Olga Neuwirth’s “Keyframes for a Hippogriff,” a chaotic explosion of postmodernism, had its American premiere, conducted by Thomas Sondergard.The composer Olga Neuwirth doesn’t tend to call her works anything as straightforward as symphonies or concertos.Instead, over the years, Neuwirth, 55, has classified pieces in fanciful categories: an “amphigory” for violin and ensemble, a “ballet mécanomorphe,” a “distorting mirror” for orchestra, a “footnote” for soprano.And now, “musical calligrams.” That is the subtitle of “Keyframes for a Hippogriff,” the sprawling, chaotic explosion of postmodernism that the New York Philharmonic played on Saturday evening at David Geffen Hall, conducted by Thomas Sondergard.“Hippogriff” was to have had its world premiere with the Philharmonic as part of its Project 19 series of new works by female composers. But the pandemic intervened, and the piece came to New York after being performed by the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, two of the other commissioners.It is good news for those of us who keep pressuring orchestras to commission music larger in scale than the 10- or 15-minute length of the standard concert opener. That position has become something of a prison for contemporary works, offering audiences a little taste of the new that can be quickly forgotten over the next hour or two of standard repertory.Thirty minutes long, and scored for a big orchestra, countertenor soloist, children’s choir, broad battery of percussion, electric guitar and pair of synthesizers, “Hippogriff” is not so easily dismissed. Grand and in-your-face, it keeps surging from hushed, tensely vibrating simmers to piercing instrumental and vocal roars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Françoise Hardy, an introspective pop singer who became a hero to French youth in the 1960s with her moody ballads, died on Tuesday. She was 80.Her death, from cancer, was announced by her son, Thomas Dutronc, in a post on Instagram, saying simply, “Mom is gone.” No other details were provided.With songs like her breakthrough 1962 hit, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” (“All the Boys and Girls”), and later “Dans le Monde Entier” (“All Over the World”); her lithe look, prized by star fashion designers; and her understated personality, Ms. Hardy incarnated a 1960s cool still treasured by the French.“How can we say goodbye to her?” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a statement on Wednesday, a play on the title of Ms. Hardy’s 1968 hit “Comment Te Dire Adieu” (“How Can I Say Goodbye to You?”).She was the only French singer on Rolling Stone’s 2023 list of the 200 best singers of all time.Ms. Hardy in 1969. Her singular look — tall, long brown hair, a natural reticence — catapulted her into the worlds of fashion and film. Joost Evers/Anefo, via The National ArchivesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Instagram

The criticism arrives amid the rise of Asian hate crimes in America that prompts multiple stars of Asian descent, including ‘Killing Eve’ star Sandra Oh, to take to their social media account to speak against the rise of the attacks.

Mar 22, 2021

AceShowbiz –
Fat Joe was under fire for his lyrics on his track “Talkin’ Back”. The rapper was accused of being an anti-Asian as he called COVID-19 “Wuhan Virus” on the song which is featured on Benny The Butcher’s new album “The Plugs I Met 2”. The term is often used by people to blame Chinese and Chinese Americans for the global pandemic.

“Fat Joe makes a reference to the ‘Wuhan virus’ on Benny’s new album. Not helpful,” one person wrote on Twitter. “Fat Joe tried to jump on this Benny/Fraud with topical bars + the best he could do was ‘Wuhan virus’ + ‘track me in + out of court, Harvey Weinstein,’ ” someone else added.

Another user chimed in, “Lmao fat joe says ‘drag me in & out of court like Harvey Weinstein’ & then like a single bar later says ‘watch it spread like the wuhan virus’. Should’ve seen this coming tbh.” Meanwhile, one person called him out in a tweet that read, “Hey @fatjoe long time fan here. But given the current climate and how asians are being treated do you think you could’ve phrased this a little differently? ‘Threw that white up in the pot, gave ’em pipe dreams/And watch it spread like the Wuhan virus.’ ”

  See also…

Catching wind of the criticism, Fat Joe took to his Twitter account on Saturday, March 20 to address the matter. “I’ll adress the Benny verse i did that verse a year ago when the news was calling it the wuhan virus before they called it COVID,” the “All the Way Up” spitter explained. He also shared that he’s not an anti-Asian as he declared, “i support and love all my asian brothers and sisters never hate.”

The clarification, however, wasn’t enough for the previous Twitter user. “I want to accept this apology but I can’t,” the person wrote. “@fatjoe you couldn’t change the line since you recorded it or just not put it out? Do you think it was worth it to keep it and continue the hurtful narrative that asians are to blame for thousands of lives?”

The criticism arrives amid the rise of Asian hate crimes in America. Multiple stars of Asian descent, including Sandra Oh, took to their social media account to speak against it. The “Killing Eve” star wrote on Instagram on Saturday, “Many in our community are very scared. To everyone here… I will challenge everyone here, if you see something, will you help me? If you see one of our sisters and brothers in need, will you help us?”

She went on to say, “We must understand, as Asian-Americans, we just need to reach out our hand to our sisters and brothers and say, ‘Help me and I’m here.’ I am proud to be Asian! I belong here!”

You can share this post!

Next article

The Isley Brothers to Battle It Out With Earth, Wind and Fire on Easter Sunday’s ‘Verzuz’ Match

Related Posts More

In back-to-back programs, the orchestra presented concertos by Beethoven and Benjamin Britten.The violin concertos by Beethoven and Benjamin Britten are as alike as they are different, and over the past week, the New York Philharmonic presented them in back-to-back programs that gestured at their beauties without digging into them.Both concertos begin with a rumbling in the timpani, barely the outline of a rhythm, but enough of a motif to inspire developments in the orchestral and violin parts that build to strenuous emotional heights. Both tax the soloist’s endurance with a series of technical hurdles, and challenge the orchestra to step up its musical partnership.The Philharmonic nestled each concerto into the middle of programs that began with a brief curtain-raiser and ended with expansive, idiosyncratic symphonies. Last week, Stéphane Denève conducted the Beethoven in between Carlos Simon’s “Fate Now Conquers” and Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony. Then, on Thursday, Paavo Järvi led a more strongly conceived program that framed the Britten with Veljo Tormis’s Overture No. 2 and Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony.If the concerts had similar setups, they had similar problems too. The Philharmonic, perhaps a bit on autopilot, began the concertos tentatively, smoothed out the drama of the symphonies and locked into isolated moments of dynamism. The openers, particularly the Tormis, emerged as effectively crafted short stories: internally coherent, absorbing, satisfying.The unabashed emotionality of Britten’s concerto, which the pacifist composer completed after the outbreak of World War II, shows up in the solo writing in two ways: urgent, long-lined melodies of sweet despair; and raw plucking and feverishly cascading stops. Alena Baeva, making her Philharmonic debut, played the piece with assertive beauty and vibrato so quick, at times, that it seemed to disappear. With her understated legato and handsomely voiced harmonies, she made things sound easy. In guttural passages, she indicated Britten’s intentions without compromising her ability to return to lyricism.Baeva, so facile in surmounting technical obstacles, had trouble turning up the temperature. The exquisite, full-throated lament at the center of the second movement gets volleyed between soloist and orchestra, and Järvi didn’t build a compelling progression out of the straightforward yet potent musical scenario. Baeva’s final re-entry was anticlimactic. In the cadenza, she dispatched technical challenges — the duetting of held notes and plucked ones was finely handled — without tapping into the writing’s existential anguish. She sounded more aligned with the tranquillity of the third movement.Stéphane Denève, left, leading the Philharmonic and the violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto last week.Chris LeeIn 1801, a few years before completing his Violin Concerto, Beethoven wrote in a letter of his encroaching deafness, “From a distance I do not hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices.” And yet he ended up producing a sprawling concerto that keeps the violin in the tippy top of its range as it leaps continually through intervals.The violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider’s solo playing, decisive in bold passages and tender in soft ones, sometimes turned brittle. Quiet moments emerged like beautiful whispers that evaporated as they tapered off, and he sounded more at ease in stepwise passages than leaping ones.Saint-Saëns’s Third, nicknamed the “Organ Symphony” for its prominent use of that instrument, is full of theatrical string writing that Denève shortchanged. The work came alive in its final stretch when he made the Maestoso section, which derives its power from majestically broad time signatures, sound like a king’s procession marching down the aisles of David Geffen Hall. The four-hand piano playing was simple yet magical, and the organist Kent Tritle seemed to be having a ball with his forte passages after teasing out the subtler beauties of earlier sections and their woozy prism of colors.Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony, like Britten’s Violin Concerto, can be considered a response to the horrors of World War II; at times you can almost hear the sound of an individual’s spirit writhing out of the grasp of a conflict that would snuff it out. And, as with the Saint-Saëns, the Philharmonic snapped into focus in the work’s final minutes.Up until that finale, when he drove the Vivace at a thrilling clip into a climax of overwhelming impact, Järvi walked the middle of the road. The conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, chosen by Prokofiev for the symphony’s world premiere, left behind a gripping recording full of specific choices: a stiff, percussive celesta; ear-clearing winds screeching on high, blowzy brasses with something sinister to say. By contrast, Järvi’s adherence to conventional beauties sounded strange.But he found Prokofiev’s individuality in the Vivace, where the violins sounded clean yet somehow breathless, and the clarinet, warm yet sharply etched. A threat bubbled up from the percussion section. The final moments of cataclysm arrived suddenly and all at once. It was almost worth the wait. More

WENN

The ‘Therefore I Am’ singer has decided to scrap her entire world tour after pushing it back a couple of times because of the worldwide coronavirus health crisis.

Dec 5, 2020
AceShowbiz – Billie Eilish has cancelled her entire “2021 Where Do We Go? World Tour”.
The pop superstar previously axed the March (20) dates of her tour due to the coronavirus pandemic, but had been hoping the situation would have improved enough for her to head back out on the road later this year with a European tour scheduled to begin in early July.
The “Therefore I Am” hitmaker then decided to postpone the shows until 2021, starting in March.
However, she and her team have now decided to call off the whole run and provide refunds to her fans.
In a statement posted on her social media pages, the Grammy-winner announced, “Hi guys. i wish that I could have seen you on tour this year. i’ve missed performing for you and being on stage so much i can’t even tell you.”

  See also…

“we’ve tried as many different scenarios as possible for the tour but none are possible and, although I know so many of you want to hold onto your tickets and vip passes, the best thing we can do for everyone is to get the money back into your hands as soon as we can.”
“Keep an eye on your email for more info from your point of purchase and when we’re ready and it’s safe we’ll let you know when everyone will be able to purchase tickets again for the next tour. (sic)”
She signed off, “I love you so much, stay safe, drink lots of water, wear a mask (sic).”
The tour originally included a string of shows in the U.K. this summer, including three nights at Manchester Arena and four at The O2 Arena in London.
While the “Bad Guy” hitmaker’s European tour was set to kick-off in Spain on 9 July.
Billie initially began her tour in North America at the beginning of March as planned, but after playing her run of shows in Miami, Florida, she was forced to announce the postponement of the rest of the month’s concerts, as well as those scheduled for April, before shifting the run to 2021.

You can share this post!

Next article
Romee Strijd Proudly Shares Breastfeeding Picture After Giving Birth to First Child

Related Posts More