Quick Takes: John Mayer cancels gigs

John Mayer has bowed out of a series of concerts after suffering from “something next to my vocal cords called a granuloma,” he said Friday.

The singer and songwriter said he had undergone months of monitoring, but the condition — a small area of tissue inflammation that most often occurs in the lungs — had prevented him from going ahead with the performances, including a Sept. 24 appearance with Tony Bennett at Staples Center in downtown L.A.

The release of Mayer’s next album, “Born and Raised,” also is being pushed back to next year.

“This is a temporary setback, though I’m not sure how long or short a period of time it will be,” he said in a statement.

—CNN

Kansas City arts center opens

A long-awaited, $414-million performing arts center, a hefty steel and concrete chrysalis-like structure on the edge of downtown Kansas City, Mo., opens this weekend amid high hopes for its role as a performance site — and incubator for the arts, education and more.

After years of delays fueled by various concerns over everything from the location to costs and a reeling economy, construction began in early 2007 on the 285,000-square-foot Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

The center, which has two performance halls — the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre for theater and dance performances, and the 1,600-seat Helzberg Hall for the symphony — was financed largely by private donations, including more than $100 million from the late Muriel and Ewing Kauffman, whose pharmaceutical fortune and philanthropy also funded many other Kansas City undertakings.

—Associated Press

‘Abduction’ sequel planned

“Abduction” — the film that marks Taylor Lautner’s official bid to become an action star — doesn’t hit theaters until next Friday. But director John Singleton says that no matter how the movie fares at the box office in the coming weeks, a sequel is already a done deal.

When asked if there would be another installment of “Abduction,” Singleton replied enthusiastically: “Definitely.”

“We’ve been talking about it while we’re making the movie. Of course, I’m gonna direct it,” he said with a grin at the premiere of the film in Hollywood Thursday night.

And if the movie tanks at the multiplex? “I don’t think we have to worry about that,” he said. “It’s happening.”

—Amy Kaufman

Charlie Sheen’s new outlook

Six months after his very public firing from TV’s top-rated comedy, Charlie Sheen admitted that he was out of control and not really “winning” during the ensuing media frenzy, but losing.

In television appearances this week, the 47-year-old actor appeared calm, clearheaded and repentant about the events surrounding his March dismissal from CBS’ “Two and a Half Men.”

“I couldn’t really put out the fire, so I had to keep fueling it,” Sheen said Friday on NBC’s “Today” show.

Discussing his new outlook with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” Sheen claimed he’s eager to “lead by example again” — in sharp contrast to his erratic behavior earlier this year, which he described as being the “reluctant conductor” of a runaway train.

“I would have fired [myself] too,” Sheen told Leno. “Well, maybe not like they did.”

—Reuters

Museum will return vase

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts plans to return an ancient Greek vase to Italy after determining that it matched a photo Italian police had seized in a crucial 1995 raid on the Swiss warehouse of Giacomo Medici, an antiquities dealer who subsequently was sentenced to eight years in prison for conspiring to sell looted artworks.

In announcing the impending return of what’s known as the Volute Krater, which it bought in 1983, the museum said that an investigation had made clear that the vase, dating from about 450 BC, was in fact the one pictured in photos seized from Medici.

Evidence showed the vase, which depicts a procession of Dionysus, the god of wine, and his devotees, probably had been dug from an archaeological site near Rutigliano in Southern Italy.

—Mike Boehm

McCartney marrying again

Paul McCartney is set to tie the knot at the venue where he first married more than 40 years ago.

Officials said Friday that the former Beatle and fiancee Nancy Shevell have posted a notice of intention to marry at London’s Marylebone Register Office, where McCartney married his first wife, Linda, in 1969. She died of cancer in 1998.

Westminster Council said the couple could marry anytime after Sept. 30. They have a year to hold the ceremony.

—Associated Press