Aurelia Butler

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    Carlos Niño, the Spiritual Force Behind L.A.’s Eclectic Music Scene

    During concerts, Carlos Niño may set up a bass drum and a floor tom, but his percussion is far from conventional. Uninterested in maintaining a steady beat, he creates shimmering atmospheres and earthen textures with the many bells, shells, rain sticks or rattles he totes in a big black roller bag. He surrounds himself with cymbals and gongs. He shakes desiccated palm fronds. Wind chimes are involved.A fixture in the Los Angeles music world for nearly 30 years, Niño has become a key practitioner of what he calls “spiritual, improvisational, space collage music.” (The genre it’s probably most related to is spiritual jazz.) He’s a beacon of energy and knowledge who can get in touch with the city’s transformative saxophonists and give you the name of a master acupuncturist. He’s also prolific, with seven releases from various projects arriving over the past eight months alone. His latest, “Placenta,” is due on May 24.On a recent afternoon at Endless Color, a cafe and record store near Niño’s home in Topanga Canyon, Calif., he was effusive and enthusiastic, recommending both menu items and vinyl. A multicolored knit cap sat atop his wavy brown hair. Wisps of gray ran through the bushy beard radiating from his face.Niño began recording music when he was a teenager. Over the decades, as he became more confident in himself as a musician and performer, his circle of collaborators expanded.Adali Schell for The New York TimesAlong with being an instrumentalist and a producer, Niño, 47, has been a beatmaker, a D.J. on both terrestrial and online radio, a record collector and a venue programmer. But most of all, he is a listener. “There’s a lot of times where there’s literally no music playing in my life, but I still feel the current of sound,” he said. “I’m in the stream, essentially. I’m not really ever not in the stream, which is kind of awesome.”Nate Mercereau, a guitarist who has become one of Niño’s frequent collaborators, said listening is a crucial part of their dynamic, but it’s far from a passive experience. “It’s listening to yourself and letting that be part of the communication,” he said. “It’s not just a receiving thing, it’s like waves within waves towards each other and within.”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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    Kendrick Lamar Rides a Rap Beef All the Way to No. 1

    On the Billboard album chart, Dua Lipa’s heavily promoted “Radical Optimism” opened at No. 2, held off by the third week of Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets.”An old-fashioned rap war that unfolded online at lightning speed has sent Kendrick Lamar to No. 1 on Billboard’s latest singles chart, while Taylor Swift easily holds off a challenge from Dua Lipa’s new album.Relations between Lamar and Drake, two hip-hop giants and longtime rivals, exploded into a public war of words in recent weeks, in the form of a rapid-fire sequence of diss tracks packed with insults and unsavory (and unproven) accusations. Lamar seemed to get the last word with “Not Like Us,” released May 4, which becomes his fourth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. That total counts collaborative releases — among them “Like That,” a track in March with the Atlanta rapper Future and the producer Metro Boomin, which kicked off the latest volley.Consumption of “Not Like Us” was driven by streaming, with 71 million clicks in the United States last week. Another Lamar diss track, “Euphoria,” which came out the week before, is No. 3 on the latest singles chart, while Drake’s “Family Matters” is No. 7.For this week’s Billboard 200 album chart, Lipa seemed to enter the contest with some advantages for “Radical Optimism,” her third studio LP. To promote it, she went on “Saturday Night Live” as both performer and host, and was on the cover of Time and Elle. Earlier this year, she had prominent performances at the Grammy and Brit award shows, and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.But “Radical Optimism” was still trounced by the third week of Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” which holds at No. 1 with a wide margin.“Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 282,000 album sales in the United States, including 298 million streams and 51,000 traditional sales, according to the tracking service Luminate. In its first three weeks out, “Tortured Poets” — which smashed records in its debut two weeks ago, despite mixed reviews — has racked up the equivalent of 3.3 million sales, including 1.6 billion streams for its 31 total tracks in the U.S. alone.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 Night to Remember at the Opera, Complete With a Phantom

    In the pitch-dark auditorium of Rome’s Teatro Costanzi, a high-pitched lament floated from the top galleries. Dozens of flashlights snapped on, their beams crisscrossing crazily, seeking the source of the sound.The shafts of light homed in on a spectral figure — a slim, dark-haired woman dressed in white, moving at a funereal pace and plaintively singing. In the audience, 130-odd children, ages 8 to 10, let loose squeals, some gasps, and one “it’s not real.” Several called out “Emma, Emma.”The children had just been told that the Costanzi, the capital’s opera house, had a resident phantom. No, not that one. This was said to be the spirit of Emma Carelli, an Italian soprano who managed the theater a century ago, and loved it so much that she was loath to leave it, even in death.“The theater is a place where strange things happen, where what is impossible becomes possible,” Francesco Giambrone, the Costanzi’s general manager, told the children Saturday afternoon when they arrived to participate in a get-to-know-the-theater-sleepover.The children reading clues of a treasure hunt.Alessandro Penso for The New York TimesMusic education ranks as a low priority in Italy, the country that invented opera and gave the world some of its greatest composers. Many experts, including Mr. Giambrone, say their country has rested on its considerable laurels rather than cultivate a musical culture that encourages students to learn about their illustrious heritage.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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    Cannes Film Festival: 5 Things to Look For

    With the most prestigious festival in the world starting Tuesday, here are the movies, artists and events we’ll be keeping an eye on.On Tuesday, the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will begin in the south of France. You can expect glamorous gowns and awfully prolonged standing ovations — at Cannes, such things are de rigueur — but what distinguishes this year’s lineup? Here are five things we’ll be watching out for.A new Coppola on the Croisette.Some 45 years after Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, he will return to the Croisette, the festival promenade, with “Megalopolis,” starring Adam Driver as a visionary architect determined to rebuild a city after it’s beset by disaster. Coppola self-financed the longtime passion project to the tune of $120 million, a steep price tag that has so far deterred potential distributors. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that at a March screening meant to entice buyers, many came away confounded by Coppola’s vision: “There are zero commercial prospects and good for him,” said one source. But if it’s true that the film is a big, wild swing, it’s hard to imagine a friendlier place for its public debut than Cannes, where the filmmaker is revered.‘Furiosa’ starts its engines.The biggest movie to debut at Cannes this year will be “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the latest film in director George Miller’s postapocalyptic action franchise. This one serves as a prequel to the Oscar-winning “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which premiered at Cannes to great acclaim in 2015 and produced an unexpected moment at the film’s news conference when star Tom Hardy apologized to Miller for his bad behavior during the shoot. Expect a big bash for the new movie and a major red-carpet moment from its fashionable star Anya Taylor-Joy, who takes over the titular character originated by Charlize Theron.A cinematic Trump card.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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    Arooj Aftab Knows You Love Her Sad Music. But She’s Ready for More.

    The genre-crossing songwriter’s introspective “Vulture Prince” was a pandemic hit. Now she is returning with “Night Reign,” an LP that reveals her many dimensions.In a remote studio in North Brooklyn, the actress Tessa Thompson stood behind a camera and instructed a young model how to project a precise but elusive expression of longing: “Almost like you can’t help it,” she suggested from beneath a black beret. Thompson was making her debut behind the camera, directing a music video by the Pakistani composer and vocalist Arooj Aftab.“This is a dream come true,” Thompson said between takes on an afternoon in March. “A dream I didn’t know I had.”The clip was for Aftab’s latest song, the dusky “Raat Ki Rani,” from her fourth solo album, “Night Reign,” due May 31. Drawing inspiration from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 thriller, “Persona,” the treatment weaves an imagistic love story between two women into a trippy meta-narrative that takes place on the set of a perfume commercial. Accordingly, the room was filled with fragrant bouquets as Aftab, 39, observed quietly from the sidelines.If you didn’t know she was the star of the show — not to mention, the beautiful, Auto-Tuned voice pouring from the speakers all day — you might have assumed she was one of the crew members assessing the scenery, keeping the mood light, checking if anyone needed bottled water. As the team reset for a complex shot accompanied by a relentlessly looped fragment from her track, Aftab whispered offhandedly to a cameraperson, “Thank God the song is good!”“Raat Ki Rani” is Aftab’s first official music video and a rare instance of the musician outsourcing her distinctive vision. Many listeners first encountered her hypnotic and immersive style via her 2021 breakthrough, “Vulture Prince”: a minimalist blend of jazz, folk and ghazals, a form of Urdu poetry that incorporates themes of longing and loss.The album became a rare pandemic-era success for an independent artist, partly because its quiet, introspective music aligned with the times. It was forged in grief as a tribute to Aftab’s younger brother, who died in 2018, and the emotional intensity often came through her stunning vocals.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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    Susan Backlinie, First Shark Attack Victim in ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77

    Ms. Backlinie, a stunt woman, appeared in the terrifying opening scene of the 1975 blockbuster in which a great white shark attacks.The actress and stunt woman Susan Backlinie, whose portrayal of a violent death as the first shark attack victim in the opening scene of the blockbuster movie “Jaws” terrified moviegoers, died on Saturday. She was 77.Ms. Backlinie died at her home in California, her agent, Sean Clark, said on Sunday. He said she had a heart attack.“Jaws,” the 1975 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, memorably features Ms. Backlinie in a scene in which she played a skinny-dipper, Chrissie Watkins, who runs along the beach and dives into the water for a nighttime swim.The placid scene is shattered as she is suddenly pulled under the water. She screams while being violently thrashed by an unseen great white shark and tries desperately to cling to a clanging buoy only to be pulled below the water one final time.For the scene, Ms. Backlinie was secured to a harness, according to The Daily Jaws website. The Palm Beach Post reported that Ms. Backlinie was wearing a pair of jeans with metal plates stitched into the sides with cables attached.Susan Backlinie getting prepared for her memorable opening scene from “Jaws.”MPTV, via ReutersWe 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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    Alex Hassilev, the Last of the Original Limeliters, Dies at 91

    The trio’s witty, urbane arrangements made it one of the top acts of the early-1960s folk music revival. His gift for languages helped.Alex Hassilev, a multilingual, multitalented troubadour and the last original member of the Limeliters, one of the biggest acts of the folk revival of the early 1960s, died on April 21 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91.His wife, Gladys Hassilev, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was cancer.Before Beatlemania gripped America’s youth in 1964, the country fell in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music — and few acts drew more adoration than the Limeliters, a trio made up of Mr. Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough and Lou Gottlieb.Mr. Hassilev played banjo and guitar and sang baritone, not only in English but in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, all of which he spoke fluently. His bandmates were equally brainy: Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology and Mr. Yarbrough once worked as a bouncer to pay for Greek lessons.Urbane and witty, they packed coffeehouses and college auditoriums with a repertoire that mixed straight-faced folk standards like “The Hammer Song” and cheeky tunes like “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud” and “Charlie the Midnight Marauder.”At their height, between 1960 and 1962, the Limeliters were playing 300 dates a year and recording an album every few months, two of which — “Tonight in Person” (1960) and “The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters” (1961) — reached the Billboard Top 10.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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    Roger Corman’s Best Movies: A Streaming Guide

    The producer and director ran what was essentially a trade school for future stars and filmmakers like Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola and Pam Grier.It’s almost impossible to measure the impact Roger Corman, who died Thursday at 98, had on independent genre filmmaking and the careers of emerging young directors, performers and crew members who cut their teeth under his tutelage. As a producer, Corman mastered the economics of drive-in movies and B-pictures, turning out consistently profitable work that gave the audience what it wanted while allowing for a little creative flexibility. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Joe Dante and John Sayles didn’t exactly do their best work under Corman, nor did future stars like Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Jack Nicholson, Pam Grier and Diane Ladd. But his productions were like a trade school for New Hollywood.The 13 films below only scratch the surface of Corman’s huge filmography, but they do provide a glimpse into his ambition and his sensibility as both a director and a micro studio boss. From the macabre comedy of early films like “A Bucket of Blood” and “The Little Shop of Horrors” to heady forays into science fiction and the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Corman’s work as a director signaled the dime-stretching ingenuity that would define his tenure at New World Pictures, where he developed a formula for making money while revealing a keen eye for recognizing talent. Beatniks, bikers, gear heads, voyeurs, outcasts and rebels — all had a place in Corman’s world, on both sides of the screen.1959‘A Bucket of Blood’Stream it on AMC+ and Shudder. Rent it on Amazon and Apple TV.From early in his career, Corman took a keen interest in the emerging counterculture, even as he personally understood himself as an outsider. That dynamic animates his fiendishly clever, ultra-low-budget comedy about a square who schemes his way into the cool crowd through macabre means. “A Bucket of Blood” would turn out to be a rare lead role for legendary character actor Dick Miller. He stars as the busboy at a beatnik bar who uses his incredibly lifelike sculptures to impress the hip clientele. His secret? Best not to break through the plaster and find out.1960‘The Little Shop of Horrors’Stream it on AMC+. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play and YouTube.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