DJ duo Major Lazer will perform in Barton Hall on March 11, the Cornell Concert Commission will announce Wednesday. Opening acts for the group have not been determined.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Billy Joel will perform at Bailey Hall on Dec. 2 in an event titled “Billy Joel: An Evening of Questions & Answers ... and a little music."

Sun Staff Writer John Taechin Lee sat down with Cornell Concert Commission’s current Executive Director Douglas DuRant 11 and last year’s Executive Director (and Sun columnist) Justine Fields 09 to get their take on 2009s pop music hits.

Beyoncé, “Single Ladies”

“We love to be in places like colleges where people love music,” Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine told the sold-out crowd in Barton on Sunday night. “That’s how we started our whole career.”

The concert marked the group’s fourth stop on their Back to School Tour of college campuses with opener Fitz and the Tantrums.

In order to increase funding for Slope Day, the Cornell Concert Commission (CCC) gave $30,000 of its own funds to the Slope Day Programming Board on Thursday.

“We’re very appreciative of everything the Concert Commission has done for us and thankful of their generosity,” said Mandy Hjellming ’09, chair of the Slope Day Programming Board. “It will definitely be significant to the success of Slope Day and the artists that we bring.”

Imagine it’s 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. You’re still drunk from last night, you’ve got work and laundry piling up and it’s not even light out. Yet here you are at Barton Hall, chugging coffee and assembling steel trusses, heavy-duty rigging for light fixtures and scaffolds into a stage. You’re making signs that say: ‘Backstage Band Area’ or ‘Bathrooms Here,’ or running errands to Wegmans to buy your guests of honor their organic bottled water of choice. A truck breaks down on its way to Ithaca, so the stage you need to have assembled by 3 p.m. won’t be ready for a few more hours. But the show must go on — will go on, at 6 p.m. Screw how early it is, it’s time to get to work.

CCC

An inaugural cry of vitality kicked the Decemberists into gear with a tight, up-tempo cathartic march. Rocking to the Barton Hall rafters, the veteran Portland, Oregon band confirmed their reputation as a jaw-dropping live act while reenforcing their status as “independent super-pop” trailblazers. Busting the Sunday evening stupor, the Decemberists hitched indie rock’s scratchy, emotionally piercing dissatisfaction with a charged army of rich organs and inventive percussion.