MUSIC
DEADICATED (Arista). Mercy me, not ecology again. But -- yes -- it's a save- the-rain-forest jamboree of 15 Grateful Dead tunes covered in rambunctious fashion by artists as diverse as Jane's Addiction and Suzanne Vega. Check out Warren Zevon and David Lindley taking Casey Jones down the track and Elvis Costello keeping Ship of Fools dead on course. But there's good work all around.
LE MYSTERE DES VOIX BULGARES: VOL III (Fontana/Polygram). Voices, the name used by several women's choirs that sing traditional Bulgarian folk songs, has built a growing cult of listeners since its first U.S. release four years ago, and deservedly so. The a cappella harmonies use impossibly high pitches with exquisite precision. The effect is weird, beautiful and sometimes unearthly.
PROKOFIEV: The Complete Piano Music, Vols. 1-4 (Chandos). For Sergei Prokofiev's centennial, Boris Berman has begun a welcome traversal of all this modern master's difficult solo piano music. It's safe to say of Berman -- whose strong technique is calculated to capture both the music's lyricism and its sardonic bite -- that his artistry equals his audacity.
ART
HARRY LIEBERMAN: A JOURNEY OF REMEMBRANCE, Museum of American Folk Art, New York City. Forty-five paintings recalling the lost world of prewar European Jewry. Through Sept. 22.
GREAT AMERICAN COMICS: 100 YEARS OF CARTOON ART, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Nearly 100 original cartoon panels documenting this whimsical and sometimes serious art form, from the turn-of-the-century adventures of Little Nemo through the goings on of Opus the penguin. Through Nov. 10.
BOOKS
BRIEF LIVES by Anita Brookner (Random House; $20). A woman approaching 70 grows reminiscent after seeing an obituary of an acquaintance 10 years older. The lives portrayed in this novel -- the author's 10th -- are hardly brief, but they radiate considerable strength and poignancy.
PRESERVATION HALL by William Carter (Norton; $29.95). From its beginnings on the site of an obscure French Quarter art gallery in the early 1960s, Preservation Hall became an internationally renowned Mecca for traditional New Orleans jazz. This lavishly illustrated volume chronicles the personalities and music behind one of the most stunning, and improbable, success stories in the history of American entertainment.
TELEVISION
COVER TO COVER (NBC, debuting July 29, 11 a.m. EDT on most stations). This new magazine show targeted to women, with hosts Gayle King and Robin Wagner, will spotlight stories on such topics as fashion, health and parenting. The ones, presumably, that Oprah and Good Morning America have missed.
PAN AMERICAN GAMES (ABC, Aug. 3-18). ABC Sports, shut out of the Olympics for a good while, will try to recapture the thrill of victory with more than 20 hours of coverage of the hemispheric competition, originating from Cuba.
THE NEW RANGE WARS (PBS, Aug. 6, 9 p.m. on most stations). The usually mild- mannered National Audubon Society got into hot water with cattlemen (and the Ford Motor Co., which pulled its ads from an earlier showing on TBS) with this hourlong report on the dispute between environmentalists and ranchers over public grazing land in the American Southwest.
MOVIES