Aurelia Butler

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    Quincy Jones Orchestrated the Sound of America

    Jones, who died at 91, erased boundaries, connected worlds and embraced delight. As a producer, he coaxed ingenuity from his players and singers.I have this book called “The Complete Quincy Jones,” from 2008. It’s the sort of grand coffee table experience so ephemera loaded that it all but spills out photos and reproductions of letters and sheet music and newspaper clippings and report cards. It’s a book that requires a plan to transport it from a store to your house. Some of this stuff is affixed to the pages, as if Jones, who died on Sunday, had assembled it just for me, even though my name’s nowhere near Oprah Winfrey’s effusive “thank you” note. One of the unglued news items, from a 1989 edition of The International Herald Tribune, has now become a bookmark that reads, inartfully: “Quincy Jones: Black Music’s Bernstein.”It’s a constellatory, celebratory, classy volume, just like the music Jones devoted the majority of his 91 years to. As you make your way through, you realize how ubiquitous this man was. I mean, I knew he was connected. (Maya Angelou writes the preface. The foreword’s by Clint Eastwood, the introduction is by Bono and the afterword belongs to Sidney Poitier.) But not until I sat down with this thing could I truly appreciate something else: what a connector he was, human ligament.That, of course, was also in the music. He played many brasses — sousaphone, trombone, tuba, horns — but settled on the trumpet and quickly became an ace arranger and producer, someone whose brilliance involves having it all figured out. His approach to music involved not simply the erasure of boundaries but an emphasis on confluence, of putting some of this with some of that, and a little of this thing over here. Bossa nova together with jazz, Donna Summer doing Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Van Halen and Michael Jackson. On records, for movies, in concerts, with “We Are the World” and Vibe magazine. Connections.This wasn’t iconoclasm and, officially, it wasn’t civil rights, either. It was vision, curiosity and taste that aligned with civil rights. Jones didn’t want artificial boundaries dictating that vision. So what you hear in all of that music is a little bit of everything — African percussion and R&B rhythm ideas, percolating alongside fur-coat string arrangements and trans-Atlantic flights of falsetto. It sounds like whatever America is supposed to mean. Often, he was orchestrating the sound of America, complicating it while grasping what makes it pop. It’s worth considering how his music opens one of the most-watched television events ever broadcast (“Roots”) and his production is behind the best-selling album ever recorded (“Thriller”). Two titles that nail the depth and sensation of the Quincy Jones experience.Jones, right, at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993, with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross among the celebrities in attendance.Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis, via VCG, via Getty ImagesBut there’s another, related aspect of that experience, and it’s all over “The Complete Quincy Jones.” In just about every photo, he seems so happy to be wherever he is. Standing next to Hillary Clinton, chatting with Colin Powell, cracking up next to Nelson Mandela, perched beneath a conductor’s podium alongside Frank Sinatra and Count Basie. In one picture he’s got an arm around Sarah Vaughan and the other around Chaka Khan. Elsewhere, he’s planting a kiss on Clarence Avant’s cheek; pressing his cheek into Barbra Streisand’s (she signed that one: “My big ole black butt is sticking out — isn’t it?”; and I’ll just say her dress is dark). A big spread on “The Color Purple,” which he produced and scored, includes a photo of him and Alice Walker, forehead to forehead. Then there’s the intriguing shot of him looking heavenward with Leonard Bernstein at, we’re told, the Sistine Chapel.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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    How ‘Blitz’ Recreates War-Torn London

    Steve McQueen’s latest film, set in 1940 during Germany’s bombardment of the British capital, draws extensively from contemporary photos, and was shot entirely outside London.In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee. The photograph, taken during the eight-month-long bombardment of British cities by German forces during World War II, was one of the images that inspired Steve McQueen’s new film “Blitz,” currently in select theaters.The boy, carrying his small suitcase as he evacuated London in 1940, inspired the character of George in “Blitz.”AlamyThe film is told from the perspective of George (Elliott Heffernan), a biracial 9-year-old who is evacuated from London to the countryside as bombs descend on his hometown. Mid-journey, he escapes the train, abandoning his suitcase and weaving his way back to his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), in east London.Doing research for the film, McQueen and its production designer, Adam Stockhausen, were struck again and again by “the incongruity, and the heartbreak,” of images of life in London during the bombing, Stockhausen said in a recent interview. McQueen would see a photo of a woman sweeping out her ruined house or one of a man sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette, the home around him reduced to rubble, and build a scene around it, Stockhausen added.The film’s production design is meticulous — Stockhausen previously collaborated with McQueen on “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows” — and seen through George’s eyes, 1940s London is a sprawling labyrinth. Depicting the sweep of the city was essential to the narrative, Stockhausen said, but shooting in London would have been too difficult and expensive, and the team wanted to avoid a C.G.I. set.Adam Stockhausen, left, the film’s production designer, and Steve McQueen, the director, working on set.via AppleWe 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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    For Robert Treviño, Classical Music Was Never Elitist

    Robert Treviño, who has drawn acclaim for recent recordings, learned music in public school and wants to break down barriers for others.Classical music’s recording industry may be a shadow of its former self, but sometimes, a bit of light shines through. One of the brightest of late has been Robert Treviño, a Mexican American conductor who has been the music director of the Basque National Orchestra in San Sebastián, Spain, since 2017.Treviño, 40, has drawn acclaim in the past several years for recordings that are carefully prepared, exquisitely rendered and attentively controlled without ever sounding at all cautious. Enthusiastic fanfare greeted two Ravel discs on Ondine that tried to reclaim the composer as fundamentally Basque, and hence subject, as Treviño wrote in a note, to the “gravitational pulls of the Iberian Peninsula and France.”I have particularly admired remarkably sensitive Respighi with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, of which Treviño is currently the principal guest conductor, and a frankly gorgeous survey of Bruch with the Bamberg Symphony on CPO.Most intriguing, and perhaps most revealing of Treviño himself, are “Americascapes,” a pair of bold releases of American music with his Basque ensemble. The first volume smartly explores works by Charles Martin Loeffler, Carl Ruggles, Howard Hanson and Henry Cowell. The second, which was released last Friday, begins with George Walker and ends with Silvestre Revueltas. At its dark heart is an aptly eerie, indeed at times quite ghastly account of George Crumb’s “A Haunted Landscape.”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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    Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

    Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on fiction and nonfiction works about space exploration that were adapted into popular films.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions. More

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    14 Essential Quincy Jones Songs

    As a producer, arranger, composer, bandleader and recording artist, he made a powerful mark on nearly every genre he touched. He died Sunday, at 91.Quincy Jones, who died at 91 on Sunday, was a colossus of American music, leaving a profound influence on nearly every genre he touched, from the 1950s on — jazz, funk, soundtracks, syrupy R&B and chart-topping pop.The scope of his career is so vast, it seems almost impossible that it’s the work of a single person. He cut his teeth as a trumpeter in Lionel Hampton’s touring band in the early ’50s, then studied in Paris under the great classical pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He produced jazz albums for Mercury Records, made fast friends with Frank Sinatra — who called him “Q,” a nickname that stuck — and recorded “It’s My Party,” a No. 1 hit by a teenage Lesley Gore.Then came gorgeously textured movie scores, slithery funk and a fantastically successful partnership with Michael Jackson, whose 1982 LP “Thriller,” produced by Jones, is the biggest seller of all time. And it didn’t end there. In 2018 documentary, “Quincy,” Kendrick Lamar, the reigning rap laureate, is seen bumping fists with Jones and crediting him as the inspiration for “combining hip-hop and jazz.”Here is a sampling of some of Jones’s essential work, as a producer, arranger, composer, bandleader and recording artist in his own right.‘Evening in Paris’ (1957)Jones was a jazz journeyman in the 1950s, playing trumpet with Hampton, working at Mercury and putting together his own albums. This gorgeous ballad, from “This Is How I Feel About Jazz,” his standout early LP, was composed by Jones and features an all-star band including Herbie Mann, Zoot Sims, Hank Jones and Charles Mingus.Ray Charles, ‘One Mint Julep’ (1961)Jones and Ray Charles met as teenagers in Seattle in the 1940s, as dramatized in the 2004 film “Ray.” By the time of his big band LP “Genius + Soul = Jazz,” Charles was a giant who seemed to remake American music with every step. Jones arranged half the tracks on the album, including “One Mint Julep,” a hot and swinging instrumental take on the Clovers’ original that Charles — leading from the organ — made a Top 10 hit.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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    Quincy Jones, Giant of American Music, Dies at 91

    As a producer, he made the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” He was also a prolific arranger and composer of film music.Quincy Jones, one of the most powerful forces in American popular music for more than half a century, died on Sunday in California. He was 91.His death was confirmed in a statement by his publicist, Arnold Robinson, that did not mention a cause. The statement said that he had died peacefully at his home in Bel Air.Mr. Jones began his career as a jazz trumpeter and was later in great demand as an arranger, writing for the big bands of Count Basie and others; as a composer of film music; and as a record producer. But he may have made his most lasting mark by doing what some believe to be equally important in the ground-level history of an art form: the work of connecting.Beyond his hands-on work with score paper, he organized, charmed, persuaded, hired and validated. Starting in the late 1950s, he took social and professional mobility to a new level in Black popular art, eventually creating the conditions for a great deal of music to flow between styles, outlets and markets. And all of that could be said of him even if he had not produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time.Mr. Jones’s music has been sampled and reused hundreds of times, through all stages of hip-hop and for the theme to the “Austin Powers” films (his “Soul Bossa Nova,” from 1962). He has the third-highest total of Grammy Awards won by a single person — he was nominated 80 times and won 28. (Beyoncé’s 32 wins is the highest total; Georg Solti is second with 31.) He was given honorary degrees by Harvard, Princeton, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, the Berklee School of Music and many other institutions, as well as a National Medal of Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master fellowship.His success — as his colleague in arranging, Benny Carter, is said to have remarked — may have overshadowed his talent.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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    Stream These Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in November

    A slew of great movies and TV shows are leaving Netflix for U.S. subscribers in November. Here’s a roundup of the best.Three inventive and engaging biopics are leaving Netflix in the United States this month, along with a scorching stage adaptation, a thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle and an animated comedy that is decidedly not for the kiddies. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Edge of Tomorrow’ (Nov. 6)Stream it here.If James Cameron remade “Groundhog Day,” it might come out looking like this fast, funny and thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle from the director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”). Cruise stars as a military public relations man with a cowardly streak who is reluctantly thrown onto the front lines, where he discovers he is trapped in a time loop: When he is killed, he jolts awake back at the beginning of his adventure, forced to keep doing it until he gets it right. Emily Blunt is dynamite as the heroic soldier who shows him the ropes (and has a fair number of laughs at his expense), while Liman orchestrates the comic and action beats with equal grace and skill.‘First Man’ (Nov. 14)Stream it here.A common thread of this month’s titles is unconventional biopics — stories about important historical figures that mostly manage to eschew the cradle-to-grave framing, on-the-nose dialogue and shallow insights of too many screen biographies. Take this portrait of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, which is less interested in telling a broad historical story than an intensely personal one. As played by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong is a modest man, one who takes that “one giant leap” more from a sense of duty and service than from ambition or ego. It’s a character study; the character just so happens to be the first man to walk on the moon. The director Damien Chazelle, re-teaming with his “La La Land” leading man, is as aware of the biopic clichés as you are, and he smoothly sidesteps most of them to make a picture that is surprisingly urgent and emotional.‘Harriet’ (Nov. 15)Stream it here.The “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons directs this similarly outside-the-lines dramatization of the life of Harriet Tubman, brought to scorching life by the gifted Cynthia Erivo (on the big screen this fall in “Wicked”). The telling is fairly direct: Working from a script written with Gregory Allen Howard, Lemmons hits the biographical milestones in Tubman’s journey from slave to runaway to guide for those who wished to do the same. But Lemmons’s direction is artful and lyrical, taking its cues from the visions that Tubman said guided her, which gives the enterprise an almost otherworldly quality. Erivo’s performance is powerful and textured; she is supported by an excellent cast, including Joe Alwyn, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr. and Clarke Peters.‘Sausage Party’ (Nov. 22)Stream it here.Parents who aren’t quite paying full attention might assume that this animated feature about anthropomorphic supermarket foods is typical kiddie fare — and boy, oh boy, would they be in for a surprise. This is very much an R-rated, adults-only venture, the brainchild of the actor and filmmaker Seth Rogen and his frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg. As with their previous films “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” and “This Is the End,” the jokes are rude and crude, and the cast is stuffed with comic stars. But the nicest surprise of “Sausage Party” is its thoughtfulness; in the end, it’s a pointed examination of conventional wisdom surrounding religion and death, which is not quite what you might expect from a film that culminates in a food orgy.‘Ali’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.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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    Anitta Mesmerizes the Weeknd, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks from Ethel Cain, the Black Keys featuring Beck, Ilham 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.The Weeknd featuring Anitta, ‘São Paulo’The Weeknd gets top billing on “São Paulo,” but the song is defined by its Brazilian funk-style synthesizer riff and a hook that Anitta borrowed (with credit) from the Brazilian funk singer Tati Quebra Barraco. Anitta chants about her irresistible body (and dominates the version edited for video), while the full song gives the Weeknd ample time to bemoan how thoroughly he’s in her thrall.Champion, Four Tet, Skrillex and Naisha, ‘Talk to Me’Three top producers concocted the sparse beat and boinging riff that accompany a nearly weightless melody from the Indian singer Naisha Bhargabi. She sings and raps in Hindi about solitude and self-sufficiency — “My nights are by myself alone, never lonely.” But she switches to English for the simple invitation to “talk to me.”The Black Keys featuring Beck, ‘I’m With the Band’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