Aurelia Butler

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    FKA twigs’s Electro-Pop Enticement, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Haley Heynderickx, Cymande, Bonzie and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.FKA twigs, ‘Perfect Stranger’Collaborating with a consortium of electronic producers — Koreless, Stargate, Ojivolta and Stuart Price — FKA twigs makes the case for an anonymous hookup in “Perfect Stranger”: “I’d rather know nothing than all the lies / Just give me the person you are tonight,” she urges. The ticking, pumping track is neater and poppier than most FKA twigs songs, yet her high, whispery voice reveals the anxiety behind the offer.Cymande, ‘Chasing an Empty Dream’The British funk band Cymande was formed in 1971 by Caribbean musicians in London, broke up in 1974 after releasing three albums, and regrouped in 2014, long after being sampled for hip-hop from the Fugees, Wu-Tang Clan and De La Soul. “Chasing an Empty Dream,” from an album due in January, rekindles socially conscious 1970s R&B, with a conga-driven Afro-Caribbean groove, swooping disco strings, pointed horn arrangements and a call for music to reclaim a purpose beyond materialism. “Everybody chasing fame, with no message for the young to hold onto,” the lyrics warn. As Cymande urges listeners to heed the lessons of “yesterday,” the music embodies them.Kelly Lee Owens, ‘Love You Got’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

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    At 150, Charles Ives Still Reflects the Darkness and Hope of America

    This pioneering composer is not the easiest to love. But while he explores the poison of American nationalism, his music also offers an antidote.Sunday is the 150th anniversary of the composer Charles Ives’s birth, and the most fitting way to celebrate would be to bang your fists on the table and rail against the damned closed-mindedness of classical music, with its lazy dependence on a predictable canon. But honestly, that’s old news; a lot of the classical community is already doing that. Would Ives be satisfied by the current state of things? Hard to say. Improvements have been made but not, I suspect, enough.Ives, a Connecticut Yankee, straddled tumultuous and defining eras of American life; he was born in the shadow of the Civil War and lived almost a decade after World War II. He had no shortage of grand visions, whether for music or for his quite successful insurance business. He conceived influential strategies of estate planning and formulas for coverage. He dreamed that music would evolve into “a language, so transcendent, that its heights and depths will be common to all mankind.” (This didn’t pan out, unless you count Taylor Swift.) And, in the first two decades of the 20th century, he dreamed up a radically original American musical voice — an enviable triumph that came bundled with failure. It was a voice many people didn’t want to hear, and still don’t.It is easy to understand the doubts of audiences, befuddled by under-rehearsed and under-enthused orchestral performances of Ives’s work. It is harder to forgive this neglect in professional musicians. Not long ago, I was in a car with a distinguished British cellist who admitted he knew just one Ives piece: the cheeky satire “Variations on America.” When I mentioned the anniversary, he said that Ives was “cute,” but that was it. This condescending opinion, offered in near-perfect ignorance, made me want to dump every last ounce of British tea into the nearest harbor.Concert presenters don’t seem super keen this anniversary, either. Thankfully, the writer Joseph Horowitz took initiative and obtained grants for events at Indiana University, Carnegie Hall and elsewhere. The flutist Claire Chase cleverly curated a program at the Juilliard School that traces Ives to other experimental artists. But that seems to be the extent of Juilliard’s commitment.The BBC Proms in Britain were more festive than most. (Cancel that tea party!) As a pianist, I’m trying to do my bit by performing the “Concord” Sonata, including at the 92nd Street Y New York in December, and releasing a recording of the violin sonatas with Stefan Jackiw on Nonesuch. But there doesn’t seem to be a groundswell of demand. It’s more like a bunch of passionate Ives nuts are standing at a street corner, begging the world to care.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

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    A New Venue Celebrates the Sound of the Bronx

    The Bronx Music Hall is the first new independent music venue in the borough in more than 50 years.Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll get a look at the Bronx Music Hall, the first brand-new music performance space to open in that borough in more than 50 years.David Dee Delgado for The New York TimesThe 250-seat music performance space that is opening tonight in the Melrose section of the Bronx began with a cassette recording that was played at a staff meeting of a nonprofit organization. This was in the early 2000s, when cassette tapes were still a thing.The tape was a sampling of the musical legacy of the Bronx — music that had been written or performed there.“Everyone’s eyes lit up,” recalled Nancy Biberman, who at the time was the president of the nonprofit, the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation.She remembers telling herself after the meeting that “maybe we are thinking too narrowly about what community development could mean — it’s not just bricks and mortar.” That realization morphed into thinking about what tenants would want besides basic needs like food, health care and education. What would make them happy?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

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    ‘Fantastical’ Is a Catfishing Horror Story About Toxic Fandom

    “Fanatical,” an eye-popping film directed by Erin Lee Carr, details the bizarre 16-year ordeal that the duo and their fans endured.The turn-of-the-century internet was organized not around content selected for us by algorithms, but around shared interests that we sought out. Whether you loved a band or were devoutly religious or had questions about your sexuality, someone had made an AOL chatroom or a message board or a LiveJournal community where you could meet people like you. It was often invigorating and life-affirming, especially if you felt lonely in the real world. It seems like the exact opposite of today’s personality- and ad-driven internet.The new, eye-popping documentary “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara” (Hulu), directed by Erin Lee Carr, is about that era and what became of it. But the lens through which it tells the story involves a truly bizarre series of events related to Tegan Quin, who with her twin sister, Sara Quin, formed an eponymous indie pop band that became huge right as the social internet was taking off. At the start of the film, Tegan says she’s never talked publicly about the situation before, which began 16 years ago. In fact, she admits to Carr, she already kind of regrets talking about it now.The duo started to become famous after their 2004 album, “So Jealous,” when the sisters realized their growing audiences skewed young, mostly female and mostly queer. Their concerts were safe spaces, and their fans often found one another through sites devoted to the band. Both women, but Tegan in particular, were active on the internet, and made a point of connecting with fans both online and at shows. They fostered a community.But “Fanatical” is not a profile of the band or its fans. It’s a horror story.In 2008, a fan named Julie contacted a Facebook profile that appeared to be Tegan’s. A yearslong messaging relationship ensued, one that turned close and even intimate. But then, in 2011, Tegan did something that felt off to Julie. So she contacted the band’s manager.From there emerged the kind of mystery that’s actually a nightmare, a story Carr tells through interviews with fans, the band’s former management, a few experts and both sisters. The user Julie had been talking to for years wasn’t Tegan at all — it was someone impersonating Tegan, a user they all started calling “Fake Tegan,” or “Fegan.” For Julie, this relationship had been deeply meaningful, especially since Tegan and Sara’s music was a way to process her fear when, as a college student, she began to question her own sexual orientation. When “Fegan” turned aggressive, even verbally abusive, she was wounded — and realizing that years of her life had been spent unburdening her secrets and her soul to someone who wasn’t Tegan was horrifying. As the band and their management discovered, these intimate messaging relationships went far, far beyond Julie — and so did the fallout.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

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    Adam Abeshouse, Prolific Producer of Classical Music, Dies at 63

    A trained violinist, he found his calling in the studio control room. He also started a foundation to help fund recordings that lack major-label support.Adam Abeshouse, a Grammy Award-winning producer of classical music for more than 30 years who also ran a foundation that helps fund the recording of works not supported by major labels, died on Oct. 10 at his home in South Salem, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 63.His wife, Maria Abeshouse, said the cause was bile duct cancer.Mr. Abeshouse, who was also a concert violinist, was prolific: Starting in the early 1990s, he produced (and often engineered and edited) hundreds of albums. Among the musicians he worked with were the violinists Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman, the pianists Simone Dinnerstein, Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleisher and Lara Downes, and the Kronos Quartet. In 2000, he won the Grammy for classical music producer of the year.Musicians described Mr. Abeshouse as a technically brilliant and joyful producer.“He had so many different qualities necessary for recording, but you don’t expect them all to be contained in one person,” said Ms. Dinnerstein, who recorded 14 albums with Mr. Abeshouse, including her newest, “The Eye Is the First Circle,” which documents a 2021 performance of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata.“He had a fantastic, acute ear,” she added. “He knew how to do a recording session; he knew when you needed a break or needed to move on or to be pushed. He was an amazing engineer; he knew all about sound, microphones, acoustics, and had a huge array of vintage microphones.“And he was astonishingly good at editing. From all the takes in a session, putting them together was almost like being a sculptor.”Mr. Bell said that Mr. Abeshouse’s background as a violinist helped their collaborations.“He was a wonderful violinist; he didn’t just hack away at it,” Mr. Bell recalled, adding that Mr. Abeshouse helped him get past his perfectionism in the studio.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

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    Bob Yerkes, Bruised but Durable Hollywood Stuntman, Dies at 92

    A body double to the stars, he performed sometimes bone-breaking feats in movies like “Return of the Jedi” and “Back to the Future.” And he was still at it in his 80s.Bob Yerkes, who was set on fire, thrown down stairs and hurled from skyscrapers, bridges and trains during a nearly 70-year career in Hollywood as a stunt double for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson and other big-screen stars, died on Oct. 1 in Northridge, Calif. He was 92.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Tree O’Toole, a stuntwoman who had been his caretaker. He had recently been ill with pneumonia.Though he was virtually unknown to audiences, Mr. Yerkes was a Tinseltown legend.In the 1980s alone, he flew through the air as Boba Fett in “Return of the Jedi,” hung from a clock tower as Christopher Lloyd’s character in “Back to the Future” and clung to scaffolding atop the Statue of Liberty in “Remo Williams.”“He is one of the few stuntmen I would say have celebrity status in the stunt business,” Jeff Wolfe, the president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures, said in an interview. “His lack of fear was kind of renowned.”Mr. Yerkes (rhymes with “circus”) performed stunts in the films “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Poltergeist” (1982), “Ghostbusters” (1984) and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), as well as on television in “Gilligan’s Island,” “Wonder Woman,” “Starsky and Hutch” and “Dukes of Hazzard.”He was concussed more times than he could remember.“I’m better now, though,” he said in a 2016 video produced by My Gathering Place International, a religious organization. “It used to be that when I’d talk, I wouldn’t finish a sentence.”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

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    Liam Payne’s Cause of Death, the 911 Call and More: What We Know

    A hotel desk manager called 911 with concerns about Payne, the former One Direction singer, shortly before he fell from a third-floor balcony. The results of toxicology reports are pending.Liam Payne, a former singer in the popular British boy band One Direction, died on Wednesday after falling from a third-floor balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires.Payne’s family released a statement on Thursday asking for privacy. “We are heartbroken,” the family said. “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul.”Here is what we know about the circumstances of his death, which led to an outpouring of grief from fans, and the ensuing investigation.A 911 call was made moments before his death.The Buenos Aires police released a recording of a 911 call that was placed minutes before Payne’s death from the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, where he was staying.A man who identified himself as the hotel desk manager said on the call that a guest who appeared to have excessively consumed drugs and alcohol was “breaking everything in the room.” The manager requested urgent assistance because the room had a balcony and hotel employees were “afraid he could do something that puts his life at risk.”A spokesman for the Buenos Aires police said on Thursday that the guest was Payne, 31.The local prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the death, said in a statement that it appeared Payne was alone when he died. It said investigators found broken objects and furniture in his hotel room, as well as what appeared to be narcotics and alcohol. The results of toxicology tests will most likely not be made public for several weeks.An autopsy said Payne died of ‘multiple trauma.’In an autopsy performed a few hours after Payne’s death, forensic experts determined that he died from falling out of a window and that there were no signs of anyone else being involved. It is not clear whether Payne intentionally jumped or accidentally fell from the third floor.The autopsy report was submitted to the prosecutor’s office, which said it indicated that Payne died of “multiple trauma” and “internal and external bleeding” in the skull, chest and abdomen and limbs.The prosecutor’s office indicated that, because of the position in which the body was discovered and the 25 injuries he sustained, officials presume that Payne did not try to protect himself from the fall and may have fallen into a state of unconsciousness.No defensive wounds were found on the body.The prosecutor’s office said that it was investigating the death as a matter of protocol because of the circumstances, but that no defensive injuries were found on Payne’s body.Five people were interviewed at the prosecutor’s office, the authorities said, including two women who had been with Payne earlier Wednesday but had left the hotel before his death. They also interviewed three hotel workers. More

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    Mitzi Gaynor, Leading Lady of Movie Musicals, Is Dead at 93

    She was best known for starring in the 1958 screen version of “South Pacific.” But her Hollywood career was brief, and she soon shifted her focus to Las Vegas and TV.Mitzi Gaynor, the bubbly actress, singer and dancer who landed one of the most coveted movie roles of the mid-20th century, the female lead in “South Pacific,” but who abandoned film as the era of movie musicals came to an end, died on Thursday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93. Her managers, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, confirmed the death.The role of Nellie Forbush, a World War II Navy nurse and (in the words of a song lyric) a “cockeyed optimist” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit 1949 Broadway musical, had been originated and defined by Mary Martin. But when it came time to cast the 1958 movie of “South Pacific,” some considered Ms. Martin too old (she was in her 40s) and perhaps too strong-voiced for any actor who might be cast opposite her. (Ezio Pinza, her Broadway co-star, had died.)Doris Day was considered. Mike Todd wanted his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, to play the role. Ms. Gaynor was the only candidate to agree to do a screen test, she recalled decades later, although she was an established actress, with a dozen films, seven of them musicals, to her credit.In fact, she was shooting “The Joker Is Wild” (1957), a musical drama with Frank Sinatra, when Oscar Hammerstein II came to town and asked to hear her sing. (Ms. Gaynor always credited Sinatra with making her best-known role possible, because he asked for a change in the shooting schedule that would give her a day off to audition.)Ms. Gaynor in 1962. A year later, she would make her last movie, but she became a star in Las Vegas.Don Brinn/Associated Press“South Pacific” was a box-office smash, and Ms. Gaynor’s performance, opposite Rossano Brazzi, was well received. (She turned out to be the only one of the film’s stars to do her own singing.) But she made only three more films, all comedies without music; the last of them, “For Love or Money” with Kirk Douglas, was released in 1963. She turned instead to Las Vegas, where she headlined shows at major resorts for more than a decade, and to television.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