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      Gustavo Dudamel, Superstar Conductor, Will Lead Paris Opera

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      In a coup, the venerable company has hired as its next music director the rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity.When Alexander Neef was named the next director of the mighty Paris Opera in 2019, he did not have a particular candidate in mind to succeed the company’s music director, who was leaving after a decade. “I felt I should consult with the musicians,” Neef said by phone recently, “and see who for them, what for them, how for them the future looked like.”One surprising name kept coming up in those conversations: the superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the musical leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009 and the rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity.He had made his Paris debut in 2017, with “La Bohème,” and hit it off. “I felt this connection with the house, the musicians, the choir, with the whole team,” Dudamel recalled in an interview on Thursday at the company’s ornate Palais Garnier theater. “I was here for one month and a half and I was feeling like I was at home.”Yet it still seemed an unlikely marriage, given Dudamel’s packed schedule and the fact that, even if that “Bohème” was a success, it had still been his only engagement with the company. Indeed, while he has dipped his toe into the operatic repertory in Los Angeles, at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, he has been largely known as a symphonic conductor.“But I thought,” Neef recalled, “why not ask?”That ask eventually resulted in a coup for the company, which announced on Friday morning that Dudamel would be its next music director, starting in August for an initial term of six years, overlapping for much of that period with the Los Angeles position, where his current contract runs through the 2025-26 season.The appointment marks a turning point in the heady career of an artist who made his name as a wunderkind with orchestras in North and South America and is now, at 40, taking the reins at one of Europe’s most venerable opera companies, founded in 1669 as the Académie d’Opéra by Louis XIV.Dudamel said he had not required much convincing when Neef offered him the permanent position.“It’s a big and beautiful responsibility,” he said.Dudamel in the Palais Garnier, one of the Paris Opera’s theaters, on April 15. “I have been developing my opera career in the way that I wanted to,” Dudamel said. “I took my time.”Julien MignotDudamel — who was born in Venezuela in 1981 and was trained there by El Sistema, the free government-subsidized program that teaches music to children, including some in its poorest areas — occupies a unique position in music. He is sought by leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic. But he also appeared in a Super Bowl halftime show; was the classical icon Trollzart in the animated film “Trolls World Tour”; is conductor of the score for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film version of “West Side Story”; and inspired a messy-haired main character in the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle.” In 2019 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.His renown will surely be a shot in the arm for the Paris Opera, which like other arts organizations is warily eyeing the need to reintroduce itself to its core audience after the long closures of the pandemic, at the same time as it aims to capture new operagoers. Handsomely subsidized by the French government, the company has expanded its audience in recent years, but still faces the pressure of roiling debates about racial representation and the relevance of expensive-to-produce classical art forms.“Our future is not validated by our history,” Neef said. “This Covid crisis has put us in a pressure cooker and reinforced and amplified the need to give people real artistic reasons for why we need to exist, why this has value.”He added that Dudamel was “already a very credible ambassador for that. What he’s done successfully is, he’s broken down barriers.”It is no longer the norm — especially outside German-speaking countries — for opera music directors to start as pianists and singer coaches and work their way up through the ranks, as Philippe Jordan, 46, Dudamel’s predecessor in Paris, did. While Dudamel lacks that upbringing in the nuances and logistical complexities of the art form, and his operatic appearances have been sporadic, he is not unknown at major houses. He made his Teatro alla Scala debut in 2006, when he was in his mid-20s, and had his first appearance with the Berlin State Opera the following year. He first conducted at the Vienna State Opera in 2016, and at the Met in 2018, with Verdi’s “Otello”; on Wednesday he finished a run of “Otello” in Barcelona.“I have been developing my opera career in the way that I wanted to do, and I feel very good about that,” he said. “I took my time.”Neef pointed out that Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 46, the Met’s music director since 2018, did not start there with an enormous repertory, either. “The question is not about quantity,” Neef said. “And these things are a little bit deceptive: When you look at the list of operas Gustavo has conducted, it’s from Mozart to John Adams. He’s been conducting opera as long as he’s been conducting symphonic music.”Asked which works he is most looking forward to tackling, Dudamel replied, “Everything.” In Paris this fall he is scheduled to conduct Puccini’s “Turandot” and Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” In addition to mainstream repertory, he said he hoped to work with living composers from Europe as well as North and South America, including Adams, Thomas Adès and Gabriela Ortiz.He added that he is keen to conduct the Paris Opera Ballet, the company’s in-house dance company. Dudamel said his mentor, José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, often took him to the ballet to learn about conducting.“It was part of my education,” he said. “Even for my way of seeing the music.”His appointment will involve significant travel between Paris and Los Angeles, but his commitment to the Philharmonic is one Dudamel said he has no intention of curtailing. “I will share my time between the two families,” he said.Chad Smith, the chief executive of the Philharmonic, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “With Paris as a place where Dudamel can delve more deeply into opera, it creates a perfect balance with his orchestral home in L.A.”What he will cut back on is guest conducting, a process he said he started a few years ago in order to shift his focus to longer-term projects.“The way we’re going to organize it is the way he works in L.A., too,” Neef said. “Long periods that hang together, rather than a lot of travel.”Neef added that Dudamel would be a charismatic and visible link between the company’s main stage productions and its educational endeavors. In Los Angeles, Dudamel has contributed to the Philharmonic’s robust educational outreach, especially the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, a program inspired by El Sistema that was founded in 2007.He also continues to also hold the post of music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, but after he criticized the Venezuelan government in 2017, the country canceled his planned international tour with that ensemble. While he has not been able to perform with the Simón Bolívar since then, he still works with it remotely and has sometimes met outside Venezuela with groups of its players; during the pandemic he has had sessions with them over Zoom.His appointment comes two months after the release of a report on discrimination and diversity at the Paris Opera. The report focused on changes to the repertory, school admissions process and racial and ethnic makeup of the ballet company. At the same time, opera companies around the world have been called on to make their staffs, artists and productions more representative.Dudamel said in the interview that he would press for that conversation to continue at the Paris Opera over the long term. “Sometimes we pretend to do changes,” he said, snapping his fingers to indicate overly fast decisions. “In that way, you cannot develop something that is strong for the future.”Neef said that alongside Ching-Lien Wu, the company’s recently appointed (and first female) chorus master, Dudamel’s hiring was part of an effort to change the face of the company’s executive ranks and how it thinks about diversity and equity.“It’s already what he lives and who he has been in L.A. and other places,” Neef said. “I think there’s great opportunity to be gained from that experience for us, to have someone with that experience at the table at the highest level.”The next step is for Dudamel to learn French. “I’m starting!” he said, before adding, “I’m very bad with languages.”One carrot will be the opportunity to finally read one of his favorite books — Rousseau’s “Confessions,” which he discovered as a teenager and brings with him everywhere — in the original. “I will try,” Dudamel said, smiling. 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      Gustavo Dudamel, superestrella de la música clásica, dirigirá la Ópera de París

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      En una jugada maestra, la venerable compañía ha contratado como su próximo director musical al excepcional artista clásico que también ha conquistado la fama en la cultura popular.En un golpe maestro de la venerable Ópera de París, fundada en 1669 por Luis XIV, la compañía anunció el viernes que el conductor superestrella Gustavo Dudamel será su próximo director musical.Dudamel, líder musical de la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles desde 2009 e inusual artista clásico que ha cosechado un estatus de celebridad de la cultura pop, solo ha dirigido una única producción en París: La Bohème en 2017. Y, aunque en Los Ángeles ha jugueteado con el repertorio operístico, tanto en la Ópera Metropolitana como en otros escenarios, es más conocido como conductor sinfónico.Pero para quienes han seguido de cerca el ascenso constante de Dudamel en los últimos 15 años, no será sorpresa otro gran nombramiento. El nuevo puesto es un hito en la magnífica carrera de un artista que se hizo renombre como niño prodigio con las orquestas en Norte y Sudamérica y que ahora, a los 40 años, tomará las riendas de una de las compañías de ópera más antiguas de Europa. Ocupará el cargo a partir de agosto, en principio por seis años, superpuestos en gran parte con su trabajo en Los Ángeles, donde su contrato actual llega hasta la temporada 2025-26.Dudamel —nacido en Venezuela en 1981 y formado ahí por El Sistema, el programa gratuito subsidiado por el gobierno que enseña música a los niños en las zonas más pobres— ocupa una posición única en el mundo de la música. Lo asedian las principales orquestas, entre ellas la Filarmónica de Berlín y la Filarmónica de Viena.Pero también ha actuado en un espectáculo de medio tiempo del Súper Bowl, apareció como Trollzart en el filme animado Trolls Gira Mundial, dirige la música en la próxima versión fílmica de Steven Spielberg de West Side Story e inspiró un personaje desmelenado en la serie de Amazon Mozart en la Jungla. En 2019 recibió una estrella en el Paseo de la Fama de Hollywood.Sin duda, su renombre será una inyección de energía para la Ópera de París que, como otras organizaciones artísticas, contempla cautelosamente volver a presentarse ante su audiencia tradicional tras el largo cierre pandémico al tiempo que busca captar nuevos asistentes. Con un generoso subsidio del gobierno francés, la compañía —cuyo director Alexander Neef, asumió el cargo el otoño pasado— ha expandido su audiencia en los últimos años, pero aún enfrenta la presión de los agitados debates sobre la representación racial y la relevancia de las costosas formas artísticas clásicas.Ya no se acostumbra —especialmente fuera de los países germanohablantes— que los directores musicales de ópera inicien como pianistas y entrenadores de voz y asciendan el escalafón de la compañía, tal como hizo el antecesor de Dudamel en París, Philippe Jordan, de 46 años. Aunque Dudamel no cuenta con esa preparación, no es un desconocido para las principales casas operísticas. Debutó en la Scala en Milán en 2006, cuando tenía veintitantos años y al año siguiente se presentó en la Ópera Estatal de Berlín. Su primera actuación en la Ópera del Estado de Viena fue en 2016 y en la Met en 2018 con Otello de Verdi. El miércoles concluyó una temporada con Otello en Barcelona.Durante su trabajo en Los Ángeles, ha contribuido al sólido programa educativo de compromiso con la comunidad, en especial con la Orquesta Juvenil de Los Ángeles, un programa inspirado en El Sistema que se fundó en 2007. También sigue ocupando el cargo de director musical de la Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, pero después de criticar al gobierno de Venezuela en 2017, el gobierno canceló la gira internacional que estaba programada. A pesar de que no ha podido actuar con la Simón Bolívar desde entonces, aún trabaja de forma remota con la agrupación y, en ocasiones, se ha reunido fuera de Venezuela con grupos de sus integrantes.El nombramiento de Dudamel sucede dos meses después de que se dio a conocer un reporte sobre la discriminación y la diversidad en la Ópera de París, enfocado en los cambios al repertorio, el proceso de admisión de la escuela y la composición racial y étnica de su compañía interna de ballet.Pero alrededor del mundo, las compañías de ópera también han sido llamadas a diversificar su personal, elenco artístico y repertorios. Junto con Ching-Lien Wu, la recién nombrada maestra del coro de la Ópera de París, la contratación de Dudamel forma parte de un esfuerzo por cambiar el rostro de las filas ejecutivas de la compañía y su enfoque hacia la diversidad y la igualdad.Zachary Woolfe ha sido el editor de música clásica desde 2015. Antes fue crítico de la ópera en The New York Observer. @zwoolfe More

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      A Battle of Boos and Cheers at the Symphony

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      In the early 1980s, John Adams’s “Grand Pianola Music” defied the seriousness of classical music. Not everyone liked that.It was 1970, and the composer John Adams was tripping on LSD.He was at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and he wandered into a rehearsal for Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy,” with the eminent pianist Rudolf Serkin sitting at a Steinway.Adams saw — or thought he saw — the piano begin to stretch into a cartoonishly long limousine. A similarly fanciful vision later came to him in a dream: He imagined driving down a California highway as two Steinway grands sped past him, emitting sounds in the heroic vein of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and “Hammerklavier” Sonata.Both of these surreal episodes contributed to Adams’s eclectic and playful “Grand Pianola Music.” The piece, which premiered in 1982, had a turbulent early history, inspiring a rare chorus of boos and drawing criticism as a symptom of American consumerism. Yet many grew to adore it — enough to garner it multiple recordings, steady representation on orchestra programs and its own episode of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Sound/Stage streaming series, out Friday.Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in “Grand Pianola Music” for the orchestra’s Sound/Stage streaming series.Farah Sosa for the LA PhilIt was an acquired taste even for its creator. “I think I said something wry in ‘Hallelujah Junction’ about wanting to take ‘Grand Pianola Music’ behind the barn and shoot it,” Adams said in a recent interview, referring to his 2008 memoir.“I’m glad I didn’t shoot it,” he added with a chuckle.If audiences were slow to accept “Grand Pianola Music,” it may have been because they didn’t know what to make of its puckish rebelliousness. The beginning, a Minimalist shimmer, was familiar territory — albeit scored idiosyncratically for winds, brasses, percussion, two pianos and a trio of siren-like singers. But the finale was audaciously melodic and openhearted, in defiance of contemporary music’s persistent, thorny seriousness.Elements foreshadowed Adams’s operas “Nixon in China” and “The Death of Klinghoffer.” At the time, however, “Grand Pianola Music” seemed a strange follow-up to the sensuous “Harmonium,” and not exactly a natural predecessor of the straight-faced and symphonically cosmic “Harmonielehre.”“It begins like ‘Harmonium,’” Adams said recently. “Then I don’t know what happened. Instead of something that people would expect, this crazy thing happened where I got into B flat major, and the piano started banging away, and I learned something about myself: that I have a bit of Mark Twain in me, I guess, because I went with it.”For the most part, though, “Grand Pianola Music” isn’t so grand. The introduction swells to a brief glimpse of the finale, but then gives way to serenity and a slow passage that recalls the spare beauty of earlier American composers like Aaron Copland. (In “Hallelujah Junction,” Adams describes the work as part of a family of pieces that “evoke the American-ness of my background, sometimes with wry humor and sometimes with a reserved, gentle nostalgia.”)This first section takes up more than two-thirds of the 30-minute running time, but Adams said it’s the second and final part, “On the Dominant Divide,” that people tend to remember. It’s also what attracted the most criticism.It starts with the pianos shimmering again, over flares of brasses that build tension until a wave of arpeggios flows from the pianists. As that subsides, a brazenly anthemic melody emerges, what Adams refers to in his book as an “Ur-melodie” that sounds familiar yet unplaceable. It is repeated, bigger each time and eventually bordering on tasteless, but held back from a tipping point by a delicate balance of irony and reaching a climax with the only text in the piece: “For I have seen the promised land.” In something of a coda, the ensemble recedes, then returns with its fullest sound yet, propulsive like a plane in takeoff — and ending just as it takes flight.“John wasn’t in any way disguising some very wonderful, big, gestural, unabashed qualities that are part of his nature,” said the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who has led works by Adams for decades, including as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1995 to 2020. “There’s a luxuriance in the sound, and I think a kind of ‘well, we all secretly admit that we do love certain things if we’re pressed into revealing it.’”Adams conducted the 1982 premiere at the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music festival. It was, he recalled, “a marginal catastrophe.” The singers performed with an operatic sound, which made him realize that the piece required voices with the directness of wind instruments. And people he respected frowned on the score.Adams conducted the premiere at the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music festival in 1982.via San Francisco Symphony“I really thought,” Adams said, “that I had made a mistake with this piece.”Mark Swed, now the Los Angeles Times’s classical music critic, heard “Grand Pianola Music” soon after, at the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival — where, he said, its tunefulness took everyone aback, programmed among works by luminaries of the European avant-garde.“People were bewildered,” he added. “We were still trying to figure John out. What happened? Did this guy go over to the dark side or what?”Swed said that he was probably “pretty pretentious about it back then,” but that he didn’t not enjoy it: “I just didn’t know that it was OK to enjoy it.”Then “Grand Pianola Music” traveled to the East Coast. The composer Jacob Druckman programmed it for the New York Philharmonic’s Horizons ’83 festival (subtitled “The New Romanticism?”) and insisted on conducting it.The orchestra was under-rehearsed, Adams said, and at any rate Druckman didn’t have a lot of experience as a conductor. Heard on an archival recording, the piece’s crucial staccatos are imprecisely pronounced, and the finale is shockingly subdued.Even more shocking, though, is the audience’s reaction. People tend to greet new music, even if they grumble about it on the way out the concert hall, with at least polite applause. There was some of that for “Grand Pianola Music” at Avery Fisher Hall; but there was also a loud contingent of boos. They cool off quickly, but roar back the moment Adams comes onstage to take a bow with the players.“All it takes is two or three people,” Adams said, “and all you hear are the boos.”Adams around 1982, when “Grand Pianola Music” premiered.Ron Scherl/Redferns, via Getty ImagesUrsula Oppens, one of the piano soloists, grabbed Adams’s hand during the bows and told him: “Oh my God, they’re actually booing. Don’t you just love it?”Who was booing, and why, is a bit of a mystery. Swed, who had traveled to New York for the Philharmonic concert, suspected an anti-West Coast bias; the audience’s reaction made him an immediate defender of the piece. The New York Times critic John Rockwell, who wrote in a review that the boos were “a telling tribute” to the piece’s “vitality,” later guessed that the hostility was “one way for determined musical modernists to protest the creeping tide of New Romanticism.” Indeed, a publication by IRCAM, the avant-garde French electronic-music institute founded by Pierre Boulez, compared “Grand Pianola Music” to the America of Disney and McDonald’s.“We were still pretty seriously in the grip of very, very severe modernism,” Adams said. “There was this sense of gravity, that contemporary music was meant to be good for you in the way that spinach is. I think people thought I was waving my nose at the whole concept of a contemporary music festival.”He wasn’t. “I think of composers I love — whether Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ or Beethoven’s scherzos, or even those weird moments in Mahler where there’s humor,” Adams said. “And I’ve never been afraid of that.”Episodes of levity recur throughout Adams’s music; he likened the ironically effervescent British Dancing Girl aria in “The Death of Klinghoffer” to the porter scene in “Macbeth.” From that perspective, the finale of “Grand Pianola Music” seems hardly outrageous or unusual — or at all deserving of its initial reception.Adams came around on the piece, eventually deciding it was “not so bad” and finding that he enjoyed conducting it. He led the performance captured on a 2015 recording with the San Francisco Symphony, a double bill with his “Absolute Jest.” It’s an interpretation of sublime balance and articulation, the meaning of its finale — its nod to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — elevated by a clearly presented reference to “the promised land.”A new generation of conductors has also taken up “Grand Pianola Music,” such as Christian Reif, who presented it with members of the International Contemporary Ensemble at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2018. When Reif told Adams about the coming performance, the composer responded, “Oh, you’re doing that silly piece of mine.”“This piece has so many things that I love about his music,” Reif said in an interview. “The layering of sound, the color palette of a big ensemble, the simplicity and delicacy, but also the explosions and the big dramatic, heroic moments — he doesn’t shy away. It’s unabashed, and we reveled in it.”In the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Sound/Stage episode — which blends a recently taped performance at the Hollywood Bowl with landscape video art by Deborah O’Grady, Adams’s wife — the conductor Gustavo Dudamel calls the work “one of my favorites.” His reading is impressive if only because the piece’s challenges, its inflexible rhythms and demand for absolute precision, are all the more difficult with players confined to plexiglass cubicles.“It’s a real document of the pandemic,” Adams said.Even so, Dudamel marshals a performance that radiates uplift and awe, enough to make a listener wonder what all the negativity was about in the early 1980s. Looking back, Swed said, “it sounded like John was selling out.”“But in a weird way,” he added, “maybe what he was doing was actually avant-garde.” More

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      Dominic Fike Video Shows Paul McCartney and New York Times

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      Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.At a New York Times printing plant in College Point, Queens, the soundtrack is usually the rapid thwap, thwap, thwap of blank paper turning into the next edition. But one night in February, thanks to a famous Beatle and the singer Dominic Fike, things got a little more musical.“Have you,” Mr. Fike sings in a music video shot at the plant, “read the paper?” The song is a cover of Paul McCartney’s “The Kiss of Venus,” and Mr. Fike is shown at the plant taking in the 14 miles of conveyor belts ferrying copies of The Times all around him.With the presses rolling and assembled copies sailing overhead, he glances at the dizzying activity and sings, in verses he added to the track, about people’s differences on issues and the media. “What’s your take on it?” he asks.The 78-year-old former Beatle himself makes a cameo at the end of the video, seated on a bench outside London. He whistles the tune as the camera zooms in on the copy of The New York Times International issue he is perusing. Mr. McCartney slowly lowers the paper to reveal wide eyes and a shock of gray hair. Then he raises his eyebrows and grins.“Paul whistled that perfectly the first time,” Jack Begert, who directed the video, said. “He’s elite.”Mr. Begert added that the image of Mr. McCartney enthusiastically poring over a copy of the paper underscores that he, ultimately, is the source of the music. “Even though Dom reimagined that song, at the end of the day, it’s a Paul McCartney song,” Mr. Begert said.Last year, Mr. McCartney wrote and recorded “The Kiss of Venus,” a smooth acoustic ballad, for his recent solo album “McCartney III.” Mr. Fike’s reimagined version — an R&B pop earworm — is part of the album “McCartney III Imagined,” out Friday, which features A-listers covering “McCartney III” tracks.So how did The New York Times score a starring role in Mr. Fike’s video?Mr. Begert said that he considered “The Kiss of Venus” a reflection of the stop-and-go energy of modern life — and that when the time came to conceptualize a video, his first thought was New York. “It’s still and beautiful, but also crazy,” he said.The video’s creative director, Reed Bennett, suggested the Times printing plant. “I was like, ‘That’s perfect,’” Mr. Begert said. “I wanted to link back to the theme of one person feeling small but also like they have a really important place in the universe.”The cavernous, 550,000-square-foot plant — about the size of 11 and a half football fields — prints copies of The Times each night, along with copies of Newsday and USA Today.At College Point in Queens, the presses are several stories tall. Clayborne BujorianThe presses are generally quiet during the day, but at night, the seven cerulean blue behemoths — each several stories tall — roar to life. “It gets your adrenaline pumping,” Nick D’Andrea, the vice president of production at the College Point plant, said. “You get that excitement as they start up to get the paper out.”The late edition of the paper goes to press at about 10:15 p.m., so a video crew of eight showed up a little before then on a Friday night in February to scout potential shots, Mr. Begert said. After that, the pressure was on: They had a few hours — max — until the presses shut down for the night.“We just knew we had to move as quickly as possible to get all the different shots we wanted,” Sam Canter, the executive producer of the video, said.Once they began shooting, Mr. Fike marveled at the organized chaos happening around him.“I don’t know what I expected, but it was surreal,” he said in an interview. “It felt like the North Pole, like Santa’s elf factory on the evening of Christmas.”Although Dominic Fike isn’t a frequent consumer of the news, he was struck by the machinery required to print it. Clayborne BujorianThis isn’t the plant’s first on-screen appearance. It got around two minutes of time in a scene in “The Bourne Legacy” — which took three days to shoot — and has been featured in episodes of “30 Rock,” “Elementary” and a couple of commercials.Mr. D’Andrea, who has worked at Times production facilities for 46 years, said visitors were often taken aback by the plant’s team of laser-driven robots, which glide around replacing rolls of paper on the presses.“People are always like, ‘I didn’t know you could do that,’” he said.But Mr. Fike had the opposite reaction. “I was surprised by all the original machinery and how old it was,” he said. “Everything that ever happened was printed there, recorded and written down.” Maybe not quite everything, but still plenty of history. Mr. Fike said he was particularly taken with a page (printed at a different plant) showing the 1969 moon landing.Although Mr. Fike is not an avid news consumer, the experience of seeing the presses and sensing some of the history there might have had an influence on him. “I’m not a news guy. But I love the NYT and I’m going to start reading the news,” the 25-year-old singer said. “That’s what people do when they get older.”Well, perhaps, but reading the news can help keep you young, too. Just ask a 78-year-old whistler. More

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      Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Durk Take Over Strip Club in 'Movie' Music Video

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      [embedded content]

      Dressed in a risque orange bra and matching sparkly thong, the Grammy-winning raptress flaunts her impressive pole dancing skills along with other dancers in a nightclub.

      Apr 16, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Durk have treated their fans to a new collaboration. On Thursday, April 15, the “Hot Girl Summer” hitmaker and the “Still Trappin'” MC dropped a new music video for her track “Movie”, in which they take over a strip club.

      Megan and Lil Durk announced its release on their respective Instagram accounts. Sharing a part of the clip, she declared, “I missed Houston so much I had to bring it to me ‘MOVIE’ OUT NOW @lildurk @713djeric.” The 28-year-old rapper, meanwhile, wrote on his own caption, “Megan we might got the #1 strip club song right now @theestallion video out now !!!!”

        See also…

      Dressed in a risque orange bra and matching sparkly thong, the Grammy-winning raptress flaunts her impressive pole dancing and twerking skills along with other dancers in the “Movie” music video. She and her co-stars appear to have so much fun as they drink expensive liquor and take shots. The clip also displays her and the Only the Family founder throwing money around the dance floor.

      Megan has since gained praise from her online devotees. Taking to the YouTube comments section, one individual gushed, “Megan DOES NOT disappoint. Never has. She always serves.” Another user raved, “What we needed to get us through the day! Megan and Cardi should open up a strip joint, call it WAP.” A third chimed in, “Why Megan slay every music video?”

      “Movie” is the fourth single from Megan’s debut album “Good News” to have its music video. It followed “Cry Baby” featuring DaBaby, “Body” and “Don’t Stop”, in which she collaborated with Young Thug. “Good News” itself was released in November 2020.

      Megan’s new music video came after it was unveiled that her and Cardi B’s raunchy performance at Grammy Awards generated more than 1,000 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. Many of the complainants dubbed their March 14 performance “disgusting” and likened it to “pornography.”

      Despite the complaints, Megan managed to take home three awards that night. She won Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for “Savage Remix”, featuring Beyonce Knowles, as well as Best New Artist.

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      Carly Pearce and Lee Brice Over the Moon Becoming Early Winners at 2021 ACM Awards

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      Just days before the 56th Academy of Country Music Awards is being held in Nashville, Tennessee, the ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ collaborators learn that they have snagged one trophy.

      Apr 16, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Carly Pearce and Lee Brice will be heading to Sunday’s (April 18) ACM Awards as winners after scoring the Music Event of the Year trophy for their hit “I Hope You’re Happy Now”.

      The stars, who will perform the tune during the prizegiving, learned they were winners on Thursday, April 15 and Brice can’t wait to get up onstage and sing after a positive COVID-19 test forced him to pull out of a set with Carly at the CMA Awards in November 2020.

      Both Carly and Lee have taken to their respective Instagram accounts to share the moment they were informed they won the prize. “SURPRISE!!!! Is this even real life? This song continues to show me that all of my country music dreams are coming true,” the 30-year-old singer wrote in accompaniment of her post.

      The “Every Little Thing” singer continued expressing her appreciation in the same caption, “Thank you @acmawards @leebrice & all of YOUUU for making ‘I Hope You’re Happy Now’ this year’s Music Event of the Year!!” She added, “Can’t wait to perform it Sunday night.”

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      Carly’s collaborator Lee, in the meantime, wrote in his own post, “I’m over the moon on winning this award but especially happy for @carlypearce! This is her story, her song and I am honored to be a part of it.”

      “Seeing this from the very beginning from her prospective to now winning awards is full circle and humbling but rewarding,” the 41-year-old crooner went on to say. “Tune in to watch us perform live this Sunday at the @acmawards on @cbstv and @paramountplus.”

      The pair joins Kane Brown, Jimmie Allen and Gabby Barrett among the ACM Awards’ early winners – Brown scored the Video of the Year honor for his “Worldwide Beautiful” promo on Wednesday, and Allen and Barrett were unveiled as the New Male and New Female Artist of the Year, respectively, last week, April 8.

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      Van Morrison to Stage His First-Ever Online Concert in Celebration of Double Album Release

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      WENN/Joel Ginsburg

      Just one day after ‘Latest Record Project: Volume 1’ hits retailers, the ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ singer will take over England’s Real World Studios for the special livestream performance.

      Apr 16, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Singer/songwriter Van Morrison will finally join the livestreaming trend by staging his first-ever online show to celebrate the launch of his new double album.

      The “Brown Eyed Girl” star will take over England’s Real World Studios for the special performance on May 8, just a day after “Latest Record Project: Volume 1” hits retailers, and he will be treating viewers to a mixed set of fan favorites and brand new tunes.

      The ticketed event will stream at 3 P.M. ET on Nugs.net.

      About the gig, Morrison took to his social media accounts to share the excitement. “We are delighted to announce that Van Morrison has partnered with @nugsnet for his first-ever virtual performance to celebrate the release of his new album ‘Latest Record Project Volume 1’ out May 7th,” he posted on Instagram.

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      “This livestream event filmed at the legendary Real World Studios in England will showcase eagerly-awaited new music, alongside classic tracks from Van’s catalogue,” he continued. His third tweet read, “Beginning today, fans can pre-order on http://nugs.net and then tune in LIVE on Saturday May 8th, 2021 at 3:00PM ET / 8:00PM BST.”

      The news of Van Morrison’s first virtual gig emerges three months after he threatened legal action against lawmakers who introduced a six-week lockdown across his native Northern Ireland in January amid the spread of COVID-19.

      The musician, who denounced COVID lockdowns in song last year (2020), instructed his legal representatives to commence judicial review proceedings, arguing the ban against playing live music in indoor licensed venues was unsustainable in law and not based on credible scientific or medical evidence.

      He also accused politicians of taking away people’s freedom, while alleging experts were making up facts to justify the restrictions.

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      Fyre Festival Ticket Holders Awarded Settlement Payout in Class Action Lawsuit

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      YouTube

      The music goers who purchased tickets to the disastrous Bahamian music festival are due to receive settlement money as they win in class action lawsuit against the organizers.

      Apr 16, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Fyre Festival ticket holders have been awarded over $7,200 (£5,200) in a class action settlement.

      Trustees have reached a settlement with 277 people who attended the disastrous 2017 Bahamian event, awarding each of them $7,220 pay-outs. The settlement was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court – Southern District of New York on Tuesday (13Apr21).

      “It’s a small but significant step for ticket holders who were defrauded and had their lives up ended as a result of the fraudulent conduct by (Fyre founder) Billy McFarland,” Ben Meiselas, the lead attorney for the class-action, tells Billboard.

      Meiselas went on to admit that not all ticket holders will receive the full sum as there are multiple creditors involved in the bankruptcy case, but added, “There will be monetary relief in some form or fashion pending approval.”

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      The news of the settlement comes a month after McFarland finally confessed to lying to investors in an unauthorised phone interview from prison, which landed him in solitary confinement.

      He told “Dumpster Fyre” podcast host Jordan Harbinger he “knowingly lied” to those backing the ill-conceived music event on the Bahaman island of Great Exuma to raise money for the festival.

      McFarland, who is currently serving a six-year sentence at the Federal Correction Institution in Elkton, Ohio after pleading guilty to multiple counts of fraud in 2017, told Harbinger, “The crime was inexcusably lying about the status of the company to get the money I thought I needed for the festival.”

      The Fyre Festival was billed as a luxury music festival with Blink-182 and Ja Rule among the acts set to appear, but the event turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, with music fans and thrill seekers, who paid thousands to attend, left stranded without proper accommodation or amenities.

      McFarland also admitted he lied to himself, convinced he could pull the festival off. “I legitimately thought the festival was going to be executed,” he said.

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