In the news

Norah Jones to play concert in Clearwater

Grammy darling Norah Jones will perform in Clearwater's Coachman Park at 8 p.m. June 11, a production of Ruth Eckerd Hall, which will be closed for renovations at that time.

Tickets for reserved seats, $37.50 and $45, go on sale to the public April 18. They are on sale now to Ruth Eckerd Hall members. Free blanket seating will be available on the night of the concert first-come, first-served.

For more information, call the hall at (727) 791-7400 or check www.rutheckerdhall.com.

Also, Jones' debut album, Come Away With Me, sold 621,000 copies after her Grammy sweep, almost 500,000 more than the week before -- the biggest post-Grammy sales spike ever, according to her record company.

Jones' disc, which won eight Grammys, is No. 1 in the country, according to figures released Wednesday.

Its sales rose 331 percent, according to EMI Recorded Music, which owns her label, Blue Note Records. The previous week, it had sold about 144,000 copies.

So far, the 23-year-old pop-jazz singer's album has sold 4.2-million copies.

Pageant staying put

There she is. And there she'll stay -- for now.

Miss America Organization officials signed a five-year contract Tuesday to keep the pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., 14 months after threatening to leave. The deal, which will continue an annual $678,000 subsidy from the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority, has options that could add 10 years to the term.

Arts medal recipients named

Country star George Jones, Motown legend Smokey Robinson and the late show-biz caricaturist Al Hirschfeld are among those chosen as this year's National Medal of Arts recipients.

The medals will be presented this afternoon in an Oval Office ceremony with President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, the White House said Wednesday. The award, established by Congress in 1984, honors individuals and organizations who have made outstanding contributions to the arts in the United States.

The other medal winners are: designer and architect Florence Knoll Bassett; Trisha Brown, a choreographer, dancer and founder/artistic director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company in New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello; actor and acting teacher Uta Hagen; landscape architect and environmental planner Lawrence Halprin; and painter and stage designer Ming Cho Lee.

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