By Doug Most, Globe Staff

By Don Aucoin, Globe Staff

The ever-climbing price of theater tickets is a chronic problem that keeps many people from setting foot inside local playhouses.

In what is described as an attempt to “remove the cost barrier’’ of seeing live theater, the Huntington Theatre Company on Tuesday announced an initiative called the Community Membership program that will enable Greater Boston residents of “limited income’’ to purchase a ticket to “any available seat” at a Huntington performance for $15. The program, whose lead financial supporter is Sovereign Bank, is built on a partnership with more than 100 nonprofit agencies that serve low- or moderate-income communities.

Huntington artistic director Peter DuBois has said many times that he wants his theater’s audience to reflect its city.

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff

There were banners across the city as hundreds gathered in Symphony Hall Tusday to serve as the welcoming party forAndris Nelsons, the Latvian conductor who was signing a contract to become the 15th music director in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The BSO, without a music director for two years since the ailing James Levine stepped down, used the moment to offer a grand introduction of its new musical leader to not only its own crowd but to the city itself.

Mayor Tom Menino proclaimed June 25 Andris Nelsons Day, and the BSO organized a whirlwind of activities that included a public performance at Faneuil Hall, press conference, lunch with the BSO’s biggest donors, and ceremonial pitch at Fenway Park.

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff

Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, is half James Levine’s age, loves Michael Jackson, and intends to build a close relationship with Boston.

Nelsons is the 15th music director in the BSO’s 132-year history, and its youngest in a century.

The announcement of his hiring Thursday came more than two years after Levine last took the podium in Boston. Nelsons, speaking from Amsterdam, said he hopes to look for an apartment this summer and is thrilled to be coming to Boston. “I think it’s very important to be part of the Boston society and the people who live in Boston,” he said. “I always feel that music is food for our souls, and [Bostonians] will be hungry.”

By James Reed, Globe Staff

Three weeks after the Boston Strong benefit united some of the region’s biggest names in music and comedy -- from Aerosmith and New Kids on the Block to James Taylor and Dane Cook -- Live Nation New England and TD Garden have announced the event will be televised on June 29 on WCVB Channel 5, from 7 to 11 p.m. without commercials. That’s particularly good news for those who got shut out of the performance, which sold out in five minutes. A live stream was partly marred by technical difficulties.

By Doug Most, Globe Staff

The death of James Gandolfini, whose performance as Tony Soprano on “The Sopranos” will go down as one of the defining roles in television history, has left fans of the HBO show, and of the actor, in shock. He was only 51 and left behind a wife, an infant daughter, and a teenage son from his first marriage.

Watching clips of Gandofini in roles other than Tony Soprano, or merely being interviewed, is fascinating, because it reminds you of how he didn’t merely act out the role of a New Jersey mob boss. He became a Jersey mob boss.

By Julian Benbow, Globe Staff

When Kanye West’s sixth studio album, “Yeezus,” spilled onto the Internet early Friday afternoon, it culminated a six-week buildup that was both highly strategic and helter-skelter.

Stripped of the meticulously lush and layered sounds that have become West’s trademark, “Yeezus” — that is, the version leaked on the Internet — is an intentionally abrasive emotional purge concocted with the help of the rap-whisperer Rick Rubin from various elements of punk, new wave, and drill music that at times sound purposely dissonant.

First impressions suggest that compared to “Yeezus,” which is scheduled for release Tuesday, the bleakest songs from West’s last solo album, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” and his joint record with mentor Jay-Z, “Watch the Throne,” sound like feel-good music.

By Sarah Rodman, Globe Staff