The celebrity blogger, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, will be the star of twice-daily radio minishows that begins broadcasting May 5.

“It will hopefully introduce me, potentially, to a whole new audience,” Hilton said.The three-minute-long radio shows will air during morning and evening drive times in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other big cities, with more markets planned for the next few months. The show, “Radio Perez,” represents another step toward media ubiquity for the blogger, whose Web site routinely posts salacious details about gossip targets such as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. A feature film featuring Hilton is due out this summer and a book by the blogger is in the works.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Harry Morgan (“Dragnet,” “MASH”) is 93. Actor Max von Sydow is 79. Actress Liz Sheridan (“Seinfeld”) is 79. Actor Omar Sharif is 76. Sportscaster John Madden is 72. Singer Bobbie Smith of The Spinners is 72. Sportscaster Don Meredith is 70. Actor Steven Seagal is 57. Actor Peter MacNicol (“Numb3rs,” “Ally McBeal”) is 54. Singer-producer Babyface is 50. Musician Brian Setzer is 49. Rapper Afrika Bambaataa is 48. Singer Katrina Leskanich of Katrina and the Waves is 48. Drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander of Primus is 43. Comedian Orlando Jones is 40. Singer Kenny Lattimore is 38. Rapper Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest is 38. Blues singer Shemekia Copeland is 29. Actress Chyler Leigh (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 26. Actor Ryan Merriman (“The Pretender”) is 25. Singer-actress Mandy Moore is 24. Actor Haley Joel Osment (“The Sixth Sense”) is 20.