Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Hot Frosty’ Review: The 8 Abs of Christmas

    A hunky snowman comes to life in this Netflix holiday rom-com that strikes a certain muscle tone.Here’s the pitch for “Hot Frosty”: A widow wraps an enchanted scarf around a hunky snowman who springs to life and professes his love. Here are the two possible audience reactions: “How dumb!” and “How dumb — can’t wait to watch!”Lacey Chabert, the star of more than 30 Hallmark Channel romances, checks into work as Kathy, a generically sweet small-town diner owner with little to do besides repeat the premise until everyone is onboard. “You just buy that he’s a snowman?” she sputters to her fellow residents of Hope Springs.No matter. The director Jerry Ciccoritti knows all eyes are on Jack (Dustin Milligan), a shirtless naïf with the soul of a labradoodle and the abs of a supermodel. “I am not cold,” he insists with a twinkle. Jack adores fixing roofs, befriending children, baking homemade pizza and rubbing ice on his bare chest. Nevertheless, Kathy is slow to warm to his charms.To be fair, Jack is a tricky role. It’s hard for a male actor to play innocent and seductive. There’s one carnal gag involving a lusty neighbor (Lauren Holly), but otherwise “Hot Frosty” doesn’t stoke much sexual heat. Families can watch together with no risk of grandma getting distracted and burning a batch of cookies.The script shamelessly re-gifts scenes from “Pretty Woman” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” along with “Edward Scissorhands,” like when Kathy’s martini-chugging pals swoon that a man this perfect has to be magic. But shameless is the goal. Everyone involved knows exactly what movie they’re making — especially Craig Robinson as the hilarious town sheriff, a killjoy determined to arrest Jack for streaking.Hot FrostyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Roy Haynes, a Giant of Jazz Drumming, Is Dead at 99

    An irrepressible force who remained relevant over the course of a seven-decade career, he had a hand in every major development in modern jazz.Roy Haynes, among the greatest and most influential drummers in the history of jazz, died on Tuesday in Nassau County, N.Y., on the South Shore of Long Island. He was 99.His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed by his daughter, Leslie Haynes-Gilmore. She declined to specify where in the county he died.Mr. Haynes was an irrepressible force who proudly remained both relevant and stylish over a career spanning seven decades, having had a hand in every major development in modern jazz, beginning in the bebop era. Remarkably, he did so without significant alterations to his style, which was characterized by a bracing clarity — Snap Crackle was the nickname bestowed on him in the 1950s — along with locomotive energy and a slippery but emphatic flow.Few musicians ever worked with so broad an array of jazz legends. Mr. Haynes recorded with the quintessential swing-era tenor saxophonist Lester Young as well as the contemporary guitarist Pat Metheny. He was briefly but prominently associated with the singer Sarah Vaughan, and with some of bebop’s chief pioneers, notably the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and the pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk.And he appeared on dozens of albums, including many regarded as classics, among them Eric Dolphy’s “Outward Bound” (1960), Oliver Nelson’s “The Blues and the Abstract Truth” (1961), Stan Getz’s “Focus” (1962) and Chick Corea’s “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” (1968).As a band leader, Mr. Haynes made a handful of highly regarded albums, like “We Three,” a 1958 trio session with the pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. and the bassist Paul Chambers.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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    6 Ambient Tracks to Transport You Someplace Else

    Listen to Gas, Hiroshi Yoshimura and Lou Reed (yes, that Lou Reed).Wolfgang Voigt performing as Gas.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,For several reasons, I have found myself listening to a lot of ambient music this week — even more than usual, which is already a significant amount. I have a new upstairs neighbor who seems to really like high-BPM techno, so I’ve needed to ensconce myself in a more inhabitable soundscape.As I noted last year, when I shared a previous ambient playlist, I am incredibly wary of streaming culture’s emphasis on “chill-out music,” a blanket term that dulls the kaleidoscopic differences between all sorts of ambient compositions. That puts the emphasis not on the artistry of musicians but on the kind of predictable and inoffensive user experience it can offer the listener. I am also aware, though, of the genre’s very worthy history as “functional music,” to borrow a phrase from the man who more or less invented ambient music, Brian Eno. As he told me in an interview recalling his earliest forays into “discrete music,” “The emphasis was on saying, ‘Here is a space, an atmosphere, that you can enter and leave as you wish.’”I believe it is possible to have it both ways: to turn to ambient music for its “functional” purposes while also developing an appreciation for all the varied sounds, textures and subgenres that fall under that category. And so, on today’s playlist, you’ll hear some minimalist compositions, some drone and even some ambient techno, from the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Gas and Lou Reed (yes, that Lou Reed). I’ve culled all six of these tracks from albums that were either released or reissued in the past year or so, just to keep things fresh.I hope that it brings you some respite from whatever ails you — be it noisy neighbors or the usual dread — and that it also compels you to seek out more.Discretely,LindsayListen along while you read.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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    The Soprano Lucy Shelton Makes Waves in Opera at 80

    Lucy Shelton, a soprano known for her work in the contemporary repertoire, has had a role tailor-made for her in “Lucidity,” an opera about identity and dementia.When the soprano Lucy Shelton opened a recital at Merkin Hall in 2019 with “Adieu à la vie,” a song by Rossini, she was about to turn 75. And though she was not bidding farewell to life as the song’s title suggests, she felt she was done with performing. For decades, she had been one of the most sought-after interpreters of contemporary vocal music. But she had reached a point where “I couldn’t sing the things that I used to sing,” she said in an interview. “And that’s depressing.”“I figured I was probably winding down,” she added. “But then I got wound up again.”On Thursday, Shelton, 80, takes center stage at the Abrons Arts Center in the world premiere of “Lucidity,” an opera about identity and dementia, composed by Laura Kaminsky, with a libretto by David Cote. With a score that calls for a multitude of expressive registers, including floated lyricism and sprechstimme, musically notated recitation, the work is tailored to Shelton’s undiminished dramatic strengths. It’s also a testament to her continuing dedication to her craft. (From New York, where the production is presented by On Site Opera, it travels to Seattle Opera.)After five decades making her name primarily on the concert scene, Shelton finds her engagement calendar increasingly filled with opera. In 2021, she performed in the critically acclaimed premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence” in Aix-en-Provence, France. Next season, she will reprise the role at the Metropolitan Opera, making her house debut at 82. “It’s kind of a riot,” she said. “It probably thrills everybody else more than it thrills me.”Shelton performing a passage from “Lucidity,” with Eric McKeever.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesShelton, who has premiered over a hundred works by composers including Elliott Carter, Oliver Knussen and Gérard Grisey, is unusual in classical music, where few female singers perform past their 60s.One challenge of staged roles is memorization, which can be made harder by age. In discussing “Lucidity” with Kaminsky, she raised her concerns that she might not be able to perform the whole show from memory. In this production, she will always have either a newspaper or sheet music to hold (her character is an aging musician), so that she has all her lines at hand.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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    ‘Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands’ Review: The Wrong Stuff

    The boy band stories in Tamra Davis’s documentary rarely intersect in a way that builds a meaningful or compelling perspective.From a documentary filmmaking perspective, there’s very little to go wild about in “Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands.” This frenetic mix of nostalgic fan service and rehashed pop culture history begins at a breakneck pace as if it’s a film made for TikTok. Naturally, it overflows with a cacophony of screaming and fainting fans.Directed by Tamra Davis (“Crossroads,” “Billy Madison”), the movie often feels more like a greatest hits compilation than a cohesive narrative. Its goal is ambitious: to trace the evolution of boy bands — from the Beatles to the K-pop group Seventeen — and explore how the groups have shaped global culture over the past 50 years. Disappointingly, the documentary prioritizes historical play-by-plays over deeper analysis, spending much of its running time tracing the influence of one boy band on the next. These stories rarely intersect in a way that builds a meaningful or compelling perspective, which might leave viewers asking, what’s the point?For some (OK, fine, me), it might be cute to reminisce about how Nick Jonas launched his career as a solo Christian artist, complete with a purity ring. For most, you’ll be left wondering why, in just 30 minutes, we’ve jumped from record-label battles faced by both ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, to Donny Osmond’s childhood connection to Michael Jackson, to how Harry Styles successfully started a career outside of One Direction, to Lance Bass coming out, to A.J. McLean’s sobriety. At first, I wondered why so many boy band members addressed were absent from this film. I think I have my answer.Larger Than Life: Reign of the BoybandsNot rated. 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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    A New Set of Gits Releases Gives Mia Zapata Her Voice Back

    The Seattle frontwoman was killed in 1993, as her punk band was on the cusp of a breakthrough. Remastered recordings provide a chance to rewrite her story.Here’s how I wish the story of the Gits could be told: Four hardworking musicians finally escaped the grind of underpaid gigs and indie recordings and followed such compadres as Nirvana to global fame, led by the poetic howls of Mia Zapata, heiress apparent to Janis Joplin and Patti Smith.Here’s the story you may already know, as told by shows including “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Forensic Files,” and the documentary “The Gits”: Talented singer found raped and murdered on a Seattle street just as her band was on the cusp of success.In an attempt to bring what might have been to life, the seminal Seattle label Sub Pop is releasing remastered recordings by the Gits on Nov. 13. While the band was together, Zapata, the bassist Matt Dresdner, the guitarist Andy Kessler (a.k.a. Joe Spleen) and the drummer Steve Moriarty released only one album of their complex thrash rock (Kessler calls it “five-chord punk”): “Frenching the Bully” (1992). Sub Pop’s digital releases will also include three LPs of unfinished recordings, early work and live tracks. In December a concert album, “Live at the X-Ray,” will arrive for the first time.“It’s been a long, long road to get to where we are,” Dresdner, 57, said in a video interview from Seattle with Kessler. “There were decades through which I didn’t have the bandwidth or emotional strength to attack a project like this.” As the group worked to finally make its music available, a “secondary motivation” arose, he said. “Mia’s talent as a singer — the music we were able to make together — we hope will be the first sentence, moving forward.”By 1993 the Gits had paid their dues and honed their sound. But their ascent was cut short by Zapata’s killing.David HawkesThe Gits formed after Dresdner saw Zapata perform at an open mic at Antioch College, a small liberal arts school in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1986. “When we started the band, it was because I fell in love with Mia’s voice,” he said. “It was so beautiful and so powerful, and so intimate.”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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    The Curious Case of Nora Holt, a Pioneer of Black Classical Music and Jazz

    “Fabulous is the word for Mrs. Nora Douglas Holt,” read the 1974 obituary in The Amsterdam News.And fabulous she was: A pioneer of the Black classical music scene in Chicago, Holt also became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age in Paris. Born into the middle-class, she moved back and forth between worlds: concert artist and blues singer, newspaper columnist and club hostess, erudite scholar and scandalous socialite.This fluidity led to friendships with two women who represented distinct versions of fame for Black women in the early 20th century: Josephine Baker, the working-class dancer from St. Louis, who became the toast of Paris; and the composer Florence Price, who transformed Chicago’s classical music scene, rising to national fame with her symphonies.Holt’s life didn’t follow familiar narratives. Hers was not a rags-to-riches story, like Baker’s; nor was it, like Price’s, a cathartic breakthrough for Black musicians in the white world of classical music. Instead, she had a kind of mutability, frequently changing her name and her place in culture, collapsing ideas about respectability and sexual liberation.Music was the through line in Holt’s life. She first made her name in classical music. For young, middle-class Black women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, classical music could open doors to salon culture, church leadership, jobs teaching music and civic engagement.In 1918, Holt, a pianist, became the first Black person in the United States, female or male, to earn a master’s degree in music, from Chicago Musical College. She also worked in the male-dominated fields of music criticism, scholarship and composition. Her music journalism, public lectures, recitals and community organizing became a blueprint for other Black women seeking to become leaders in Chicago’s classical musical scene.“Of course, men are supposed to have better business minds than women,” she wrote to a male colleague after founding a magazine, Music and Poetry, in 1921. “But I have made this thing go and the opportunities are yet unlimited.”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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    Remembering Quincy Jones, a Bridge Between Genres and Generations

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicEarly this month, Quincy Jones, one of the most influential and creative forces in American pop music history, died at 91. The scope of his success almost defies comprehension — his work began in the 1950s and continued all the way up through recent years. He produced the most important Michael Jackson albums, and also Frank Sinatra, and also “We Are the World.” He won 28 Grammys. Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Usher, the Weeknd, Lionel Hampton, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,”: He crossed paths with all of them, and more.His broad reach was a byproduct of his musical facilities, as well as his social adeptness and ability to bridge worlds, scenes and audiences with a combination of the two. It’s a scale of influence unlikely to be matched by anyone else.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Jones’s long and unique career, how he bridged musical styles and generations, his willingness to share stories and the role of long-form journalism in the social media age.Guest:David Marchese, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and co-host of The Interview podcastConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More