Aurelia Butler

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    David Harbour Is Conflicted About Becoming a Morning Person

    Working on the new movie “Thunderbolts*” and the TV series “Stranger Things,” he said, “You’re up early at 6 in the morning. But I still have that beast inside me that wants to sleep till 1 p.m.”The Red Guardian never made the varsity squad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but that’s more than OK with David Harbour.“Of the people that do love these movies, we are not the favorite,” he said of the antiheroes in the new Marvel film “Thunderbolts*.” “But we really poured our hearts into this movie and tried to make something that is about isolation in modern society and light and the darkness that is within all of us.”During what Harbour called a bit of a nightmare, he worked on “Thunderbolts*” at the same time he was shooting the final season of the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” in which he plays Hopper, the heroic small-town police chief. He is currently working on “DTF St. Louis,” an HBO limited series and the first thing he has produced, with Jason Bateman and Linda Cardellini.In a video call from Los Angeles, he elaborated on the headphones, sunglasses and Zen mantra that he considers essential. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.An AmericanoI drink it all day long. My doctor has told me to knock it off, but it is the last vice I have. I have an assistant and she does a lot of great things for me, but probably the No. 1 job is she brings me too many Americanos throughout the day.Wired HeadphonesI love a tangled cord. I used to carry a CD player back in the early 2000s and I would put on headphones and walk around the East Village and have my little soundtrack to my life. Just sort of float through.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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    AriAtHome Walks the Streets, Making Beats (and New Friends)

    On the SoHo corner where Prince and Elizabeth Streets meet, dog walkers, errand runners and lunch breakers squinted through the April sun at the part man, part beat-emanating automaton approaching them.Ari Miller, 25, known by his artist name AriAtHome, is a New York-based wayfaring musician who turns heads with his mobile beat-making rig. Donning a get-up that looks like a cross between a Ghostbusters proton pack and a ballpark-vendor tray, he dishes out on-the-spot hip-hop, neo-soul, funk and house beats throughout the city’s streets, all created entirely from scratch without breaking stride.“I built the rig with New York City in mind,” Miller said. “When you make a good song with a stranger in the street it’s like, ‘Whoa, did we just become best friends?’”Ari Miller (a.k.a. AriAtHome) at work, with his videographer Dylan Goucher capturing the scene and livestreaming. Miller making his way up subway stairs wearing 55 pounds of gear.The guts of the machinery Miller and a friend assembled for his mobile music project.Crammed with keyboards, a looper, six speakers and a controller with dozens of knobs and faders, Miller’s Frankenstein instrument offers a buffet of drum, keyboard and bass sounds, interfaced through the music software Ableton. In the back, a mess of cables hides a Mac Mini M4, a modem and the hot-swappable camera batteries that power it all.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 Uncertain Future of South Carolina’s “Porgy and Bess” House

    When George Gershwin visited a cottage in Folly Beach, S.C., in 1934, “Porgy and Bess” came to life. But will it remain a historic artifact or become just another beach house?The scholars, preservationists and historians had been strategizing for about an hour inside the salon of the charming cypress cottage they were trying to save.They all agreed that magic had been conjured in this very spot nearly a century ago. That’s when the writers DuBose and Dorothy Heyward invited the composer George Gershwin to visit their retreat, nicknamed Follywood, on the cozy barrier island of Folly Beach.Gershwin was writing an opera based on DuBose Heyward’s novel “Porgy,” which was adapted into a play co-written with his wife. The story depicted Black life in Charleston, S.C., and the Heywards thought Gershwin should see firsthand the place, people and culture he was writing about. Although Gershwin composed some of the music in New York, his South Carolina visit resulted in eternal anthems like “Summertime.”“That does bring up the elephant in the room,” said Harlan Greene, an author and historian who has done extensive research on the Heywards and the opera. He looked at those around him in mid-March, taking note that there were no Black people among the hopeful preservationists. “Here we are, a bunch of white people in a very diverse economy and you know, cultural appropriation.”The historic Folly Beach house stands out among more modern constructions. Elizabeth Bick for The New York Times“Porgy and Bess” is largely celebrated as the Great American Opera. It is also weighted by the country’s historical baggage. The opera is an elevated piece of culture that explores the dynamics of segregated African Americans; in depicting Blacks as fully formed people nearly a century ago — and not as mammies or Mandingos by performers wearing blackface — it was an outlier. Yet it also faced significant criticism for reinforcing degrading stereotypes.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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    Mike Peters, Frontman of the Alarm, Is Dead at 66

    Leading the Welsh band known for 1980s anthems like “Sixty Eight Guns,” he later became a strong voice in the fight against cancer, which he battled for decades.Mike Peters, the frontman of the Welsh post-punk band the Alarm, which in the 1980s drew comparisons to U2 for its storm-the-barricades passion and its clarion-call anthems like “Sixty Eight Guns” and “Blaze of Glory,” has died. He was 66, having battled cancer over three decades and been a prominent campaigner against it.His death was confirmed in social media posts by his wife, Jules Jones Peters, who did not say where or when he died or specify the cause.Mr. Peters was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1995 and twice with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, in 2005 and again in 2015. Both are forms of blood cancer. Last year, on the eve of a 50-date U.S. tour, he discovered that he had Richter’s syndrome, a more aggressive form of lymphoma.Starting in the 2000s, Mr. Peters took on a second career as a prominent spokesman in the fight against cancer. He helped found the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which has staged concerts in dramatic locations like Mount Everest and Mount Fuji to raise funds for cancer research and treatment.The Alarm in 1982, from left: Nigel Twist, Mr. Peters, Eddie Macdonald and Dave Sharp. Emerging from Britain’s punk underground of the late 1970s, the group was known for its electric-shock hairstyles as well as its righteous fury.Erica Echenberg/Redferns, via Getty ImagesEmerging from Britain’s punk underground of the late 1970s, the Alarm, known for their righteous fury and electric-shock hairstyles, fused the high-octane energy of punk with a distinctive twin-acoustic-guitar attack while firing off musical fusillades like “Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?,” “Spirit of ’76” and “The Stand.”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

  • 138 Shares169 Views

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    Joel Krosnick, Longtime Cellist of Juilliard String Quartet, Dies at 84

    Widely admired for his intense and precise playing, Mr. Krosnick stayed with the quartet for over 40 years, longer than either of his cellist predecessors.Joel Krosnick, the admired longtime cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, who helped shape its championing of new American music as much as its commitment to the classics, died on April 15 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 84.His death, from pancreatic cancer, was announced by the Juilliard School in New York City, where Mr. Krosnick was head of the cello department and had taught for 50 years.Mr. Krosnick’s playing combined the two hallmarks of the Juilliard String Quartet’s renowned style: intensity and precision. He was ideally suited to inherit the mantle of his two cellist predecessors in one of the world’s longest-lived string quartets — and he was with the quartet, known as the Juilliard, longer than either, from 1974 until his retirement in 2016.Mr. Krosnick, third from left, performing with the Juilliard String Quartet in 2013.Ruby Washington/The New York TimesFrom its start, 70 years before Mr. Krosnick’s departure, the Juilliard committed to playing new music with the same devotion it brought to the classical repertoire, and to playing the classics as if they were new. Mr. Krosnick went right along, as at home with the searing abstract intensity of the cello cadenza in Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 2 as with the soulful meditations of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 16 in F (Op. 135) or the spiky turbulence of Bartok’s quartets.He recorded the complete quartets of all three composers with his fellow players, and they won Grammy Awards in 1977 and 1984 for their recordings of Schoenberg and Beethoven.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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    Barbra Streisand’s Silky Duet With Hozier, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Summer Walker, Nilüfer Yanya, Ed Sheeran and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Barbra Streisand with Hozier, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’At 83, Barbra Streisand still commands a voice of dewy-eyed purity, long-breathed grace and tremulous anticipation. She has announced “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2” — an album of duets with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Sting, Laufey and more — with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” A deferential, un-gritty Hozier joins her in a slow, string-laden arrangement that changes key to accommodate him. This duet definitely won’t eclipse Robert Flack’s eternally radiant version, but it has an earnest charm.Ed Sheeran, ‘Old Phone’Fireside folk-rock contends with digital technology in “Old Phone.” It’s a guitar-strumming, foot-tapping ditty about realizing, too late, that cellphone storage can hold a Pandora’s box of regrets: lost friends, misjudgments, arguments, “messages from all my exes.” Better to wipe it next time.Summer Walker, ‘Spend It’The sound is plush and sensual, a silky, spacious R&B ballad with glimmering vocal harmonies sharing the chorus. But the message is coldly mercenary: “Give me the last four of your credit card / Buy back my love, you can keep your heart.” Instead of refuting the hip-hop cliché of women as gold-diggers, Summer Walker leans into it.Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Cold Heart’With her new single, “Cold Heart,” Nilüfer Yanya sets aside her trusty fuzz-toned guitar. Amid undulating keyboard chords and programmed beats, she sings about desire, separation, resentment and heartache: “I don’t wanna bear this burden ’cause it hurts like hell,” she sings. Many of her previous songs have built toward grungy catharsis, but in “Cold Heart,” the chords keep cycling around her; she’s still enmeshed.Bambii featuring Jessy Lanza and Yaeji, ‘Mirror’Bambii, a Jamaican-Canadian D.J. turned producer and songwriter who’s based in Toronto, keeps reconfiguring a sparse, syncopated bass riff and twitchy, flickering breakbeats in “Mirror.” Jessy Lanza sings in English and Yaeji sings and raps in English and Korean, pondering connection and identity — “I look in the mirror / I see your eyes” — as the rhythms ricochet.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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    Russell Brand Is Granted Bail in U.K. Court Hearing on Rape Charges

    The comedian, actor and YouTuber appeared before a London courtroom for the first stage of what could be lengthy criminal proceedings.The comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared before a London court on Friday on multiple charges of sexual assault, including two counts of rape.His 14-minute appearance at the court, Westminster Magistrates’, was the first, largely procedural step in what are likely to be lengthy criminal proceedings. It came a month after British prosecutors charged Mr. Brand with one count of rape, one of oral rape, two counts of sexual assault and another of indecent assault.As the brief hearing began, Mr. Brand, 49, stood inside a plexiglass box in the courtroom, wearing a shirt opened to show his chest and holding a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses. Mr. Brand confirmed his name, date of birth and British address, then listened, without showing any visible emotion, to details of the charges.Suki Dhadda, the lead lawyer for the prosecution, said that one woman had accused Mr. Brand of raping her in a hotel room during a British Labour Party conference in 1999. Ms. Dhabba said that another woman had accused Mr. Brand of orally raping her in a bathroom stall at a party.Another woman, Ms. Dhabba said, accused Mr. Brand of kissing her without her consent while grabbing her breasts and buttocks. The final charge concerned a woman who said Mr. Brand had tried to pull her into a bathroom.Mr. Brand has denied all of the charges. In a video posted to his social media accounts in April, he said that he had “never engaged in nonconsensual activity” and that he looked forward to defending himself in court.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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    Sinners’ Director Ryan Coogler Narrates Musical Scene

    The writer and director Ryan Coogler narrates a sequence from his film.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Viewers might not expect to see a DJ at a turntable in Ryan Coogler’s 1930s-set horror movie “Sinners,” but in this sequence, the history and future of music collide.This sequence takes place in a juke joint opened by the twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan). Playing for the crowd is Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), performing a song that was written by Raphael Saadiq and the film’s composer, Ludwig Goransson.“Rafael is from Oakland, kind of a local legend where I’m from,” Coogler said, narrating the moment.The scene starts with Caton’s impressive vocals, while cutting to shots of both Smoke and Stack, as well as other characters in the sequence. “We wanted to use Michael Shawver’s editing skills to establish where everybody is and what their stakes are,” Coogler said.Once all is laid out, the scene flashes back to a conversation between Sammie and another musician, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who explains Sammie’s skill for the blues and the responsibility that comes with his talent.“Blues, it wasn’t forced on us like that religion,” Delta says. “No, son. We brought this with us from home. It’s magic, what we do. It’s sacred and big.”As the scene returns to the juke joint, we hear a voice-over from Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a conjure woman. She says that some musicians have the gift to make music so powerful, it can conjure spirits from the past and the future. At this point, in an ambitious tracking shot, various eras of musicians appear in the frame, including an electric guitarist and the D.J. at the turntable.“We wanted to do it in a fluid, continuous take,” Coogler said. New music elements continue to be introduced along with new forms of dance.“Aakomon Jones, our choreographer, is changing choreography ever so slightly so that folks still feel like they’re in their time, but also outside of it as we get more and more heightened in this moment,” Coogler said.Read the “Sinners” review.Read an interview with Michael B. Jordan and Coogler.Hear from Buddy Guy, a musician who appears in the post-credits sequence.Find out about the symbolism in “Sinners.”See how “Sinners” and other movies multiply one actor.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More