Aurelia Butler

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    Actors Authorize Potential Strike With Hollywood Writers Still Picketing

    The NewsThe union that represents more than 160,000 film and television actors voted on Monday night to authorize a strike, two days before it is to begin negotiations on a new labor deal with the Hollywood studios. The result from members of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 98 percent authorizing a strike, was expected, and it came during the sixth week of a strike by Hollywood writers and just a day after the Directors Guild of America tentatively agreed to a new contract.“Together we lock elbows, and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now!” Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, said in a statement.About 65,000 members cast ballots, or 48 percent of eligible voters. The actors’ current agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, expires on June 30.Members of SAG-AFTRA supported the striking Writers Guild of America at a rally last month outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The actors have the same worries as the writers.Many of the actors’ concerns echo what the Writers Guild of America is fighting for: higher wages; increased residual payments for their work, specifically for content on streaming services; and protections against using actors’ likenesses without permission as part of the enhanced abilities of artificial intelligence. According to the writers, the studios offered little more than “annual meetings to discuss” artificial intelligence, and they refused to bargain over limits on the technology.The Directors Guild, in contrast, said on Sunday that it had reached a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that A.I. is not a person and that generative A.I. cannot replace the duties performed by members.” Details about what that meant were not revealed.Background: It has been a long time since the last actors’ strike.The last time the actors went on strike was in 2000, in a dispute over commercial pay. The strike lasted close to six months.What’s Next: Negotiations begin on Wednesday.With negotiations expected to begin on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA is bullish about what this strike authorization means. “We’re obviously coming in from a position of strength, but we’re not looking to strike,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator. “We’re here to make a deal.” He added: “But we’re also not going to accept anything less than what our members deserve. If a strike is necessary to achieve that, we’re prepared.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement that “we are approaching these negotiations with the goal of achieving a new agreement that is beneficial to SAG-AFTRA members and the industry overall.” More

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    Review: In ‘Days of Wine and Roses,’ Two Souls Lost in an Ocean of Booze

    In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy new musical, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are a glamorous couple succumbing to alcoholism.If not for the unbridled drinking, it might easily have been a screwball comedy. Just look at them: Kirsten, blondly beautiful with a tolerant smile and a quick riposte; Joe, curly-haired cute but too arrogant to grasp that he’ll have to up his game to win this woman.Within moments of their meeting in 1950 in New York City, he bursts suavely into song — some presumptuous romantic blather about the two of them together under “a chapel of stars.” Whereupon she teases him right back down to earth.“Wow,” she says. “Who are you wooing? It can’t be me; you don’t know me.”This is the addiction-canon classic “Days of Wine and Roses,” though, so some of us already know them. In JP Miller’s luridly frank 1958 teleplay, starring Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson, and in Miller’s somewhat defanged 1962 film adaptation, starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, Kirsten and Joe are the attractive pair who make a harrowing, hand-in-hand descent into self-destruction by way of alcohol.In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy, aching musical based on the teleplay and the film, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are an awfully glamorous Kirsten and Joe — O’Hara, in exquisite voice, singing 14 of the show’s 18 numbers, seven of them solos. Directed in its world premiere by Michael Greif for Atlantic Theater Company, this “Days of Wine and Roses” fills the old Gothic Revival parish house that is the Linda Gross Theater with glorious sound.“Two people stranded at sea,” Kirsten and Joe sing sparely, hauntingly, in the brief and perfect prologue. “Two people stranded are we.”So they are. But when they first meet, at a party on a yacht in the East River, Kirsten is a nondrinker primly uninterested in alcohol, while Joe is determined that she indulge, because then she can be his drinking buddy. That she acquiesces and then falls so far makes him her corruptor, or so her taciturn father (a wonderfully gruff Byron Jennings) will always believe.“Get rid of him, Kirs,” he tells her when it is already too late. And anyway it’s the oceans of booze in their relationship that really need to go.Lucas and Guettel, who mined the same midcentury period to great success in their 2005 Broadway musical, “The Light in the Piazza,” in which O’Hara also starred, have each spoken publicly of past personal struggles with substance abuse. Excising the heavy-handedness of previous versions of “Days of Wine and Roses,” and softening the details of Joe’s degradation, they go deeper into the heart-rending familial fallout of addiction.Lucas (book) and Guettel (music and lyrics) occasionally presume the audience’s familiarity with the plot, or steer so far clear of melodrama that they veer into emotional aridity. But they also capture unmistakably the bliss that Kirsten and Joe feel inside their bubble of a threesome: just the two of them and alcohol, throwing a private party that goes on and on.The high that makes sobriety so unthinkable: James and O’Hara as a couple whose lives disintegrate.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNot for these reveling lovers the swelling strings of Henry Mancini, who scored the film; in the cocktail-mixing song “Evanesce,” Guettel gives them bright, fast music, frenetic and danceable — and when they do a bit of soft-shoe in salt spilled on the floor, there’s a playful heedlessness to their sandpaper percussion. (Choreography is by Sergio Trujillo and Karla Puno Garcia.) This is the high that makes sobriety so unthinkable for Kirsten and Joe, even as their lives disintegrate.Which they do, alarmingly, despite their love for each other and for their hyper-capable daughter, Lila (Ella Dane Morgan), who learns very young to look after herself, and to lie to cover for her parents. It’s Joe who finds the strength, eventually, to choose their child over alcohol, and Kirsten who feels abandoned by her husband, as she clings to what was their private world.Affecting as O’Hara is, Kirsten is less fully drawn than Joe, whose back story makes him a recently returned veteran of the Korean War. (The combat flashback Joe suffers during one drunken binge feels gratuitous.)Kirsten gets no such context, and consequently seems oddly contemporary, which makes the show, for all its ’50s design flourishes, feel unrooted in time. (Sets are by Lizzie Clachan, costumes by Dede Ayite.) Kirsten is aware of the sexism that pervades her era — she makes snappy reference to the minuscule number of female senators — but the show doesn’t entirely seem to be. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)There is no sense of the opprobrium that would greet a female alcoholic in the 1950s, let alone one who leaves her child, or the severe judgment that would be passed on a married woman who sleeps with strange men when she’s on a bender. Or how any of that would contribute to Kirsten’s own self-loathing.Still, this “Days of Wine and Roses” has wells of compassion for her thrall to alcohol.“Don’t give up on me,” Kirsten writes to her daughter. She might even mean it when she adds: “I’ll be home soon.”Days of Wine and RosesThrough July 16 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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    Jenny Lewis Keeps Finding the Magic

    Jenny Lewis didn’t mean to wind up with the marimba.But for the last year, a vintage percussion instrument has occupied pride of place in the singer-songwriter’s forest green home studio. She inherited it from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and an amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring. He was a surrogate dad to her, the kind who surreptitiously bought Hanukkah presents when money was tight in her household, and introduced her to jazz records when she was 10. She was the only person in the room with him when he passed away.“He was my mentor and my best friend and the most Jewish of all people in my life,” she said. “Jerry would want me to get lessons on the marimba.”Lewis, the 47-year-old indie artist whose country-rock troubadour style and evocative lyricism has earned her comparisons to songwriting greats from Nashville’s Music Row to Laurel Canyon, has suffered a lot of loss lately. Her mother’s death, in 2017, was the backdrop for her last album, “On the Line,” in 2019. Now, after losing Cohen and another mentor, the album designer and her “rock ’n’ roll dad” Gary Burden, there is “Joy’All,” an album out June 9 that grapples with aging, life cycles and romantic (im)possibility and yet somehow feels vivacious.Lewis inherited the marimba from her godfather, Jerry Cohen, a music editor for TV and movies and amateur musician, who died suddenly last spring.Ariel Fisher for The New York Times“My 40s are kicking my ass,” she sings on the third track over peppy acoustic guitars, “and handing them to me in a margarita glass.” The song is called “Puppy and a Truck,” her latest — and perhaps most lasting — prescription for happiness; she scored them both. “Having survived this moment, I felt like it was important to project something joyful,” she said.The dog, Bobby Rhubarb, a shiny black cockapoo, greeted me with a waist-high leap when I visited Lewis recently at her home at the end of a wildflower-lined canyon road in the San Fernando Valley. The house is called Mint Chip — there’s an ice cream cone etched in stained glass by the garage — and Lewis acquired it after promising to maintain the whimsical touches that the Disney animator who built it in the 1950s installed. It attracts the fantastical too: during the pandemic, Lewis said, she discovered a baby squirrel had been sneaking in and hiding acorns under her pillow.There is more than a little magic to her life. It’s in the way Lewis amplifies the space around her (she decked out that truck, a Chevy Colorado, with ersatz Gucci seat covers) and even the way she made it out of a career as a child actor to succeed in another artistic universe.“She’s a unicorn,” said Soleil Moon Frye, her fellow child star (“Punky Brewster”) and a friend for decades. Even as a preteen, Lewis had musical skills, said Moon Frye, who documented their Hollywood crew’s adolescence in home movies, released as the 2021 documentary “Kid 90.” “We would memorize these hip-hop songs — she was always so good at rapping.”Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, Lewis’s keystone is still hip-hop, reggae, soul and funk — “finding the story in rap-style verses and picking up an acoustic guitar, and kind of marrying the two worlds,” she said. A printout of the Wikipedia entry for “3 Feet High and Rising,” the landmark album by De La Soul, rested on the music stand in her studio; she was paging through it to understand all the samples they had used.Though she’s pegged as a country-tinged folk rock songwriter, her references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, Portishead and Frank Ocean.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesHer references for “Joy’All” included Tracy Chapman, whose conversational delivery she admires, Portishead and Frank Ocean. About half of the tracks for the LP were created over two years in Los Angeles. The rest she made in Nashville, where she has also had a home since 2017. It’s her fifth studio album as a solo artist — she started out in popular indie bands, Rilo Kiley and the Postal Service — and her first release on Blue Note Records, the storied jazz label. (After her own tour, she’ll be joining the Postal Service on the road this fall.)Dave Cobb, the Nashville producer (Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Chris Stapleton) who worked on the album, was awe-struck by her ease and perennial good moods. “If you don’t like Jenny Lewis, you don’t like people,” he said. Their sessions, tracking instruments like pedal steel and Mellotron, along with birdsong from Lewis’s Nashville backyard, flowed easily. “To say she led is absolute, because we all played to her,” he said, adding: “Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck.”She has the openness of someone who has spent a lifetime cheerfully talking about herself, and the staggeringly eccentric stories of a showbiz veteran. Sitting on the midnight blue couch in her minimalist living room, Lewis, in a sweatshirt, sunset-hued corduroys and a single gold hoop earring inscribed with her last name, touched on being Jewish; the spiritual guru Ram Dass; the female Elvis impersonator who was her childhood babysitter; the time her mother convinced Lucille Ball to have a sitcom wrap party in their ramshackle house (“Lucy walks in, and she goes, ‘What a dump!’”); and the swap meet in Atlanta where she buys knockoff Gucci socks by the armful. “I would never buy a real Gucci sock — that’s so silly,” she said.Telling stories about Cohen, she cried. When she was a child, he took her to his job on the Universal Studios lot and let her draw and animate her own movies using giant old film machines. Being with him when he died “was probably like the most important moment of my whole life,” she said.Lewis’s parents, itinerant lounge musicians, split when she was a toddler. Her acting career in the ’80s changed the family’s fortunes, for a time, but her mother’s drug addiction and instability outpaced her sitcom earnings. She was estranged from her parents for decades, then reconciled with each late in their lives. Her father’s bass harmonica sits on a stand on her mantel.“On my dad’s deathbed, he basically was like, ‘learn musical theory,’” she said. “So there has been this pressure, from my people, to do better and learn more.”Jess Wolfe, one half of the duo Lucius, befriended Lewis and sings backup on “Joy’All.” “I really understand the need for trying to lift yourself up through your art and hoping that it can do the same for other people — she did that, in her cool, effortless Jenny Lewis kind of way,” Wolfe said.“She’s always had to figure it out and take care of herself,” she added. “She is incredibly resourceful and incredibly clever about how to do something, effectively, efficiently and affordably. Truly, I’m always blown away by her in that sense — I will always feel creative when I’m around her.”“Everything she writes about is true. She literally showed up every day with the puppy and her truck,” the producer Dave Cobb said.Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesAt age 40, after Lewis separated from her longtime partner, the musician Johnathan Rice, she moved to New York for the first time, realizing a teenage ambition. She lived in her pal Annie Clark’s (St. Vincent) apartment for two years, starting the side project NAF there with some friends. Then came Nashville, where she learned how to two-step at a honky-tonk across from the Ryman Auditorium.In a rehearsal at a space covered in red velvet in Nashville last week, which she shared over a video call, Lewis directed her all-female backing band (she seeks out women for the stage and, for this outing, even has a female tour manager — a relative rarity in the industry, and a first for her). “You guys just pedal on that, and let me do my thing,” she said, as they prepared to sing “Acid Tongue,” the title track off her 2008 solo debut. “Let’s get those ‘oohs,’” she instructed. The harmonies rolled in. “Well done,” she told them. “It’s just feeling confident.”Back in L.A., Lewis had confided that aging as an unfiltered, undoctored music star isn’t easy. “I see myself and I don’t always love it,” she said. “But I’m trying to embrace being a woman in her 40s, and all that has to offer.”She is contentedly single now, though trying out a dating app, and itching to write about it — even, she admitted, enjoying that more.“My life is outrageous,” she said, although her songwriting is not straight autobiography. “But if I’m being honest, I’m in every single line.” More

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    Turning 100, the New Jersey Symphony Sticks to Home

    The orchestra could have rented Carnegie Hall for the celebration, but “our supporters are here, our audiences are here,” its chief executive said.When the New Jersey Symphony was planning this season’s centennial celebrations, which come to a close this weekend, a question kept coming up: Would the orchestra be going to Carnegie Hall?After all, appearing at Carnegie — even if that means renting the hall — is a mark of excellence and validation, an exclamation point on a tour or a special occasion. Like a 100th birthday.While the New Jersey Symphony has given many Carnegie performances over the years, most recently in 2012, it decided this was not the right time to return.“Sure, we can go to Carnegie,” Gabriel van Aalst, the orchestra’s chief executive, recently recalled thinking. “We could have hired it out; we could have done it. But I strongly felt that this major tentpole celebration should be us in our state. Our supporters are here, our audiences are here.”These were striking words from an institution long characterized by what — and where — it is not. The elephant in the concert hall is that New Jersey is squeezed, geographically, between two of the world’s greatest ensembles, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.Smaller than either of those giants, the New Jersey Symphony has lately punched above its weight in programming ambition — and, as the music world continues to rebuild from the pandemic, has prided itself on thinking locally rather than trying to compete with its famous neighbors. In Xian Zhang, its music director since 2016, the ensemble has an energetic, collaboration-minded leader well liked by the players.“I felt this orchestra was, for me, very easy to conduct,” said Zhang, who has been music director since 2016. “They read me easily.”Douglas Segars for The New York Times“Since I’ve gotten here, I’ve hired 10 positions,” Zhang said. “We only have 66 musicians total, so that’s a high number. And after the pandemic, when everybody came back, there’s been even more of a sense of unity and wanting to be together. It feels closer now, psychologically.”What was initially called the Montclair Art Association Orchestra made its debut on Nov. 27, 1922, boasting female members at a time when that was unusual. The inaugural program included Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which Joshua Bell will reprise in this weekend’s season finale.In its early years, the orchestra benefited from its closeness to New York, since many of its players were also part of the Philharmonic — and even now, the proximity can be valuable for attracting talent. (The star pianist Daniil Trifonov might not be such a perennial presence if he didn’t live just across the Hudson River in Battery Park City.)Under the decade-long directorship of the young conductor Samuel Antek, who died suddenly in 1958, community outreach — lowering ticket prices, appearing on the radio, hiring local choruses, creating children’s concerts — was a priority. Ten years later came the glamorous tenure of Henry Lewis, the first Black music director of a major orchestra, who presided over the kind of booming institutional growth that spread throughout the American orchestral world in the 1960s and ’70s.Henry Lewis, the first Black music director of a major orchestra, presided over a golden era of institutional growth. Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe ensemble has been known for charismatic podium leaders. Hugh Wolff’s programming was creative, and his performances polished. Under Zdenek Macal, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark opened in 1997, providing a home base for the orchestra, and Neeme Järvi, in charge from 2003 to 2009, led enthusiastically received concerts.When Zhang, born in China in 1973, made her first guest appearance, in 2010, her English was still a work in progress, recalled Eric Wyrick, the orchestra’s concertmaster.“She was very businesslike” at those initial rehearsals, he said. “Very straight up and down with her delivery. But then, at the performances, she just exploded. For a tiny person, she was just huge.”“I felt this orchestra was, for me, very easy to conduct,” Zhang said. “They read me easily.”With swooping yet clear gestures, she has guided the ensemble into repertory it hadn’t touched in a long time — like, earlier this year, Mahler’s Third Symphony — as well as major commissions from composers like Steve Mackey, many of them based in New Jersey.At a recent rehearsal for a concert that featured Randall Goosby as the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, she worked with the musicians on a new piece by Chen Yi, emphasizing buoyancy and the length of the musical line: “Everything needs to be lighter and have a lot of space.” (With the composer in the house, it was a rare moment in the music world — a rehearsal being guided entirely by women of Asian descent: Zhang, Chen and the ensemble’s assistant conductor, Tong Chen.)“They’re faster than a lot of orchestras to grasp different things,” Zhang said after the rehearsal — a necessity, since the group is constantly traveling among its five main performance spaces across the state.“Because we’re not a behemoth, we can be more responsive to community needs,” van Aalst said. “Traditionally orchestras either say, ‘Come to us, we’re wonderful,’ or they go out into communities and say, ‘Hey, listen to us.’ We were very intentional that we were going to go to communities and ask, ‘What do you need from us?’”Zdenek Macal with the orchestra at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which became its home base.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThis approach has meant bigger and richer Lunar New Year celebrations than at most American orchestras, and an intriguing performance of Indian music in May that aimed to engage with the state’s substantial South Asian community. The players’ contract has a strong chamber component, encouraging participation in educational activities.“We’re not going to compete with the New York Phil,” van Aalst said. “We’re not going to compete with Philadelphia. That’s not the point. We have been very intentional about framing the orchestra as ‘your New Jersey Symphony.’ We’re here for your community.”Zhang’s current contract extends through the 2027-28 season, at which point hers will be, at 12 years, the longest music directorship in the orchestra’s history. “She could have done this for eight years and gone and done other things,” van Aalst said. “But I think she loves being here; there’s a symbiosis.”There are also things to look forward to: new repertory, including more Mahler and a robust slate of commissions, as well as hopes to create a new building that the orchestra would own — unlike the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which is its own entity — devoted to offices, rehearsals and education. In the even longer term, there are dreams for a summer venue for the region, along the lines of the Hollywood Bowl.While Zhang said she would love to lead the orchestra on tour, including internationally, there doesn’t seem to be much worry about proving the ensemble’s bona fides — particularly nearby.“I would rather commission two new pieces from New Jersey composers than spend the money to go to Carnegie Hall,” van Aalst said. “That’s actually driving the art form forward; that’s actually celebrating the orchestra.” More

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    Taylor Swift Halts Morgan Wallen’s Run at No. 1

    After 12 straight weeks at the top, the country star’s “One Thing at a Time” yields to Swift’s “Midnights,” which was reissued in expanded editions.For 12 weeks, nothing could stop Morgan Wallen’s domination of the Billboard chart with his latest album, “One Thing at a Time.” Not Metallica. Not Ed Sheeran. Not the Jonas Brothers or solo projects from two members of BTS.Then came deluxe reissues of “Midnights,” Taylor Swift’s seven-month-old LP.With two expanded editions featuring bonus tracks, “Midnights” returns to No. 1, notching its sixth time at the top. One of the new versions, called “The Late Night Edition,” was primarily sold as a CD at Swift’s current stadium tour, though for 24 hours it was also available as a download from the singer’s website. Counting all variations, “Midnights” logged the equivalent of 282,000 sales in the United States last week, including 196,000 copies sold as complete packages and 108 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate.“Midnights” has been a steady hit since it came out last October. In its 32 weeks on the chart, it has never left the Top 10, and in all but three of those weeks it was in the Top 5. In the United States, “Midnights” has had the equivalent of nearly five million sales and been streamed 3.2 billion times.Lately, as Swift’s Eras Tour has become a cultural juggernaut, her wider catalog has also dotted the upper ranks of the album chart. Last week, Swift had nine titles in the Top 40. (“Lover,” from 2019, is No. 6 this week.) Swift also announced recently that a rerecorded version of her 2010 album “Speak Now” — featuring the hits “Mine,” “Back to December” and “Mean” — will come out in July.The return of “Midnights” bumps Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” to No. 2. Its 12-week consecutive run at the top was historic, falling just one week short of tying a record set by Stevie Wonder in 1977 among albums that open at No. 1 and hold there. Wallen’s last release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 5 this week, its 122nd appearance in the Top 10.Also this week, “Almost Healed,” the new album by the Chicago rapper Lil Durk — featuring guest appearances by Alicia Keys, 21 Savage and Wallen — starts at No. 3 with the equivalent of 125,000 sales, including 168 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete package. SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4. More

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    ‘Apes Together Strong’ Review: Rooting for the Small Investors

    The 2021 “short squeeze” of GameStop was a rare victory for the little guy. This documentary explains why the house — Wall Street wealth, that is — almost always wins.If we accept the proposition that having money is sexy, we should also be able to admit that the most aggressive ways of making lots of money — the banking schemes and strategies that compound the wealth of the already rich — are not. Are they unfair to the working class? Certainly. Possibly criminal? Sure. But sexy, no. Among the more nefarious activities known to capitalism, big investing is particularly dry.In “The Big Short,” a 2015 fictionalized account of the mid-aughts mortgage-market collapse, the director Adam McKay attempted to skirt this dynamic by having attractive performers including Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez explain the details of market manipulation. In the new documentary “Apes Together Strong,” the filmmakers (and twin brothers) Finley Mulligan and Quinn Mulligan, working with a microbudget and no access to movie stars, detail how to short-sell a stock with a rough-hewed sketch involving a bag of sugar that is borrowed, sold and re-bought at a profit — or not.The title of the movie is the motto of the talking simians in the latter-day “Planet of the Apes” film franchise; it was adopted by the retail investors who led the GameStop “short squeeze” of 2021. At that time, small investors succeeded in significantly raising the price of stock in GameStop, a store chain targeted by hedge funds for market assassination.In a fast-paced style derived from Michael Moore or Morgen Spurlock, the Mulligans interview retail-investor comrades and banking pros sympathetic to the small investors’ cause. The villains, both past and present — the Reagan White House with its push to deregulate banking; big finance honchos; hedge fund vultures — are seen in archival footage, mostly.The lessons here are old, and at one point, the filmmakers use the phrase “the house always wins.” But there’s hope, because there’s always hope in such tales. While Dennis M. Kelleher, the chief executive of the nonprofit investor’s advocacy group Better Markets, says, “Wall Street wins largely because they are unopposed,” the movie closes on a rallying cry.Apes Together StrongNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Amazon. More

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    Kaija Saariaho’s Luminous Music Was a Personal Invitation

    The Finnish composer, who died at 70, is remembered by one of her longtime collaborators.The history of classical music is a history of creators of distinct originality. Its evolution has always happened through the work of visionary individuals and their ability to expand our understanding of the world through their works. These artists widen our horizons, invent, search, open doors and create paths for others. It takes extraordinary force, and courage, to follow an inner voice that no one else knows or understands yet.One of these visionaries was the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, who died on Friday at 70. Her legacy is monumentally important, luminous and larger than we can fully comprehend at this time.When I first got to know her as a person in the early 2000s, I had already admired her from a distance. She was a well-known figure in Finland, from the group Korvat Auki! (Ears Open!) in her youth and her collaborations with Avanti!, a summer festival, and in my mind, she and her music were one and the same.I conducted “Cinq Reflets” at the Helsinki Festival in 2002, and over the years that followed, I got to know both her and her musical universe more profoundly; and I came to understand how deeply personal her music really is. It is not something external, which is given or delivered to us. Rather, as I see it, it is something that allows us to enter into her intimate inner world. We are, generously, given an opportunity to look within her.It’s mind-blowing to see how a deeply personal creative voice can be so powerful that, even if the language expands in time and is more and more refined over the years and decades of their creative work, its originality shines through from the very beginning, so bright that it is immediately recognizable. Unlike anything else, it becomes a new element in the greater musical universe.Kaija’s music is like this: both new and timeless, both personal and universal, from the moment it is first heard. Whether her works are electronic or acoustic, staged or in concert, we are always transported to another time and place.The creative process for a composer is fundamentally solitary, but a characteristic element of Kaija’s working process was collaboration. She knew how the interaction between a creator and an interpreter means much more than simple questions of technique, volume or tempos — how it also means having the willingness to be on the same wavelength to be able to transmit the right atmosphere with the greatest care and respect. To write a role for a certain singer, a concerto for a soloist genuinely interested in her view of the instrument, an orchestra piece or an opera, knowing who would be conducting would, I believe, liberate her creative energy to full freedom.Her music is spellbindingly beautiful and reflects colorful imagination, but in a way it’s also a form of sonic research, through science and artisanship — and, always, poetry and reflection. Kaija has changed music because she has changed our perception and our way to listen. This music is living. It vibrates and breathes, and it has to get its own space and freedom, and it feels like it speaks to us from another world. Electronics and acoustic instruments, solo or full orchestra, the human voice, words, dreams — it’s fascinating and impressive how, in spite of different tools and changing proportions, the final result is always unique, but at the same time it also perfectly coheres with other pieces. It is a language in which specific sounds blend together and become an amazing paradox of crystal-clear precision and luminous haze.The most refined nuances are our sensory vocabulary, and in Kaija’s works nuance is everything: Understanding the essential meaning in each expression is key. For a composer, having her message passed on to the audience in the right way, with the right sensitivity, is absolutely essential.Kaija’s closest longtime collaborators — such as Jean-Baptiste Barrière, her husband; the cellist Anssi Karttunen; the flutist Camilla Hoitenga; and the conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen — recognized her talent and trusted her instinct, understanding her unique voice from the beginning. There were us others of a younger generation who joined Kaija’s musical family later, and she would never fail to express how grateful she was for our work. We in turn will forever feel a deep gratitude for the trust, for all the ways she supported us through her warmth and care, and for all the friendships that have grown out of our shared love for her art.She was a mother, exceptionally devoted to her children and family. In time, her children Aleksi and Aliisa also became working partners, and Kaija repeatedly spoke about how much she learned from them and their observations. But this nurturing and caring weren’t limited to them alone. Having been allowed to be a part of her artistic family has been the greatest privilege imaginable; her generosity in supporting the young generation of composers and musicians is also an indicator of her thinking, which was aimed to keep building things bigger than ourselves. She was warm and funny too, and a very wise and compassionate friend — a truly, remarkably beautiful person, both outside and in.The courage with which Kaija built her life’s work is enormous, considering the condescending or humiliating attitudes she had to endure as a woman early in her career — be it in the press, by institutions or in private encounters. She never wanted to draw much attention to this, but there were hurtful experiences she only shared after years of close friendship. Her nobility and strength to rise above all that, however — in keeping on, then showing the way to others — was incredible, strong and exemplary. She knew that even in that respect, her work carried huge importance, but she chose to let the music speak for itself.She is and remains a role model, not only for her place in music history, but also for her ethics and her courage to speak up about topics that she considered important. She chose complex subjects for her operas, such as those of “Adriana Mater” and “Innocence,” and the theater would include everything: the unbearable truths, but also the soothing dream world — which for her was the most central element of “Innocence,” not the tragic events themselves. Through this genuine fearlessness and honesty, she restored many people’s belief in opera as art form.It is impossible to imagine the world — the music world or my own life — without Kaija. But her presence is with us in her art. What helps now, in the grief, is the inner light present in her works, which we will now keep carrying forward, always moving toward the light. More

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    The Man Reimagining Disney Classics for Today’s World

    Sean Bailey is in charge of live-action remakes of films like “The Little Mermaid.” It’s a job that puts him in the middle of a partisan divide.For more than a decade, Sean Bailey has run Disney’s animated film “reimagining” factory with quiet efficiency and superhero-sized results. His live-action “Aladdin” collected $1.1 billion at the box office, while a photorealistic “The Lion King” took in $1.7 billion. A live-action “Beauty and the Beast” delivered $1.3 billion.Disney likes the cash. The company also views Mr. Bailey’s remake operation as crucial to remaining relevant. Disney’s animated classics are treasured by fans, but most showcase ideas from another era, especially when it comes to gender roles: Be pretty, girls, and things might work out.The reimaginings, as Mr. Bailey refers to his remakes, find ways to make Disney stories less retrograde. His heroines are empowered, and his casting emphasizes diversity. A live-action “Snow White,” set for release next year, stars the Latina actress Rachel Zegler as the princess known as “the fairest of them all.” Yara Shahidi played Tinker Bell in the recent “Peter Pan and Wendy,” making her the first Black woman to portray the character onscreen.“We want to reflect the world as it exists,” Mr. Bailey said.But that worldview — and business strategy — has increasingly put Disney and Mr. Bailey, a low-profile and self-effacing executive, in the middle of a very loud, very unpolite cultural fight. For every person who applauds Disney, there seems to be a counterpart who complains about being force-fed “wokeness.”Many companies are finding themselves in this vise — Target, Anheuser-Busch, Nike — but Disney, which has a powerful impact on children as they are forming life beliefs, has been uniquely challenged. In this hyperpartisan moment, both sides of the political divide have been pounding on Disney to stand with them, with movies that come from Mr. Bailey’s corner of the Magic Kingdom as prime examples.Consider his remake of “The Little Mermaid,” which arrived in theaters two weeks ago and cost an estimated $375 million to make and market. The new version scuttles problematic lyrics from the 1989 original. (“It’s she who holds her tongue who gets a man.”) In the biggest change, Halle Bailey, who is Black, plays Ariel, the mermaid. Disney has long depicted the character as white, including at its theme parks.The casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” was met with racist commentary online.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesSupport for Ms. Bailey, notably from people of color and film critics, has been offset by a torrent of racist commentary on social media and movie fan sites. Others have blasted “The Little Mermaid” for failing to acknowledge the horrors of slavery in the Caribbean. A few L.G.B.T.Q. people have criticized Disney for hiring a straight male makeup artist for the villainous Ursula, whose look in the animated film was inspired by a drag queen.Disney has long regarded these kinds of social media storms as tempests in teapots: trending today, replaced by a new complaint tomorrow. In 2017, for instance, a theater in Alabama refused to play the live-action “Beauty and the Beast” because it contained a three-second glimpse of two men dancing in each other’s arms. It became a global news story. Ultimately, the fracas seemed to have no impact on ticket sales.The upshot? Disney hoped “The Little Mermaid” would generate as much as $1 billion worldwide, with the furor evaporating once the film arrived in theaters. Feedback scores from test screenings were strong, as were early reviews. “Alan Menken just told me that he thinks this one is better than the animated film,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said at the film’s premiere last month, referring to the Oscar-winning composer.Instead, “The Little Mermaid” will top out closer to $600 million, box office analysts said on Sunday, largely because the film faltered overseas, where it was “review bombed,” with online trolls flooding movie sites with racist one-star reviews. The film has done well in North America, outperforming “Aladdin” and receiving an A grade from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls, although attendance by white moviegoers has been soft in some parts of the United States, according to analysts. Support from Black and Latino audiences have made up the slack.Mr. Bailey declined to comment on the racist responses to the film. “While the international opening was softer than we would have liked, the film is playing exceptionally well which we believe sets us up for a very long run,” he said on Saturday.Mr. Bailey, 53, has survived box office shoals that were far worse, including misfires like “The Lone Ranger.” The less said about his live-action “Mulan,” the better. But Disney has always supported him. “I’ve taken some big swings and had some big misses,” Mr. Bailey said. “I’m grateful that the leadership of the company understands that is part of any creative business.”Mr. Bailey has been president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production for 13 years — an eternity in Hollywood, where film chiefs are often jettisoned every few years. Over that time, Disney has been roiled by executive firings, multiple restructuring efforts and shifting strategies for film distribution. The steady-handed Mr. Bailey, who is popular with stars and their agents, has helped provide stability.“He’s a nice, decent, respectful, fair guy who does his job quietly, without fanfare,” said Kevin Huvane, a Creative Artists Agency co-chairman. “But that doesn’t mean that he is passive. Quite the opposite. He gets his hands dirty. If a deal isn’t working, he gets in there and he finds a way to make it happen.”Angelina Jolie’s two “Maleficent” films took in a combined $1.3 billion at the box office.Disney EnterprisesIn 2014, for instance, Mr. Bailey flew to Budapest from Los Angeles at a moment’s notice to have dinner with Angelina Jolie. She had agreed to star in “Maleficent” but seemed to be getting cold feet after reading a revised script. Whatever he told her worked; “Maleficent” and a sequel took in a combined $1.3 billion.“Sean is what we don’t see often these days, and certainly not in film,” Ms. Jolie said by email. “He’s consistent, stable and decent. When we have challenges, as all films do, he is even and fair. It may not be exciting for a story, but it is what we need more of.”Disney’s live-action films did not often showcase women before Mr. Bailey arrived, and diversity was almost nonexistent. Mr. Bailey has almost exclusively focused on female-led stories. He has also championed young actresses of color — Storm Reid, Nico Parker, Naomi Scott — and female directors, including Ava DuVernay (“A Wrinkle in Time”), Julia Hart (“Stargirl”) and Mira Nair (“Queen of Katwe”).“I think what he is doing is vastly important,” said Geena Davis, an actress and gender equity activist. “It’s not just about inspiring little girls. It’s about normalizing for men and boys, making it perfectly normal to see a girl doing interesting and important things and taking up space.”“Haunted Mansion,” based on the Disneyland ride, will arrive in theaters on July 28.Walt Disney StudiosThe next film from Mr. Bailey’s division, “Haunted Mansion,” arrives in theaters on July 28 and stars LaKeith Stanfield (an Oscar nominee for “Judas and the Black Messiah”), Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson and Tiffany Haddish. “Haunted Mansion” was directed by Justin Simien, the creator of “Dear White People,” and inspired by a Disney theme park ride.“I felt that we had an opportunity to try and create a really cool, Disney-appropriate PG-13 movie that does have some real scares but also charms and delights,” Mr. Bailey said.Mr. Bailey, who watched “The Little Mermaid” 18 times as it worked its way through Disney’s pipeline, has more than 50 movies in various stages of development and production, including live-action versions of “Moana,” “Hercules” and “Lilo and Stitch.” Yes, “Hocus Pocus 3” is happening. (His division makes two or three big-budget films annually for release in theaters and three modestly budgeted movies for Disney+.)“Mufasa: The Lion King,” a photorealistic prequel directed by Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning “Moonlight” screenwriter, is scheduled for release in 2024. Mr. Bailey said “The Lion King” could expand into “a big, epic saga” like the “Star Wars” franchise. “There’s a lot of room to run if we can find the stories,” he said.Restarting the five-film “Pirates of the Caribbean” series is another priority, although nothing official has been announced. “We think we have a really good, exciting story that honors the films that have come before but also has something new to say,” Mr. Bailey said. Will the franchise’s problematic star, Johnny Depp, return as Captain Jack Sparrow? “Noncommittal at this point,” Mr. Bailey said, seemingly inching the door open.One of the knocks on Mr. Bailey is that he has not created a new franchise; almost none of his bets on original movies have paid off. The sled-dog drama “Togo,” made for Disney+ in 2019, was a critical hit that failed to break out. “Tomorrowland,” an ambitious fantasy from 2015, crashed and burned. At some point, studios cannot endlessly recycle old stuff. A Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox ends up as a blank page.“It’s really hard to crack through and get an original, hugely commercial win,” Mr. Bailey said. “We’re going to keep trying.” He pointed to a project based on “The Graveyard Book,” about a boy raised by the supernatural occupants of a cemetery.One criticism of Mr. Bailey is that he has not created an original franchise. “We’re going to keep trying,” he said.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesEvery studio has been struggling to come up with original hits. But the added glare that seems to come with any Disney effort adds a degree of difficulty.Like Mr. Iger, Mr. Bailey does not hide his political leanings. He is close to Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, a friendship that started in 2000, when Mr. Bailey held a fund-raiser for him in Hollywood. (Mr. Bailey has a lot of famous friends. He goes way back with Ben Affleck, helped Dwayne Johnson start a tequila brand and serves on the board of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.)But Mr. Bailey is in the business of making movies for everyone. That challenge is part of what keeps his job interesting, he said.“How do you deal with audiences that are changing outside our country, inside our country?” Mr. Bailey said. “How do you tell stories — stories that matter to everyone — in a world that is increasingly polarized?” More