Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Music

    When Quincy Jones Worked With Michael Jackson, ‘We Had No Limitations’

    Their work on “Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Bad” set records for commercial success and defined the sound of the 1980s.Quincy Jones first met Michael Jackson in the early 1970s at Sammy Davis Jr.’s house in Los Angeles, when the 12-year-old was still a bubble-gum soul singer leading his brothers in the Jackson 5.Jones and Jackson’s second meeting, at the end of that decade, proved the more pivotal, both for them and for the future of pop music. Jackson landed a role as Scarecrow in “The Wiz”; Jones had been hired as the music supervisor for the film.What came next cemented one of the most celebrated musical relationships of all time. The pairing of Jones, a noted composer, arranger and producer for jazz and R&B acts, and Jackson, the child star looking for a breakout sound, over three albums remains a career-defining arc that transformed pop music in the 1980s.Jones, who died Sunday at 91, spoke extensively about his working relationship with Jackson, telling The New York Times in a 2012 interview, “You’re looking at one of the most talented kids in the history of show business. Michael was very observant and detail-oriented. You put that together with my background of big-band arranging and composing, we had no limitations.”From left, Jackson, Diana Ross and Jones worked together on the 1978 film “The Wiz.”CBS, via Getty ImagesWith “Off the Wall,” Jackson’s solo debut released in 1979, Jones called on his wide-ranging network of studio musicians and collaborators, notably recruiting Rod Temperton from the band Heatwave to write songs for the album, including “Rock With You,” and “Burn This Disco Out.” “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” the single that established the album’s polished disco grooves, won Jackson his first solo Grammy for best male R&B vocal performance.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

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Music

    ‘Love Is Blind’ Resets, ‘Survivor’ Stalls: A Reality TV Check-in

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLong-running reality-television franchises — with their familiar rhythms, tensions and resolutions — can provide a wonderful way to pass the time while, say, waiting for votes to be counted.The seventh season of “Love Is Blind” recently concluded with a pair of storybook weddings and a handful of collapsed connections. Following a stretch of public scrutiny that included lawsuits about labor conditions, it felt like an effort to underscore the show’s potential as a generator of true love.“Survivor,” now on its 47th season, has become a show about people who have previously been obsessed with “Survivor,” creating an echo chamber regarding the strategies deployed, and narrowing the casting to a certain kind of obsessive fan-turned-player.On this week’s Popcast, a palate-cleanse conversation about some of the year’s biggest reality-television shows, how legacy franchises develop a kind of self-awareness that can lead to change, and whether shows can ever benefit from full reboots that erase their history.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect 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.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Music

    Flo Wants to Reinvent the Girl Group for a New Generation

    On the British R&B trio’s awaited debut album, “Access All Areas,” nostalgia meets ambition.Flo’s singles kept on coming, but where was a full-fledged album? When all its pop machinery was already in motion, the group dared to put its debut on pause.The initial plan was for the British R&B trio to release a full-length album in 2023 after a string of singles that began in March 2022 with “Cardboard Box,” a coolheaded, close-harmony kiss-off that has been streamed more than 54 million times on Spotify. After the release of a 2022 EP, “The Lead,” and a hyperactive performing schedule that demonstrated their real-time virtuosity, Flo was named best rising star at the 2023 Brit Awards; they went on to release collaborations with Missy Elliott and Stormzy.But Flo’s three members — the singers and songwriters Jorja Douglas, Renée Downer and Stella Quaresma — weren’t satisfied with their album tracks. They didn’t want anything that felt like filler. So amid tour dates for an ever-expanding audience, they took a risk, banking that fans would hold on a bit longer, and found time to continue writing and trying new collaborations. The group’s finished album, “Access All Areas,” will arrive on Nov. 15.“We just kept on making music — and we kept on making better music,” Downer said in a video interview from a couch backstage at Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre in Charlotte, N.C., where Flo was opening on a headlining tour by Kehlani. They were casual before the sound check; slinky costumes and glossy styling would come later in the day.“Access All Areas” flaunts echoes of groups like Destiny’s Child, TLC and the Pussycat Dolls — music the three women, who are in their early 20s, have heard all their lives. “Back then, the standards were much higher,” Quaresma said. “Nowadays if you’ve got followers, you can be a singer. People can see that we’re really inspired by the real singers and the real artists. I think people are craving that.”But Flo is also determined to establish its own sound. “The melodies will always be nostalgic, because you’re a product of your environment,” Douglas said. “But we definitely have to be mindful of what’s more current at the moment.”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

  • 200 Shares169 Views

    in Music

    How Quincy Jones Brought Pop’s Greats to the Studio: Eddie Van Halen, Bob Dylan and More

    For decades, he had many of the pop world’s best players on call — and knew how to coax out their sharpest performances.“Quincy called me.”That is the opening line of the best stories told by some of the best musicians in the world over the last half-century or so, as they recount being recruited for recording sessions by Quincy Jones, the super-producer whose work was often as much a matter of casting as of capturing sounds on tape.Eddie Van Halen got the call one day in 1982, to add a pyrotechnic guitar solo to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” He declined credit for it, but after Jackson’s death in 2009, Van Halen said that session was one of the “fondest memories in my career.”Greg Phillinganes, the synthesizer virtuoso who began his career with Stevie Wonder, got many such calls as an in-demand session player, working on Jones-helmed albums by Jackson, Donna Summer and James Ingram, among others.“By virtue of getting a call,” Phillinganes recalled this week, “that was the endorsement that you were worthy of being there” — an induction into an elite circle that included both big stars and supremely skilled but lesser-known musicians, each chosen with intention by Jones for what they could bring to a project.Jones, who died on Sunday at 91, was the master of a nearly vanished mode of record-making that relied on groups of talented musicians working under the finely attuned ear of a producer. For decades, he had many of the pop world’s best players on call, and — in what could be a career-making enlistment or just the umpteenth studio gig — would hire them to spice up a track with a guitar lick, or smooth its contours with a synthesizer part, or ground it with just the right beat.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

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Movies

    For ‘Dinner in America,’ a Surprise Theatrical Run Is Dessert

    The film became popular on TikTok two years after its quiet initial release. Now, it’s getting a second chance in movie theaters.On a recent weeknight at the IFC Center in Manhattan’s West Village, staff members corralled a 400-person crowd in and out of the doors while swarms circled the lead actors of the sold-out feature playing that night: “Dinner in America.” The film — an angsty rom-com that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 but struggled to find distribution before being self-released in 2022 — has catapulted from crickets to cult status since going viral on TikTok in the past couple of months. Seizing on a rare encore, the filmmakers have rallied fans to support a shot at the theatrical run they never had.“You don’t get second chances in this business,” the film’s writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier told the audience during a post-screening Q&A. The surprise comeback began around September when an inexplicable bump in TikTok’s algorithm turbo-blasted the movie and its earworm original song, “Watermelon.” Soon after, the film was trending across Hulu (where it is currently streaming), Letterboxd and Google. The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Calif., was one of the first theaters to announce a screening, selling out in less than 24 hours. The nonprofit cinema said the requests for “Dinner in America” were the most they’d received for any film.The plot follows the unlikely musical and sexual chemistry between Simon (Kyle Gallner) and Patty (Emily Skeggs). He’s an on-the-lam, slick crust punk; she’s a mousy 20-year-old whose parents keep her away from strobe lights and on five different medications. She finds refuge from bullies and suburban stupor by mailing Polaroid nudes and love poems to her favorite hardcore band’s ski-masked lead singer, who, coincidentally, is Simon.Emily Skeggs with Gallner in “Dinner in America.”Best and Final ReleasingWhen “Dinner in America” was released for a limited theatrical run, as well as on demand, in 2022, The New York Times gave it a mixed review. The critic Concepción de León wrote that the movie “delivers on surprise and explosiveness, but much of its offensive language, both racist and homophobic, feels gratuitous in a film that might have otherwise landed as an offbeat love story.”But content creators have been lifting up the film. The screenwriter Nic Curcio pitched the film to his TikTok followers as the “love child of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ and Todd Solondz” after noticing the uptick beyond the usual MovieTok nerds. Those millions of viewers, he told The Times, are probably sitting alone in their rooms: “The screening elements bring this whole phenomenon full circle.” The film’s success on social media meant it wouldn’t have to wait decades to achieve an underground cachet.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

  • 100 Shares119 Views

    in Music

    The Musician Building the Great Native American Songbook

    The musician Tim Long was sitting at his dining room table on a September morning, looking at old family photos and talking about how good can sometimes emerge from suffering.Long’s mother, Stella, a member of the Choctaw Nation, grew up destitute in rural eastern Oklahoma. When she was young, her widowed mother remarried and moved nearby, leaving Stella and her four brothers to fend largely for themselves. The Oklahoma government put the children in boarding school, where Stella caught tuberculosis. One of her lungs had to be removed, and she endured two stints in quarantine that lasted a total of five years.One thing that gave her solace was her discovery of a classical music station on the radio. She developed a special fondness for Beethoven.“Without that, I wouldn’t be in music,” Long, 56, said over cups of oolong tea. “My life would not have happened if she — if my parents — had not had that broader outlook.”Long’s family in Yeager, Okla., before he was born. His father, Fred Long, is in back; his mother, Stella Long, is on the left, with relatives.via Timothy LongLong’s wide-ranging life in music has included playing the violin and piano, conducting, coaching singers and teaching. And now, he has taken on a new role, perhaps the most significant yet: commissioning.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

  • 100 Shares119 Views

    in Music

    Philharmonic Dismisses 2 Players Over Sexual Misconduct Accusations

    The orchestra said an inquiry found credible claims against the musicians of sexual assault and harassment. They denied the charges.The New York Philharmonic said on Monday that it had dismissed two players after an inquiry uncovered what it described as credible claims against them of sexual assault and harassment.The players — the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, and the principal oboist, Liang Wang — had previously been accused of misconduct, and the Philharmonic tried and failed to fire them in 2018.But the musicians were put on paid leave in April when the orchestra fielded new questions about that case. An investigation that began then has now turned up additional claims of misbehavior, the Philharmonic said.The orchestra last month informed the players that they would be dismissed at the start of the next season. They will remain on paid leave until then.“We have done the right thing and we have followed the letter of the law,” said Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s interim leader. “The facts strongly supported our case.”Ms. Borda said the inquiry had uncovered “patterns of sexual misconduct and abuse of power” by the two men. She added that Mr. Wang had engaged in inappropriate relationships with students and had improperly tried to influence decisions about tenure. In total, 11 women came forward with accusations against Mr. Wang, the Philharmonic said, and three against Mr. Muckey. The orchestra said the accusations ranged from inappropriate remarks to assault.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

  • 75 Shares129 Views

    in Music

    Quincy Jones: A Life in Photos

    A musician, bandleader, composer, producer and much more, Quincy Jones, who died at 91 on Sunday in California, led many musical lives. Only supreme talent can explain his accomplishments, but there was another factor, too: a ferocious work ethic.From childhood, he fought to learn the skills that would allow him to build a life in music. He first touched a piano at age 11 after breaking into a recreation center looking for food. Two years later, he persuaded a professional trumpeter to give him lessons every morning before school started.But once he had acquired those musical foundations, he worked to expand the range of his skills at a dizzying speed. Over the decades that followed, Mr. Jones was presented with a steady stream of opportunities — sometimes simultaneously. He embraced them all, turning much of what he touched to gold, and remaking American music along the way in a career that endured for more than five decades.These photographs show Mr. Jones both under and outside the spotlight, often helping other artists bring forth their best work. They also show the public side of him — a musical titan honored for his achievements.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones and the singer Lesley Gore working in New York on the song “It’s My Party,” which was released in 1963.Franz Hubmann/Imagno, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones leading a band at the Konzerthaus in Vienna in 1960.Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones guiding a session in a recording studio in 1963.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones and the singer Roberta Flack, circa 1973.A&M Records/ Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones in 1974.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones, left, with Duke Ellington, at the piano, during the recording of the television special “Duke Ellington … We Love You Madly” at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles in 1973.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesStevie Wonder and Mr. Jones during a recording of the song “Stop, Don’t Pass Go.”G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesMr. Jones won six Grammy Awards in 1991 for his album “Back on the Block.”URLI/GARCIA and Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones in Paris in 1988.Alain Benainous/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones leading student musicians at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc, via Getty ImagesMr. Jones and Oprah Winfrey at the 1995 Academy Awards in Los Angeles, where he was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.Associated Press/Associated PressMr. Jones with President Barack Obama in 2011, when Mr. Jones received the National Medal of Arts at the White House.Danny Moloshok/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Jones onstage with Oprah Winfrey at his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.Richard Shotwell/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Jones at a hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles in 2018.Damon Winter/The New York TimesMr. Jones in 2013. More