Lily Tomlin has been part of the comic landscape in America since she joined "Laugh-In" in the late 1960s and became famous for her characters Edith Ann and Ernestine the phone operator.

Younger generations know her as a presidential secretary on "The West Wing" and her movie roles, which include an inspired pairing last year with Dustin Hoffman in "I (Heart) Huckabees."

Tomlin has won two Tony Awards - a special award in 1977 and one for Best Actress in 1986 for her one-woman show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe." Two years ago, she received the Kennedy Center's prestigious Mark Twain Prize for Humor.

Trumpet legend Maynard Ferguson is 77, and he's been on the road ever since he was the lead horn player in Stan Kenton's big band in the 1950s.

Ferguson started merging pop and rock tunes into big band formats in the 1960s. His recording of "Gonna Fly Now" from "Rocky" became a hit single and led to a Grammy nomination.

His band has nurtured talent that could now form an all-star band: Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, among others. Ferguson's Bog Bop Nouveau Band, formed in 1990, is a move back to jazz-centered big band music that made him famous 50 years ago.

"Angels in America" has been on StageWest's list of plays to perform for several years, but only now is the theater company ready to tackle Tony Kushner's ambitious exploration of religion, politics and sex.

The story is set in New York during the mid-1980s and focuses on Louis and Prior, his HIV-positive lover; Joe, a Republican clerk and Mormon; and most important, a dying Roy Cohn, a central figure in the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, a raging bigot and, in addition, a closeted gay man dying of AIDS. The play has fantasy scenes, and its settings include Washington, D.C., Russia, New York, Salt Lake City and Antarctica.

This is provocative theater on the level of Edward Albee's "The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?" But like Albee's play, it has a lot of humor as well.

Tickets are $19.50 on Fridays and Saturdays; $17.50 for Thursdays and Sundays; $12.50 for Wednesdays, available at the Civic Center box office or by calling Ticketmaster at 243-1888. The play runs through Oct. 30.

Not only do they have singing voices that could make the soundtracks to beautiful fairy tales, they play various instruments. The group includes the traditional-style fiddler Mairead Nesbitt and 16-year-old phenom Chloe Agnew.

No doubt you've heard about this extravaganza that's part marching band, part color guard and part jam session. Created by a marching band director, the group is composed of brass and percussion players and drill team members. They combine the instrumental virtuosity and marching precision of outdoor pageantry with the repertoire, props, costuming, staging and special effects of musical theater.

You may know her even if you think you don't. Once Amy Ray's voice sails out, with its raspy undertones and slight Georgia twang, she is easy to recognize as one half of the Indigo Girls. The girl band had the huge 1989 hit "Closer to Fine," later hits like "Galileo" and many others.

A quick listen to the songs on Ray's 2005 album "Prom" makes it clear that Ray is the grittier half of the duo. Now releasing solo albums, she reveals a side that is closer to punk than the folksy/country harmonic sound of her work with Emily Aliers. On albums such as "Prom" and her previous solo release, "Stag," Ray has songs with titles like "Hey Castrator." She says she owes this rebellious, lo-fi punk rock streak to influences like the Clash.

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