Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 88 Shares159 Views

    in Music

    Listening Through the Life of George Crumb

    It’s rare for a composer to quickly find a broad audience. It usually takes years, or even decades, and sometimes doesn’t happen at all.The American composer George Crumb, though, who was born in 1929 and died two years ago, reached wide prominence within a decade. He found his musical voice in the early 1960s, and by 1968 had won the Pulitzer Prize, not to mention a bevy of grants and fellowships. Perhaps most important, his premieres were seen as genuine events, such as the pandemonium that was said to have greeted “Ancient Voices of Children,” his 1970 setting of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca for soprano, boy soprano and chamber ensemble.What explains Crumb’s near-immediate assimilation to the musical mainstream?There was, first and foremost, his dizzying sonic imagination. Crumb took the extended techniques that originated with Henry Cowell and John Cage and exploded them, plying instruments for virtually any sound they would yield and creating a vast new timbral universe.His scores — created by hand and themselves works of art — are rife with exacting instructions to performers: how to thread paper between the strings of a harp, or how string players should use the thimbles on their fingers. In “Ancient Voices,” there is an 86-word note instructing the pianist how to use a chisel (Crumb specifies the size) to create a glissandos on the piano strings that last well under a minute. He insisted that his extended techniques were not mere sound effects, as some listeners believed, but essential elements of musical expression.In addition, Crumb was largely untouched by the rift between serialists and tonal composers that split the music world in the 1960s and ’70s. His writing was so original, it seemed to sidestep that whole fiasco. Indeed, there was something both timely and timeless about Crumb’s music. His pieces had titles that evoked distant worlds and had deep, primordial resonances, but they were unmistakably of their day. In “Black Angels,” one of his most famous works, symmetries, numerology and religious allusions in the score were accompanied, Crumb said, by “vibrations from the surrounding world, which was the world of the Vietnam time.” The score is inscribed as having been completed on “Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 (in tempore belli),” or “in time of war.”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

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Movies

    Kevin Costner Will Not Return to ‘Yellowstone’

    The actor and director is turning his attention to his ambitious film series about post-Civil War America.It’s official: Kevin Costner will not be returning to television’s hit neo-western “Yellowstone” for its final episodes or for any future “Yellowstone” offshoot, ending speculation about his involvement with one of TV’s biggest hits in recent years.In a video posted to social media on Thursday evening, Costner said that after a year-and-a-half working on his upcoming multi-film epic “Horizon” and thinking about “Yellowstone,” which he called a “beloved series that I love that I know you love,” he realized that he would not be able to continue. The second half of Season 5, the show’s last, is set to debut on Nov. 10.“It was something that really changed me,” Costner said about “Yellowstone,” which premiered on Paramount Network in 2018 and became an instant and durable standout. It was TV’s highest-rated drama of the 2021-22 TV season, and its Season 4 finale was the most-watched scripted prime-time telecast in 2022, Variety reported.“I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning,” Costner, 69, continued, telling fans that he has loved the relationship they have been able to develop. “I’ll see you at the movies,” he added.A representative for Costner did not immediately reply to a request for further comment on Friday.The announcement comes after will-he-or-won’t-he rumors about whether Costner would continue in the role of the ruthless Montana rancher John Dutton, which earned Costner a Golden Globe for acting in 2023. Tensions between Costner and the show’s creative team had been reported for more than a year — to the point that it was largely expected that Costner would not be involved in the conclusion of “Yellowstone.”In an emailed statement on Friday, a representative for Paramount Network said that those at the network wished him the best with the film series and that they had hoped that they would continue working with him. “Unfortunately,” the statement read, “we could not find a window that worked for him, all the other talent and our production needs in order to move forward together.”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

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Music

    Charli XCX and Lorde End the Rumors on a Refreshing Remix

    Lorde adds guest vocals to Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing,” a song that muses on the complexities of female friendship, and helps create something revelatory.To a lot of people these days, “ambivalent pop music” is an oxymoron. Catchy hooks tend to streamline complex emotions into universal, legible sentiments, temporarily dividing the world into teams: the heartbreakers vs. the victims, the happy vs. the sad, the boys vs. the girls. Infectious as they are, many of the songs on Charli XCX’s incisive sixth album, “Brat,” refuse to take sides, making them difficult to discuss in the explainer-generating, SEO-baiting grammar of modern pop standom. How refreshing.Charli never mentioned Lorde by name on the album’s knotty ninth track, “Girl, So Confusing,” but all signs pointed to her being the somewhat socially awkward, poetry-loving doppelgänger to whom the song is addressed. (“People say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair,” Charli sings, winking at those of us who remember when an interviewer asked her about writing Lorde’s “Royals.”)It was less clear how we were supposed to understand this song in the limited and polarized language of 2020s musical fandom, which pits female pop stars against one another like pro athletes while still insisting that they “support women” at all times with a benevolent grin. “Sometimes I think you might hate me, sometimes I think I might hate you,” Charli babbles atop a strobe-lit A.G. Cook beat, one of the many “wait, are you even allowed to say that anymore?” moments on “Brat.” The song strains the vocabulary of clickbait. Is this a “diss track” or the start of a “feud”? Are the girlies fighting? And if they are, what could Lorde possibly be doing in the V.I.P. section of Charli’s recent show?It’s complicated, and — blessedly — so is the surprise remix on which Lorde appears, firing off her first new lyrics in three years. After Charli unloads her feelings and projections in that first verse, Lorde responds with the run-on intensity of a late-night voice note: “You’d always say, ‘let’s go out,’ but then I’d cancel last minute,” the New Zealander confesses, “I was so lost in my head and scared to be in your pictures.” She then reveals, devastatingly, that she’s been “at war with my body,” insecure about fluctuations in her weight, and that the enigmatic aura she’s created is actually a stifling defense mechanism. That she does it all so succinctly in a cadence that effortlessly matches Cook’s beat should make everyone excited for her next album, whenever it arrives.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

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Music

    Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift’s Duet, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Mavis Staples, Jamie xx featuring Robyn, Rakim 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.Gracie Abrams featuring Taylor Swift, ‘Us.’The title of the singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams’s second album, “The Secret of Us,” comes from this feverish duet with her friend and onetime tour mate Taylor Swift. “If history’s clear, someone always ends up in ruins,” Abrams, 24, sings breathily through a thicket of fingerpicked notes, the signature sound of her and Swift’s mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who co-produced the track with Jack Antonoff. (Dessner’s band the National gets a shout out toward the end of the song, when Abrams sings of being “mistaken for strangers.”) Midway through, the wise elder Swift swoops in to put Abrams’s youthful heartbreak in perspective. “If history’s clear, the flames always end up in ashes,” she sings. “And what seemed like fate, give it 10 months and you’ll be past it.” LINDSAY ZOLADZJamie xx featuring Robyn, ‘Life’The latest single from Jamie xx’s long-awaited second album “In Waves” pairs playful and effortlessly cool vocals from Robyn with a thumping, skittish beat intercut with lively horn samples. Her personality shines brightest on the bridge, when she throws out some vampy non-sequiturs and dissolves into giggles at one of them: “You’re giving me strong torso.” Whatever you say, Robyn! ZOLADZMavis Staples, ‘Worthy’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

  • 63 Shares159 Views

    in Music

    10 Standout R.E.M. Deep Cuts

    Hear a pick from each of the band’s first 10 albums.R.E.M., from left: Bill Berry, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck.Paul Natkin/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Last week R.E.M. was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, an event that sparked a lot of FOMO from me, your guest newsletter writer (the band briefly reunited in New York; I was out of town) and text conversations with my fellow R.E.M. devotees. (Does this fandom have a name? The Sleepyheads?)My friend Kris Chen sent over this query from a fan account: “Imagine that R.E.M. were going to reunite but only to play in your kitchen and only one song. Which song?” He selected “Fall on Me” from “Lifes Rich Pageant,” the band’s 1986 album, which is my favorite despite its lack of an apostrophe. I gave it some real thought and came back with “These Days.” I was amused when I realized those two songs are neighbors on the LP. And then I was struck by my own consistency: I quoted from it in my high school yearbook in 1995.So: R.E.M. One of the greatest bands of all time (this is not debatable). But I am willing to argue over the group’s best deep cuts. It has 15 studio albums, so let’s set some rules: I am going to limit myself only to records recorded with the band’s original lineup (Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe), before Berry’s departure from the group after a brain aneurysm. That’s 10 LPs, “Murmur” from 1983 up through “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” in 1996. And I didn’t let myself look at the band’s own picks for its members’ 40 favorites until I finished!The only thing to fear is fearlessness,CarynListen along while you read.1. “Pilgrimage”Chiming guitars, cheery Beach Boys-y backing vocals, lyrics I could never quite decipher: This is the R.E.M. I would have first fallen for, had I heard its 1983 debut, “Murmur,” when it arrived.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe 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

  • 50 Shares189 Views

    in Movies

    Conan O’Brien Doesn’t Matter

    After hosting talk shows for nearly three decades, Conan O’Brien has come to believe that longevity is overrated. The first time he made this point to me was in April at a restaurant in New York, when he proposed that all statues and monuments should be made with durable soap that dissolves in seven years. One month later, in his office in Los Angeles, down the hall from his podcast studio, he went further, declaring himself anti-graveyard.Asked if this means he wants to be cremated, O’Brien responded: “I want to be left in a ditch and found by a jogger.” Taking up space in a cemetery seems selfish to him. “I say this in a positive way,” he added, leaning forward and shifting to a less jokey tone. “We don’t matter.”Since leaving late-night television in 2021, Conan O’Brien, 61, has become more reflective about life (and death), given to philosophical flights of fancy that he compulsively alternates with comic tangents. O’Brien famously champions the intersection between smart and stupid, but in conversation, what stands out is how quickly he moves between light and heavy. In one of several interviews, I asked him if he was happier now than when he was on television and his response was to question happiness itself. “At best it’s a fleeting moment after a rainstorm when the sun’s coming out,” he said. “Being contented comes in little moments, here and there.”The only thing trickier than being a late-night talk show host is being a former one. Some relapse (Jon Stewart). A few vanish (Johnny Carson, Craig Kilborn). Most enter a more modest era (David Letterman, Jay Leno). Since he started writing for “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s, Conan O’Brien has built one of the most consequential careers in comedy. And while his late-night tenure is beloved by comedy nerds, helping define a sensibility for a generation of comedians like Bill Hader, Eric André and Nikki Glaser, his postshow work may turn out to be more impressive.It helps that his brand of joyfully goofy absurdity ages well. Stewart may have repeatedly beaten him out for Emmys during the George W. Bush years, but jokes about the Iraq War have a shorter shelf life than the masturbating bear, a recurring character on O’Brien’s late-night show that is exactly what it sounds like. His reputation has grown as new generations have discovered his work online.The other reason O’Brien has done well since leaving “Conan,” his final late-night show (after “Late Night” and “The Tonight Show”), is that he’s always been excited by and open to experimentation. “I enjoyed playing with that form,” he said of the talk show. “The stuff I’m really interested in, there’s so many opportunities to do it now. ‘Hot Ones’ is proof.”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 Shares109 Views

    in Movies

    It’s the Summer of Powell and Pressburger in New York

    The British filmmaking team were maestros of Technicolor and so much more. If you don’t know their work, your favorite directors do.Toward the end of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “Black Narcissus” (1947), set at a convent high in the Himalayas, the crazed Sister Ruth sneaks up behind her perceived nemesis, Sister Clodagh, who is ringing the convent’s cliffside bell, and gives her a good shove.The scene, a classic in the Powell-Pressburger canon, is remarkable for many reasons. For one, the mountains are an illusion, conjured with paintings on glass and matte work at Pinewood Studios near London. “Wind, the altitude, the beauty of the setting — it must all be under our control,” Powell recalled explaining to his collaborators.For another, the whole sequence was filmed to a precomposed score. Shooting action to music fascinated Powell. He and his filmmaking partner, Pressburger, would refine the technique in “The Red Shoes” (1948) and in the filmed opera “The Tales of Hoffmann” (1951). In the new documentary “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,” Martin Scorsese says that repeated childhood viewings of “Hoffmann” taught him “pretty much everything I know about the relation of camera to music.”A scene from “The Tales of Hoffmann,” a Powell-Pressburger collaboration.Rialto Pictures/StudiocanalScorsese is hardly alone in feeling that Powell and Pressburger, the greatest British filmmakers this side of Alfred Hitchcock, left a profound mark on his way of thinking about movies. Francis Ford Coppola’s forthcoming “Megalopolis” pays tribute, too, by lifting an exchange from “The Red Shoes.” For those who already are or who long to be similarly entranced, Powell and Pressburger are blanketing New York this summer.For five weeks beginning Friday, the Museum of Modern Art is screening “Cinema Unbound,” the most comprehensive Powell-Pressburger retrospective ever mounted in the city. Scorsese will introduce “Black Narcissus” on Friday, while his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, who was married to Powell until his death in 1990, will introduce a preview of “Made in England” on Saturday. That film, which features Scorsese as an onscreen guide, opens July 12. And Film Forum is giving a run to “The Small Back Room,” the noir that followed “The Red Shoes,” starting June 28.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

  • 138 Shares129 Views

    in Movies

    15 Donald Sutherland Movies to Stream: ‘Hunger Games,’ ‘M*A*S*H’ and More

    Whether in the lead or a supporting role, the actor’s immense talent and range were apparent in six decades of performances.A lithe and seductively charming actor who worked consistently for more than six decades in Hollywood, often as a leading man, Donald Sutherland died on Thursday at 88. As a thinking man’s sex symbol whose versatility made him equally persuasive in irreverent comedies and heart-rending dramas, Sutherland worked with major directors across multiple eras, including Robert Altman, Federico Fellini and Clint Eastwood and looked comfortable in both modern dress and period garb. His unusual height — he was 6-foot-4 — and sonorous voice gave Sutherland an authoritative gait, but he was given more toward gentle-giant sensitivity than masculine swagger. Narrowing his great performances down to 15 films is no easy task — there’s at least another 15 where these came from — but this selection of streamable titles is a testament to his immense talent and range.1970‘M*A*S*H’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.Kicking off a decade in which counterculture rebellion would seep into American studio movies — and a decade in which, not unrelatedly, Sutherland would become a big star — Robert Altman’s irreverent comedy about a medical unit during the Korean War doubled as a stealth commentary on the then-ongoing quagmire in Vietnam. Sutherland and Elliott Gould embody the film’s coarse iconoclasm and soul as two skilled combat surgeons who fill the downtime between harrowing emergencies with pranks, sarcastic quips and a fair bit of womanizing, often at the expense of the head nurse (Sally Kellerman). A hit in theaters, “M*A*S*H” was a popular long-running TV comedy, but the film remains significantly pricklier.1970‘Alex in Wonderland’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.The central joke of Paul Mazursky’s clever riff on Fellini’s “8 ½” is that “Alex in Wonderland” was only the second film Mazursky had directed, following “Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice,” and thus he had not nearly the mileage Fellini had accumulated when his onscreen alter ego suffers a nervous breakdown after eight films and major international success. Here, Sutherland has the comic humility to play Mazursky’s hyper-neurotic surrogate, who is rendered nearly catatonic in his panic over his future in Hollywood and whether he should shift to a more commercial direction. It’s an unusual role for Sutherland, whose gravitas makes him more naturally assured, but he’s counterbalanced nicely by Ellen Burstyn as his wife, who manages his ego while exerting a subtle influence over his decision-making.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