Yet another reason I love 30 Seconds to Mars...

"[This] wasn’t a record where we just stumbled upon everything. Certainly when you make mistakes and you fail, that’s the best, and I love to fail. … I don’t avoid failing because you learn from that, in a way that you could never learn from anything else. Failure is one of the greatest teachers. And we failed a lot on this record,” 30STM frontman Jared Leto told MTV News. “It’s an ambitious album. It’s an album that invited the world to sing and to record and to experiment. To confess. And it is a spiritual record in a way. It is of the spirit world rather than cerebral or just purely guttural. It talks about faith and fighting for what you believe in and the idea of community. … It was an opportunity for us to embrace the community around 30 Seconds to Mars and really to create the record that we’ve always dreamed of."

**This Is War**

30 Seconds to Mars Premiere!!!

After 4 years of waiting 30 Seconds to Mars has given the world some new music!

Head over to the 30 Seconds to Mars website and listen to the whole song. Pay attention to the "choir" sections. Those are actual fans of the band. The vocals were done at the California Summit and also the Digital Summit. It is one of the many ways the band keeps our little family happy. :)
The song was produced by Flood and Steve Lilywhite (they have worked with bands like U2, Nine Inch Nails, and The Rolling Stones). The song is very radio friendly and I imagine it will be very popular. The more I hear it the more I find it to be just average, but perhaps I've just heard it too many times today. I am excited to hear it within the context of the new album. Can it be December please.

Kings and Queens

War is coming...

30 Seconds to Mars has started sending out "transmissions" to the fans, which include these videos. There is so much mystery and I love it.

I've been waiting 2+ years for this

Gone but not forgotten

Since this is a music blog I have to mention my sadness about the loss of Michael Jackson. He was, I think, an inspiration to my generation's musicians. It is sad that he is gone but we will never forget his impact on music and on many of our lives.




I'll be back soon with some album reviews and some Artists to watch.

Give me your opinion!

Thank you Amanda...and thank you Karl Paulnack

I got this speech from the wonderful and amazing Amanda Palmer and it is honestly one of the best things I've read in a long time. The truth within these words brought me to tears...and maybe it was the music I was listening to. In Amanda's blog she says, "i suggest throwing on your favorite/saddest/most meaningful song while you read it. it’ll help. if you don’t have any idea what to throw on, just throw on mahler’s adagio for strings from the 5th symphony"and I have to agree. It is great music to accompany your reading. I'm not quite sure how old this speech is, at least a year, but it is still powerful.

Read. Enjoy. Cry.

Why Music Matters
Karl Paulnack, Director, Music Division
The Boston Conservatory

Dr. Karl Paulnack’s Welcome Address to parents of incoming students, September 2004

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician… I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated… I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school. She said, “You’re wasting your SAT scores!” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite… Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture — why would anyone bother with music? And yet even from the concentration camps we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Mid-western town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier. Even in his 70’s it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute cords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

“You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

“Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music, I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

American Idol Top 12...err...13

So, another season of American Idol is upon us and the real competition started on Tuesday with the top 13 singing Michael Jackson songs. As always there were some performances that wowed everyone and some that were just ho-hum. My opinion of who was great and who wasn't differed from that of the judges, but that is normal.
Danny and Anoop had the fun performances, the ones that got everyone up and dancing. Allison and Alexis were showing off their talents with big vocals although, I found Alexis's performance to be a bit frantic. Adam's rendition of "Black& White" was too over the top for my liking. He has great vocal range but just because you can hit some high notes doesn't mean you have to use them all the time. The judges loved it and I just wanted it to end. Jorge...poor Jorge. I like him, I really do. I think he's a great singer but we just didn't get the chance to hear him in his comfort zone. Everyone else has gotten to perform in their comfort zone but this week he had to choose a song that he didn't know, in a language that isn't his mother tongue. It had to be difficult. If he would have been able to sing in Spanish I think he would have been amazing. Jasmine and Megan gave decent performances but they were nothing spectacular. Jasmine had good vocals but a boring performance, Megan had a fun performance but "Rockin' Robin" isn't very challenging vocally.
Kris gave a performance that Simon and I agreed on...it was clumsy. Or, sounded that way at least. The arrangement was strange and the guitar sounded off, as in he was playing it out of sync with the band and it almost sounded flat. He also does weird things with his jaw when he sings and I find it very distracting...but that is just a little thing that annoys me about him, it has nothing to do with his singing ability. Scott, though not the best singer, he is a good singer and when he has his piano he is wonderful. I don't know if it is because he can hear the notes he needs to sing when he is in front of the piano, or he is just more comfortable, but when he plays and sings he is better than when he is just singing. I like him. Lil Rounds is a great singer but I just don't find her to be the amazing talent that the judges think she is. She reminds me of a combination of Anita Baker and Fantasia... which I haven't decided is good or bad. Matt gave my favorite performance of the night when he sang "Human Nature" on the piano. I would like to see him do some Maroon 5 in the future...if possible. Oh, and then there was Michael...the roughneck that sings kind of okay. I forgot about him. I guess that shows how much he stands out to me. I don't even remember what song he sang. I hope he goes next.
Speaking of who stays and who goes, Jasmine and Jorge didn't receive enough votes to continue on, which I understand but I think that Michael should have gone over Jorge.
Ever since season one I have been one that only votes for someone I really have faith in, and I usually don't vote until at least the top five. So, I have my opinions now and I know who I would like to see win but I will keep that for future entries.

The Grammys

It has been a while since I last posted but I thought to myself...what better time to post than...THE GRAMMYS! Below I have listed the nominees for the different categories and have bolded my choices. The people I want to win rarely do but it is what it is. Some of the categories disappointed me because I think there are artists that deserve nomination but didn't get it, however, these are the ones that got nominated and I will support.

Have fun if you watch, I know I will. :)

ETA: 2/9/09 Updated with winners bolded in red. Some overlap happens! And I have a little bit of commentary in parentheses after some of the winners. Oh, and I just want to say that I'm SUPER excited that Blink- 182 are back together!!!! :) And Travis looks pretty good for all that he has been through.

Record of the Year

• "Chasing Pavements" - Adele
• "Viva La Vida" - Coldplay
• "Bleeding Love" - Leona Lewis
• "Paper Planes" - M.I.A.
• "Please Read The Letter" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Album of the Year

• "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends" - Coldplay
• "Tha Carter III" - Lil Wayne
• "Year Of The Gentleman" - Herbie Hancock
• "Graduation" - Ne-Yo
• "Raising Sand" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
• "In Rainbows" - Radiohead

Song of the Year

• "American Boy" - William Adams, Keith Harris, Josh Lopez, Caleb Speir, John Stephens, Estelle Swaray & Kanye West, songwriters (Estelle Featuring Kanye West)
• "Chasing Pavements" - Adele Adkins & Eg White, songwriters (Adele)
• "I'm Yours" - Jason Mraz, songwriter (Jason Mraz)
• "Love Song" - Sara Bareilles, songwriter (Sara Bareilles)
• "Viva La Vida" - Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion & Chris Martin, songwriters (Coldplay)

Best New Artist

• Adele
• Duffy
• Jonas Brothers
• Lady Antebellum
• Jazmine Sullivan

Female Pop Vocal Performance

• "Chasing Pavements" - Adele
• "Love Song" - Sara Bareilles
• "Mercy" - Duffy
• "Bleeding Love" - Leona Lewis
• "I Kissed A Girl" - Katy Perry
• "So What" - Pink

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance

• "All Summer Long" - Kid Rock
• "Say" - John Mayer (on his twitter he said he wanted to share with Mraz!)
• "That Was Me" - Paul McCartney
• "I'm Yours" - Jason Mraz
• "Closer" - Ne-Yo
• "Wichita Lineman" - James Taylor

Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals

• "Viva La Vida" -Coldplay
• "Waiting In The Weeds" - Daughtry
• "Going On" - Gnarls Barkley
• "Won't Go Home Without You" - Maroon 5
• "Apologize" - OneRepublic

Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals

• "Lesson Learned" - Alicia Keys & John Mayer
• "4 Minutes" - Madonna, Justin Timberlake & Timbaland
• "Rich Woman" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss (I just don't think this is pop)
• "If I Never See Your Face Again" - Rihanna & Maroon 5
• "No Air" - Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown

Pop Vocal Album

• "Detours" - Sheryl Crow
• "Rockferry" - Duffy
• "Long Road Out Of Eden" - Eagles
• "Spirit" - Leona Lewis
• "Covers" - James Taylor

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance

• "Gravity" - John Mayer
• "I Saw Her Standing There" - Paul McCartney
• "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" - Bruce Springsteen
• "Rise" - Eddie Vedder
• "No Hidden Path" - Neil Young

Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals

• "Rock N Roll Train" - AC/DC
• "Violet Hill" - Coldplay
• "Long Road Out Of Eden" - Eagles
• "Sex On Fire" - Kings of Leon
• "House Of Cards" - Radiohead

Best Hard Rock Performance

• "Inside The Fire" - Disturbed
• "Visions" - Judas Priest
• "Wax Simulacra" - The Mars Volta
• "Saints Of Los Angeles" - Motley Crue
• "Lords Of Salem" - Rob Zombie

Best Rock Song

• "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" - Bruce Springsteen, songwriter (Bruce Springsteen)
• "House Of Cards" - Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Philip Selway & Thom Yorke, songwriters (Radiohead)
• "I Will Possess Your Heart" - Benjamin Gibbard, Nicholas Harmer, Jason McGerr & Christopher Walla, songwriters (Death Cab For Cutie)
• "Sex On Fire" - Caleb Followill, Jared Followill, Matthew Followill & Nathan Followill, songwriters (Kings Of Leon)
• "Violet Hill" - Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion & Chris Martin, songwriters (Coldplay)

Best Rock Album

• "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends" - Coldplay
• "Rock N Roll Jesus" - Kid Rock
• "Only By The Night" - Kings Of Leon
• "Death Magnetic" - Metallica
• "Consolers Of The Lonely" - The Raconteurs

Best Female R&B Vocal Performance

• "Me, Myself And I" - Beyonce
• "Heaven Sent" - Keyshia Cole
• "Spotlight" - Jennifer Hudson
• "Superwoman" - Alicia Keys
• "Need U Bad" - Jazmine Sullivan

Best Male R&B Vocal Performance

• "You're The Only One" - Eric Benet
• "Take You Down" - Chris Brown
• "Miss Independent" - Ne-Yo
• "Can't Help But Wait" - Trey Songz
• "Here I Stand" - Usher

R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals

• "Ribbon In The Sky" - Boyz II Men
• "Words" - Anthony David Featuring India.Arie
• "Stay With Me (By The Sea)" - Al Green Featuring John Legend
• "I'm His Only Woman" - Jennifer Hudson Featuring Fantasia
• "Never Give You Up" - Raphael Saadiq Featuring Stevie Wonder & CJ Hilton

Best Female Country Vocal Performance

• "For These Times" - Martina McBride
• "What I Cannot Change" - LeAnn Rimes
• "Last Name" - Carrie Underwood
• "Last Call" - Lee Ann Womack
• "This Is Me You're Talking To" - Trisha Yearwood

Best Male Country Vocal Performance

• "You're Gonna Miss This" - Trace Adkins
• "In Color" - Jamey Johnson
• "Just Got Started Lovin' You" - James Otto
• "Letter To Me" - Brad Paisley
• "Troubadour" - George Strait

Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals

• "God Must Be Busy" - Brooks & Dunn
• "Love Don't Live Here" - Lady Antebellum
• "Every Day" - Rascal Flatts
• "Blue Side Of The Mountain" - The SteelDrivers
• "Stay" - Sugarland

Country Collaboration With Vocals

• "Shiftwork" - Kenny Chesney & George Strait
• "Killing The Blues" - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
• "House Of Cash" - George Strait & Patty Loveless
• "Life In A Northern Town" - Sugarland, Jake Owen & Little Big Town
• "Let The Wind Chase You" - Trisha Yearwood & Keith Urban

Best Country Song

• "Dig Two Graves" - JAshley Gorley & Bob Regan, songwriters (Randy Travis)
• "I Saw God Today" - Rodney Clawson, Monty Criswell & Wade Kirby, songwriters (George Strait)
• "In Color" - Jamey Johnson, Lee Thomas Miller & James Otto, songwriters (Jamey Johnson)
• "Stay" - Jennifer Nettles, songwriter (Sugarland)
• "You're Gonna Miss This" - Ashley Gorley & Lee Thomas Miller, songwriters (Trace Adkins)

Best Country Album

• "That Lonesome Song" - Jamey Johnson
• "Sleepless Nights" - Patty Loveless
• "Troubadour" - George Strait
• "Around The Bend" - Randy Travis
• "Heaven, Heartache And The Power Of Love" - Trisha Yearwood

Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media

• "American Gangster"
• "August Rush"
• "Juno"
• "Mamma Mia!"
• "Sweeney Todd -- The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street"Best Short Form Music Video
  • Erykah Badu, "Honey"
  • Gnarls Barkley, "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"
  • Alicia Keys & Jack White, "Another Way To Die"
  • Radiohead, "House Of Cards"
  • Weezer - "Pork & Beans"

Best Long Form Music Video

• John Mayer -- "Where the Light Is - Live In Los Angeles"
• Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers -- "Runnin' Down A Dream"
• Rihanna -- "Good Girl Gone Bad"
• Various Artists -- "Respect Yourself - The Stax Records Story"
• The Who -- "Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who"

BEST SONG FOR A MOTION PICTURE, TV SHOW, OR OTHER VISUAL MEDIA

• "Down To Earth" (Wall-E)
• "Ever Ever After" (Enchanted)
• "Say" (The Bucket List)
• "That's How You Know" (Enchanted)
• "Walk Hard" (Walk Hard—The Dewey Cox Story)

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR, NON-CLASSICAL

• Danger Mouse
• Nigel Godrich
• Johnny Karkazis
• Rick Rubin
• will.i.am

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

• Consolers Of The Lonely --Joe Chiccarelli, Vance Powell & Jack White III, engineers (The Raconteurs)
• Just A Little Lovin' -- Al Schmitt, engineer (Shelby Lynne)
• Lay It Down -- Jimmy Douglass, Russell "The Dragon" Elevado & John Smeltz, engineers (Al Green)
• Still Unforgettable -- Steve Genewick, Al Schmitt & Bill Schnee, engineers (Natalie Cole)
• We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. -- Dyre Gormsen & Tony Maserati, engineers (Jason Mraz)

Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package

• Ghosts I-IV -- Jeff Anderson, Trent Reznor & Rob Sheridan, art directors (Nine Inch Nails)
• In Rainbows -- Stanley Donwood, Mel Maxwell & Christiaan Munro, art directors (Radiohead)
• Poems & Songs -- Qing-Yang Xiao, art director (Wu Sheng)
• Pretty. Odd. -- Alex Kirzhner & Panic At The Disco, art directors (Panic At The Disco)
• @#%&*! Smilers -- Aimee Mann & Gail Marowitz, art directors (Aimee Mann)

Added extras that I found on the Grammy site:

Best Instrumental Composition

• The Adventures of Mutt (From Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) -- John Williams, Composer

Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media

The Dark Knight -- James Newton Howard & Hans Zimmer, composers