July 3 – Opening of the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, London, UK.
July 5 – Staatsminister Rainer Robra and Halberstadt Oberbürgermeister Andreas Henke preside as the notes A♭ and C are added in the sixth sound change of the performance of John Cage’s Organ/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) that began on 5 September 2001 and is to conclude on 5 September 2640, in Halberstadt, Germany.
July 23–26 – The 2008 10,000 Lakes Festival is held.
July 24–28 – The Fifth International Symposium of throat-singing, “Khoomei—Cultural Phenomenon of the Peoples of Central Asia” is held in Tuva.
August 1–3 – The Lollapalooza music festival takes place in Chicago, Illinois, US.
August 8 – Chen Qigang is director of music for the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. A minor scandal ensues when it is revealed that Lin Miaoke, the performer of “Ode to the Motherland”, was miming to a recording by another girl, Yang Peiyi.
August 10 – Jimmy Dean and Eddie Fisher celebrate their 80th birthdays.
August 12–18 – Sziget Festival 2008 takes place in Budapest, Hungary.
August 13 – Jeff Singer quits Paradise Lost.
August 19 – LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, dies from complications from an ATV accident suffered earlier in the summer.
August 22 – Coke Live Music Festival opens in Poland, headlined by artists Sean Paul, Timbaland, and The Prodigy.
August 23
Madonna starts her Sticky & Sweet Tour which is set to become the highest-grossing tour for both a female and solo artist.
Michael Nicklasson quits Dark Tranquility.
August 30
Filipino rock band Eraserheads hold their one-night-only reunion concert in the Fort open field, their first concert since 2001. After the 20-minute break, vocalist Ely Buendia is rushed to the hospital because of chest pain due to emotional stress.
American Idol Season 7 runner-up David Archuleta’s debut single “Crush” scores the highest debut of a song on the Billboard Hot 100 by an American Idol finalist not performed on the show. The track opened at No. 2 after selling 166,000 downloads in its first week of release.
August 31 – Chrome Division fires Eddie Guz.
September 6 – Six members of The Specials re-unite at the Bestival as a ‘Surprise Act’. They use the name “Terry Hall and Friends”, because Jerry Dammers, who owns the band’s name, did not participate.
September 7 – The 2008 MTV Video Music Awards are presented at Paramount Studios, Hollywood. Britney Spears’ wins Video of the Year, Best Pop Video, and Best Female Video for “Piece of Me”. Christina Aguilera also made her return to music since giving birth to her first child with the debut of her single Keeps Gettin’ Better.
September 9 – Jessica Simpson releases her first album in two years, Do You Know, her first country album. It goes straight in at No. 1 in the Billboard Country Charts and at No. 4 in the Billboard 200 with sales of 65,000.
September 10 – The 22nd Annual ARIA Music Awards are held in Sydney, Australia, recognizing Australian music in 2008. Dance-punk group The Presets win Album of the Year.
September 11 – Christian Älvestam leaves Scar Symmetry.
September 12 – Season 4 of the Finnish talent contest, Idols, begins.
September 15 – Kris Drever, John McCusker and Roddy Woomble release Before the Ruin.
September 18
Soilwork hires former member, Peter Wichers, to replace Daniel Antonsson, who is fired.
Ben Folds Five play a sold out reunion show in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, performing the entirety of their 1999 album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, that was filmed for DVD and web release by MySpace in benefit for Operation Smile
Crystal Castles play their biggest headline show to date, at Electric Ballroom in Camden, London.
September 19 – “Only by the Night” the fourth studio album by American alternative rock band Kings of Leon, released worldwide in September 2008. – Travis Barker and Adam Goldstein (DJ AM) survive a plane crash that claims four lives.
September 20 – P!nk scores her first solo number-one hit in her native US, with “So What”.
September 21
At the Gates play their final show.
The Eric Burdon show in Oklahoma is cancelled due to his health problems.
September 24 – Within Temptation release the Black Symphony DVD, featuring the Metropole Orchestra and guest musicians.
September 25 – Paul McCartney performs at Tel Aviv park, his first performance in Israel since The Beatles were banned from the country in 1965.
October 1 – Tina Turner leaves semi-retirement to embark on her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, which grosses over US $130 million.
October 5 – Stephanie Jeong wins the Second Prize (no First Prize is awarded) in the Premio Paganini international violin competition in Genoa.
October 7 – Spotify on-demand music streaming service launches in Sweden.
October 10 – The Fourth Waakirchener Zither Festival takes place in Waakirchen, Bavaria.
October 12 – Opening of the VII Festival Internazionale di Musica e Arte Sacra, in Rome and the Vatican City (until November 30).
October 16 – Britney Spears sets a new record for the biggest jump to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, rising from number 96 to number one in just one week, with her single “Womanizer”. It is Spears’ first American number one since her debut single “…Baby One More Time”. (The record is subsequently broken by Kelly Clarkson). It also garners first-week download sales of 286,000, the biggest opening-week tally by a female artist.
October 18 – Rihanna scores her fifth number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 (as a featured artist on T.I.’s “Live Your Life”, which follows “SOS”, “Umbrella”, “Take a Bow”, and “Disturbia”), becoming the leading solo female artist with the most number ones to have charted in this decade until Beyoncé Knowles breaks her record (as a solo artist).
November 1–9 – The Southbank Centre in London, UK presents “Klang: A Tribute to Stockhausen”, a festival curated by Oliver Knussen, with a series of concerts focusing on works from the composer’s last decade, including the world premieres of Urantia and Zodiac for Orchestra, as well as late-night performances, lectures, and master classes.
November 2 – The Fauxharmonic Orchestra loses in its debut confrontation with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra in a Bargemusic concert.
November 4 – Bhimsen Joshi is selected to receive the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour.
November 6 – Michael Tilson Thomas makes his Philadelphia Orchestra subscription-concert conducting debut.
November 17 – Korean violinist Hyun-Su Shin wins First Prize in the Jacques Thibaud International Violin Competition in Paris
November 23 – 13 years after his disappearance, Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey Edwards is declared dead in absentia.
November 24 – The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra announces the appointment of Pinchas Zukerman as principal guest conductor, to begin in January 2009.
December
December 9 – Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon say that Blur will reunite for a concert at Hyde Park on July 3, 2009. Tickets for the concert sell out within two minutes of release, and Blur announce another date on July 2, 2009.
December 11 – Elliott Carter celebrates his 100th birthday.
December 13 – Beyoncé Knowles scores her fifth number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, which followed “Crazy in Love”, “Baby Boy”, “Check on It”, and “Irreplaceable”, tying with Rihanna as the leading solo female artist with the most number ones to have charted in this decade.
December 22 – Live Nation announce that Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour is the highest-grossing tour for a solo artist, with US$280 million in ticket sales and 2,350,282 fans attending the 58 shows during the three-leg tour across Europe and the Americas
Tag: 2008
January 1 – Julia Fischer makes her début as a concert pianist, performing Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt. The concert was conducted by Matthias Pintscher, who replaced Sir Neville Marriner. On the same occasion she also performed the Violin Concerto no. 3 in B minor by Camille Saint-Saëns.
January 5 – The Salzburg Festival launches the “Herbert von Karajan Jubilee Year” with a concert in Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus.
January 29
Face to Face announce that they will reunite for select shows in the US and internationally.
Rage Against the Machine headline the Big Day Out festivals in Australia and New Zealand, their first shows outside the United States since reforming, and their first Australian shows in 12 years.
January 31 – Laura Attwood of the King Edward VI School in Morpeth wins the second Eileen Bowler Award.
February 8 – Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, the world’s best-selling album of all time, is reissued as Thriller 25 to celebrate its 25th anniversary, with Jackson himself as executive producer.
February 10 – The 50th Grammy Awards ceremony takes place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, US.
February 19 – System of a Down guitarist, Daron Malakian, tells MTV.com that the band is not likely to reform as he will be concentrating on his new project Scars on Broadway.
February 20–25 – Viña del Mar International Song Festival is held in Chile.
February 23 – March 3 – The second annual Soundwave festival is held in Australia.
February 26 – The Return of the Spice Girls tour comes to a close in Toronto.
March 6–9 – The 2008 Langerado Music Festival is held on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in southern Florida.
March 7 – The Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival 2008 takes place in Indonesia.
March 7–16 – The 2008 South by Southwest Conference and Festival is held in Austin, Texas, US.
March 11 – Jazz musician and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttelton announces his retirement from presenting BBC Radio 2’s jazz programme after forty years.
March 25–29 – Miami Winter Music Conference.
March 31 – theJazz radio station stops broadcasting.
April 1 – Scott Weiland’s departure from rock band Velvet Revolver becomes official. His reunion with his former band, Stone Temple Pilots, and tensions between him and the rest of Velvet Revolver, led to his departure.
April 5
The reunited Face to Face perform together for the first time in four-and-a-half-years at The Bamboozle Left in Irvine, California, US.
Leona Lewis single “Bleeding Love” reached number 1 in 35 countries and became the first song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart by a female British solo artist in 20 years since Kim Wilde did with “You Keep Me Hangin On” back in 1987. Her single was later proclaimed as the best selling single of 2008 worldwide and Lewis was named Top New Artist by Billboard.
April 12 – “Touch My Body” becomes Mariah Carey’s 18th number 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, putting her into second place among artists with the most number 1 singles in the rock era, and first place as a solo artist, surpassing Elvis Presley.
April 15 – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa officially proclaims Mariah Carey Day in Los Angeles, California, US.
April 22 – Andrey Baranov of Russia wins First Prize in the Second Benjamin Britten International Violin Competition in London.
May 3 – The sixth annual The Bamboozle festival opens at the Meadowlands Sports Complex, East Rutherford, New Jersey, US.
May 10–11 – The Give It A Name 2008 festival is held at Earls Court, London, UK.
May 14 – The “Spirit of Change” Gospel Choir celebrates its tenth anniversary with the 20th Zündorfer Gospelnacht concert in the Catholic Parish Church of St. Mariae Geburt, in Zündorf.
May 21 – David Cook defeats David Archuleta to win season 7 of American Idol, in a contest decided by 97.5 million votes, a record for the show.
May 24 – 43 countries compete in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest final in Belgrade, Serbia, including newcomers San Marino and Azerbaijan. The contest is won by Russia, with Believe by Dima Bilan.
May 24–26 – The Sasquatch! Music Festival is held over Memorial Day weekend at The Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington, US.
May 25 – The Slovak preliminary round of the first Bluegrass competition (toward the annual Czech Festival Banjo Jamboree) is held in Hviezdoslavovo námestie, Bratislava.
May 30 – June 1
Rock In Rio Lisboa 2008 takes place in Parque da Bela Vista, Chelas, Lisbon, Portugal, continuing on June 5–6.
The fourth annual Mountain Jam Festival is held in Hunter Mountain, New York, US.
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This week its the Top 100 Hits of 2008.
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January 17 – Bobby Fischer, American-Icelandic chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion (b. 1943) Died
January 21 – Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.
January 22 – Heath Ledger, Australian actor (b. 1979) Died
February 19 – Fidel Castro announces his resignation as President of Cuba, effective February 24.
March 2 – Jeff Healey, Canadian musician (b. 1966) Died
April 22 – Surgeons at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital perform the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into 2 blind patients.
May 12 – Robert Rauschenberg, American pop artist (b. 1925) Died
June 2 – Bo Diddley, American musician (b. 1928) Died
June 13 – Tim Russert, American journalist (b. 1950) Died
July 25 – Johnny Griffin, American saxophonist (b. 1928) Died
August 10 – Isaac Hayes, African-American musician (b. 1942) Died
August 15 – Jerry Wexler, American music producer (b. 1917) Died
August 17 – Michael Phelps surpasses Mark Spitz in Gold Medals won at a single Olympics, winning eight.
September 1 – Don LaFontaine, American voice actor (b. 1940) Died
September 15 – Richard Wright, English musician (b. 1943) Died
September 26 – Paul Newman, American actor (b. 1925) Died
November 4 – United States presidential election, 2008: Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States, and becomes the first African-American President-elect.
December 2 – Odetta, American singer (b. 1930) Died
December 25 – Eartha Kitt, American singer and actress (b. 1927) Died
December 29 – Freddie Hubbard, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1938) Died
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