Aurelia Butler

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    Cissy Houston Dies at 91; Gospel Star Guided Daughter Whitney’s Rise

    Hailing from a musical family, she won Grammys, sang backup to Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin and helped shepherd Whitney Houston to superstardom.Cissy Houston, a Grammy Award-winning soul and gospel star who helped shepherd her daughter Whitney Houston to superstardom, died on Monday at her home in Newark. She was 91.Her family announced her death in a statement, which said she had been in hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease.Ms. Houston was a gifted stylist whose powerful voice and deep faith made her an influential figure in gospel circles for decades. She won Grammy Awards in the traditional soul gospel category for the albums “Face to Face” in 1997 and “He Leadeth Me” in 1999.Before then, she had been among the busiest backup singers in the record business, providing vocal support for Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and many others. And for more than a half-century she was the choir director for the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she got her start as a singer in the 1930s.Ms. Houston was the matriarch of a singing dynasty that included her daughter, her nieces Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick and a cousin, the opera star Leontyne Price. She endured the deaths of her daughter, who drowned in a hotel bathtub in 2012, and of Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, who, in an eerily similar tragedy, was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Georgia home in January 2015 and died six months later. Whitney Houston had struggled with addiction for many years despite her mother’s intervention.Ms. Houston with her daughter Whitney, right, and her niece Dionne Warwick during the annual American Music Awards ceremony in 1987. The opera star Leontyne Price is a cousin.Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch, via Getty ImagesWe 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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    Chappell Roan Seeks the Line Between IRL and URL

    For Chappell Roan, who has been toiling in the pop music trenches for several years now, the recent burst of acclaim she’s received has been overdue, affirming and more than a little disorienting. Perhaps the most energizing breakout star of this year, she has songs that center queer romance, a robust aesthetic gift and, most striking of all, an unusually moral sense of how a famous person should be treated.As she’s being embraced, she’s also being tested. The last couple of weeks especially have provided Roan a case study in the difference between IRL and URL fandom — the people who show up to commune with you, and the people who make you the object of their study and chatter online — and which to stake her future on.Last Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn., she took a mid-show breather to survey the 7,500 people who’d come to see her perform at the FirstBank Amphitheater.“I know how hard it is to be queer in the Midwest and the South,” she said. She grew up around seven hours west, in Willard, Mo., chafing against her conservative surroundings. As a young person, she continued, “I really needed a place where people weren’t going to make fun of me for how I dressed or who I liked.”For the night, the amphitheater just outside of Nashville had become such a place. Carved into a rock quarry, the open-to-the-sky venue felt cloistered, protected. A place for intimate but very loud conversation out of view of prying ears and eyes.Fans came to the show in costume: Realtree camouflage, pink cowboy hats, Western boots, frilly dresses, hand-drawn shirts with Roan references. Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressWe 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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    The Cases Against Sean Combs

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLast month Sean Combs — the hip-hop mogul known alternately as Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy and Love — was arrested on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty.The indictment was a striking fall from grace seemingly put in motion approximately a year prior, when one of his ex-girlfriends, the singer Cassie, filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of rape and physical abuse. (That case was settled in one day.) A lawsuit filed in late September is the eighth over the past year by a woman accusing Combs of sexual assault; three other lawsuits have made allegations of sexual misconduct.On this week’s Popcast, a discussion of Combs’s criminal and civil cases, the role of the court of public opinion, and how the entertainment press covers morally complicated figures.Guests:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music business reporterJulia Jacobs, culture reporter for The New York TimesJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Soon, you’ll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don’t miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts. More

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    ‘Pavements,’ ‘My Undesirable Friends’ and Other Documentaries at New York Film Festival

    In epic takes like “My Undesirable Friends” and playful biopics like “Pavements,” the vital art of the documentary is on full display.Documentaries face a great paradox in 2024: They proliferate, but most nonfiction filmmakers will tell you they’re also harder to get made. Streaming services groan under the weight of true crime and biographical films, but most feel fast, formulaic and shoddy, designed specifically to throw on while watchers scroll on their phones. Meanwhile, directors who aspire to challenge audiences and craft art from reality say that they struggle to find money and distribution — and that it’s gotten markedly tougher in just the past few years.That’s why the festival circuit is so important to independent and international documentarians. It can be their best shot at reaching audiences and, perhaps, finding a distributor. But I notice that at many major film festivals, nonfiction can feel like a second-class citizen, unless a celebrity is involved. The films are often programmed in documentary-specific categories, as if they need to be kept away from the “real” movies. Some festivals, like Cannes, barely program any nonfiction at all.Thankfully, the New York Film Festival is not one of those. This year’s edition includes 18 feature-length (and longer) documentaries and 10 nonfiction shorts, and they’re placed alongside fiction in various sections rather than siloed. And while the festival, which rarely features world premieres, has only two this year, both are nonfiction.Technically there are two celebrity-focused documentaries on the slate (unless you count the delightful botanist Mark Brown, of the equally delightful “7 Walks With Mark Brown,” as a celebrity). The more conventional is “Elton John: Never Too Late,” directed by R.J. Cutler and David Furnish, the singer’s husband. The other is Alex Ross Perry’s gonzo “Pavements,” about the indie-rock band Pavement, which involves a little reflection and history from the band but mostly a bunch of elements that mess with the audience: footage from a Pavement jukebox musical that was briefly mounted downtown in 2022 (I saw it) specifically for this movie; a dramatic movie about the band, starring Joe Keery (“Stranger Things”) as the lead singer Stephen Malkmus, that may or may not actually exist; a museum exhibition of Pavement memorabilia. It’s terrifically strange and entertaining even if you (like me) have never really been a fan — and you’ll get a lightly satirical skewering of the whole musician biopic genre, to boot.“Youth (Hard Times) is one of two films from Wang Bing showing at the festival.via NYFFBut where “Pavements” is goofy and doesn’t take itself too seriously, several other documentaries tackle serious subjects with aplomb, and run times to match. “Exergue — on Documenta 14,” directed by Dimitris Athiridis, is a whopping 14 hours, presented in chapters. It’s a riveting and often dryly funny film about Adam Szymczyk — the artistic director of the 2017 edition of Documenta, the highly influential every-five-years exhibition of contemporary art — as he works with his team of curators to put together that show. While there’s a specific event at its center, “Exergue” is also a formidable survey of the challenges facing the contemporary art world as it wrestles with racism, colonialism, politics and power.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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    Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Ainadamar’ Opera Makes Its Met Debut

    Osvaldo Golijov’s opera about Federico García Lorca makes its Met debut in a dance-heavy production, directed by the choreographer Deborah Colker.Rippling scales of Spanish guitar, the howls of a raspy-voiced singer, thunderous clapping and stamping — the sounds could have been coming from a tavern in Andalusia, home of flamenco. But this was the Metropolitan Opera House during a recent rehearsal for its new production of “Ainadamar.”A one-act opera by the Argentine-born composer Osvaldo Golijov, “Ainadamar” has its Met debut on Tuesday. And it wasn’t just the sounds of flamenco that were unusual for the opera house. There were two choreographers in the room, one of whom, Deborah Colker, was the production’s director.Since its premiere at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2003, “Ainadamar”— an 85-minute work about the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca — has had many productions, including in a Golijov festival at Lincoln Center in 2006. But this one, which played at the Scottish Opera and Detroit Opera before coming to New York, has by far the most dance in it.“What Deborah has done blew me away,” Golijov said in a phone interview. “She revealed to me something I had not thought about”: that the opera “can be danced throughout.”Colker is known for her dance company in Brazil, as well as her choreography for Cirque du Soleil and the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She had a musical education, seriously studying classical piano as a child, but “Ainadamar” is the first opera she has directed.“I direct like a choreographer,” she said after the rehearsal, noting that her theatrical approach to the opera was simple: gestures, movement, dance. “This is my language, yes, but this is also what the music is asking for.”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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    ‘Joker’ Sequel Falls Far Short of Original at the Box Office

    The bleak musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend.The original “Joker,” in 2019, earned 11 Oscar nominations, $1 billion in global box office receipts and created a cultural phenomenon. So it was inevitable that Warner Bros. would make a sequel, with the same director, Todd Phillips, and star, Joaquin Phoenix.More of a surprise is that the new film was dismissed by its audience this weekend. Titled “Joker: Folie à Deux,” and featuring Lady Gaga as Mr. Phoenix’s love interest/partner-in-crime, the bleak R-rated musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend. The studio will now struggle to earn back its production budget of around $200 million, plus its hefty marketing costs.Reviews have been dismal. The New York Times called it “a dour, unpleasant slog,” and audiences awarded it a D score in exit polls, according to tracker CinemaScore. The musical element — an idea that apparently came to Mr. Phoenix in a dream — offered audiences a fresh idea and, to many critics, it served as the proper way to further explore a deranged main character with a warped imagination. But in this case, it alienated the typical fanboy audience who would be expected to have been frothing for a follow-up to the nihilistic film that won Mr. Phoenix his Best Actor Oscar.The opening draw is a far cry from the $96 million “Joker” generated in its first weekend five years ago, almost to the day. That film cost $55 million to make. This one is contained primarily to two locations: Arkham Asylum, which houses Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. The Joker, after his murderous spree killed six people, and the courthouse, where he’s being tried for his crimes. So it shouldn’t have cost as much. But everyone was paid handsomely for their efforts, under the new production heads at Warner Bros., Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. (Trade reports indicate that Mr. Phoenix received $20 million to reprise his role of Arthur Fleck/Joker while Lady Gaga earned $12 million to return to the bleak world of Mr. Phillips’s creation.)“Lady Gaga in a musical was an unconventional choice,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email. “‘Joker’ was a well-made character study about a dark, sad figure. That story had limited potential to grow, and ‘Folie à Deux’ is not overcoming it.”With overall box office receipts down 12 percent compared with last year at this time, Hollywood was looking for a big hit to kick off October and help the studios stoke momentum through the rest of the year. Now it looks as if it will have to rely on “Venom: The Last Dance” and the Thanksgiving movies: “Wicked,” “Gladiator 2” and “Moana 2” to recover. More

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    Review: Philharmonic Returns to Classics, at Its Own Expense

    Led by Manfred Honeck, the orchestra all too quickly revisited Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and, with Vikingur Olafsson, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1.A risk of programming standard repertory works over and over is that an orchestra is practically begging to be compared with its own recent performances — not to mention a huge and ever-growing body of recordings. Why should someone buy a ticket to a concert if they just heard the same group do the same piece, or if they can stay home and listen to dozens of masterly versions online?That question came to mind on Friday, when the New York Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at David Geffen Hall. Just over a year and a half ago, the ensemble did Beethoven’s Seventh at Geffen under Esa-Pekka Salonen — a stirring rendition that balanced accented force and long-lined legato into a propulsive, joyful whole.If the work came around every five or 10 years, it would be easier to judge each arrival in a vacuum. But the Philharmonic’s choice to perform it again so soon — its programming this season is particularly uninspired — meant that Friday’s concert, conducted by Manfred Honeck, was inevitably going to be held up against the last one.Honeck, who led without a score, is experienced in Beethoven’s classic; his 2015 recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, of which he is the longtime music director, is one of the finest in a crowded field. But under his baton, the Philharmonic didn’t come close to matching its February 2023 self, let alone Pittsburgh’s rich, vigorous example.In the first movement, Honeck lingered over pastoral passages, perhaps to try and provide respite from — and intensification of — the relentlessly rhythmic surrounding music. But the orchestra negotiated these transitions of speed and atmosphere in a way that was stiff, not agile. An unusually drawn-out tempo in the third movement’s contrasting Trio section could have conveyed wistful longing if the Philharmonic had fuller, creamier tone, but as it was the orchestra just seemed strained by the slowness.Honeck always approaches standards like this with fresh ideas. He presented the second movement as a hushed hymn rather than the traditional sturdy dirge, a choice that elicited extraordinarily soft, silky sound from a group that generally doesn’t like to whisper.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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    Marvin Schlachter, Record Executive Who Championed Disco, Dies at 90

    In the 1960s, he helped get wide exposure for Black artists like Dionne Warwick. A decade later, he brought dance music from the clubs to radio success.Marvin Schlachter, a music executive who helped launch Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles in the 1960s and who a decade later created one of the world’s most influential disco labels, bringing acts like Musique and France Joli to the masses, died on Sept. 19 in Manhattan. He was 90.His son Brad said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was intestinal cancer.Beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Schlachter played a crucial role in the emergence of Black musicians from genre-based appeal to become a force in the American music mainstream.Mr. Schlachter in 1962, a year after he became executive vice president of Scepter Records.Record World magazine, via Schlachter familyHe spent nine years as an executive with Scepter Records, a New York label comparable in some ways to Motown in Detroit (although much smaller). The label brought in Black songwriters, producers and musicians and promoted their albums among white audiences — still an unusual idea at the time.Among Scepter’s biggest successes was Ms. Warwick, whom the label paired with the songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The Bacharach-David team wrote many of Ms. Warwick’s early signature hits, including “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Walk On By” and “Alfie.”Dionne Warwick’s first album was released by Scepter Records in 1963, early in her long association with the songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David.Scepter RecordsWe 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