Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Music

    Ingrid Haebler, Pianist Known for Her Mastery of Mozart, Is Dead

    In concerts and on dozens of recordings, she applied a delicate touch that critics said set her apart from other performers.Ingrid Haebler, a pianist who drew particular acclaim for her performances and recordings of the works of Mozart, impressing critics while still in her 20s with elegant interpretations that set her apart from other musicians of her day, died on May 14. She was believed to be 96.Decca Classics, which last year released “Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings she made for the Philips label, posted news of her death on Facebook. The Austrian newspaper The Salzburger Nachrichten reported her death, attributing the information to her circle of friends, but did not say where she died.Ms. Haebler was born in Vienna, probably on June 20, 1926 (some news reports said 1929). Her father was a baron. Her mother played piano and began teaching Ingrid when she was a young child; she gave her first public performance at 11. They lived in Poland when Ingrid was young but settled in Austria in the late 1930s.As a teenager, she wrote poetry and dabbled in composing. But at 19 she decided to focus fully on piano — “I had to kill a lot of my interests,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1964. She trained at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria and in the early 1950s began earning accolades at European piano competitions. By 1954, recordings she made for Vox with the Pro Musica Symphony of Vienna were drawing notice in the United States.“Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings, was released last year by Decca Classics.“A delicate — but not finicky, to make the distinction — articulation of Mozart that is uncommon today is the way Ingrid Haebler plays the A major (K. 414) and B-flat major (K. 595) Piano Concertos,” Cyrus Durgin, a music critic for The Boston Globe, wrote in August 1954, reviewing one of those records. “You will always find people (including musicians) defending or attacking this manner, but it does meet Mozart’s requirement that his keyboard music ‘flow like oil and water.’”That same year she performed as a soloist in England with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart was her calling card, but she proved an adept interpreter of other composers as well, as she did in 1956 when she played a program of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert at Wigmore Hall in London. She “captured and held spellbound her audience,” The Daily Telegraph of Britain wrote.By 1958, The Bristol Evening Post reported, her stature was such that, at the Bath Festival, she felt free to reject the Steinway that was provided to her during the practice session and sent the organizers scrambling to find another piano.At that festival, she further showed that there was more to her than Mozart. She played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and impressed The Daily Telegraph of Britain. “Without ever invoking a spurious foresight of the Beethoven that was to come,” the newspaper wrote, “she placed the work in the 18th century, yet across the gulf that already separated him from Mozart.”Ms. Haebler in 1959. “The poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart,” one critic wrote, “is a rare treat.”The New York TimesIn October 1959 she made her American debut in Minneapolis with the Minneapolis Symphony, playing the Mozart Piano Concerto in B-flat.“The acclaim of the audience brought the pianist back to the stage five times,” Ross Parmenter wrote in a review in The New York Times, “and the members of the orchestra joined in the applause.”Ms. Haebler, who was a baroness but did not use the title, was still impressing audiences with her Mozart interpretations in 1976, when, at Hunter College, she played her first New York recital, augmenting her program with works by Schubert and Debussy but shining as usual on the Mozart selections.“This was cloudless, untroubled Mozart,” Donal Henahan wrote in a review in The Times, “in line with the last century’s view of him as a miraculously blessed child.”Ms. Haebler continued to tour until early in this century. On her numerous recordings, many of them for Philips, she covered a range of composers, but again it was often the Mozart recordings that stood out. Reviewing her recording of Mozart sonatas in 1990 for The Kingston Whig-Standard of Ontario, the critic Richard Perry zeroed in on what made her refreshingly different.“In a concert world rife with pianists of dazzling technique who seemed forced by competition and cavernous concert halls to demonstrate their mettle at every turn,” he wrote, “the poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart is a rare treat.”Information on Ms. Haebler’s survivors was not immediately available.Christopher F. Schuetze More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    The Conductor Thomas Guggeis Is Rising Fast After a Surprise Debut

    Thomas Guggeis was a young repetiteur at the Berlin State Opera five years ago when he was asked a career-changing question: Could he conduct “Salome”?He had worked with the singers, but this new production of Strauss’s opera was meant to be led by the veteran maestro Christoph von Dohnányi — until a dispute with the director led him to back out mere hours before the final dress rehearsal. So Guggeis went on in his place. And he was back in the pit on opening night.“This was a situation of a star is born,” said Bernd Loebe, the general manager of Frankfurt Opera, who saw Guggeis lead that performance.It wouldn’t be the last time Guggeis, now 29, stepped into a high-pressure situation. Earlier this season, as the State Opera’s Kapellmeister, or house conductor, he picked up rehearsals and two runs of a new “Ring” cycle after Daniel Barenboim withdrew because of illness. And on May 30, he will make his North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a revival of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer,” taking over from Jaap van Zweden.Things are happening quickly — Guggeis starts as the general music director of the Frankfurt Opera this fall — but he is trying to maintain a steady development that some of his peers have abandoned in favor of peripatetic celebrity.“There was a question of how to go on,” he said in an interview at the State Opera here. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm. If an opportunity is meant to be, there will still be interest and possibility in two or three years.”APART FROM an uncle — the accomplished percussionist Edgar Guggeis — Guggeis grew up in a nonmusical family in Bavaria. His father was the director of a brewery, and his mother was a tax clerk. But he played instruments from a young age, and sang in choirs.Guggeis followed those interests to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, but not with single-minded focus. He studied conducting but, aware of the precarious life it promised, also picked up a degree in quantum physics.“I was really interested in the subject,” he said, “and I just wanted to have something on the safe side. You never know how it works out as a conductor. When I started, if you asked me, ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years?’ I would say I don’t know. But I will have this other degree, and I can always go back to that.”Guggeis is trying to maintain a steady development. “There was a question of how to go on,” he said. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm.”Ava Pellor for The New York TimesNow, Guggeis might read about a discovery related to something he remembers studying in school. But his specialty was theoretical particle physics, which is impossible to follow on a part-time or casual basis. So he has stopped keeping up with the field.During his time in Munich, Guggeis was often at the Bavarian State Opera while it was under the music directorships of Kent Nagano and Kirill Petrenko. In between classes one day, he sat in on a rehearsal of Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” led by Petrenko. By the second act, he decided to skip school and stay. He was hooked, and saw nearly everything the house had to offer in what amounted to a parallel education. “To see those conductors,” he said, “was amazing, but also so formative.”Guggeis continued to study conducting in Milan, then returned to Germany to serve as a repetiteur in Berlin. He coached singers from the piano but almost never spoke with the house’s long-reigning maestro, Daniel Barenboim. “It was hard to get close to him,” Guggeis said, “because everyone wants something from him there.” But slowly, the two built a relationship in which Barenboim became increasingly approachable.For his part, Barenboim didn’t need much time at all. He recalled watching the young conductor lead a rehearsal and immediately thinking he was gifted.“You can see these things straight away with somebody,” Barenboim said. “And he was obviously a very natural conductor. He had a rare combination of easiness and comfortable responsibility. He moved his arms in a natural way, and was naturally in command. From the very beginning.”Their bond deepened. “It felt like family,” Guggeis said. “He was generous, supportive, kind and always there when I had questions about career.” They talked about music, art and philosophy, or gossiped about Pierre Boulez. Between those conversations and the rehearsals Guggeis would watch and later ask about, Barenboim became, he said, “the most influential mentor for me.”GUGGEIS BELONGS to a class of conductors — more common in Germany — that comes up through opera houses rather than concert halls, even if their careers eventually balance both. He said that the repertoire he learned as a repetiteur has stuck “deeply in my head and guts,” and that his time at the State Opera in Berlin, as well as in Stuttgart and Berlin as a Kapellmeister, has defined his approach to the podium, such as how to manage rehearsals and soloists or wrangle a large-scale work for orchestra and chorus.“You can never buy that experience,” he said, “no matter how talented you are.”He has also tried to test out famous pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony away from very public stages like the Philharmonie in Berlin or the Musikverein in Vienna. He has conducted the Beethoven, but in Italy, in a five-concert series with the Milan Symphony Orchestra, following advice he once heard attributed to Herbert von Karajan, that regardless of where you lead this work, the first 15 times won’t be good; so start early.Guggeis at the Met. In fall, he becomes general music director of the Frankfurt Opera.Ava Pellor for The New York TimesWhen Guggeis shares memories and insights like that, he sounds like a conductor looking back on a career rather than forward. His mix of confidence and self-awareness was part of what endeared him to Barenboim, who said: “He’s very talented, but he knows that he has a lot to learn. He has a great curiosity, and that will go until the end of his life.”Curiosity, but also the courage to take on classics by Wagner and Strauss in front of the boo-happy audience at the Berlin State Opera. (Reviews during his time as Kapellmeister have tended to be positive.) So, when he stepped into the pit for “Salome,” it was just another day on the job. He was supported by Dohnányi, who remains a mentor — and gave him most of his score library — and stunned Barenboim.“It was remarkable,” Barenboim said. “There was no ‘What shall we do now?’ His future was absolutely clear.”Loebe, Frankfurt Opera’s general manager, was similarly struck by this 24-year-old conductor he had never heard of before. “I wanted to know more,” he said. “So I saw him many more times, and we started to have many meetings.” Loebe was looking for a new music director, and Guggeis was “the only guy I wanted.”Frankfurt’s orchestra, Loebe added, was used to having two or three choices, but he insisted on Guggeis, who formed a quick bond with the musicians. During the pandemic, he led them in a streamed performance of Mozart’s “Requiem” — one of the few videos online of his conducting — that reveals his clear direction, level head and sense of shape. Then, in 2021, he was named as their new music director.Mozart is how Guggeis will begin his tenure next season, with a new production of “Le Nozze di Figaro” premiering on Oct. 1. In a demonstration of the range he hopes for there, he will also lead Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre,” Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and Strauss’s “Elektra,” in addition to concert programs.Guggeis’s inaugural season in Frankfurt took shape as he was wrapping up his time as Kapellmeister in Berlin. There, he was working with Barenboim on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring” that was unveiled all at once last October, an immense and virtually unheard-of undertaking for a repertory house. It was years in the making, but Barenboim’s health rapidly declined that summer, and the planned four cycles were split between Guggeis and Christian Thielemann.When his condition permitted, Barenboim shared his wisdom with Guggeis about, for example, which notoriously tricky passages in the operas’ 16 hours of music should be the focus of rehearsals. They still speak; Guggeis values his advice, seeing it as the equivalent of singers working with coaches long into their careers.Guggeis was also in constant contact with Thielemann, an experienced hand in Wagner. “We were working out problems together,” he said. “It was very interesting. But then he would also say things like not to worry about ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ because it’s self-going, it will become loud by itself. All this was really fantastic for me.”Earlier this month, Guggeis said goodbye to Berlin, for now; his tenure as Kapellmeister ends this season. He led two concerts with the Staatskapelle, the opera house’s storied orchestra, and was on a plane to New York for “Holländer” rehearsals the next day.“The little bird is now flying from its nest,” he said in an interview at the Met. “I’m conducting professionally since five years, more or less. I was with this fabulous orchestra and now I’m here working at this tremendous place. To be here is something I never would have expected, and couldn’t ever wish for.” More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Movies

    ‘The Machine’ Review: A Hard-Partying Comedian Pays for His Sins

    In a movie extrapolated from one of his stand-up bits, Bert Kreischer is dragged to Russia to face a gory but still comedic reckoning.The star of this picture, Bert Kreischer, is one of those popular stand-up comedians who’s not zeitgeist-adjacent enough to generate much in the way of think pieces or buzz. But in the late 1990s, as a student at Florida State University, he was the subject of a Rolling Stone magazine profile that named him “the top partyer at the Number One Party School in the country.”The late 1990s were a while ago, and today Kreischer is a hefty 50-year-old who looks mildly partied out. That’s part of his shtick — he performs stand-up while shirtless. In “The Machine,” he plays a fictionalized version of himself, initially in a penitent mode — a family man who’s royally ticked off his clan. At his daughter’s 16th birthday party, Bert and his carpet salesman dad, Albert, are accosted, at gunpoint, by the mobster Irina (Iva Babic) and taken to Russia, where Bert is to make amends for his part in a drunken train robbery decades before.This gore-steeped shaggy dog story is extrapolated from an actual Kreischer bit. As they dodge a score of Slavic psycho killers who are after an heirloom Bert stole, father and son hash out their issues (of course).You may wonder, if Kreischer is such a popular stand-up comedian, why he hasn’t done more television and movie acting. Well. Here he hits his marks and stays in his persona lane, but he’s not a performer who can carry a movie. Mark Hamill, as his dad, comes closer to crusty-old-man territory than one might have predicted. He’s practically Wilford Brimley.The director Peter Atencio has gotten reasonable results in the absurdist meta-comedy realm (“Keanu,” for instance), but he can’t cook with these ingredients. Even when the relentlessly salty humor gets fully crass (a dog is thrown out a high window), the product is bland.The MachineRated R for language, gore and extreme partying. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Music

    Celine Dion Cancels the Remainder of Her World Tour

    The pop star, who announced in December that she was suffering from a rare neurological condition, said she was “working really hard to build back my strength.”The powerhouse pop superstar Celine Dion announced Friday morning on social media that she was canceling the remainder of her Courage World Tour through April 2024 in order to focus on her recovery from a rare autoimmune and neurological disease.Dion, 55, first shared publicly that she was grappling with the medical condition — called stiff person syndrome, which causes progressive stiffness and severe muscle spasms — in an emotional Instagram video that she posted in December 2022, as she canceled or postponed a number of tour dates.“I am so sorry to disappoint all of you once again,” Dion said in the statement on Friday. “I’m working really hard to build back my strength, but touring can be very difficult even when you’re 100 percent. It’s not fair to you to keep postponing the shows, and even though it breaks my heart, it’s best that we cancel everything now until I’m really ready to be back onstage again. I want you all to know, I’m not giving up … And I can’t wait to see you again!”The remaining 2023 tour dates had been scheduled to run from Aug. 26 in Amsterdam through Oct. 4 in Helsinki, Finland; then from March 6, 2024, in Prague through April 22, 2024, in London. Tickets purchased for the canceled dates can be refunded via the original point of sale, according to the statement.Before the pandemic paused Dion’s tour in March 2020, she had completed the first 52 dates of the tour, in North America. “Unfortunately, these spasms affect every aspect of my daily life sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I am used to,” she said in the video posted last year.Dion can be seen in her first feature movie role, alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, in the romantic comedy-drama “Love Again,” which was released this month.After the announcement of her illness last year, Dion, known for her renditions of ballads like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On,” was met with a remarkable outpouring from fans, particularly in Quebec, the French-speaking Canadian province where Dion was born. More

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Music

    Mary Turner Pattiz, Rock D.J. During FM’s Heyday, Dies at 76

    She was known as “the Burner” for her seductive delivery, but off the air she was anything but a wild rock ’n’ roller. She later became an addiction counselor.Mary Turner Pattiz, who as Mary Turner was a silky-voiced disc jockey at KMET, the album-oriented rock station that was the soundtrack of Southern California in the 1970s and early ’80s, before leaving radio to become an addiction counselor and philanthropist, died on May 9 at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 76.The cause was cancer, said Ace Young, a former KMET news director.KMET was a hard-rocking upstart in the early 1970s, with its laid-back jockeys delivering a steady flow of new music from bands like the Who, Pink Floyd and Steely Dan, along with slightly naughty patter — a bit of sexual innuendo, endless stoner jokes — that was a welcome counter to the Top 40 hits churned out by AM stations.They were proud renegades, mixing surf reports with news coverage of events like the Mexican government’s spraying of its illegal marijuana crops with paraquat, a deadly poison. (When Jim Ladd, a late-night D.J., told his listeners to phone the White House to protest the practice, 5,000 callers jammed the White House switchboard.) Their bright yellow billboards were ofteninstalled upside down. They had a signature cheer, “Whooya” (the “w” was silent), that all the jockeys worked into their programs; the neologism was a refinement, Mr. Young said in an interview, “of the coughing sound we made when we smoked too much pot.” Ms. Pattiz — then Mary Turner — was known as “the Burner,” a nickname said to have been given to her by Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band, for her seductive delivery and good looks, and she had the prime nighttime spot, from 6 to 10 p.m.When major bands came to town to perform or promote a new record, they made a stop at KMET to be interviewed by Ms. Pattiz. She was soft-spoken and conversational, a gentle interlocutor who once teased Bruce Springsteen by asking, “Do you really know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way, where they play guitar all night and all day?” (She was quoting “Rosalita,” a song from Mr. Springsteen’s second album.) Most important, she let her subjects talk without interruption. For his part, Mr. Springsteen was so taken with her that he asked her on a date, and at his performance at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., the night after the interview, he dedicated the song “Promised Land” to her.“You guys can’t see what she looks like,” he told the audience. “She’s real pretty.”She was also extremely private, circumspect about her personal life, her background and even her age. If she dated a rock star, her colleagues weren’t aware of it.“The image of a rock ’n’ roll woman on the hippest radio station during those wild years was not the real Mary Turner,” said Michael Harrison, a former host and program director at KMET who is now the publisher of Talkers, a trade publication about the radio industry. “The real Mary Turner wasn’t wild. She was smooth and professional. It was show business.”Mr. Ladd, whose show followed hers, said: “You would listen to her, and you would fall in love with her voice. She was deceptively soft. She would say a joke and two minutes later you would get the punch line. And like all good interviewers, she knew when to keep her mouth shut.”By 1981, two rock interview shows she hosted, “Off the Record” and “Off the Record Specials,” were being syndicated by Westwood One, a company founded by the media entrepreneur Norman Pattiz, whom she married in 1985. They were broadcast in every major market in the United States and 40 countries through the American Forces Radio and Television Service, giving Ms. Pattiz a worldwide audience of more than 20 million. Members of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury of Queen all opened up during her freewheeling sessions. Mr. Mercury declared that he found his early music disposable, “like a tampon.” Keith Richards was eloquent on the ineffable magic of the Stones’ chemistry, and Mick Jagger admitted to extreme burnout while on tour.On Ms. Pattiz’s 10th anniversary at KMET, she was honored by Tom Bradley, then the mayor of Los Angeles, in a ceremony at City Hall. A few months later she left the station.Her final show, on Aug. 6, 1982, is in the permanent collection of the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. The hard-driving playlist included “Hang ’Em High” by Van Halen, “Back in the Saddle” by Aerosmith and, appropriately, “Rosalita.”“Well, listen you guys, it has been a lot of fun spending every single weekday night with you for the last 10 years,” she said as she concluded the show, “but the old Burner’s got to be moving on.” And then she played her final tune, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”Ms. Pattiz in 2005. She worked at KMET in Los Angeles for 10 years before signing off with one last hard-driving playlist in 1982.R. Diamond/WireImage, via Getty ImagesMary Caroline Turner was born on Feb. 4, 1947, in Baltimore. Her father, William Turner, was an aviation representative for an oil company. Her mother, Carol (Steuart) Turner, was a homemaker.She studied communications at Indiana University Bloomington, thinking she might work in television, but instead found a job as a promotions director at KSAN, a progressive radio station in San Francisco. She did a little of everything there: engineering, hosting a weekend talk show and filling in for other disc jockeys. It was the days of free-form FM radio, when the D.J.s played music from their own collections, and to their own taste.“It was an exciting time back then because you didn’t operate under any rules,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1982. “You could play anything you wanted, say anything you wanted, and who cared? FM at that time was a joke, especially to Top 40 people. We were the hippies, and they were the stars.”She worked briefly at KSFX, a competing station in San Francisco, and then auditioned for an opening at KMET in 1972. At the time, she was one of only a handful of women working in radio. (Among the others was Alison Steele, otherwise known as “the Nightbird,” a sultry star on WNEW-FM, KMET’s sister station in New York City.)Ms. Pattiz said she found her gender to be an advantage, despite the overzealous fans who lurked in the parking lot after her show and the stalker who frightened her so much that she never left work without her two German shepherds and a male colleague.“I think being a woman helped more than anything else,” she told The Los Angeles Times. “The time was right for it, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”Although Ms. Pattiz continued making her “Off the Record Specials” until the early ’90s, she mostly left the radio world — and her colleagues — behind after her marriage to Mr. Pattiz. The couple then became known for their philanthropy and for their regular appearances courtside at Lakers games.Ms. Pattiz also began working as a drug and alcohol counselor, having confronted her own struggles with substance abuse. In 2006 she earned a master’s degree in psychology from the California Graduate Institute (now the Chicago School of Professional Psychology), and in 2008 she earned a Ph.D. In 2010, she became chairwoman of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., taking over from Mrs. Ford’s daughter, Susan Ford Bales. Most recently, she served on the boards of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and its Graduate School of Addiction Studies.“When she left broadcasting she had no interest in discussing the subject whatsoever,” said Elliot Mintz, a longtime media consultant and a friend of the couple. “She became totally committed to improving the lives of people caught in addiction.”Mr. Pattiz died in December. Ms. Pattiz is survived by a brother.“The Mary Turner of the Betty Ford era was the real Mary Turner,” Mr. Harrison of Talkers said “The Mary Turner of KMET was a figment of our rock ’n’ roll fantasy.”Alain Delaquérière More

  • 175 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Ed Ames, Singing Star Who Became a Familiar Face on TV, Dies at 95

    After more than a decade of hit records with his brothers, he found success as a solo performer and a star of the series “Daniel Boone.”Ed Ames, who first gained fame as the lead singer of the Ames Brothers, a chart-topping group whose success predated the rise of rock ’n’ roll, and who then turned to acting as Fess Parker’s Indian companion on the popular NBC show “Daniel Boone,” died on Sunday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 95.His wife, Jeanne (Arnold) Ames, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.Mr. Ames’s introduction to the spotlight was a family affair. With their smooth, clean harmonies, the Ames Brothers — Ed, Gene, Joe and Vic — had hit records from the late 1940s through the late ’50s with material ranging from pre-World War I college songs (“The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”) to folk songs (“Goodnight Irene”) to love songs (“I Love You for Sentimental Reasons”). The quartet had a two-sided No. 1 hit in 1950 with “Sentimental Me” and “Rag Mop.” Their “You, You, You” held the top spot for eight weeks in 1953 and stayed on the charts for nearly eight months. All told, the Ames Brothers sold more than 20 million records.The Ames Brothers performed at major venues including Ciro’s in Hollywood and the Roxy in New York. They appeared regularly in Las Vegas and on television, as guests of Milton Berle, Perry Como, Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan. In 1956, they had their own syndicated TV series. In 1958, Billboard magazine named them the vocal group of the year.But by 1960, Ed Ames had had enough.“I thought I’d go out of my skull if I had to sing the same song again,” he said in 1964. “We were in a comfortable groove, but it was a merry-go-round for me and I was getting bored.” His brothers continued on the nightclub circuit without him.The Ames brothers had a string of hit records from the late 1940s through the late ’50s. Clockwise from bottom left: Gene, Joe, Ed and Vic Ames.Karen Mesterton-Gibbons, via Associated PressMr. Ames, who played the half-Cherokee, half-English Mingo, with Fess Parker, who played the title character, on the set of the TV series “Daniel Boone” in 1964.Associated PressAfter taking acting lessons, Mr. Ames was cast in an Off Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” for $50 a week. He made his Broadway debut as Jerry Orbach’s replacement in the 1961 musical “Carnival!”He also continued recording. As a solo artist, he had hits with “Try to Remember” (1965), “Time, Time” (1967), “My Cup Runneth Over” (1967) and “Who Will Answer?” (1968).Mr. Ames also starred in the 1963 Broadway production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel. He played Chief Bromden, an American Indian patient in a mental hospital who feigns being mute and ends up suffocating the lead character — the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Kirk Douglas (and later, on film, by Jack Nicholson) — as an act of mercy.It would not be the last time Mr. Ames played a Native American.His performance in “Cuckoo’s Nest” led to his best-known role: opposite Fess Parker on “Daniel Boone” as Mingo, the Oxford-educated son of a Cherokee woman and an English nobleman who joins Boone in his expeditions on the Tennessee frontier. (Mingo’s father was the Earl of Dunmore, but Mingo chose to remain part of the Cherokee Nation rather than claim the title.)Mr. Ames played Mingo for the first four of the show’s six seasons, from 1964 to 1968. But his most memorable moment during those years did not come on “Daniel Boone.” It happened on April 29, 1965, when he was Johnny Carson’s guest on “The Tonight Show.”In a segment that soon became a staple of “Tonight Show” highlight reels, Mr. Ames set out to teach Mr. Carson how to toss a tomahawk, using a rudimentary drawing of a sheriff on a wooden panel as his target. He threw the tomahawk across the stage. When it embedded precisely in the sheriff’s crotch, the audience reacted with loud, sustained laughter.Mr. Ames tried to retrieve the tomahawk, but Mr. Carson grabbed his arm. As another roar of laughter subsided, Mr. Carson looked at Mr. Ames and said, “I didn’t even know you were Jewish.”He was.Ed Ames in Hollywood in 2010.Chelsea Lauren/Getty ImagesEd Ames was born Edmund Dantes Urick in Malden, Mass., on July 9, 1927, the youngest of nine surviving children born to David and Sarah (Zaslavskaya) Urick, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. In their teens, Ed and his three brothers formed a singing group and won amateur contests in the Boston area.Originally billed as the Urick Brothers, then the Amory Brothers, they became the Ames Brothers when they were signed by Coral Records. They began having hits after moving to RCA Records in 1953.Ed was the last surviving member of the Ames Brothers; Vic died in a car accident in 1978, Gene in 1997 and Joe in 2007. His first marriage, to Sara Cacheiro, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1998, he is survived by two children from his first marriage, Ronald and Sonya; a stepson, Stephen Saviano; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. His daughter Marcella Ames died before him.In the 1980s and ’90s, Mr. Ames performed in regional productions of musicals including “South Pacific,” “Man of La Mancha” and “Carousel.” He was also seen occasionally on television, on “Murder, She Wrote,” “In the Heat of the Night” and — as himself — on the sitcom “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.”Dennis Hevesi, a former reporter for The Times, died in 2017. Shivani Gonzalez contributed reporting, and Kristen Noyes contributed research. More

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Movies

    Is ‘May December’ the Most Fun Film at Cannes?

    The movie stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore as cravenly self-interested women. Its director, Todd Haynes, is relieved that festival audiences are laughing.At the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “May December” this week, something happened in the first few minutes that put director Todd Haynes at ease. It took place at the end of the movie’s second scene, as Gracie (Julianne Moore) gets ready for a family barbecue that will be attended by Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a famous actress who is preparing to play Gracie in a film.As Gracie crosses her kitchen and opens her fridge, Haynes zooms in on Moore and plays a dramatic music cue. The viewer is on high alert: Something significant is about to happen! Instead, Moore announces mildly, to no one in particular, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.” And the Cannes audience burst out laughing.That’s exactly the reaction Haynes was hoping for. Though plenty of viewers will read “May December” in a straightforward way, the subject matter is so juicy that Haynes more than welcomes a playful interpretation.“I was encouraged that the audience felt permission to enjoy the film,” he told me over coffee, “and appreciate it at the same time.”Haynes may be understating things: “May December” is the most fun movie that’s played at Cannes this year, a well-reviewed entertainment that fest-goers have been quoting nonstop since its premiere. There is a whiff of tabloid scandal at its core, since Gracie is loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher convicted in 1997 of raping her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau, whose baby she gave birth to in jail and whom she later married. Gracie and her husband, Joe (Charles Melton), have a similar back story, but when Elizabeth travels to their Savannah, Ga., home to shadow them for a week, they present her with a picture-perfect image of long-married domestic bliss.Still, the strength of their union is predicated on never truly revisiting its origin, and as Elizabeth pokes, prods and asks invasive questions, theirs is a marriage under siege. Gracie will do whatever she has to in order to keep her family together, but Elizabeth is just as determined to crack her facade, and as both women face off in a series of electric encounters, the self-interest that motivates them is often so craven that you can’t help but laugh.“As we were cutting it, it felt funnier than I really knew even reading or shooting the movie,” Haynes said. “We didn’t play it for laughs — it just has a sardonic wit about it.”“I was encouraged that the audience felt permission to enjoy the film,” Todd Haynes said of “May December.”Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersDoes Haynes agree with the critics who’ve called the film campy? “That was never, ever a term I applied to the script or style of shooting,” he said, though he understood why writers might be tempted to use the word: “‘Camp’ is maybe a too catchall term these days for an excited state of reading things, where you’re encouraged to read something against itself at times. And that’s exactly what I hoped would happen, especially with a sense of pleasure involved, and amusement.”In the festival’s biggest bidding war, Netflix prevailed with an $11 million price that should presage a major awards campaign for Portman, who makes Elizabeth’s fully committed insincerity so compelling.“She was so invigorated and excited — like mischievously so — to play with the expectations that people would bring to the movie,” Haynes said. “At first you think Elizabeth will be our comfortable way in to this sordid back story, and then you start to really re-examine who she is and feel that she is not a reliable narrator.”The film could also be an awards breakout moment for Melton, whose Joe comes to the fore in the final act as he movingly scrutinizes the life path he was locked into as the boy at the center of a tabloid scandal. “We were so lucky to find him for this,” Haynes said of the actor, previously best known for “Riverdale.” (Between Melton and the “Elvis” star Austin Butler — last year’s Croisette breakout — the CW-to-Cannes pipeline has become a real thing.)Haynes has been juggling his duties on “May December” with a career retrospective in Paris that has highlighted films like “Carol,” “Far From Heaven” and “Safe” (the latter two also starring Moore), and he has welcomed each as a distraction from the other. “One has to filter it a bit just to survive it all, and it’s heady looking back at my whole creative life and history,” he said. “I would be in pools of tears otherwise.”The retrospective will soon end with a screening of “May December,” and that feels fitting: This is the most mainstream film Haynes has yet made, but it’s still packed with thematic layers, and Haynes welcomes any interpretation you’ve got, be it serious or funny.“If there’s a thinking process that runs parallel to watching the movie, that’s superb,” he said. More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Ice Spice Joins Taylor Swift’s ‘Karma,’ and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Dua Lipa, Water From Your Eyes, Ichiko Aoba and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Taylor Swift featuring Ice Spice, ‘Karma’Mutual appreciation or celebrity damage control? Taylor Swift’s apparent new boyfriend — Matty Healy, from the 1975 — mocked the Bronx rapper Ice Spice and made other offensive comments on a since-deleted podcast that may (or may not) have been ironic comedy; social media flared. Now, proclaiming admiration and good feelings all around, Ice Spice gets her moment on a remixed Swift track that predicts karmic revenge on all the singer’s antagonists and obstacles. Ice Spice seizes the opportunity in her verse, warning, “Karma never gets lazy.” JON PARELESBeyoncé featuring Kendrick Lamar, ‘America Has a Problem’Beyoncé has now handed over the opening minute of her song “America Has a Problem” to Kendrick Lamar — the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper who has previously collaborated with her. His verses use multiple voices and registers to pick fights with corporations (Universal) and technology (artificial intelligence) while acknowledging hip-hop history by praising Jay-Z. It’s a commercial nudge to the “Renaissance” album that also deepens its sense of layered traditions and lore. Somehow the new track’s timing adds up to 4:20. PARELESDua Lipa, ‘Dance the Night’“I don’t play it safe,” Dua Lipa insists on her gleaming, disco-kissed “Dance the Night,” the first single from the soundtrack to the upcoming “Barbie” movie. But the song itself — a rehash of the trusty “Future Nostalgia” formula with a little “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” thrown in — makes the opposing argument. Though disappointingly self-serious and light on “Barbie Girl” camp, “Dance the Night” is a blandly fun summer jam that shows off Lipa’s easy confidence: “Ooh my outfit’s so tight,” she sings, “you can see my heartbeat tonight.” LINDSAY ZOLADZWater From Your Eyes, ‘Everyone’s Crushed’The title track from the Brooklyn art-rock duo Water From Your Eyes’ excellent new album “Everyone’s Crushed” is a kind of lyrical Rubik’s Cube, finding Rachel Brown twisting and rearranging a few deadpan phrases until they click into new meanings. “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts,” Brown declares, prompting Nate Amos to blurt out a caustic, angular guitar riff. The song makes space for both a collective feeling of generalized malaise and also the relief of sharing it with others: “I’m with everyone I hurt,” Brown concludes, “and everything’s love.” ZOLADZSquid, ‘The Blades’Squid is one of the British bands that’s reconfiguring prog-rock in the wake of post-punk, mingling musicianly technique and caustic attitude. In “The Blades,” Squid sets up a tense 7/4 beat and a gnarled counterpoint of guitars, drums and horns, as Ollie Judge sings, insinuating and eventually yelping, about surveillance and callousness. The song peaks with a dire vision of crowds that look like blades of grass, “begging to be trimmed,” then tapers down to a quietly alienated coda. PARELESJeff Rosenstock, ‘Liked U Better’The Long Island punk lifer Jeff Rosenstock’s knack for writing shout-along choruses is on full display in “Liked U Better,” a one-off single that’s as blistering as it is catchy. Racing thoughts and a palpitating heartbeat set the song’s antic tempo, before he shrugs them all off in a cathartic refrain: “I liked you better when you weren’t on my mind.” ZOLADZJess Williamson, ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’A dinky drum-machine beat from a cellphone app ticks behind “Time Ain’t Accidental,” a song about a brand-new romance with a longtime friend from a rarely visited town. Jess Williamson, born in Texas but well-traveled, has lately collaborated with Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) as the countryish indie-rock band Plains; this will be the title song of her next solo album. “I have a life somewhere real far away,” she sings, and later, with guitar and banjo joining her, “Look me in the eyes, I know it’s experimental.” But the song revels in staying smitten. PARELESBlk Odyssy featuring Kirby, ‘You Gotta Man’The situation is clear — “You gotta man, I gotta girlfriend” — but the music is blurry and dazed, as the R&B songwriters Blk Odyssy, from Austin, and Kirby, from Memphis, trade impressions and rationalizations about an infidelity that was fueled by “dopamine and Hennessy.” Above a slow, woozy beat, amid a welter of echoey voices and electric sitar, Blk Odyssy’s delivery is disbelieving and hesitant, answered by Kirby’s high whisper, both of them uncertain and then amorous; “See you next lifetime,” they vow before parting. PARELESIchiko Aoba, ‘Space Orphans’“Space Orphans” joins Ichiko Aoba’s extensive catalog of quiet, skeletal, soothing songs, often accompanied only by her acoustic guitar; they are akin to bossa novas, American folk-pop and Japanese koto melodies. A string arrangement — warmly sustained and sometimes harmonically ambiguous — opens up the track as her Japanese lyrics speak of an otherworldly romance, where “We go to sleep each night/In some quiet place, that’s neither land nor sea.” In an initiative led by Brian Eno called EarthPercent, the Earth is credited as a co-writer and gets royalties for environmental programs. PARELESAnjimile, ‘The King’There are clear echoes of the minimalism of Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Steve Reich in “The King.” The track progresses from a complex, wordless chorale into a keyboard-arpeggio whirlwind as Anjimile sings biblical allusions and sensible advice: “What don’t kill you almost killed you,” he observes. PARELES More