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Brian Montana, a former guitarist for the Bay Area death metal band Possessed, was killed in a shootout with police in South San Francisco.

Montana briefly played in the pioneering death metal band from 1983 to 1984.

Among the universal celebrations of his work this season, a young and appropriately wild pianist with a taste for death metal, Thomas Mellan, impressively captured the aggression of Boulez’s Second Sonata on the composer’s birthday as part of the Piano Spheres series at the Colburn School.

Featuring appearances by a wide variety of guests — among them Brandi Carlile, Michael McDonald, Anoushka Shankar, Shawn Mendes, Kirk Franklin and John Mayer — the sprawling yet intricately detailed “Djesse Vol. 4” layers electronics and hand-played instruments as it blends R&B, jazz, folk and even a bit of death metal; the album’s opener, “100,000 Voices,” features recordings of about that many audience members at Collier’s concerts, where he conducts the crowd like a giant choir.

Last week the record store hosted a concert at the Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip, headlined by the Licorice Pizza All-Star Band, with current and former members of the Eagles of Death Metal, Stray Cats, Guns N’ Roses and more.