By Andrew Dobbie

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Gregg Allman is a believer in the healing power of music.

Barely a year after undergoing a liver transplant, the veteran American musician is back on the road with his regular band, looking a little frail but in good voice and excellent spirits.

The Gregg Allman band kicked off a European mini-tour at London’s Barbican Center on Friday, with two further UK dates scheduled plus more in Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany before they head home next month for a lengthy tour of the United States and Canada.

The backbone of their set is a series of songs from the album “Low Country Blues,” his first record for 14 years.

It was released in February to critical acclaim and commercial success to match, debuting at No. 7 in the U.S. Billboard chart.

Diagnosed with hepatitis C and advised he needed a new liver, Allman decided to go into the studio to record an album of songs by his blues heroes, before going under the surgeon’s knife in June last year.

By Andrew Dobbie

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – A group of talented and ambitious young artists join forces, determined to stir up the art establishment which they see as sentimental, stodgy and distant from reality.

A familiar story? Perhaps not.

The artists in question are not the French Impressionists, but an iconoclastic group that emerged in the Scottish city of Glasgow in the late 1870s to become the most daring and original painters in Britain at the time.

The Royal Academy of Arts is hosting the first major London exhibition for more than 40 years celebrating the achievements of the group, known as the Glasgow Boys.

More than 80 oils, watercolors and pastels by such artists as James Guthrie, George Henry, E.A. Hornel, John Lavery, Arthur Melville and James Paterson have been assembled from private and public collections.

When the group was formed, Glasgow was the second city of the British empire and known as the workshop of the world, its prosperity built on industry, commerce and finance.