The voice of Renée Fleming inevitably causes music lovers to wheel out a pastry cart of adjectives like "creamy" and "honeyed." But don't reach for the dessert too fast. Last week, the music world got a reminder that Fleming is a meaty, mighty diva.

After 40 years of music making, hundreds of world premieres, 20 CDs and seven spins around the globe, Sunday will be among the last chances for local audiences to soak in the bracing sonic vinaigrette of Walter Verdehr's violin, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr's clarinet and Silvia Roederer's piano.

Randy Gelispie folded his hands and gave thanks for his meal. Settling into a booth at the Lansing Mall Panera Bread, he began to dismantle his sandwich, like a jeweler taking a watch apart.

A strangely lopsided, unlikely architectural tableau has opened to view on South Washington Avenue in Lansing's REO Town. Deep in the south shadow of the Lansing Board of Water and Light's mountainous new co-generation power plant, nearing completion and set to go on line in July, sparkles a storybook-castle Grand Trunk Western Railroad depot, newly restored by the BWL to its 1903 glory.

As seductive in college as it was in the clubs, jazz has long had the power to coax open a well-placed wallet, but a recent gift from the MSU Federal Credit Union to Michigan State University's Jazz Studies program is in a class by itself.

Forget FDR and Churchill, Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl or fond nods from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher. The "special relationship" between Britain and America was really cinched in 2002 when Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart was named music director of the very British BBC Concert Orchestra.

Michigan State University's annual musical and spoken word tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. is still known by its original name, "Jazz: Spirituals, Prayers and Protest" — a big tent to begin with — but MSU Jazz Studies chief Rodney Whitaker keeps stretching it bigger and bigger.

Inspiration can be a drag. Take the guilt-inducing paragons who taunt us on the interstate: "Climbed Everest. Blind." Desmond Tutu, Steve Jobs, Jackie Robinson. Sure, we can relate. Thank God, millions of mortal screw-ups have Lansing's Rose Jangmi Cooper, the singing motorcycle dreadlock woman, to look up to.

Imagine two contrasting romantic scenes. In the first, a beautiful person comes into sudden view, coils around you and bite-kisses your lower lip without mercy for about 17 minutes. In the second, you spot a breathtaking beauty under a waterfall in the woods, sit down and swoon quietly on a crag for an hour, unobserved.

Scene: the refrigerated dressing room of Kid California, a fighting piece of sushi past his prime. It's after midnight. Kid's trainer, Salm Salmon, is rubbing him down.