newsmakers

October 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

newsmakers

Gibson makes guitars to honor John Lennon

BOZEMAN, Mont.

The Gibson Guitar factory in Montana is finishing a project to honor what would have been the 70th birthday of Beatles singer and guitarist John Lennon.

Gibson Acoustic’s director of sales and marketing, Robi Johns, tells the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that Yoko Ono asked the company to release a limited number of J-160Es — the model of guitar her husband played.

Johns says the company is releasing three models with suggested retail prices of between $4,700 and $15,000.

Detroit symphony musicians on strike

DETROIT

Musicians who are refusing to accept steep pay cuts demanded by the financially struggling Detroit Symphony Orchestra have hit the picket lines.

Dozens of tuxedo-clad musicians began picketing Monday morning at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in downtown Detroit, as a French horn quartet played in the background.

Symphony management declared an impasse Sept. 1 and began implementing a 33 percent base pay cut for orchestra veterans, from $104,650 to $70,200 in the first year.

Donnie Wahlberg’s divorce finalized

LOS ANGELES

Donnie Wahlberg is the new single kid on the block. Court records in Simi Valley, Calif., show the actor-singer and his wife of nearly nine years finalized their divorce Sept. 28.

The pair each filed for divorce on the same day in August 2008 and reached an out-of-court settlement in the case, which was handled at a Ventura County courthouse about 38 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. They have two sons, were married in 1999, and separated in early 2008.

Wahlberg was a member of the boy band New Kids on the Block, which was intensely popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s and have reunited in recent years.