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Captain Azizul Islam, one of the noted flutists in the sub-continent, will play on the flute at a function at the National Theatre Hall of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy today.
   Dance and Music Department of the academy will organise the function which will begin at 7:00pm.
   Ustad Aziz participated in all the major musical programmes at home and abroad and honoured with many awards. He also received the Citycell Channel-i Music Award.
   Music based magazine Monthly Sargam proclaimed him as the Ustad of Classical Flute in 2001.
   Aziz also performed at the 50th anniversary of the Doverlane Music Conference.
   He is the first Bangladeshi who was invited by Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture to play on the flute, said a press release.
   He first took lessons on flute from Priyada Ranjan Sengupta and then from legendary flute maestro Panna Lal Ghose, Ustad Bilayet Ali Khan, Ustad Bahadur Khan, VG Karnad and Pundit Debendra Murtheshwar.

Veteran rockers Queen along with Razorlight and Simple Minds will top the bill at an AIDS benefit concert in London next month to mark Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, organisers announced Tuesday.
   Precisely 46,664 tickets will go on sale for a three-hour gig in Hyde Park on June 27, which is in support of the former South African president’s 46664 campaign against HIV/AIDS.
   Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mandela, now retired from public life, is to make a rare appearance.
   Other artists on the bill include Annie Lennox, Leona Lewis, the Sugababes, Shirley Bassey, Andrea and Sharon Corr, Eddy Grant, Jamelia, Zucchero, South African artists and the Sudanese ‘war child’ rapper Emmanuel Jal.
   ‘The concert will feature numerous unexpected appearances, with several major artists keeping silent about their involvement in order to take both Mr Mandela and the audience by surprise’, organisers said.
   Royalty, former US president Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, US actors Robert De Niro, Will Smith and Forest Whitaker, US television host Oprah Winfrey and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton are to attend events spread over three days leading up to the concert.
   The campaign, named after Mandela’s prison number during his 27-year incarceration, aims to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic which is rife in sub-Saharan Africa.
   South Africa is one of the countries worst-hit by HIV, with 5.41 million people living with the illness.
   Tickets for The 46664 Concert Honouring Nelson Mandela at 90 cost 65 pounds (128 dollars, 83 euros) each.
   A concert marking Mandela’s 70th birthday and calling for his release was held at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1988.
   The four 46664 concerts already held so far were in November 2003 in Cape Town; March 2005 in George, South Africa; April-May 2005 in Madrid and June 2005 in Tromso, Norway.
   Mandela lost a son to AIDS in January 2005.