Aurelia Butler

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    75 Years Ago, Latin Jazz Was Born. Its Offspring Are Going Strong.

    A concert at Town Hall this week that will be led by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra celebrates the legacies of Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and Chico O’Farrill.In the fall of 1947, Dizzy Gillespie called on his friend, the trumpeter-arranger Mario Bauzá, in search of a conga player for an upcoming Carnegie Hall concert where he planned to debut songs exploring the connection between Afro-Cuban music and jazz. Bauzá suggested Chano Pozo, a swaggering master of Yoruba rhythms, who had just arrived from Cuba.It was a wildly fortuitous introduction: Dizzy and Chano’s team-up would mark a watershed moment in jazz history, what many refer to the birth of Latin jazz. Although neither musician could communicate in the other’s language, they shared a cultural connection, and suddenly bebop, Gillespie’s rebellious jazz experiment, became Cubop.Arturo O’Farrill, leader of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, which he formed in 2001 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, has long contemplated that meeting. It was a collaboration that united African diasporas, north and south, reconstructing ties broken by the slave trade. “There’s a saying, I’m sure you’ve heard it,” he said in a recent video interview, “where Dizzy says, ‘I don’t speak Spanish and Chano doesn’t speak English, but we both speak African.’”This Saturday at Town Hall, O’Farrill will commemorate that moment, just over 75 years ago, when Dizzy and Chano bonded over their ancestral past and took the music into the future, as well as the role his father, Chico, played in that evolution. The concert, which pays tribute to “The Original Influencers,” celebrates a Town Hall show similar to the Carnegie performance that took place in December 1947, and will feature O’Farrill’s 18-piece orchestra, as well as special guests Pedrito Martínez on percussion, Jon Faddis on trumpet, Donald Harrison on saxophone, the singers Daymé Arocena and Melvis Santa, and O’Farrill’s two sons, Adam and Zack, on trumpet and drums.The Cuban-born Chico O’Farrill was the son of Irish and German immigrants to the island and was so taken with the fusions previously explored by Bauzá as musical director of Machito and His Afro-Cubans, that he convinced the impresario Norman Granz to commission and record his “Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite,” featuring Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich and Flip Phillips, in 1950.“My father was fully European, living in an African country — because, you know, Cuba’s basically an African country — and also falling in love with jazz,” O’Farrill said. “He was the perfect person to be in all three worlds.”The elder O’Farrill joined up with Gillespie in the following years and became one of Latin jazz’s chief arrangers and orchestra leaders. Gillespie became Faddis’s mentor soon after he arrived in New York as an 18-year-old aspiring trumpeter. On Saturday, he will perform the “Manteca Suite,” Chico’s elaborate rearrangement of the Gillespie-Pozo classic written with Gil Fuller, “Manteca.” Faddis’s close association with Gillespie made him privy to Chico’s relationship with Pozo, who was tragically murdered in Harlem in 1948.“Mario Bauzá would take Dizzy up to Spanish Harlem to hear bands like Alberto Socarrás’s, and sit in,” Faddis said in an interview. “The collaboration with Chano was really important — I know there are many things that Chano taught him and the musicians in his band.”Pozo clued in Gillespie’s band to the dense polyrhythmic patterns that permeate the Afro-Cuban music that he learned as a street drummer in the Black Cayo Hueso neighborhood of Havana. In his autobiography “To Be, or Not … to Bop,” Gillespie expressed a desire to recapture lost elements of African tradition, writing that he “always had that Latin feeling” but that his musical ancestors remained “monorhythmic,” because drums were not tolerated by U.S. slave masters, while the Afro-Cubans “remained polyrhythmic.”Gillespie and Pozo shared other cultural bonds, too. “I think when you hear Dizzy and Chano play the Afro Cuban Suite, you hear the pattern of call and response,” Faddis added. “One of the main connectors between that Afro-Cuban lineage and American jazz is what you hear in the work songs, the prison songs and even the spirituals — the call and response in the church.”Gillespie and Pozo’s reunion of different diasporic African traditions through jazz had many antecedents, particularly in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when King Oliver and Lorenzo Tio visited Havana with a military band and absorbed Cuban influences. The ragtime pianist Jellyroll Morton famously referenced “tinges of Spanish” in his playing, and in New York, Bauzá had been steadily absorbing jazz techniques and sharing Cuban rhythmic tradition as musical director of the Chick Webb orchestra in the 1930s.Both Gillespie and Bauzá had yearned to escape the predictability of danceable Latin ballroom and big band music, and in 1947, just as Gillespie was perfecting his notion of bebop, Pozo’s intervention helped jazz became an international genre. It would put Gillespie on a path that defined the rest of his musical career. By 1988, Dizzy founded the United Nations Orchestra, which over the years featured Latin jazz stars like Paquito D’Rivera, Giovanni Hidalgo, Arturo Sandoval, David Sánchez and Miguel Zenón among many others.Pedrito Martínez, who will be performing two songs from his 2013 self-titled debut at the Town Hall concert, is evidence of Cubop’s internationalist legacy. He was inspired by Pozo, and even grew up in the same neighborhood in Havana. “I learned to play rumba in the street, like Chano did,” Martínez said in an interview. “He was someone from the marginal world who didn’t speak English, but he opened up doors for all of us.”Martínez had collaborated with Faddis in Steve Turre’s “Sanctified Shells” band, and had Faddis guest on his most recent album, “Acertijos.” He sees the connection between Afro-Cuban and jazz music as a kind of mystical fusion of spirit worlds. “I’ve seen a lot of Thelonious Monk videos, and he looked like a rumbero,” Martínez said, referring to the way Monk would sometimes perform a spinning dance that suggested Yoruban dance and spirit possession. “He stood up to dance and played the piano with one hand and then the other. Jazz has a very spiritual connection to Afro-Cuban music, because it’s a way of feeling, of giving reverence to the ancestors.”The rediscovery of common spiritual roots between African Americans and the Afro-Latin American diaspora is what keeps the Afro-Cuban jazz concept grounded and coherent. While there have been many debates about whether American jazz’s melodic and harmonic traditions and Afro-Caribbean rhythmic techniques dominate, it’s always been a back-and-forth conversation, an inter-hemispheric musical negotiation. It’s no surprise that Pérez Prado and Tito Puente’s mambo rose quickly in the wake of Gillespie and Pozo’s Cubop, and that it’s possible to hear Prado mambo elements in the early work of the Afro-futurist pioneer Sun Ra.What’s clear is that there’s no going back. “There are a lot of purists who want to keep jazz, jazz as jazz, they don’t want to mess with it,” O’Farrill said. “But I’ve been fighting this battle for 30 years, and I’m like, no, no, no. Jazz and Latin are the same trunk of the same tree. But it looks like we can never resolve this discussion. It can only go on and be explored to the end of time.”“Dizzy, Chano and Chico: The Original Influencers, 75 Years Later at Town Hall,” featuring Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, runs at Town Hall on Saturday at 8 p.m.; thetownhall.org. More

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    BAM Artistic Director David Binder to Step Down in July

    Binder, who was a Broadway producer before joining the nonprofit in 2019, plans to return to theater’s commercial sector.David Binder, the artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will step down in July, as the venerable institution faces ongoing turnover and the challenge of pandemic-era rebuilding after decades of stability in its leadership team.BAM, which began presenting work in 1861 and describes itself as the nation’s oldest performing arts center, long played a key role in New York’s cultural life, presenting adventurous theater, film, music and dance from artists around the world. But the institution was quieter than some at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and Binder’s departure will follow the 2021 exit of the institution’s president, Katy Clark, and the 2020 death of its board chairman, Adam Max.Binder joined BAM as artistic director in 2019, making his tenure significantly shorter than those of his two predecessors, Joseph V. Melillo, who spent 35 years at the institution, and Harvey Lichtenstein, who led BAM’s artistic work for 32 years.Similarly, on the institution’s executive side, Clark left BAM after five years in the post (keeping an apartment the institution helped her purchase); she had succeeded Karen Brooks Hopkins, who had spent 36 years at the institution, including 16 as president. BAM’s current president is Gina Duncan, who started just last year, after a year in which that position was vacant.Binder, who had been producing Broadway shows as well as arts festivals before joining the institution, said he was leaving voluntarily and is planning to return to commercial producing after leading the nonprofit’s artistic programming through the upheaval of the pandemic as well as the change in the organization’s executive staff.BAM said Binder would continue to consult for the organization until next January as it searches for a new artistic leader. Binder began working with Melillo when his appointment was announced in early 2018.“I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to do there, and I want to get back to making work and producing work,” Binder said in an interview. “I want to keep growing.”Duncan characterized the transition similarly, saying, “David decided to move on, and I appreciate him letting me know now.” She added, “We have a strong team in place, and I have time to do a search and find someone to be my artistic partner.”Binder’s departure comes as many performing arts institutions around the nation are seeing turnover at the top — New York’s theater leaders have tended to hang on longer than most, which is a source of criticism as well as stability, but there is wholesale change unfolding in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.Binder, who is 55, has drawn some buzzy work to BAM, which primarily presents shows developed by other companies.Last year’s pandemic-delayed production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which starred James McAvoy and transferred from London, was both a critical and a popular success, becoming the best-selling show in the history of the BAM Harvey Theater. And this month, BAM was the only institution with two shows on The New York Times’s list of things critics are looking forward to this year: the theater critic Jesse Green wrote about anticipating a production of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” with Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan in the starring roles, and the dance critic Gia Kourlas wrote hopefully about BAM’s U.S. premiere of Pina Bausch’s “Água,” a piece created two decades ago in Brazil.Binder arrived at BAM saying he wanted to bring in new artists — his first Next Wave festival there, in 2019, featured only artists who had not previously performed there. Over the course of his tenure, Binder said he will have presented more than 50 debuts of artistic companies as well as solo performers.Ticket sales during his time have generally exceeded projections; BAM says it is attracting new audiences, and there have been multiple programming highlights: Simon Stone’s “Medea” adaptation, produced by BAM, starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale; a new spring music series, curated last year by Hanif Abdurraqib and this year by Solange; and an annual artist residency program.“Through the pandemic and through the leadership changes, I feel that the team and I at BAM have stayed focused on putting fantastic work on our stages, and when we couldn’t do it on our stages, we did it outdoors or site-specific or virtually. And the work we’ve done has been really successful,” he said. “We always tried to mix it up: We had the National Theater of Korea’s opera of ‘Trojan Women,’ and ‘Kiki and Herb Sleigh’; we had the Lithuanian opera ‘Sun & Sea,’ which won the Golden Lion at Venice; and we also hosted the world premiere of Madonna’s ‘Madame X’ tour.”In the commercial arena, Binder is best known as the lead producer of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which won the Tony Award for best musical revival in 2014. Binder said that he would soon announce that “Hedwig” was “finally coming to the West End in a big way.”Beyond “Hedwig,” Binder is among a handful of commercial producers who have continued to focus on the production of plays, which tend to be riskier than musicals. He says he plans to resume work on his longtime effort to bring the German director Thomas Ostermeier’s production of “An Enemy of the People” to Broadway. (Last fall, Binder brought Ostermeier’s “Hamlet” to BAM; that production was in German, but “An Enemy of the People” would be presented in English.)Binder said he was also working with the innovative British director Jamie Lloyd, who helmed the “Cyrano” revival at BAM, to develop a new play that he was not yet ready to describe.BAM, like other arts organizations, shrank during the height of the pandemic, but is now nearly back to where it was, according to a spokeswoman: Its current annual budget is $56 million, up from $55 million prepandemic; it has 222 full-time staff positions, down from 256; its most recent Next Wave festival had 13 shows, down from 16 prepandemic; and last spring, BAM presented 17 shows, up from 16 during the final prepandemic spring.“I think we’re doing as well as one can, given the circumstances of the world,” Duncan said. “We’ve had some success in audience growth, and our membership numbers are starting to increase again. Everything is heading in the right direction, and now it’s a matter of time.” More

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    Ruggero Deodato, Whose ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ Enraged, Dies at 83

    He directed a variety of movies in a variety of genres. But it was a gruesome found-footage film that brought him both fame and infamy.When you make the most infamous movie ever to come out of a genre sometimes called the cannibal vomitorium, you’ve achieved true cinematic notoriety.That distinction belongs to the Italian director Ruggero Deodato, whose “Cannibal Holocaust” is said to have gotten him briefly accused of murder because of death scenes that seemed a little too real, as well as generating complaints for obscenity and animal cruelty.The film, released in 1980 in Italy and later (sometimes after overcoming bans) in other countries, drew scalding comments from critics and some film scholars. In 1985 the “Phantom of the Movies” column in The Daily News of New York called it “the kind of brain-damaged, stomach-churning cinematic offal that gives junk movies a bad name.”And yet the movie also developed a cult following and is widely credited with influencing later films, especially “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), which, like “Cannibal Holocaust,” used a found-footage conceit intended to leave viewers asking, “Was it real?”Mr. Deodato died on Dec. 29 in Rome. He was 83.Eugenio Ercolani, a filmmaker and film historian who had interviewed Mr. Deodato extensively, confirmed the death. He said Mr. Deodato had pneumonia and had been experiencing kidney and liver failure.Mr. Deodato made a variety of movies in a career that began in the 1960s, as well as directing commercials and episodes of Italian television series. There was, for instance, “Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man” (1976), a crime thriller that Mr. Deodato said was one of his personal favorites. “Last Feelings” (1978), a romantic drama about a competitive swimmer who learns he has a terminal illness, drew comparisons (usually unfavorable) to “Love Story,” the 1970 American blockbuster.But his horror films of the late 1970s and ’80s overshadowed everything else. He directed in a subgenre that, generally speaking, featured encounters between modern Westerners and jungle dwellers, with the Westerners not faring well. Before “Cannibal Holocaust,” he worked the territory with “The Last Survivor” (1977, also released under assorted other titles), in which oil prospectors whose plane is damaged in a rough landing in the Philippines are greeted by cannibals.“Director Ruggero Deodato’s unselective barrage of torture and bloodletting includes termites eating human flesh, a python eating an iguana and a girl giving birth and tossing her infant to a hungry crocodile,” Linda Gross wrote in a 1978 review in The Los Angeles Times.“Promotion material claims ‘The Last Survivor’ was made among authentic tribes and that one crew member who disappeared during filmmaking is presumed to be a victim of cannibalistic rites,” she added. “Pity the cannibals didn’t eat the film instead.”And then came “Cannibal Holocaust.” Filmed in Leticia, in the rain forest of southern Colombia near the country’s borders with Peru and Brazil, it tells the story of an American professor who travels to the Amazon to investigate the disappearance of four journalists who had gone there to make a documentary on cannibal tribes. He finds their film, which recorded atrocities the journalists themselves committed as well as their brutal deaths.Me Me Lai and Massimo Foschi in Mr. Deodato’s “The Last Survivor” (1977), also released under other names, including “Jungle Holocaust,” which one reviewer called an “unselective barrage of torture and bloodletting.”Erre CinematograficaThough Mr. Deodato used local villagers for much of the cast, he brought in some young actors to play the Westerners and, he said, had them sign agreements to not appear in anything else for a year, to keep up the illusion that parts of the movie were real.That came back to haunt him. He said he was accused of actually murdering the actors — of, essentially, making a snuff film — and had to seek them out and produce them in public to get those charges dropped. Other charges, though, stuck, including ones stemming from the real deaths of several animals during the filming.“To confiscate the film the authorities applied a public health law banning the importing of Spanish bullfighting in Italy, and on the basis of this law they seized the film,” he told Starburst magazine years later. “I was fined millions of lira and given a four months suspended sentence.”Mr. Ercolani, who included an interview with Mr. Deodato in his book “Darkening the Italian Screen: Interviews With Genre and Exploitation Directors Who Debuted in the 1950s and 1960s” (2019) and produced the special features included in a recent rerelease of “Cannibal Holocaust,” said that Mr. Deodato “in many ways composed, rather than directed, ‘Cannibal Holocaust,’ as if in a long improvisational jazz session.”“Ruggero Deodato was a director who put himself at the service of the market’s needs,” Mr. Ercolani said by email. “He wasn’t an intellectual, but he was an acutely instinctive man and director. He loved the process of storytelling, may it be in films, TV series or commercials. He had a great sense of rhythm and could recognize a good story.”“This is not to say he wouldn’t put any thought into what he did,” he added, “but he was a man who gave priority to what he felt rather than what he thought. In many ways you could say he followed his gut right into film history with ‘Cannibal Holocaust.’”Mr. Deodato was born on May 7, 1939, in Potenza, in southern Italy. His family moved to the Parioli neighborhood of Rome when he was a child, and he got a taste of acting.“I participated in the early to mid-’50s in a handful of films,” he said in his interview for Mr. Ercolani’s book, “and I was even called by Federico Fellini to audition for a role — I don’t remember for which film — but in the meantime I had gone through puberty and I had lost my boyish charm. I wore glasses, had bad skin, and was discarded immediately.”As a teenager he befriended Renzo Rossellini, son of the director Roberto Rossellini, which provided him with more connections in the film world. In the 1960s he worked with a number of Italian directors on a variety of movies, including Antonio Margheriti’s horror and fantasy titles (“Horror Castle,” “Anthar l’Invincibile”) and Sergio Corbucci’s westerns (“Django”).“I was lucky enough to have been exposed to many different directors,” he said, “and each one of them has been essential to my growth. Margheriti taught me a lot about special effects, while from Sergio Corbucci I inherited a certain taste for violence and brutality.”Mr. Deodato was married to the actress Silvia Dionisio in the 1970s and since the 1990s had been in a relationship with the actress Valentina Lainati. He is also survived by a son, Saverio, and a daughter, Beatrice.Mr. Deodato’s movies after “Cannibal Holocaust” included “Cut and Run” (1985), which involved a cable news crew, drug smuggling and lots of corpses. “You can wait years for a movie as bad as ‘Cut and Run,’” Bill Cosford wrote in a review in The Miami Herald. He also acted occasionally, in his own movies and those of others; his credits included an appearance in “Hostel: Part II” (2007) by the director Eli Roth, a fan of “Cannibal Holocaust.”Mr. Deodato was still racking up minor directing credits until a few years ago. Throughout his career, he was constantly asked about his most famous creation.“He would at times embellish and build upon the numerous legends and myths that surround the complicated making of the film, often contradicting himself in the process,” Mr. Ercolani said. “What is evident is that ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ ended up being a gilded cage for its director.“I feel a large portion of Deodato’s life has been passed battling his own creature, trying to reason with it, or maybe simply trying to fully understand it, and fending off perceptions the film generated about him over the years while embracing the fame it brought him. Deodato was a fun-loving, womanizing, outrageous, egocentric man, larger than life in so many ways, who found himself living for decades with this dark, fascinatingly twisted creature that he tried to educate and direct but that would not listen.” More

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    Film Forum Director Karen Cooper to Step Down After 50 Years

    Karen Cooper, who took over the nonprofit cinema in 1972 and transformed it into a $6 million-a-year operation, will step down in July after five decades.When Karen Cooper took over Film Forum in 1972, the theater was a projector and 50 folding chairs in a loft on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, showing what were then known as underground films. The annual budget was $19,000. Cooper projected the films — sometimes herself — on a single 16-millimeter machine no larger than a microwave.“I’d say to someone, ‘I show independent films,’ and they’d say, ‘You mean pornography?’” Cooper, 74, recalled with a laugh in a recent conversation at the nonprofit art house cinema’s offices, now located across the street from the theater in Greenwich Village.But now, Cooper, who has become synonymous with Film Forum — which has grown into a four-screen space with a $6 million-a-year budget and an influence that reaches far beyond New York City — is stepping down from the director role she’s filled for half a century, the organization announced on Monday.“I’ve thought about this for years,” said Cooper, whose last day will be June 30, though she will remain on staff as an adviser. “I wanted to have a smooth transition.”Succeeding her will be Sonya Chung, 49, the theater’s deputy director, who began working at Film Forum in 2003 as the director of development. Chung, who has a master’s degree in fiction writing from the University of Washington, in Seattle, left in 2007 to write and publish two novels (she also taught literature and writing for three years at Columbia University and for nine years at Skidmore College, both in New York). She returned in 2018 as a programming consultant and a member of the advisory committee, and was hired as deputy director in February 2020.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.Jostling for Best Picture: Weighing voter buzz, box office results and more, here’s an educated guess about the likely nominees for best picture.“Sonya has great taste and a way of articulating it,” Cooper said. “It immediately occurred to me when I met her — unbeknownst to Sonya — that she had the ability to be the director of the theater.”Cooper has been the director of Film Forum since 1972.Emma Howells/The New York TimesCooper was a newly minted 23-year-old Smith College graduate when she took over the theater founded by two film buffs, Peter Feinstein and Sandy Miller, in 1970. Over her 50-year tenure, she built a beloved cultural institution that has introduced the work of now-prominent filmmakers to American audiences, earning the affection of critics and patrons alike.She has led the theater through three relocations — Film Forum moved to its current space on West Houston Street in 1989 — and oversaw a $5 million expansion and renovation in 2018 that upgraded the seating, legroom and sightlines in all screening rooms and added a fourth, which increased the venue’s capacity to nearly 500 seats.Cooper said she was most proud of working to broaden the scope of Film Forum’s programming, introducing audiences to major German filmmakers of the 1970s like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders. She was also honored to have programmed the New York premieres of ambitious documentaries such as “Asylum,” Peter Robinson’s 1972 look inside the psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s therapeutic community of people with schizophrenia living together in a group home in London; and Spike Lee’s “Four Little Girls” (1997), about the children killed in the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala.It’s the meticulously curated slate of new films — which Cooper, Chung and the artistic director Mike Maggiore map out on a dry erase board in the cinema’s offices as far as six months in advance — that serves as part of the draw for Film Forum’s approximately 200,000 visitors each year, along with a robust lineup of classic films programmed by the repertory artistic director Bruce Goldstein, a concession stand menu of decadent baked goods and a robust lineup of talkbacks with filmmakers.Chung says the biggest challenge facing Film Forum, which is one of the few theaters regularly to feature independent movies in New York, is competition from streaming services. It can be tough, she said, to convince people who’ve become used to watching at home to bundle up, take the subway to the theater and pay $15 for a night out.One solution, she said, is creating a memorable experience that people can’t get anywhere else. They recently hosted Q. and A. events with the filmmaker Lizzie Gottlieb, who directed the documentary “Turn Every Page — The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” and the film’s subject, the book editor and her father Robert Gottlieb; as well as with the Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, whose dark tale about the life of a donkey, “EO,” has been shortlisted for an Academy Award. Both events sold out, she said.“Especially post-pandemic, when we have so much streaming overload, younger people are antsy for an IRL experience,” she said, using the acronym for “in real life.”Chung also wants to cultivate a younger and more diverse audience, with a particular focus on people of color from outside the theater’s white, more affluent neighborhood. For the last several years, she has created a young members program and developed partnerships with cultural and community-based organizations like Girls Write Now, a creative writing and mentoring nonprofit for young people from underserved communities in New York City; and ArteEast, a nonprofit that presents work by contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas.And now, starting this month, the theater’s internship program — which places three college students each semester in roles in the theater’s repertory program, outreach and administration departments — will be paid.“We decided we should pay them in order to attract a more diverse group of young people to be able to work here,” Chung said.As for Cooper, a longtime resident of the far West Village who walks to work each day, she will remain an active member of the organization’s programming team. She’ll continue to represent Film Forum at the Berlin and Amsterdam film festivals. She intends to maintain her schedule of watching at least 500 films per year. She’ll continue to focus on fund-raising for the nonprofit, which raises approximately $3 million of its operating budget each year.“I never thought I’d stay here 50 years,” she said. “But where would I go? What do they say — the hedgehog knows one thing, the fox knows many things?“I’m a hedgehog,” she said. “I know one thing — how to run a movie theater.” More

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    SZA’s ‘SOS’ Holds Off Taylor Swift for a Fourth Week at No. 1

    Both artists introduced new digital versions of their albums, bringing a tight race to a typically sleepy week on the Billboard charts.The R&B singer and songwriter SZA has edged out Taylor Swift to hold at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart for a fourth time, attaining a notable victory during what is usually the post-holiday sales doldrums.“SOS,” the long-awaited second LP by SZA, who was born Solána Rowe in St. Louis and raised in suburban New Jersey, had the equivalent of 125,000 sales in the United States last week. That total included 162 million streams and about 3,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.It is the first time an album by a woman has held at No. 1 four consecutive times since Adele’s “30,” which reigned for six weeks at the end of 2021, Billboard reported. (Swift’s “Midnights” notched five No. 1’s over a six-week stretch last fall.) “SOS” is also the first R&B title by a woman to rack up four weeks at the top since Alicia Keys’s “As I Am” (2007).“SOS,” a steady streaming hit that features guest spots by Travis Scott, Phoebe Bridgers and other artists, faced stiff competition last week from “Midnights.” Both SZA and Swift released special digital versions of their albums to lure fans. SZA sold two versions, containing extra tracks, while Swift’s website sold four editions, featuring variant artwork and bonus commentary cuts, for one day only.Swift’s promotion helped “Midnights” move the equivalent of 117,000 sales, up 10 percent from the week before, including 58,000 copies sold as a complete package. “Midnights” holds at No. 2 for a fifth week in a row.Also this week, a number of recent hits crawl back up the chart as holiday albums disappear like so many Christmas trees hauled to the curb. “Heroes & Villains” by the rap producer Metro Boomin rises one spot to No. 3, Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” is No. 4 and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is in fifth place.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which dipped below the Top 10 for two weeks at the end of the year, jumps back five spots to No. 6. Since its release two years ago, “Dangerous” has notched a total of 101 weeks in the Top 10, dropping out only three times during the holiday-albums crushes in 2021 and 2022. More

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    At Praise Fest in New Orleans, Spreading the Gospel Through Song and Community

    In a city facing wide-ranging challenges, the gospel music you hear at Praise Fest can be a balm for the collective spirit.On the final day of the 13th annual Praise Fest, the free gospel music festival that started after Hurricane Katrina to bring locals back to New Orleans, the skies above Bayou St. John turned gray. Then, around 2 on an afternoon in October, an eerily familiar sight appeared: torrential rainfall.Pools of water pocked the bayou grass as festivalgoers scrambled to their cars. Attendance for Praise Fest, the first one held in person since the pandemic began, was modest (though organizers said it was about what they expected) — the conditions may not have helped. Bishop Ryan Warner, president and chief executive of Versatile Entertainment, which runs Praise Fest, clomped around the grounds in his rain boots, directing traffic. The rain would pass, he insisted, and the festival would continue. That was the New Orleans way.Anchored by the sound of organs, pianos, tambourines, drums and melodic voices preaching the word of God, gospel music is a fixture in Black Christian churches across the United States, especially in the South. In a city facing so many challenges — whether hurricanes or housing insecurity — it can be a necessary balm for the collective spirit.“There’s so much craziness happening in the world today,” said Cordell Chambliss, a local pianist and retired music teacher. It was about 24 hours before the storm, and Mr. Chambliss sat on a bench wearing black sunglasses and a backward hat with the strap emblazoned with “Aloha.” “Gospel music is the good news,” he said. “And we need to spread the good news.”This article is part of Our City, a series focused on how people around the United States use public and shared spaces to build community.Once the sky had cleared up, about an hour after the rain began, Bishop Warner, 47, a laid-back man with a smooth voice, climbed atop the stage and, with a microphone in hand, declared that the festivities would carry on. “I will never question the Lord,” he said. The two dozen or so who remained dragged their chairs away from the massive tents and up to the stage where, they believed, God’s presence was clear.“God has been good to me,” Angela Lindsey, 60, said the day before. Ms. Lindsey, a New Orleans native, sat on her lawn chair behind the vendors hawking discount jewelry along the slow-moving bayou water, where ducks and birds cooled off. She sang gospel in church with her sisters growing up and moved to Mississippi after Katrina.Ms. Lindsey makes frequent trips home to help take care of her son, who sustained a brain injury in a car accident, and to attend Praise Fest. Most of her family remains in New Orleans, which proved difficult when she came down with colon cancer. When one of her sisters died, Ms. Lindsey was unable to attend the funeral because of emergency surgery. Still, she remains grateful.“I never was alone,” Ms. Lindsey said, over the sound of soaring vocals. She found comfort during her sickness in memories of singing with her sisters, and something else: “God was always there.”Ms. Lindsey and the rest in attendance were treated to a variety of different acts, from traditional gospel choirs to gospel-influenced R&B and hip-hop.“New Orleans, this is truly a gospel gumbo,” said Josh Kagler, who performed alongside Tyrone Jefferson. “Gospel music in the city of New Orleans is foundation. It’s family,” he said.Here are clips from some of the most memorable performances from the festival.Joanna Hale-McGillJoanna Hale-McGill, 38, was the first to take the stage after the rain. At the start of her set, a rainbow painted the sky. Ms. Hale-McGill, who hails from Meraux, just outside New Orleans, is an independent artist who blends hip-hop and gospel. A highlight was her performance of the 2008 song “God in Me” by the gospel duo Mary Mary featuring Kierra “Kiki” Sheard. Ms. Hale-McGill danced around the stage and flailed her arms in the air as she sang.“You’re so fly, you’re so high,Everybody around you trying to figure out why.You’re so cool, you win all the time,Everywhere you go, man, you get a lot of shine.”“The lyrics to the song describe me perfectly. I’m known around town as the girl that sparkles everywhere she goes,” Ms. Hale-McGill said in an interview later.Tyrone JeffersonMr. Jefferson, 49, performed alongside his choir from the Abundant Life Tabernacle in New Orleans, as did Mr. Kagler, 36, the choir director. As Mr. Jefferson got the crowd going with his vocals, Mr. Kagler shook his head and stomped his feet and waved his arms until his bright pink Yankees hat fell of his head. Among Mr. Jefferson’s performances, his rendition of Ricky Dillard’s “Search Me Lord” was memorable.“Sometimes we can be so stubborn, if you will, as it relates to us thinking we know everything,” Mr. Jefferson said in a later interview. “The song simply says, ‘Lord, you search me. Lord, you know whether I’m right or wrong.’”Mr. Jefferson also performed an original song, “Trouble in My Way,” a rousing track meant to be a reminder of Jesus’ healing abilities.“The beat brings you to church. It brings you right to church on a Sunday morning. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping,” he said. “We on a thousand, as we say here in New Orleans.”Arthur Clayton IV and Anointed for PurposeArthur Clayton IV, 45, hails from Marrero, La., fewer than 10 miles outside New Orleans. Alongside his choir, Anointed for Purpose, Mr. Clayton took delight in performing his friend VaShawn Mitchell’s song “Big.” When his choir sang the words, “There’s nothing my God cannot do,” Mr. Clayton followed with, “He’s a keeper, yes, he is.”“That reminds me of how we all were kept during that moment of Covid,” Mr. Clayton said in an interview. “Even after Covid, here in New Orleans we went through a hurricane, and we were kept in that moment.”Eric Waddell and the Abundant Life SingersMr. Waddell, 49, came from Baltimore with his choir, the Abundant Life Singers. He attended Praise Fest despite the death of his father fewer than two weeks earlier at age 91. His father had been in a gospel group, and when Mr. Waddell was a child, his father “put me on the chair and said ‘sing!’” Mr. Waddell said performing at Praise Fest was a way to honor his father. “He would’ve said, ‘Boy, you go and sing,’” Mr. Waddell said.Mr. Waddell brought some attendees to their feet with his moving original track “He Won’t Change.” The lyrics to his song “Yes, I Know Jesus” also resonated with a city that has worked through its share of obstacles.“Yes, I know JesusYes, I know JesusYes, I know Jesus for myself.Woke me up this morning,I saw a brand-new dawning.Feeds me when I’m hungry,Comforts me when I’m lonely.”Zacardi CortezThe sky was black by the time Zacardi Cortez, 37, the festival’s closing act, took center stage. Mr. Cortez, whose 2012 album “The Introduction” placed No. 2 on the Billboard magazine top gospel albums chart, shone under the stage’s bright lights. One of the songs he performed, an original called “Praise You,” was a funk tune inspired by two of his idols, Prince and James Brown. His set took a turn on “You’ve Been Good to Me,” a slow, tender tribute to his faith.Mr. Cortez wrote the song not long after spending time in jail. “God just had to deal with me. He had to sit me down for a little while and show me some things. And a lot of great things were birthed out of that,” Mr. Cortez said. “I’m so glad that I got to a place where I’ll never have to go through those situations again, because God has changed some things, turned some things around.”Bishop Warner, the organizer, watched from the side as Mr. Cortez closed the festival. Praise Fest had been a success, he said, attracting about 2,000 people. The goal every year is to bring New Orleans a little hope, no matter how dire the circumstances. That’s the meaning of gospel music, and it’s a special ingredient that keeps spirits up.“Let’s say in a couple years, we’re going to have another event like this,” Bishop Warner said, referring to Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people. “Man, you got to live life to the fullest, or you’ll be caught in this, thinking you was going to try to get out, and you die in the process.“You got to keep moving.” More

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    Golden Globes: How to Watch, What to Know About the Scandal

    The group that puts on the ceremony has promised reforms since it plunged into scandal two years ago. On Tuesday, it will try to win back viewers.In 2021, actors accepted Golden Globes remotely at a time when organizers were just beginning to grapple with a growing scandal around finances, ethics and diversity in its ranks.Last year, NBC refused to air the show at all, saying that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the troubled organization at the center of the scandal, needed time to make “meaningful reform.”But on Tuesday, the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards are back on NBC with a show that will attempt to win the trust of viewers and participants.What is not yet clear is how many of those viewers will return, after a precipitous drop in ratings during the pandemic, and whether celebrities and other members of the industry will appear en masse.The Globes have long had a reputation for booziness and irreverence. Will the revived ceremony still be seen as a less-staid alternative to the Academy Awards? Or will the Hollywood Foreign Press take the show more seriously?Here’s a brief history of the ceremony’s downfall, how its organizers are trying to rehabilitate it and what to expect from this year’s telecast.What brought down the Golden Globes?Days before the ceremony in 2021, an investigation by The Los Angeles Times took account of financial and ethical lapses at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and revealed that it had no Black members.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: An ‘80s child star, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.The Costume Designer: Shirley Kurata, who defined the look of the movie, has a signature style that mixes vintage, high-end designers and an intense color wheel.Gotham Awards: At the first big show of awards season, which is a spotty Oscar predictor but a great barometer for industry enthusiasm, the film took the top prize.At the time, there were 87 total members in the group, and a lawsuit filed by a Norwegian reporter, Kjersti Flaa, who had thrice been denied admittance to the group, accused members of accepting “thousands of dollars in emoluments” from members of the industry who were campaigning for recognition at the Globes. (A lawyer for the association said the lawsuit was a “a transparent attempt to shake down the H.F.P.A. based on jealousy,” The Los Angeles Times reported.)One story of wooing voters became emblematic of a reputation for accepting lavish perks. The Netflix comedy series “Emily in Paris,” which was the subject of lackluster reviews, received two nominations after dozens of association members flew to Paris to visit the “Emily” set and were put up by the Paramount Network at a five-star hotel.There was also scrutiny over how much members were paid for their involvement. According to filings from the tax year ending in June 2019, the nonprofit paid more than $3 million in salaries and other compensation to members and staff. Serving on one committee, for instance, meant $1,000 a month, a 2021 internal association report shows.How did the H.F.P.A. react?At the ceremony in 2021, the hosts, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, made repeated jabs at the press association over its lack of Black members, and midway through the program, leaders of the group took the stage and pledged to increase the diversity of its membership.In the two years since, it has recruited new members, overhauled eligibility rules and enacted a stricter code of conduct. All existing members — some of whom have had their journalistic credentials questioned over the years — needed to reapply. The 96-member group now has six Black members — up from zero in 2021 — and has added 103 nonmember voters, a dozen or so of whom are Black.Todd Boehly, the interim chief executive, has moved to end the association’s tax-exempt status and turn it into a for-profit company with a philanthropic arm. (He has been awaiting final governmental approval for that plan, after which he is expected to disband the H.F.P.A.)How has Hollywood responded?The H.F.P.A.’s practices have been scrutinized for decades, but this time, Hollywood couldn’t turn away.Netflix, Amazon and WarnerMedia said they would not work with the association unless changes we made.There were condemnations by A-list stars and producers. Shonda Rhimes called out the organization for its treatment of her shows; Tom Cruise returned his Globe trophies; Scarlett Johansson suggested the industry step back from the H.F.P.A. until it tackled “fundamental reform.”And more than 100 Hollywood publicity firms called on the association to “eradicate the longstanding exclusionary ethos and pervasive practice of discriminatory behavior, unprofessionalism, ethical impropriety and alleged financial corruption.” Until the group made its plans for change public, the firms said, they would not advise their clients to engage with the group’s journalists.Now that the organization has outlined its plans for reform, publicists and agents say that some stars are open to participating, while others want the Globes to be permanently retired. Based on this year’s list of presenters — which include Billy Porter, Natasha Lyonne and Quentin Tarantino — many are planning to show up on Tuesday.When and how do I watch?Wait, aren’t awards shows usually on Sunday? Typically, but this one was bumped to avoid clashing with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”Held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., the telecast will air at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific time on NBC. For the first time, the show will also be available simultaneously online, through NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock.Who is the host?The comedian Jerrod Carmichael will be the master of ceremonies. His HBO special “Rothaniel,” in which he came out as gay, won an Emmy and was considered among the best of 2022. And he may be familiar to NBC viewers from his 2015-17 sitcom, “The Carmichael Show,” or from his turn as host of “Saturday Night Live” last year.Who is expected to attend?The show has announced a list of presenters, including Ana de Armas, who is nominated for her performance as Marilyn Monroe in the Netflix biopic “Blonde”; Jamie Lee Curtis, who is up for a supporting actress award for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”; and Niecy Nash, who is nominated for her role in Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”Also listed as presenters are Ana Gasteyer, Colman Domingo, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Nicole Byer and Tracy Morgan. Eddie Murphy and the producer Ryan Murphy are receiving special honors.It is not likely to be clear until Tuesday whether a significant group of celebrities intends to boycott the ceremony.Brendan Fraser, who is nominated for best actor in a drama for his performance as a morbidly obese man in “The Whale,” has said that he would not attend the ceremony, citing the H.F.P.A.’s handling of his accusation that a former leader of the organization, Philip Berk, groped him at a luncheon in 2003. Berk denied the accusation and is no longer a member.Who is up for awards?The film with the most nominations is “The Banshees of Inisherin,” an Irish drama from the writer-director Martin McDonagh about a fractured friendship. It is up for eight awards. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — the sci-fi comedy about a Chinese immigrant and laundromat owner, which is co-directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — is up for six.The best film directing category contains some heavyweights — James Cameron for “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Steven Spielberg for “The Fabelmans” and Baz Luhrmann for “Elvis” — as well as McDonagh, Kwan and Scheinert.On the television side, the schoolroom sitcom “Abbott Elementary,” created by Quinta Brunson, is up for the most awards, with five nominations, including best musical or comedy series.In the increasingly prestigious limited series category, the talked-about drama “White Lotus” is up against “Pam & Tommy,” “The Dropout,” “Black Bird” and “Monster.”HBO Max and Netflix are tied with the highest number of nominations, at 14 each.Brooks Barnes contributed reporting. More

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    Matt Shultz, Cage the Elephant Singer, Arrested on Weapons Charges

    Mr. Shultz, 39, was seen pulling a gun out of his pocket in a public restroom at a Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.Matt Shultz, the lead singer of the indie rock band Cage the Elephant, was arrested at a Manhattan hotel on Thursday on weapons charges, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Shultz, 39, was arrested on Thursday morning after a Bowery Hotel employee had seen him pull a gun from his pants pocket in one of the hotel’s public restrooms, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Shultz, of Nashville, appeared intoxicated, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Police officers responded to a 911 call, obtained a search warrant and found two loaded firearms — a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a .45-caliber Sig Sauer pistol — in a bag in Mr. Shultz’s hotel room, according to court records and the prosecutor’s office.Officers also found 11 Polaroid photos of the guns, some showing a hand pointing to the firearms, and six handwritten notes, the prosecutor’s office said. A message on one of the notes read, in substance, “I will defend myself if I am attacked,” according to the prosecutor’s office.Mr. Shultz faces multiple counts of weapons possession charges, according to court records. He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Shultz had been released on bail, which was set at $30,000.Cage the Elephant, which was formed in 2006 in Bowling Green, Ky., is known for its psychedelic sound, distinct echoes of past rock eras and Mr. Shultz’s warbling, sometimes abrasive voice.The band released its first album in 2008, and has won the Grammy Award for best rock album twice, most recently in 2020 for “Social Cues.” It won its first Grammy in 2015 for its album “Tell Me I’m Pretty.”The band’s 2011 album, “Thank You Happy Birthday,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and the album’s lead single, “Shake Me Down,” was No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts, according to the Grammy Awards.Before the band was established, Mr. Shultz had worked as a plumber and in a sandwich bar, according to the Grammy Awards. More