Aurelia Butler

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    Tracy Schwarz, Mainstay of the New Lost City Ramblers, Dies at 86

    He was the last surviving member of a retro-minded string trio whose celebration of prewar songs of the rural South put them at the heart of the folk revival.Tracy Schwarz, the last surviving member of the New Lost City Ramblers, an influential folk trio whose reverential approach to the lost music of the rural South stood in contrast to more commercial acts like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, died on March 29 in Elkins, W.Va. He was 86.His death, in a hospice facility, was announced by his wife, Virginia Hawker.The New Lost City Ramblers were formed in New York in 1958, riding the crest of the folk revival. They performed at the first Newport Folk Festival the next year and counted Bob Dylan — whom they jammed with at Gerdes Folk City, the storied Greenwich Village folk club, in the early 1960s — as a fan.“Everything about them appealed to me — their style, their singing, their sound,” Mr. Dylan wrote in his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles: Volume One.” “Their songs ran the gamut in style, everything from mountain ballads to fiddle tunes and railway blues.” He added, “I didn’t know they were replicating everything they did off old 78 records, but what would it have mattered anyway?”Mr. Schwarz, who was skilled on the fiddle, accordion, guitar and banjo, joined Mike Seeger, a half brother of the folk luminary Pete Seeger, and the guitarist John Cohen in the Ramblers after another original member, Tom Paley, left in 1962.Even though Mr. Schwarz was New York born and the son of an investment banker, “there was just something that was down-to-earth country about Tracy,” Mike Seeger was quoted as saying in the 2010 book “Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival,” by Ray Allen. “He just kind of has a feeling for the music, it was in his bones.”Mr. Schwarz, right, and Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The Ramblers first performed at the festival in 1959, three years before Mr. Schwarz joined.John Byrne Cooke Estate/Getty ImagesWe 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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    Singer Sues Met Opera Over Firing for Post-Pregnancy Vocal Problems

    The mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who suffered vocal problems during and after pregnancy, is suing the opera company — and the union that represented her — after she lost work.The Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was once one of opera’s most sought-after stars, renowned for stirring, powerful performances in works like Bizet’s “Carmen” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”But after she began experiencing vocal problems during pregnancy in 2021, her career suffered. When she returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, company officials later said, she did not sing up to her standard. The Met canceled her upcoming engagements, and she lost work at other opera companies.Now Rachvelishvili, 40, is suing both the Met and the union representing her, seeking more than $400,000 in compensation for lost work. In a complaint filed in late March, she accused the Met of breaching its contracts with her, and she said that her union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, had failed to properly represent her.Rachvelishvili’s lawsuit claimed that the Met had been aware that she had “suffered complications from her pregnancy and birth affecting her voice and vocal range.” The suit described her as being “disabled due to her pregnancy” and accused the opera company of discriminating against her.“I was shocked that I was not given a chance to recover and all of my contracts for the next two years were immediately canceled without pay,” she said in a statement.The Met said it could not comment on pending litigation.Her complaint argues that the Met should compensate her because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay contracted performers even if they later decide not to engage them.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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    5 Songs by Rubby Pérez, the Merengue Singer Lost in the Roof Collapse

    The musician, 69, got his break in the 1980s and continued releasing albums through 2022.Rubby Pérez, the singer who was performing on Tuesday when the ceiling of the Jet Set nightclub collapsed in Santo Domingo, claiming at least 124 lives including his own, spent his long career devoted to merengue, the signature style of the Dominican Republic.Wilfrido Vargas, the band leader who gave Pérez his big break in the early 1980s, called him “the best singer the genre has ever produced” upon learning of his bandmate’s death. At the outset of their collaboration, Vargas dubbed the singer “the loudest voice of merengue,” an appellation the vocalist wore proudly. An enthusiastic performer, Pérez brought high spirits even to ballads, but he specialized in rousing, spirited numbers where his clarion voice commanded attention over a dance band’s bustling rhythms.Music was Pérez’s second choice for a career. As a teenager, he harbored hopes of baseball stardom, dreams that came to an end when his right leg was fractured in an auto accident when he was 15. During his convalescence, he found solace in the guitar, which he called his “new bat.” He started singing in a church choir and, by the end of the 1970s, he dedicated himself to music, studying at Santo Domingo’s National Conservatory of Music.Initially drawn to bolero, he embraced the widespread popularity of merengue in the Dominican Republic (it has also gained a significant foothold in Venezuela). He made his professional debut as part of Los Pitagoras del Ritmo, sang in Los Juveniles de Bani, then replaced Fernando Villalona in Los Hijos del Rey, spending three years with the outfit before joining Vargas’s orchestra in 1980.Vargas provided the launchpad for Pérez’s career, giving him a pair of signature hits in “El Africano” and “Volveré,” which allowed him to embark on a solo career in 1987. His last album, “Hecho Esta,” arrived in 2022, but he made his mark in the 1980s, when both he and merengue broke out of the Dominican Republic. Here are five of his signature songs. (Listen on Spotify or Apple Music.)‘El Africano’ (1983)Pérez made his recording debut as the lead singer in the band led by Vargas, and the single “El Africano” from Vargas’s 1983 album “El Funcionario” was a Latin hit. It’s a brassy merengue, with Pérez’s high vocals punctuated by saxophones and a raucous trombone. The lyrics may strike modern listeners as offensive (“Mommy, what does the Black man want?” Pérez repeatedly sings, from the perspective of “a little Black girl”). The backing vocals answer, between mock-African interjections, “He wants some.” The track was later sampled by Pitbull for his 2007 single “The Anthem.”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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    Conductor John Nelson Dead at 83

    He revived interest in a “problem child” in the pantheon of high romantic composers, bringing Berlioz overdue recognition as one of France’s greatest composers.John Nelson, a genial American conductor who made France love one of its own underappreciated musical sons, Hector Berlioz, died on March 31 at his home in Chicago. He was 83.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Kari Magdalena Chronopoulos, who did not specify the cause.Mr. Nelson made Berlioz (1803-1869), the wild man of 19th-century French music, his passion, performing and promoting his work ceaselessly during a career that stretched over 50 years on both sides of the Atlantic.As a young conductor, he introduced Berlioz’s epic five-act opera “Les Troyens” (“The Trojans”) to New York in a 1972 Carnegie Hall performance deemed “highly successful” at the time by Raymond Ericson of The New York Times.By the end of his career, Mr. Nelson was so closely identified with Berlioz, one of France’s most extravagant musicians, that the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph wrote, “John Nelson was clearly born with Berlioz in his genes.”That remark came in a 2017 review of Mr. Nelson’s much-praised recording of “Les Troyens” with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and a cast that included the American soprano Joyce DiDonato.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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    Pop Songs, ‘Hamilton’ and Windows 95 Chime Join National Registry

    The recordings, along with works by Tracy Chapman, Elton John and the rock band Chicago, are among the 25 selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.Hits by Celine Dion and Mary J. Blige. The song “Happy Trails” by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Tracy Chapman’s debut album. The original cast album of the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” The chimes Brian Eno wrote for Microsoft Windows in 1995.These were among the 25 audio works chosen this year to join the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, which preserves works deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” that are at least 10 years old.More than 2,600 nominations were made by the public this year, with “Chicago Transit Authority,” the 1969 album from the rock band Chicago, topping the list, according to a news release from the Library of Congress.The Elton John album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” — which features songs like “Bennie and the Jets” and “Candle in the Wind” — and the R&B album “My Life” by Mary J. Blige were among the top 10 of public nominations.The new class of inductees for the National Recoding Registry brings its total number of titles to 675.Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said in a statement that the selected works were the sounds of America and that the registry was “our evolving nation’s playlist.”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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    ‘Pink Narcissus’: A Home Movie Both Abject and Erotic

    Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia by James Bidgood gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph.As its title suggests, “Pink Narcissus” is something of a hothouse flower. A feature-length movie, shot over a period of seven years on eight-millimeter film and elaborate sets constructed in the filmmaker’s tiny Manhattan apartment, it’s also a labor of love — focusing largely on a single actor.Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia created by the photographer James Bidgood, newly restored by the film and television archive at the University of California, Los Angeles, gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph, starting April 11.The breathtaking opening sequence in which a full moon is glimpsed through a tangled forest is as fastidious as a late 1930s Disney animation, an association supported by a musical track heavy on program music like Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” Soon, amid busy butterflies and fluttering flowers, Bidgood’s young star, known as Bobby Kendall, makes his first appearance.The movie has no dialogue and, so far as I can tell, no women. Dressed variously in tight white jeans and short kimonos, but most often posed as a nude odalisque, Kendall plays a kept rent-boy whose fantasies provide a succession of set pieces, as when he imagines himself as a matador whose bull is a hard-charging biker. Kendall also participates in a toga party and is entertained by a provocative belly dancer in a male seraglio.Sex acts are implied and full nudity coyly veiled. Explicit yet decorous, “Pink Narcissus” is founded on a dialectic between the erotic and the abject. The rococo apartment and an idealized natural world of rosy sunsets vie with a dank public urinal and an invented, garbage-strewn Times Square where pushcarts sell vibrators and other sex toys. Charles Ludlam can be glimpsed among the denizens of this sordid domain, but more than Ludlam’s “ridiculous” theater, Bidgood’s precursors are taboo-breaking movies like Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” and Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks.”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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    Angel Studios Turns to Viewers of Faith to Greenlight Movies

    The company behind “Sound of Freedom” follows an unusual strategy that relies on an army of subscribers to its streaming platform.When “Sound of Freedom,” a $14.5 million indie film about child trafficking based on the life of a Homeland Security agent, stormed the box office to become an unlikely $250 million hit, practically nobody saw its runaway success coming.Except Neal Harmon.Harmon is the chief executive of Angel Studios, a self-described “values-based distribution company,” that he founded in 2013 in Provo, Utah, with his brothers Daniel, Jeffrey and Jordan as well as their cousin Benton. Even before a rave review from Ted Cruz and a private screening held by Donald J. Trump, the reception for “Sound of Freedom” was effectively preordained, Neal explained in a recent interview, because the studio’s million-member Angel Guild had endorsed the film before the company decided to acquire the distribution rights.Jim Caviezel in “Sound of Freedom,” the breakout hit that went on to earn $250 million at the box office.Angel Studios“We definitely knew it was going to be successful because of the guild’s reaction,” Neal said. “We knew it was going to be really well received.”Most distributors rely on the instincts of a programming team, which typically attends festivals and watches screeners like a prospector sifting for gold. Angel’s model defers to the subscribers of its streaming platform, which has grown to become one of the most-downloaded apps on the Apple TV store, occasionally surpassing Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.In addition to a library of original content, the Angel app features short-form concept videos for potential movies or TV shows. Subscribers, or guild members, answer short surveys about the videos, and based on the results, Angel decides whether to greenlight projects. Subscriber fees are funneled back into the films and shows in production, essentially turning Angel’s system into a wide-scale crowdfunding model.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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    Trumpeters. Friends. Rivals. 60 Years Ago, the Pair Made Jazz History.

    “There was a bar right there,” a Crown Heights, Brooklyn, resident named James said in early March, pointing to the deli at 835 Nostrand Avenue, at the intersection with President Street. “Long time ago, though.”Sixty years ago, the Black social club that once occupied that corner hosted a jazz concert that is so storied, it has a title: the Night of the Cookers. Of the dozens of performances that the trumpet star Freddie Hubbard led in the mid-1960s, his two nights at La Marchal on April 9 and 10 featuring his friend and chief rival, Lee Morgan, are heralded as arguably the most celebrated jazz gig in the borough’s history.“That was one of the records that made me say, ‘You gotta go find your own thing,’” the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard said in a phone interview, referring to the recordings from the gig that were first released on LP in 1966. “They both had great sounds on their instruments, but they were very different.”The Night of the Cookers was a night of tension. Hubbard and Morgan, both born in 1938, were the hottest trumpet players in the business as they turned 27, though each was at his own crossroads. Hubbard, always ambitious, was securing his future as a bandleader; Morgan was struggling with addiction while watching the improbable rise of his hit record, “The Sidewinder,” on the pop charts.An engineer named Orville O’Brien was rolling tape as the bandstand filled with heavyweights including James Spaulding on alto saxophone and flute, the pianist Harold Mabern Jr., the bassist Larry Ridley, the drummer Pete LaRoca and another special guest, Big Black, on congas. Well-dressed Brooklynites, including musicians like the trumpeter Kenny Dorham, filled the spot to capacity. A crowd of standees hovered near the bar.“When anybody mentions Night of the Cookers, I can see it as if I was there again,” said the trumpeter Eddie Henderson, who sat in the front row both nights. “I was at their feet, looking up at Freddie and Lee, and I was screaming and yelling. When I hear that record, I can hear my voice.”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